Sleep, Domesticity, Present Participles 'n Stuff

This is a post found hiding in the Draft Pile... and every crackerjack editor on site is scratching his head, as there's no discernible reason for it to be lurking in the stacks.  It's not great.  It's not terrible. Some of it makes me laugh, but the jokes are for insiders.  Some of you ARE insiders, so there, that's justification enough to let it see the light of day. From textual archaeology, I am dating its origin as May 2011, give or take a decade.

Photo of the Hejrl Hede "Living Museum"

Good morning, and I really mean that!

Okay, so I have a Kotex pad wrapped around my leaking leg, kept in place by a long string of gauze, tied in a cute little bow.  I haven't showered in what I even consider "a while," and no one, not Fred, not La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore, and not a single member of the Domestic Staff here at Marlinspike Hall, the ancestral home of the Haddock clan -- NO ONE -- fed the cats.  They are circling my leg, alternately mewling and hissing;  It's making me nervous.  It's also kinda hypnotic.

But hell fire and damnation, I feel so much better than my last effort at consciousness!

Nothing beats, apparently, taking both tizanidine and baclofen at the same time -- when you are totally desperate to stop your leg from spasming, jerking, and flying around the room backward.  I reached that point of desperation at approximately 2 am, and slept until 10 am, without once waking.  I feel so much better... it is beyond description.

So is this how it used to be, at the end of a *good* night's sleep?  I guess so.  I could learn to like this.
Heck... they ought to bottle this. 

Oh, the intricacies of pain, the psychology of it.  I wonder if I could manage my pain, possibly with one hand tied behind my back (with soft organic cotton, please), were I simply able to SLEEP?

The bed is soaked.  From my leg.  Totally gross.  All I can think to do (besides lots of laundry) is to wash the mattress down with soap, water, then alcohol?  Maybe use some Resolve?  (I dunno?!)

Unfortunately, we recently switched to a modern mattress, swapping our old woollen one for The Castafiore's Sleep Number Bed..  In a puzzling move, she, much like the ultra-sensitive Princess in the Hans Christian Andersen Pea Story, sleeps on a pile of the things now -- mostly feather, as was the want of the wealthy in Medieval Times (and ever since).   For historical accuracy's sake, as well as for her famous degenerative discs, the feathered layers are carefully interspersed with fresh straw ticking, and other mattresses of felt, wool, the straw's chaff, even grasses and seaweed.   Thank goodness, she gave up on the rice and oat chaff, which she only managed to crush into oblivion within a minute of her nightly repose.  The Agricultural Minister of Tête de Hergé (très décédé, d'ailleurs) has even consulted with us about his plans for the year's cereal crops -- so much depends upon Bianca's bedding choices.

Yes, you suppose rightly -- she is the bane of the Domestic Staff! In fact, we can only get a Mattress Freshening Crew to service Bianca's peculiar tastes thanks to the intervention of her personal... umm, well, thanks to the intervention of The Cabana Boy's biological father, Sven Feingold.  (It's a long story that involves diagramming the genetic aspect of our housekeeping staff's indentured inheritance.)

She even has the ornamented canopy, to top things off just so.  Her bed is so wholeheartedly medieval that the rest of her apartment fairly screams in Renaissance dissonance (remember, she once redid everything in the style of François 1 -- shoot, she *replicated* the man's bedroom and charged admission...).  See Anacoluthe! 

I think it might be that her sleeping chamber now resembles something of a stage.  Yes, that's the unconscious draw for The Milanese Nightingale.  Even going to sleep is theatre in the round around here...

Although there were canopies and curtains, these weren’t the full four poster beds with poles at each corner which started to arrive in the 15th century. In the late Middle Ages the best beds had hangings draped from a frame which was suspended from the ceiling beams (see left), sometimes supported by a tall bedhead too, and often with a canopy called a tester or celure. The actual bedstead was usually an independent structure within all the finery. Beds tended to be quite high and might be raised further by being set on a platform.

Hmmm. It would seem that not even a great night's sleep can cure me of my tendency to... what? Think in a lateral way? That's what I prefer to call what others might mistake for Wandering Dementia.

And, as I so frequently inquire: Whose blog is it, anyway?

So, beds.  A straw mattress is not such an ancient construct, did you know?  Actually, a bit of background reading tells us that the mattress form is probably not ideal for straw -- "loose" straw is preferable, in terms of comfort. 

Like all important domestic matters, our greatest needs require the steady, quiet attention of a string of present participles.  Stocking and cleaning the kitchen.  Milk, eggs, flour, and coffee or tea -- good coffee, good tea, mind.  Making bread (which is why it's not on the list).  Filling the salt cellars (from sea to celery).  Separating the recycling and taking out the trash.  Keeping a handy supply of toilet paper. Cleaning the toilet.  Doing the laundry.  Changing the straw, the various chaffs, the grass, and the seaweed in your mattresses.  Or, perhaps, in simpler places than The Manor I live in, just flipping the mattress and exchanging the Egyptian-cotton-high-thread-count sheets with some regularity.

