Day 58 Night Shift
- At April 12, 2011
- By Roxanne Snopek
- In Life, Roxanne Writes On
- 0
Another sleepless night.
My youngest daughter is fighting a virus and I think she’s given it to me, thanks darling. I don’t know what it is about colds, but don’t you feel that whenever you’ve got one, it’s the worst thing ever?? The pain in your chest is like, probably, a heart attack. Your sinuses feel, you imagine, how they might feel if someone poured Drano down your nose. You wonder if people going through chemo ache like this in their bones.
You know it’s just a cold. But still. A tiny bit of your brain wonders if this time, you might die of it.
The first thing to go for me is the ability to sleep. Partly a menopause thing, partly my own personal cross to bear. If I’m excited, I can’t sleep. If I’m depressed, I can’t sleep. If I’m hungry, angry, worried, I can’t sleep. Those mornings that I get up, aware that I did not see the clock at 2 am or 3:30 am or 5 am, I feel like doing cartwheels on the lawn. I SLEPT last night, people! I can do ANYTHING!
But then there are the other nights. I’m like Goldilocks, trapped on a dark, Escher-like treadmill. Too cold. More blankets. Too hot. Blankets off. I’m hungry, so I get a snack. Full stomach turns into Restless Legs Syndrome. Stretching my legs turns into yoga. Yoga becomes meditation. Meditation becomes an idea for a story. Which ends up with me huddled beneath a dim light with my notebook.
At least I’m getting something done.
But if I don’t get some sleep soon, the Sneaky Hate Spiral will kick in, and someone’s gonna get hurt.
Day 56 Great News – I’m Not Pregnant
But it certainly explains the blueberry-sized pimple percolating unicorn-like on my forehead. It’s an evil joke that puts chin hairs and zits on the same face, but I know of many women around my age that are dealing with this. Hot flashes interspersed with menstrual cramps. Mood swings and memory lapses, (which is actually a good combination when you think about it.) Insomnia, cravings, and get-the-hell-out-of-my-way rage. PMS on crack, that’s perimenopause, except it’s less predictable and it seems to last longer.
Yay, right?
I’ve been in it for the last three or four years and, between herbal supplements and bioidentical hormone replacement cream, I’m dealing. Sometimes better than others, but I haven’t killed anyone, so that’s something.
I always told my girls that the emotional ups and downs that sometimes – but not necessarily – accompany the menstrual cycle are not a “bad” thing, but rather a tool we can use to identify something that perhaps we’re unhappy about, but that three weeks out of four, we’re pretending is just fine. My daughters have all inherited the “nice” gene, I’m afraid, so I always felt this was information they needed.
We try so hard, us nice girls, to deal, to make things good, fine, okay, great, happy, smooth, peaceful, that we sometimes roll right over those aspects of our life that aren’t quite as they should be. We don’t ask for help when we need it; we don’t say when we’re disappointed; we agree to things when we really want to argue. PMS rips off the veil, forcing us to see what’s real, instead of what’s easiest.
So, yeah, now that I seem to be in a permanent veil-lifted stage, the lessons I taught my girls are coming home to roost. I might look a little more selfish, crabby, argumentative, and a little less compliant and obliging. What I am definitely more of these days is honest. And I think that’s the real task of mid-life.
It comes circling back to that central question: what do I really want? For myself, not anyone else, just me?
Because as my primarily-mother years wane, I’m back to me, myself, a woman I need to get to know all over again.
Day 54 Listening to the Mountain
It’s warm and sunny today, which means I get to spend a few hours digging in the dirt, before I do my yoga for the day! Give me a wheelbarrow and a couple yards of bark mulch and I’m happy. Give me a vacuum cleaner and a floor mop and I’ll tell you exactly what you can do with them.
Our backyard is a rocky slope, made up of fill that has, over the past nine years, naturalized with mostly native grasses, thistle and blackberry.
Pastoral from a distance, but close up, it’s an eyesore. So I’ve been working on turning it into something beautiful, but still natural and low-maintenance.
My plan is to cover the wild and weedy area on the northside of our house with landscape fabric and bark mulch, continuing what I started around the west side. I call it my 20-year project. But hopefully this season I will make it across to the east side, nearest our neighbour, who has been patiently and kindly ignoring the overgrown mess adjacent to their manicured outdoor entertainment area.
Mine is no namby-pamby white-cotton glove affair. It’s a put-your-back-into-it job that usually leaves me with pleasantly aching muscles, cuts and scrapes from brambles, sweat and today at least, mud.
When I began this project, I should say, way back when we first looked at this lot, my mind began whirling with the possibilities and potential. We could have Butchart Gardens, right in our own backyard, I thought!
Then I realized I was being ridiculous.
Minter Gardens. Maybe.
“I’m strong and creative,” I told my husband. “I’ll make this into a showcase.”
“As long as you can do it all yourself,” he answered, “because we’re house-broke.”
So, that’s how it started. I’m strong, creative and Mennonite, babe. You won’t believe what I can do with nothing. Tillers of the earth, ya’ know.
“What’s your plan?” hubby asked, dubiously, when the biggest change was an enormous, and unsightly, pile of dirt.
“I’m not sure,” I answered. “A path through here, I think. Unless I hit a rock. Or a big stump.”
“Then what?” he persisted, the line between his eyebrows deepening. “Terraces? Steps? Retaining walls? How are you going to keep the weeds out? Won’t the deer eat everything you plant? How long will it take? This is going to cost $70,000, isn’t it?”
Unless he costs out a project himself, he believes all endeavours will run either $700, $7000 or $70,000. It’s just where his brain goes. Either that or “and we’ll all die.”
“I have to buy bark mulch and fabric,” I admitted. “But it won’t cost much.”
“Maybe you can draw out a schematic for me,” he said. “With estimated completion dates. So I know what to expect.”
I took a deep, cleansing breath, straightened my shoulders and looked at my mountain. It’s not going anywhere. If I put the right plants in the right spots, work with what I have, I can bring out the natural beauty of this slope. If something doesn’t work the first time around, I’ll try something else, until it feels right. Maybe not Minter or Butchart. But right.
I looked him in the eye. “Honey,” I said. “I’m listening to the mountain. I’ll do what works, and I’ll be done when I’m finished. Don’t worry. It’s going to be beautiful.”
I was remembering this conversation while I was doing my standing postures in class today. Despite a morning of hard, physical, dirty work, my practice was strong and smooth. Even Standing-Head-to-Knee! Not perfect, far from it, but… better.
It seems that, as with my landscaping project, there’s a limit to the control I can exert over my muscles, my body – my 80-year project, hopefully. And I have to focus on the potential, instead of the potential problems, to find the right way. My right way.
The name of my favourite standing meditation pose?
Tadasana. Mountain Pose.