June 23, 2009
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I went to the laundromat today.
While I got ready to go, Doug and I were trying to recall how long it had been since I’d done any laundry. We knew that I’d taken him with me because I was having trouble breathing. That was probably early in the course of the atypical fungal pneumonia two years ago, before it became too severe for me to do anything that physically demanding.
Then, when I was beginning to recover from the pneumonia, I got the flu. I took it easy, took care of myself, and I was starting to feel somewhat better when I caught a cold from Greyfox. By then, it was December and just before the middle of December Doug called 911 for me and the paramedics took me to the ER. A few days later, I was back home, in bed, depending on Doug for just about everything.
It has been a long, slow recuperation. Getting over the acute illness wasn’t made any easier by my several chronic disorders. M.E. is the most challenging of them. It slows me down, trips me up, impairs my sleep, fogs my brain sometimes, ties my muscles in painful knots at other times. If all the symptoms hit at once, it might even impair my will to live. But they don’t, and so my will to live remains strong.
My will to dance is something else. I love to dance. I used to live to dance. I danced for a living, even. I sometimes spontaneously start dancing, but I no longer dance to fatigue. It’s a practical matter, really. I can’t justify it. When I am unable to keep my house clean, unable to do laundry for two years, I can’t justify expending much of my scarce and precious energy on dancing. Dammit.
I do, however, venture into the yard occasionally, and bend, crouch, kneel, or lie on the ground to play with my camera. A few days ago, I got my best shot yet of a bumblebee.
I also documented evidence (in the bronzed tips of these Spirea leaves) that we had some patchy frost on the night of the Summer Solstice.
And, I photographed a wildflower I’d never seen before: Linnaea borealis, or “twinflower.”
Also in my recent photos are a closeup of a mosquito, a shot of shelf fungus growing on a rotting log, plus a series of shots of the sky around the moment of the Solstice, 9:45 PM AK time June 20th…
…and a series taken around the same time, of a neighbor’s lilac bush.
Comments (8)
Yeah!~ a fellow Xanga blogger! I’m planning to get back to mine, thanks for sharing.
kaboomz_mom Bruce Noneman Memorial site
My_Weird_Life_now Penny Noneman site
All that dancing is very.. Ellen Degeneres of you
i do my laundry every Saturday like clockwork
Nice bee picture—had a couple robins playing in a puddle in the yard the other day and couldn’t figure out how to zoom in—after almost five years learnt how to activate the flash recently
I wish I could go two years without doing laundry. Me thinks folks might start to complain, though.
Love the bumble bee pic!
Well I guess if clothes are free in the dumpster it doesn’t give you a reason to do laundry.
I have certain clothes though that I like wearing. They are comfy and make me feel at home. I can’t help but want to wash them again so I can keep wearing them! I believe you said you have a few clothes like that in one your blogs.
Great pictures
I especially like the bumblebee and the lilacs (lilacs are one of my favorite flowers—I love the way they smell).
Laundry is piling up on me here, too. I have about 8 loads in my closet, but the wall of the closet has been subjected to water leaking from the roof, and so mold has grown. I’m really allergic to molds, so my husband and I need to get some face masks, and get in there and take care of it. Ugh. I haven’t been in there in about 5 months. Not looking forward to it, but I know I have to get that stuff out of there for my/my family’s health.
@KarlaandSuperMedic - Those special clothes were what motivated me to make the effort to do the wash. I’m really paying for it today in stumbling and fumbling. Now we both have clean underwear (long and short) and all our polar fleece is clean, ready for winter. Next, I need to go pull some jeans out of the pile to wash.
@BluePaNDoRa - I SO understand about the mold and all. Our bathtub/shower stall is still full of dirty clothes. They had been bagged and piled up around the overflowing hamper in the hallway until last fall when we had the electrical wiring done. Doug moved everything to the tub to get it out of the way.
I was down for days after I spent an afternoon in there sorting clothes a few months ago. It took those months for me to recover sufficiently from the sorting to go wash half a dozen loads. Now, when I recover from the laundromat, I need to go sort some more.
i hope you get better with the sickness
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