Life, that beggar
So, last night, off-handedly, Peter says that he thinks the pain is getting worse not better.
WHAAAAAT?????
I didn’t sleep too well last night. And when I did sleep I had anxiety dreams so lurid and overwrought they’d be funny if they were happening to someone else.* And then, of course, I slept through my alarm, which I had set at 6:30 or so because I wasn’t sleeping—but I knew I would fall irrevocably into oblivion about twelve minutes before I was due to get up and I needed to ring the surgery as soon as they opened about getting Peter in to see someone today. Whereupon the phone rang at 10 o’clock and it was Peter wanting to know what plans I had made for the day, especially if they included dragging him off to the surgery . . . which conversation was made more interesting than necessary by the fact that the landline at the cottage is having one of its possessed-by-demons fits of manic static. This one began in the middle of a conversation with Hannah, so it wasn’t anything I did, unless breathing and knitting are now on the proscribed list for conversations using BT wiring, and the usual pathetic excuse about rain getting into the crucial grrbbjjjt connections doesn’t seem likely in the middle of a drought.** At least in this case I knew it was Peter and could make an educated guess what he wanted.***
I had just finished looking at the clock and screaming when the phone rang again and it was Mehitabel at the church office. Remember the CRB check? Criminal Records Bureau? Because anyone who might want to teach another person to ring change methods can be assumed to be a dangerous lunatic and a threat to the fabric of society? Yes. This topic is so manifestly annoying without any help that the phone static shut up to listen.
They had sent my painstakingly filled-out form back. Due to irregularities about my name. Look, the full whack is Jennifer Carolyn Robin McKinley Dickinson and I don’t use all of it. But dangerous lunatics frequently have unnecessarily long names so they have to be careful.† So we had to go through the whole frelling *&^%$£”!!!!! thing again. ARRRRRGH. ††
Peter and I only had to wait about thirty-five minutes at the doctor’s†††, a mere bagatelle for the cattle-call‡ that is an open surgery. The doc we drew clearly thought I needed a stiffish sedative—something suitable, say, for an elephant—and I felt like saying, you Brits lead such sheltered lives. But he said that These Things Take Time, and More Time Than That When You Get Old . . . and that the apparent worsening of Peter’s pain has probably been caused by the endless dicking around with his painkillers, trying to find one without the fascinating array of intolerable side effects. And he also told us more about the Falling Down‡‡ Clinic we’re going to on Thursday—I wasn’t, originally, going along too, but I’ve decided I’d rather know EXACTLY what’s happening—which does at least sound like what we wanted. Small favours and all that.
And then we came home again (via the pharmacist) and collapsed in our various ways. Peter had a nap and I . . . knitted.
And then, because I am mad, I went bell ringing. It’s Holy Week so I’d assumed we wouldn’t have Monday practise—having forgotten that Colin has a (secular) mini-ring in his garage. Sometimes I think I’d rather forget that Colin has a mini-ring in his garage. I am going to learn to ring the nasty little frelling things, I am. And we did get through plain courses of bob triples and bob major which was . . . amusing.
And at this point I’m so tired . . . I wouldn’t be surprised to find I have eight hellhounds. But I really don’t want the cottage to have disappeared. I don’t feel like making up one of the beds at Third House. Besides, if I have eight hellhounds, I’m going to need two houses. As well as eight arms, sixteen legs, and a best-seller to pay for all the chicken.
* * *
* One of the more absurd and therefore repeatable dreams was that I got back from hurtling hounds and discovered that the cottage had disappeared. The front steps were still there, but instead of a front door with a house around it there was . . . nothing. I could see the garden, which still seemed to be there.^ And I thought vaguely, well, I can plant more roses. . . . And then I looked down and discovered I had about eight hellhounds.
^I don’t remember what the shelves attached to the wall outside my kitchen window were doing. Held up by caryatids possibly.
** Could be squirrel pee. Squirrels get into everything.
*** I have a message on my answerphone right now that I can hear so little of I have no idea what it’s about. “Hello, this is GRAAAAAAHZZZZZZZZZZGGGGGTTTTTT and I wanted to ask you about the ZZZZZZZZZKHKHKHKHKHKHRRRRRRR and if you’d please drop me an email at ZRRRRKKKKAAAAAAZZZZZZGGGGGG. Thanks so much, talk to you soon ZGZGZGZGZGZGZGZAGZAGZKKKKKKKK.” If I get desperate enough I can ring Peter back on Pooka. I can’t ring Graaahz back because I don’t know who she is.
† There’s a whole chapter about it in the DSM IV.
†† This time their Random Checker will declare that all hellhound owners must be asked additional questions. You know they wanted the name of my first school? I haven’t the faintest pebbledashing idea what the name of my first school was. It was in California. I never, ever got to play in the sandbox because it was too small and was always crammed with millions of other kids. And I was bullied relentlessly by a boy in first grade—I was in kindergarten—who looked bigger than Godzilla to me. I hope his true love jilted him and his first novel never sold. And that the teachers who looked the other way because ‘kids have to learn how to deal with life’ have boils in sensitive areas and noisy neighbours.
††† And no, I didn’t knit. I read. I do still read. But I had my knitting with me. Just in case.
‡ Moooooo
‡‡ = Prevention
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