If it were not so, I would have told you.

Dear Readers, mostly of the Sweet Sort --

I received this comment after my last scintillating post of a copy of one of those LOLcat thingies that cat fanatics laugh at every day:

T said...

Been a week now, that's not like you. I hope you are ok.

TAM

Well, okay, damn it, TAM, if you're gonna get all pushy and rude about it, and can't get by for a week on a hard-fought, drainingly intellectual (and creative!) cat cartoon, well, then, geez!  I guess I'd better write something.

You want the truth or the truth?

I mean, I could say it's all been due to March Madness and the fact that my Gothic Wonderland DukieDom was demolished in the Elite Eight, and I'm in mourning.  La Bonne et Belle Bianca ripped off all her clothes -- which took a while -- who knew the secret of her amazing assortment of undergarments, that we will blithely name "shapewear"?  We caught her, reluctantly, before she made it over the drawbridge, but Fred is still putting drops in his eyes.

Speaking of Fred, he has the world's weirdest ear infection going.  In both ears, though he only perceives it in one.  Talking to him is the tops of hoots:  he offers you one side of his head, then the other, then proceeds to slowly rotate back and forth, listening for the correct pitch of your blip on his radar.  He has no pain, has had no fever or dizziness, and likely would not have noticed a thing were it not for the echos and distortion to his hearing. But get this!  He went to the doctor, TWICE.  Of course, TWICE, he saw, not the doctor, but the PA, who was rude enough to check his prostate, as well.  The ear bone is connected to the prostate bone -- new-fangled medicine.  So I've been thankful to the ear issue as it lead to a physical and the sudden appearance of a salad with his every meal -- we both skip breakfast, as I can't do salad for breakfast.  Fruit salad, yes -- staying ahead of TAM, the smarty-panted.

Which leads, quite naturally, to a discussion of why we skip breakfast.  Neither of us are able to sleep.  For a few nights, it was the height of ridicule, both of us in bed, awake for worry about the other.  That accomplished nothing but resentment in the blaring, glaring light of day.  I've gone over to the dark side, to Fred's "schedule." I sleep when I can, and, basically, that means either whole days at a stretch, or not at all.

Many nights of biting through my lower lip, a worried feline Dobby gently putting his paw on my former shoulder, trying in his elven way to bewitch me into sleep, so that he can then curl up on my head, tail forming  an Amish beard under my chin.

I have been writing, but mostly, sorry, poetry.  And sorry poetry it is, too!

I even hosted a poetry contest which I then ruined by being myself.  My contestants, having been "judged" by unnecessarily long and pretentious comments, are almost universally and uniformly pissed off.  Add to that the warm-hearted comments I keep getting after I win any sort of "prize" or recognition, and I feel a bit like a motherless child.  They keep saying, "There is no audience for you here." 

Well, the motherless child reference is just overwhelmingly rich, as my Dearest of Readers already know,. and though Freud and Jung both suck, they'd easily earn their weight in cocaine and great mandalas after just 30 seconds of my whine.  "She's mourning ze mama," they'd say.  Well, she ain't dead yet, my Monty Python side mutters.  I feel no remorse for calling in the troops of Adult Protective Services and only hope that they are true to their word -- which would be a first among the human species I've encountered in the last few weeks or so.  I lay in my bed, moaning, finding no position free of pain, and am psychically connected to her decrepit frame and mind, so many hundreds of miles away, and sometimes I do not reach for my pain medications out of a demented certainty that her pain is untreated, her confusion enhanced by the hurt.

They are not cruel people, her children, and caring for her can be no easy task.  But it's one that needs doing, and must be done well.  

I also hope they've not robbed her blind.  I also hope that... well, you know what one hopes.

My blood work shows something that looks like hemolytic anemia, so I'm not bleeding out, though I am still bleeding.  Sumpthing, sumpthing to do with bone marrow that would like a vacation, please.  Probably from the onslaught of five years of heavy-duty antibiotics.  No bitterness here, no ma'am, no sir!  The worst part is that exertion, sometimes in the form of three to ten steps, can bring on a dip into cold-lipped darkness.  So I use a trick that I knew would one day come in handy.

