sensations, oranges, Blue

 * Myriad sensations. Warmed blankets. Skin pricks. Antiseptic. Rubbing alcohol. Chatter as professionals walk past my cube. I doze unaided by meds...do they pipe the meds in through the air vents? Disappearing for hours, not dreaming. A chest on fire, pierced by a row of barbed wire. I prattle to the driver : "The nurse put my shoes on me." Home, with flowing drains beneath my flat shirt. Icey mandarin orange segments. Meds and dreamless sleep. All this while outside the snow falls and cars sit unresponsive in the negative degrees.

* News the world thinks important does not penetrate. Even after the heavy duty meds are gone all I want to do is eat mandarin oranges segments and sleep. My room mate refills the vaporizers, feeds the dogs, empties my 'grenades', pushes me to drink water. In preparation we decided that he would not ask me how I am but that when my eyes opened I would recite a litany of ...well...how I am. And with every litany I add : "I am not complaining, just reporting." Close my eyes, drift back to sleep. A bomb next door would not disturb my mandarin oranges and sleep. 

* Finally, I am able to open the door to let the dogs out. I inspect my fingernails and wonder how I got the cut on my inner heel. A pale yellow gaunt face reflects back at me. And finally, I take notice of the snow, the cold, the news, the winter garden. I wonder, at last, what is next on this wretched unplanned passage. On my very own A Trip Into the Blue.

morning

 * See you in the morning.....

knives, Feb, arrived, spelling

* Does the direction knives are hung on a kitchen wall denote something?  Horseshoes with ends up or down means something, I cannot remember.

* The early Feb sunshine does much for my non alcoholic spirits. 

* Whatever is said about Amazon, I ordered post-mastectomy garments on Friday and they arrived today in time to be washed and hung on the line.

* There are words whose proper spelling escapes me so I just let them lie if I know I will use them infrequently. When 10, I found one whose spelling I needed to remember in order to escape my mother's wrath. We had just moved back to the mainland and I was at last old enough to write thank you notes and letters to mostly never been met relatives in a small Ohio town where they had remained even as my parents had fled. The town has a challenge to pronounce and spell name derived from a Native American language. I displayed my efficiency by combining my Christmas thanks notes with my January birthday thank you notes--or was it procrastination? Anyhow, learning, memorizing, the spelling of the town name helped me escape my mother's irritation. Two words recently have traipsed into my life to force me to specifically remember their spelling:cemetery (a third 'e' not an 'a') and mastectomy (thought it was masectomy--whoops! there goes the spell correct red line). Yipes! I do hope they will not be used in the same sentence in the near future.

* 'Elizabeth is Missing'

* on a t-shirt : What if the hokey-pokey is what it's all about?

* French takeout : 'le click-and-collect'

* The wee hour coldest air of the night insinuates itself into my stretched out tightly wrapped feet needling me to wake. "Ignore. Ignore." I do and only unignore when the weak outside light flits over the stained glass.