One Long, Long, Long Week

Let's see for record. It all started really over week ago. A fierce lightning storm knocked out the power on my entire street. I live out in the country you see, so when the power goes out, it's all blackness. That, and it takes the power people ages upon ages to drive their little bucket trucks out here (maybe to find that there are actual roads and people who actually use power.) and figure out the problem. I'm not one to complain, but when the waffling temperature decides to plummet down to the 30's a lack of heating is sorely missed. The brilliant power people, I guess decided to theorize about how to turn the power on instead of actualing turning it back on. This is important for purely academic reasons. They also probably theorized how well the local people could manage if they went an extra night without power the same night that it actually snowed in Alabama. So the power stayed off for over 30 hours. And the silent snowflakes were falling. Larvae-like, the 2nd night, I slept in my cocoon sleeping bag. Warm. Except for my scowling face protruding out of the darkened, country quiet. The next morning. I didn't feel so hot. My cough, that I still haven't managed to shake, was progressively worse. I could sense the approach of a serious cold.

A day or two later, I was getting ready for this huge spiritual retreat. The kind of retreat that is built up into one of those life-changing encounters. I had gotten in at the last moment. And though, my cough was nasty, I wasn't backing out. Who knows when I'd get the chance to go on this retreat. People from all over the community of Birmingham come and take part. Guys only. And you go through these devotional meditational type activities. These are not the retreats were you hit on the opposite sex, play ping pong and run around with Supersoakers and then hoarsely sing worn out devotional songs. Cry. And then the next morning its the Supersoakers again. No. These were the type of more in-depth devotional practices. Really and truly designed for life transformation. Instead of a day-care with rice-kripsie squares and free T-shirts, there was something different about this retreat. All ages were welcome. I was probably among the youngest.

Well, it wasn't too long until my cough and cold made the first night of this retreat unbearable. I lay in my bunk bed miserable. I coughed, I sneezed. I ached. I had something more serious than a common cold. I tried to overdose myself on Nyquil to knock me out. But I continued to lay there continually aware of my miserable state. I laid there the entire night. Maybe nodding off for a few minutes. I was in no mood for a retreat. I just wanted to be unconscious. The next morning, early. The stage was set for sanctity. It was only Friday, but Communion was given. I didn't take any, not being in the proper state of mind. I left the retreat that morning. And went to the doctor.

The doctor, which as was custom, had a way of measuring whether or not, I really felt sick enough to see him. That is, by giving me lots and lots of time to really contemplate whether I'm sick or not. This contemplation screening is done in a waiting room, in the hallway before one's room, and then even in the patient's room, where you can't stop from leaning back and crinkling the paper on the bed. A different nurse walks in each time and prods you with all different annoying devices. Something's jammed down your throat, something else stuck up your nose, and then they make you bleed with needles. All to test your resolution on the matter, as though you would jump up, and confess "Aha! Okay, you've got me. I'm not really sick!! I'll go home now and just eat some soup. Just please stop touching me with those things!!" Well, I passed all these screening tests. But then they decided to make my doctor's bill extraordinarily higher by giving me X-rays. And after everything was said and done the doctor came back with his sagacious discernment that earns him a condo in Florida and proclaimed the obvious. "You've got the flu." I was handed out all different types of prescriptions some to actually help me, some more to help the pharmacists pay for their condos in Florida. I was told that I was contagious until Tuesday. It was then Friday. But then the final end to my doctor's visit came. One which would have been incomplete was my visit by Big Betty. Of course, her name probably wasn't Big Betty. But she looked part. She was this big black lady with a nice smile. She came in, so politely. with some needles and rubber gloves. I knew what this meant. And I said calmly, "Which arm?" She laughed her Big Betty laugh. "I don't need your arms." A gulp resounded in that white room and I dropped my drawers. Big Betty administered my steriods shot in my rear end. And then to measure them off, pricked me with some other needle on the adjacent side. With the steriods shot, I probably had the buttocks muscles of a male ballet dancing superstar. Or at least one side.

I had a long haul of being sick. There was nothing more that I wanted to do than just lay in bed for the next 5 days. As I drove home something was not feeling right with my car. "Oh great" isn't this lovely." But I made it home.

So for the past week. All I've done is just lay in bed, eat soup, take my medicines, read Hemingway, Chekhov, and Anne Rice, fiddle around on the computer, and watch every single episode of the Flight of the Conchords. Oh, and talk on the phone with some of my friends. I am better now. I still have this savage cough. But, I feel recuperated to some degree. But...but I am still stuck for you see, my car got sick about the same time that I was sick. Yes, one day, before my full recovery, I ventured up to the store, and had a difficult time bringing it back. Turns out the transmission's shot on it. And transmission's don't come cheap. So right now, my poor Honda Accord 03 is sitting in a shop in Pell City, while a greasy fingernailed man tinkers away inside her. And the cost that I'll probably have to pay him is around $1600. So the doctor, the pharmacist, and the mechanic have all conspired together on how to siphon off the money that I was saving up for my travels. (Sounds like the plot of a nursery rhyme to me, except I'm not much in the mood for nursery rhymes.) And so I'm just left at the house with absolutely nothing to do. Fortunately, my job is such that allows for such inconveniences. But I am getting antsy and restless. Which proves that I'm returning back to my natural self.