Many, many years ago, in the days of living with the Self-Proclaimed Greatest of American Authors (was I ever that stupid?  Yes, I was!  And, oddly, regret it less and less.  Honor the ways in which you have survived, no matter how self-demeaning and weird!) -- Anywho, back to my fairy tale: 

Many, many years ago, in the days of living with the Self-Proclaimed Greatest of American Authors, he and I spent an entertaining couple of summer months as Drum and Bugle Corps groupies for the Santa Clara Vanguard, a six-time Drum Corps International Champion.  Self-Proclaimed Greatest had once been the freaking drum major for UCLA, one of those odd quirks that make up attractions, as I would often ask for some strange bedroom reinactments.

His younger brother played horn, blew trumpet, for The Vanguard, and a more dedicated horn blower there has never been.  "Squealing" was the height of heights for these brothers.  Squealing consisted of Baby Brother standing at the end of his bed, which, thank the gods, had a low footboard, his back to it.  Throw pillows were scattered about his feet, "just in case." To squeal is not just to blow for all you are worth, for the entirety -- and then more -- of your lung capacity. No, you show control as well, and as you wail, your back naturally arches, the horn turns heavenward, and you traverse the tones, you trip the light...

Well, yeah, you actually do trip the light.  You do it, or they did, to the point of passing out.  Done correctly, this musical exercise leaves you plopped on the end of the bed, drooling, and much as Heston dared, still gripping the horn which might have to be pried from a dead, cold hand. 

Then, rapidly coming to, you high five your sibling and yell out things like "the coolest" or "awesome blow, dude." 

So as I maneuver around the bedroom, not seeing the point of the transfer to wheelchair and its so forths and so ons, when all I want is something out of the closest of the twelve walk-in closets of our well-appointed digs here in The Manor, I sidle around the contours of the bed, looking for all the world like Eliot's crab, ragged and scuttling.  It's as close to a trumpet squeal as I'm gonna get, and twice has actually worked as planned.  Things began to go cold and dark, and all I needed to do was go backward.  Once, actually, it probably even looked like a casual, planned sit.  Except for the ensuing collapse of the upper body onto the mattress.  Other times, I've parked the wretched chair in the mid-space of my route, and usually made it to the seat in time.  A few times, I've hit the wall, instead, which has a subtle sobering effect, and causes a bit of internal panic, but, as yet, no need for repainting.

Unfortunately, nonsense such as this has lead to more medical appointments, something I had wanted to swear off, as this year is dedicated to staying away from the beastly medic types, unless there is a fire to be put out.  I suppose go-to-guy sees this as a stray spark in a virgin forest afflicted by dangerous drought, an over eager aridity.  I could burn the world down.

So tomorrow, and then again on Thursday, we waste our days with figuring all this out and spraying down the old trees, wetting the underbrush, digging fire lines, breaks to the spread of my ember's arson.

In short, I'm tired.  One trip last week, to sweet Justine, the world's best vampire, wore me out. Writing bad poetry, insulting contestants who willingly entered into a sacred agreement with me to honor their work, trying to keep the Domestic Staff from going wild with equanox joy, and keeping the naked Bianca contained on this side of the moat, all of it has taken a ridiculous toll.  The Mother-Unit's troubles, Fred's poor muddled ears, and the fact that I've demanded coffee in bed the past four days -- all this makes me blue.

Three fingernails are trying to come off and I'm too much of a baby to yank 'em.  My song of experience?  There was a fourth, and I yanked it.  A terrible, sad new use for the profundity of "Never again!" 

Oh, I forgot one of my better excuses!  My eyes.  I'm not blind, I just can't see.  I've even gone faithful to the regimen of glaucoma drops but isn't it the nature of need-driven faith to just gnaw your ass off?

We'll call this a Post of Obligation and hope that you all can find enough in the archives to stay amused.  There's no cure yet for CRPS, or I'd have told you, and the gated community of biofilm osteomyelitis infection has only added a chain link lock to the wrought iron enclosures.  Jose Ochoa is still a turd, as is Scott Reuben, and Lindsey Baum is still gone.  

If it were not so, I would have told you.