Interesting week. Felt very much like a fractal of what this whole nation is going through during and post-election. Old stuff had to go for new stuff to come in. First, the old stuff:
First, the need to absorb and integrate an unprecedented crime and tragedy in the neighborhood, only a stone’s throw from my house. I found out about it last Sunday, six days ago, as I was driving back to town from a grueling yoga retreat that seemed to be squeezing every bit of toxins from all my cells. (And see this.)
Next, the scheduled take down of a beautiful 46-year old (we counted the rings) Elm tree (a rarity around here, apparently), that had been producing fewer and fewer leaves for the past three years, and since it was a split tree, one part could have fallen on my house, and the other part on the house next door!
Here’s Adrian Heil, the best tree service in town (he no longer takes new customers), up in the crane.
That was Tuesday. We decided to keep all the wood,
for terracing and hugelculture garden beds, the first three of which we will create in a GANG garden (Green Acres Neighborhood Garden) workshop and celebration tomorrow afternoon.
Also, this week, the completion of a deck on the back of the house that incorporates a new sliding door (replacing a double window).
This will give better access and circulation through the still extremely messy and ugly back yard and force me to begin to do a permaculture design for this part of our little two-house homestead.
Meanwhile, sad to say, not only was I immobilized (by the yoga retreat) on Monday, by Tuesday I had come down with a raging cold. From Tuesday through this morning my body has been releasing the mucus buildup over the past two years . . . during which I discovered elderberry tea! (crush berries, pour boiling water over, and steep) and drank copious amounts.
Meanwhile, we still took our walks, like this one, past one of IU’s current mammouth building-up projects (this one for the Music School).
Thursday, Shadow and I drove out to Monroe Lake for our walk, where a wondrous fog matched my foggy brain.
The misery and inconvenience of my “cold” was nothing, however, compared to what I received yesterday. Okay, here goes, the piece de resistance, my TORTURE DEVICE!
SAY WHA? you say? Yeah, me too. And I’m supposed to wear the damn thing for three hours total a day, torquing my poor still stiff hand into various difficult positions to increase range of motion. And it cost $1000 (of which I pay $200, or 20%) . . . And within two or three months, it will hopefully work . . .
So, this morning, before getting ready for the day, when I must (obviously) clean house and make food for tomorrow’s hugelculture event, I sit with my iPad in my favorite chair with puppy Shadow,
wrist locked back into position,
read about the Fall of Petraeus (sounds like “betrayed us,”) and laugh like crazy about the real meaning of “embedded.”
2 thoughts on “Fractured Wrist Chronicles continues: Tear Down to Build Up, plus torture device!”
Torture device indeed! Let’s hope it works to make all that is now separated, come together.
I know that nasty Midwestern cold! My dad in NE shared his with me on my recent visit. Between stressful trips to a variety of family members and to a variety of oncologists and specialists to confirm that the cancers, and my father, are now at that point and that “all has been done,” to sleeping on my mother’s beds – that were the piece de resistance at one time, but no more (!), I picked up the virus and am still working on laying it down or casting it away….I’m going on the 4th week. I hope yours is over much sooner! Yay for elders – in all forms!
It is yet another time of change, growing, processing, recycling (as in your elm tree) and appreciating the cumulative best that remains.
*I can’t seem to add a picture to this reply, but Miss Lilly, the beautiful beagle, says “Hi Shadow!”
I feel so much better today. Truly, I credit elderberry for the quickly moving mucus release. Just to make sure, am going to have another cup of it, right now, as I settle in for my second hour of torture device, this one with hand bent forward . . .