Feeding all sentient beings, and tending the rest.  (Or:  Feed the cats, damn it, and water the tomato plants!)

Yes, feeding the cats is part of the domestic glue that keeps us going.  Is it really all that hard to remember, given that our Feline Remnant can be disturbingly vocal?  Do we need to relegate feeding our indoor pets to one of the inherited tasks taken on by the genetically-engineered Domestic Staff on site?  I think not.  And harrumph!

Okay, so, yes, I have written this strange little post over the course of several hours, adding a word at 9:30 am and a phrase at noon.  As I've done so -- enjoying my day while accomplishing some of what I've listed in the preceding paragraphs -- the strangest thoughts have presented themselves. 

Like...

Is there anyone else out there who has an extra-coverage, odor-absorbing Feminine Pad strapped to their shin?

Can I find a soul mate who understands how wheelchairs will track dirt all over the damned place, which is why one should sweep up after one's precious self?

Will I ever be able to find a quality elevated toilet seat, cushioned, maybe, with arms?  (And if I find it, will I be able to afford it, or will it join other such items on my Christmas Wish List?)

Can bandages soaked with serosanguinous fluid be safely recycled, and if so, do I put them with the aluminum or with paper and newsprint?

Is it ever acceptable to return a kitten adopted from a no-kill animal shelter (given an unrepentant and undeterrable penchant for chewing wires transmitting important data, such as blog posts)?

Next to a decadent chocolate, this note

On my pillow, next to a decadent chocolate, this note:

Dear Retired Educator, You Prof-de-Rien, Vous!


Tonight, when you get depressed and down on yourself as barely qualifying as a waste of space, remember that you did the following things today:


You took care of the animals, meaning the indoor cattery.  Please leave the Petting Zoo Miniatures to the Miniature Experts. [If you are ever sorely tempted to meddle in that domain again, pause and think of Tiny Todd, who might have lived had you not mixed microscopic Egyptian adders with Barely There Anguis fragilis, the amoebic slowworms gifted to The Captain by County Clare for safekeeping. The same admonition, but larger, goes for the Gigantesque Bovines!  They are best herded and milked by classically trained teams of tireless Cistercian Brothers;  Good thing the Haddock ancestral manor has a monastery for its closest neighbor.]  


Anyway, you successfully fed Marmy Fluffy Butt, Buddy the Freakishly Large Kitten, and Dobby the Runt big bowls of basic kibble, as well as providing nutritious treats.  In fact, you catered to their every whim, giving Marmy milk-flavored crunchy nuggets, giving Buddy handfuls of restaurant grade tuna flakes, and teasing Dobby with "liver and cheese" morsels.  You watered them, twice -- a necessity because Dobby polluted the water by giving several spinach tortellini, some stolen eye drops, two yarn balls, and a paper towel a good dunk.  


You brushed all three of them, too, no mean feat.  All praise to the veterinary techs who tag-teamed Buddy last week, successfully lopping off an inch of claw, at least, per bear paw!  Otherwise, your dream of flailed flesh might have come true.  Dobby rolled from side to side from pure joy upon the presentation of a new comb, just for him, and the persistent dandruff at the base of his tail. You tended Marmy and Dobby's runny eyes, a genetic trait, apparently, identical in this mother and offspring.  Marmy hissed at you;  Dobby blew kisses. You put some serious loving on Buddy, who is distressed by his recent virgin hairball experiences.  It turns out that he is afraid of them -- of the actual hairball, itself.  He produced one, looked at it, and ran, screaming as only a Maine Coon can.


He is in a Glom Phase and is never far away -- sniffing at my peeling feet, demonstrating proper tether ball technique, exuding please-don't-abandon-me-to-the-hairballs desperation.  Such a gentle giant.


So you did well, Retired Educator, with these creatures.  Good job!  Do your remember entertaining Dobby with one of your 37 grabbers?  [Insert gratuitous cat video here]

There is more, Madame! You did two (and a half) loads of laundry.  So what if you picked up where you left off on Monday, at week's dawn?  So what if the wet clothes had been sitting all that time in the washer?  You ended up with clean clothes, clean comfy throws, and plenty of fresh and thirsty kitchen towels to throw on the floor the next time you spill water from the cat bowls.


You cleaned the microwave.  Granted, you cursed a bit too much.  There was an incident report to Haddock Family Values, Inc. but the corporate office seems enamored of results over style, so just be more careful in the future.  You may want to review some of The Captain's favorite oaths, all considered socially acceptable, such as "Parasites! Patagonians! Pestilential Pachyderm! Phylloxera! Pickled herrings! Pirates! Pithecanthropic montebanks!"


You did the dishes, three times (and another sink full awaits your attention).  This is one of the harder tasks in your repertoire of daily activities now, and you managed it without too much complaint, and, shockingly, without obscenities. Per your one plaintive request to management, we are sending, under separate cover, the explanation you requested as to "why men think they've 'done the dishes' when they wash, precisely, only those dishes that they were responsible for dirtying?"


