Long time no blogging.
I’ve been having a very full life. The time before the Co-op board meetings is stressful and full – and this week looking for candidates without success made it worse. I think we have that issue resolved, but I was suddenly violently ill DURING the board meeting Thursday and had to leave in the middle. So I wasn’t part of the final ideas and decisions the next day.
I haven’t been that sick for over ten years. Luckily it was horrible and fast, a lot like food poisoning, but I can’t imagine anything I ate that would have caused it and every time I’ve had food poisoning it comes on about 2 AM. This was a twinge while eating dinner at the Co-op around 5:45. Then diarrhea during the meeting, and made it home (on bike) to more of that and violent vomiting.
By 6 AM the next morning all that was over, and I just feel beaten up from the inside out and have little interest in food but some hunger.
I’m a wacky sick person – not wanting to be alone, embarrassed to ask for help, wanting assurance from the person helping me that they still like me, doing a push me pull you give me attention but please don’t notice how pathetic I am. But I really did need help and I asked for it and appreciate it but still feel very vulnerable and uneasy about it all.
Some friends have heard the story of giving the keynote address at a conference at 7,000 feet and getting altitude sickness just before it was time to speak. I suppose the last time I was this sick actually. The coincidence continues – I started to get cold which is a bad sign. I never get cold unless I’m sick or it is totally frigid.
I did the speech, and realized I was going to be sick. There were 200 people between me and the bathroom at the back of the room. Most would likely stop me to be nice about my speech. I looked around frantically for a trash can, a bag, anything that would spare me from vomiting onto the floor. No luck.
But I had brought my wonderful lovely sacred Tibetan bowl with me, and had played it during my talk to provide a break for breathing and centering. It was a bowl, it is about 8 inches in diameter, it was all I had.
I used it. The rest is a blur, except it is a rare gift to be ill in a room full of healers. I got to pick two people to help me, and Bruce Berger who founded Heartwood Institute became my angel who stayed with me for many hours as the altitude sickness took hold with headaches, peeing every few minutes all night long, and misery.
About 36 hours later I was fine.
The funny tag line is a few years later at a conference a woman came up to me and was friendly, I didn’t recognize her but she clearly knew me. She finally let me know the extent of our connection – she said that she was the one who emptied, washed, and then returned the Tibetan bowl to me. No wonder I didn’t recognize her….
So Thursday night I sat up to say goodbye to the friend who had come to help, feeling the worst had passed, and felt another wave of awful. I had just seconds to realize what was about to happen, and it seemed obvious to grab the only bowl present, again the wonderful singing bowl that was not made for this purpose. But interesting that the two times in the last dozen years or so that I’m vomiting that is the only bowl around. And now I have another friend who has done me that favor or returning the bowl to a pristine state ready for the proper singing use. Thanks Gary.
Life is weird.
Enough of that self indulgence.
Zomba’s birthday was Tuesday. She would have been 10. She should have been 10.
I cried a few tears, I recalled her death, I especially remembered a lot of her life.
There will never be another dog who is as wonderful as she was. Because she was Zomba, and because she was the first.
A few hours before the illness hit I also found out the bees didn’t make it through the very last part of the winter. DOn’t knwo why yet, but I’m sad that they couldn’t live to fly this spring. They were gentle good bees. I will try again.
Otherwise, teaching infant massage and sex ed in the same week is a lovely pairing. My friend Joanne did a wonderful job of talking about sexuality and birth and abstinence and then passing out birth control devices and even having a few of the kids go over the 10 (yes 10!) steps of proper use of a condom with the models she brought.
And for the sake of curiosity and education what are those 10? These may not be the exact steps planned parenthood has, but basically – check the expiration date, check for the bubble in the package, open with your fingers not teach or with sharp objects, unroll with the right side in (if you reverse it by accident start with a new condom as pre-cum can then be on the inside and you don’t want that), pinch an inch of the top so there is space for ejaculate, unroll to the base of the penis, only use approved water based lubricants that don’t weaken the condom, after sex withdraw while the penis is still somewhat erect holding at the base of the condom so it stays on, remove the condom, don’t flush it but rather put it in the trash – tied is preferred.
Ten steps.
Busy week. I got my bike back out, some new equipment including a new seat that my behind has to get used to but it is better than the overly soft seat I foolishly bought two years ago. It feels good to be on the bike again. Although Thursday’s ride home feeling so sick was not so good.
So that is my long catch up post – I have links and more to write later, but at least this lets out a bit of my need to write and tell a weird story or two. If you’ve read this far I appreciate your indulgence.