Remain calm! All is well!

The old corpus is sustaining a bit of abuse these days. "Old" being the key word. 41 years I've been polluting and marking up this body, and stuff is crapping out on it.

Couple of weeks ago I spent an afternoon sprucing up the library at the Big Man's school, including spray-painting the book carts. They were the color of dried putty when I started, a shade I call "soul-crushing beige," and I painted em black. All I had. And just doing that wrecked my knees for a week. I was forced to admit that a) I have bursitis and b) it was acting up. Plus, pushing the button on 4 cans of paint seems to have injured the nerves in the tips of both my index fingers. They still feel tingly and numb.

Next, I booked appointments at the good eye doctors and the audiologist. Can't fucking hear. Too much time spent directly in front of the stage. I always stand stage left, and when they finally check my hearing I won't be surprised if it's worse on that side. The eye doctor needed to check my nascent cataract (cataract?! fuck!), but while I was there agreed that I need bifocals. Dilated me all to hell. (Dilated my eyes. It's been 4 years since I was last in labor, but that coulda sounded funny - what was your eye doctor doing down THERE?!)


My eyes are supposed to be blue, not black.

Speaking of labor, Big Man's delivery was very hard. After he was born, my left leg didn't work at all for a few days. I didn't have a whole lot of follow-up with the neurologist because ten days after Big Man was born, travel within NYC became difficult and doctors got kind of inaccessible. It got back to normal on its own, but just lately I've been noticing my left leg tripping me up. That foot just doesn't follow through on a step as fast as the other one.

Last spring, I was using a mandoline to slice potatoes. Sliced the side of the tip of my pinkie off to boot. Went to the urgent care and they gave me a tetanus shot and got the bleeding stopped. That finger is all slanty now.

And yesterday, I was using garden snips to deadhead spent flowers. Big Man was picking peas for dinner and asked me a question. I turned my head to answer him and snipped off the side of the tip of my ring finger. Took three different clotting attempts this time to get the bleeding stopped.

So if you've been keeping score, I'm down to 6 fingers operating at full capacity. I'm typing this one-handed, but not to fret - because I've spent so much time as a software trainer, I am pretty speedy one-handed. Also I can type upside down, but there's not much call for that.

Here is a picture of the wastebasket at the urgent care overflowing with all the bloody crap despoiled by my goddamn ring finger.



Bursitis. Cataract. Hearing loss. Bifocals. Lazy foot. Insensate fingertips. Quite an inventory.