You cleaned the stove top.  You did a lousy job.  Do it again tomorrow, and this time, use the correctly purposed grabber to reach all the oily crevasses and boiled potato smears.  


[I mean crevices. No I mean crevasses!] 


Nowhere near exhausted, you mopped the kitchen floor.  However, you then proceeded to vacuum it.  *After* mopping it, not before.  Remember the long ago afternoon in that mountain hideout of a laundromat, with your good friend Jean, the poet, who accused you of putting your dirty clothes directly into the dryer?  You folded them all nicely, piled them in your gold plastic laundry basket, and then into the hatchback before being enlightened by God's Gift to Occasional Verse.  Her poetry was derivative, and anyone who would marry their psychiatrist is clearly troubled.  Remember, too, that she threw a heavy ceramic ashtray in the general direction of your head.  {Green Glass Wings!}


You partially cleaned a bathroom.  Oh okay, you emptied the trashcan, straightened the towels, and retrieved three volumes of Will Shortz' Crossword Puzzle Toilet Omnibus from under a 20-pound ValuPak of three-quarter ply tissue. Then, of course, you vacuumed.  Apparently, when you can no longer bend like a lithesome wood nymph done up in toothsome diaphanous greens -- because, oh, I dunno, you fractured a rib, your glenoid cavity is awash in pus, and you have no knees -- the extension provided by the vacuum is more valuable than a hairless cat.  I mean, gold.  More valuable than gold.


Because we never tire of cleaning cat hair, here in Marlinspike Hall, deep, deep in Tête de Hergé, do we?
[Editorial inquiry:  When was the last time you took your temperature?]


At this point, you were observed by Regional Emergency Gossip Coordinator Tante Louise as you took a short break, slaking your thirst with a generic lemon-lime diet soda.  There were several descriptions submitted to Twitter about your hair, deemed at that juncture to border on inappropriate, and judged by Tante Louise to constitute a fire hazard. 


The Crackhead Lady From Across The Way -- our local claim to fame, being a very well-known, juste comme il faut organic pig farmer -- and the inimitable Bianca Castafiore were seen a-traipsin' across the lowered drawbridge during this interlude, but have not been seen since.  Please contact REGC T. Louise with any sightings.


You went on to vacuum the rest of the Northeast Wing Manor Living Quarters.  We noted your  concentrated efforts at cleaning the new boudoir carpets ordered during the Recent Deliriums, supposed to be a rich, woven black offset with a crisp, beige diamond design.  Kudos, by the way, for your efforts to echo, par terre, the rectangular accents of color, emotion, and primordial memory hung on the walls in the form of black-framed Rothkos. 


The rug design had quickly become covered in weird speckles, however, which turned out to be a collection of massive slough-off from your Little-Old-Lady skin. After dedicating whole days to the mystery of the omnipresent white flakes, doubling and tripling the effort to keep Dobby's dandruff under control, only to learn that the stuff was falling from these hideous peeling CRPS-afflicted legs.  More incentive to clean. [Another reason to hide?]


Time enough tomorrow to ask if peeling, flaking feet are to be expected or whether some odd treatment -- a  grape jelly and duck fat marinade, perhaps -- is called for.  In the interim, flakes, flakes, flakes are everywhere.


You kept going, Dear Prof, you did not cave in to momentary defeat.  


You baked 12 muffins and three individual cakes.  Wonderful result - moist, delicious, healthy.  Bananas, apples, and raisins in a cardamom and cinnamon rich batter. A cup and a half of oats and a generous handful of oat bran.  For some reason, two eggs instead of one.  Radical time management.  Twenty minutes at 400 did not do it.  Twenty-three was perfection.


You tackled some of the mounting issues in Your Office, where it seems everything from stray straw hats to scary rocking chairs are being stored.  You finally contacted the right agency and donated the old power chair and the walker to someone who desperately needs them.  You alphabetized a few sections of books, you cleared a path through the piles of bills, at least sorting it all out into different pile categories -- now one is dedicated solely to Explanation of Benefits and another to Most Creative Collection Agencies, all superceded by the overarching category:  Dear President Obama... [This imaginary epistle might continue with references to how PCIP was supposed to insure that I'd not lose all my possessions in my fight to become and stay healthy... and might end with the reality of my checking account.]

As you put head to pillow tonight, be kind to yourself, for a change.  


Today, you broke free from inertia and the paralyzing effect of outside opinion, at least for a while. You made an appointment for outpatient surgery to have your port removed:  April 20, 9 am.  


You threw away keepsakes that had followed you several times around the world, but that you did not love and did not want.  Dusty postcards, snippets of textile, photographs.


You sometimes cried as you vacuumed, you miss some people like you might miss a left arm.  But you kept moving, now into a laugh, now into new friendship, now into being okay with things as they are.


You did good, girl.  


Tomorrow?  Washing trash cans, repairing blinds, one-pot wonders, more bills, and heightened efforts to recover Fred's sweet smile.


Grosses bises,
The elle est belle la seine la seine elle est belle Editorial Board