You know when life hands you lemons, but instead of lemonade, you get a migraine, gastrointestinal acrobatics, and windshield wipers that unionize mid-shift? Yeah. That was my last 48+ hours. Buckle up.
First, the good news: Mom’s home from Arizona for a week, and I’m not in trouble for the house smelling like Eau de Cat Urine. Huge sigh of relief. The bad news? I made curry, and apparently, she hates the smell. Guess curry is on the growing list of things that overpower urine. Silver linings, right?
Now, back to the night before last. After painstakingly shampooing and spot treating the carpet repeatedly for more than two days, I found a mystery pee spot at 2:30 a.m., because life’s not complete without surprise missions. I stayed up the rest of the night cleaning it. Fast-forward to yesterday: migraine city. I managed to drag myself to physical therapy and followed Clayton’s instructions to the letter, only to end up in my car later, crying tears of “Why am I even alive right now?” and brilliantly snacking on fancy epicurean pretzels that my stomach rejected in every possible way. My gut responded with full Cirque du Soleil-level gymnastics.
At one point, I sat in my freezing car, clutching my stomach, praying earnestly to Jesus that I wouldn’t vomit, and I literally saw His golden rays shining down on me, as I wondered why I can never muster the passion to see The Golden Light when I’m not dying or vomiting? Don’t you fret though: I didn’t do either thing. But it wasn’t pretty.
Next stop: my orthopedic surgeon. Before heading in, I experienced one of life’s humbling moments—a catastrophic violation of my sacred rule: NO PUBLIC RESTROOM POOPING. Let’s just say, rules are meant to be broken when you’re fighting for your life. There is little dignity in illness.
I finally made it into the waiting room, barely upright, eyes nearly closed, tears streaming down my face—not from crying, but because my body decided I needed to look even more pathetic. The medical assistant called my name with cheerleader-level enthusiasm. I must have had the look of death. She responded by turning off the lights and handing me one of those puke bags with the hoop thingy. Bless her soul.
The surgeon walked in, took one look at me, and said, “Oh no, please don’t vomit. I’d rather mop up blood than deal with that.” Comforting, right? He handed me an ice pack and tried to pretend this was a normal appointment. He mentioned surgery options, but honestly, I was too focused on not hurling gourmet pretzels to care. I mustered a, “Fine. Do what you want.”
Then came the checkout process. The line was a mile long, and my body was like, “You’re not waiting in this, Darlin’.” So, I broke social norms, handed my paperwork to the first person who finished with a patient, and said, “I’m about to vomit.” She compulsively took it. Thankfully, humans are creatures of habit. When you hand us something, we almost can’t help taking it, and I ran out of there before she had time to protest.
The drive home? A miracle. I was freezing, armed with a puke bag, and had to stop repeatedly, get out and manually move windshield wipers that refused to work until I finally asserted my dominance and they reluctantly complied, shuddering out a labored rhythm. And yet, somehow, miraculously I made it home without puking or losing consciousness. How? Singing Eddie Rabbit’s “Drivin’ My Life Away.” I have no explanation. “…Oh, the windshield wipers, slappin’ out a tempo, keepin’ perfect rhythm with the song on the radio-o-oh. I gotta keep a rooooh-llin’.” And I did.
When I finally got home, I said, “All I have to do is vacuum up the crusty baking soda and vinegar mess, and I can sleep.” Spoiler: it didn’t vacuum up. So then I said, “All I have to do is shampoo this one spot, and I can sleep.” That escalated into a marathon of “just one more things.”
In the end, I got the house looking great for Mom’s arrival. She said the stairs looked amazing (thank you, kidney-infection cat pee–it needed the shampoo anyway), and I got her stamp of approval. Small victories.
So there you have it. My life is chaos, but I’m still upright, though a bit slow and crooked, but ready for whatever comes next anyway. Also, I’ve managed to get a lot of work done on my new shop. Admittedly, I’m relentless.
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