I had a decent day at work today though by the time I got home I was exhausted. I arrived to an intriguing big padded envelope in my mail. What could it be? I didn’t recall ordering anything so the mystery perked me right up!
The fucking chemo fairy brought me an informational “starter kit” for a drug I started last week. I’d of rather received a quarter under my pillow. The full color materials are covered with photos of happy people going fishing or on a picnic, like a bloody beer commercial. Seriously I think I got a pretty good sense of this stuff when I read the instructions online that warned me to “Wear latex or nitrile gloves when handling tablets that have accidentally been crushed or broken.” Are you kidding me? But don’t forget to toss your daily dose down! Maybe the happy brochure is to make up for that little tidbit? (If I put the broken tablet under my pillow do I get that quarter?)
Actually the new drug looks like it will be a keeper despite the failures of their marketing department. Time will tell. Meanwhile I’ll continue to thrive on a steady diet of sarcasm and swearing.
Thursday, August 15, 2019
Friday, August 2, 2019
Fuck it
I’d been lucky enough to enjoy good health most of my life. When that changed, I learned a fair bit about my priorities. Limited energy taught me how little I actually care about much of what I’d normally do in a day. I learned to gaze at some chore and say “fuck it”. This is not uttered with frustration or invective, but rather carries all the emotion one might vest in the rhyming “bucket”. A more mannered person might look at some chore to be discarded and say “nope”, but a serene “fuck it” works for me.
The vast majority of any to do list does not need to be done. Much of what is left does not need to be done as often, or as completely. The necessary and the unnecessary change places with time and circumstance. Tasks swirl about our feet like the ocean foam at the beach, only to be sucked back out to where they make no difference to our life.
I pulled the dog sled into the kitchen last December to wax the runners. Running low on energy I never got myself back out to run dogs. I finally waxed the runners and put it away in the shed last week, July. My dog sled is quite lovely to look at, and the fairly simple task was still more effort than its importance justified. Fuck it.
The dogs certainly never complained that I’ve trimmed nails maybe 6 times since December. I’ve learned they wear them down rather well. Fuck it.
The porch door needs to be re-hung. Dogs blasting through the dog door wore the old hinges out over the years. But we’ve found we can keep the inside door closed instead. Maybe this fall, but meanwhile, fuck it.
Weeding the garden, fuck it. Picking raspberries to put up, fuck it. Mowing the lawn regularly, taking down the lambing jugs, fixing the shed door, all swept out on the fuck it wave.
There surely are activities that I wish I had more energy and time to enjoy, but the to do list was jettisoned to make room for taking care of myself. Through this process I learned how many things are not that important to me, including any sense of obligation to the trivia of everyday life.
The vast majority of any to do list does not need to be done. Much of what is left does not need to be done as often, or as completely. The necessary and the unnecessary change places with time and circumstance. Tasks swirl about our feet like the ocean foam at the beach, only to be sucked back out to where they make no difference to our life.
I pulled the dog sled into the kitchen last December to wax the runners. Running low on energy I never got myself back out to run dogs. I finally waxed the runners and put it away in the shed last week, July. My dog sled is quite lovely to look at, and the fairly simple task was still more effort than its importance justified. Fuck it.
The dogs certainly never complained that I’ve trimmed nails maybe 6 times since December. I’ve learned they wear them down rather well. Fuck it.
The porch door needs to be re-hung. Dogs blasting through the dog door wore the old hinges out over the years. But we’ve found we can keep the inside door closed instead. Maybe this fall, but meanwhile, fuck it.
Weeding the garden, fuck it. Picking raspberries to put up, fuck it. Mowing the lawn regularly, taking down the lambing jugs, fixing the shed door, all swept out on the fuck it wave.
There surely are activities that I wish I had more energy and time to enjoy, but the to do list was jettisoned to make room for taking care of myself. Through this process I learned how many things are not that important to me, including any sense of obligation to the trivia of everyday life.
©Maria Amodei
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