Jumbled VII
I think I better stop with these Jumbled titled posts, they might be keeping the jumble materializing in my days. This last day of 2008 had a jumble of highs and lows. One of the highs was getting to visit with a woman who was a childhood friend whom I've not seen for nearly twenty years if not more. She was the daughter of one of my mother's childhood friends who recently passed and my friend had been here to help her Dad dispose of her mother's belongings. If the snow had not kept me stalled in Phoenix for so long I might have had more than a thirty minute visit but she was heading home--several states away--today as school is about to start and she teaches music at a middle school.
The only low point of that encounter was when she drove in minutes after I had come inside after a workout on the mini-tramp. I was soaked from the inside out with sweat from the waist up and from the outside in with rain from the waist down. I'd been planning to head for the shower but had to substitute a quick sponge bath and change of clothes along with cursory attention to face, hair and teeth. And of course being in a rush combined with the issue of my visual impairment causing me to fumble, things to tumble, and my feet to stumble and by the time I got out to the front room to say hello my mind was a jumble.
Shortly after my friend left I went to my laptop to start working on today's post and one of the first steps I intended was to get the pictures off my camera to illustrate the post I planned (not this one obviously) and update Saturday, Monday and Tuesday's posts with the picture's I've been promising.
But I no sooner got settled and my mother came in to take a nap. See, I'm sharing Mom's room with her this year and have set up my laptop on its foldable desk with a surface the sice of a TV tray next to the bed. The setup is similar to what I have at home except that here I've less space and less light. With the overhead off as it must be when Mom is sleeping, I had only the reading lamp at the head of the bed to my right and that light was not only coming from the wrong direction it was too weak by the time it reached my keyboard to illuminate well enough for me to read the keys.
This light issue and the need to be quiet precluded my getting out the camera and USB cord and getting those pictures off the camera. So I contented myself with reading and composing email until Mom woke up and returned to the front room. During that time I eyed the area on my side of the bed and saw that I could move my desk closer to the lamp by switching places with the bedside table. I asked my sister who said 'I don't see why not.' So I proceded to move things off the surface of both onto the bed and made the switch and then cleared the stuff off the bed. It didn't take long, maybe twenty minutes and by the time I was done I was pleased with the effect and anticipating a more productive session after dinner.
I helped my sister prepare dinner and then served it as she was leaving to hang with a friend for a few hours (she had not be able to get away much before my arrival) and all through the making, serving and clearing up of dinner I was itching to get back in to Mom's bedroom to finish putting my workspace in order and get those pics off my camera before it was time for her to go to bed. That was a bit of a high point and pretty much the last one of the day--except maybe watching Bradley, the family's cat, playing with a toy mouse my sister found in the bag I'd left on the couch. It was the mouse Merlin had been playing with on the bed while I was packing and either he put it in my bag or I accidentally picked it up along with other items. I must admitt that watching Bradley chase that mouse around the kitchen, through the dining room and into the livingroom was a hoot and a half and qualifies as a high point. But that didn't happen until after my sister got home which was after my Mom had gone to bed.
Returning to the moment the dishwasher was nearly loaded. I turned from the open dishwasher to head to the livingroom to see if Mom was done with her plate as it was about the last thing to go in. Now that dishwasher door when open is about shin level. It blocks the path between the sink counter and the stove counter. The back door is just the other side. So I had taken maybe two steps away from the dishwasher towards the dining room heading to the living room when the doorbell rang. I thought it was the back door so I turned and rushed to answer it. And BANGED my left shin HARD into the dishwasher door.
I yelped, myy vision browned, my gut roiled, tears sprang. The doorbell rang. Mom called out, 'Joy!!! are you OK?' and the temptation to pass out left me in a rush as I imagined Mom trying to get up and come to me. I fumbled with the dishwasher rack, pushing it in and closing the door which immediately bounced open as I hadn't latched it. The door bell rang again, Mom call out again. I managed to call back that I was OK and not to try to get up. Then I hobbled to the front door to let in my cousin's husband--the very same who came over to fix our blocked kitchen sink drain between nine and eleven last night.
I had no presense of mind to say come on in or ask what was up. I just turned and hobbled to the recliner next to Mom and fell into it. Then lifted my pant leg more than half expecting to see a bloddy gash across my shin. But nothing was visible. But Oh Boy! Touching the spot caused the browning vision, roiling gut and tears all over again. I had to sit there for nearly half an hour before I trusted myself to stand and walk again. And it was only because Mom reached out to hand me her plate saying she couldn't hang onto it any longer.
After I put her dishes in the dishwasher I headed to the bedroom with hopes rising again that I could finaly get to work on a real post. I haven't done a substantial one since last Friday. I lifted the lid of my laptop and saw there was an email from Ed and eagerly reached for the clip on lenses that augment my prescription eyeglasses so that I can read the screen from a bit more than arms length away instead of the four inches required by the bifocal lense. The clipons were not in their place. They were not any any of their less usual places either.
I realized I must have lost track of them during the hasty moving around of the things on the surfaces of my desk and the bedside table. No big deal. They'll just be somewhere on the bed still or at the worst on the floor beside the bed. But no. I felt around and look all over. Could not find them. I asked my nephew to help me and he couldn't spot them either. As soon as I was sure they were not on the floor where I could step on them in my search for them I excused him to go back to his video game. But I kept looking. And looking. And looking. For three hours, breaking a sweat that plastered my hair to my scalp and steamed up my glasses and trickled into my eyes. I looked right up to the moment my Mom came in to bed at ten.
I didn't find them. So I'm writing this with my nose nearly on the screen. Well it is actually a palm's length from but it feels like I'm about to collide with it. This position makes my neck, back and thighs scream after a few minutes so I have to sit back and either stop typing or risk having to fix a bazillion typos in the sections I type while unable to read the lines flowing from the cursor.
And I've got a blue goose egg on my shin that is throbbing like a migraine.
And so this year tumbles into the jumble of history's dump.
Forgive this grump for not editing these jumbled lines.
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