Don't blink or you will miss out

Sunday, January 24, 2010

If I had recorded the track of life inside this old farmhouse over the last month or so and then ran outside to the barn, turned around and looked at the house and hit replay, this is what I would have seen;

The dried up old siding would heave and chuckle trying to hold itself together as it shook with amusement, and the old crooked porch that regularly pulls itself away from the main house body in the cold, would sit straight and proper as it leaned in to listen to all the fun we’d had.

The roof would raise its eyebrows once or twice and blush—and oh yes, the eaves troughs would droop just slightly for that one—maybe two—spats in the face of autonomy when Pete and I sweated too much over the small stuff.

30 days have come and gone and this neck of the woods is back to relying on ‘Skype’ video chats and emails to keep in touch with the One.

And despite what some may think about computer technology, its connectivity is priceless—even when you look like a drowned rat at 6 a.m. as your husband’s face appears on the computer screen from half way around the world and smiles at your disheveled bed head.

20 years ago, I distinctly remember a vow I made never to own or be seen on a “videophone.” Today, I can’t imagine life without the advancements of visual communication accessibility to the world beyond my back door.

It’s taken a few days to clean up the leftover livelihood of this place—wonderfully amuck with the discarded lifestyle that is my husband.

And at the risk of writing about something that blurs the lines of what is too personal to account for; when I walked back in the door after seeing him off at the airport at 8:15 a.m., the scent of his Old Spice body wash still lingered in the humid house air from his morning shower and it smelled wonderful.

Who wants to clean up the chaotic clutter of the last 30 days at that juncture?

Not me.

But now, the little heaps of dirty socks, that if left too long in the corners of the bedroom would surely become condominiums for mice families, are in the laundry basket and the dint in the couch where a man camped out for hours watching countless episodes of ‘Stargate Atlantis’ and ‘Dr. Who’ has all but disappeared.

I put off washing the dirty dishes until I’d used up all the spoons and coffee cups and then, while putting away the drinking glasses from our last dinner together I had to chuckle.

Earlier this month Pete and I had been watching “The Dr. Oz” show wherein the medical guru had pushed the concept of cupping therapy—which uses vacuum pressure on the skin to create better “chi” energy flow and release toxins.

If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that if my husband hears about something he thinks is a rad idea, make sure you aren’t the only guinea pig in the room.

And if you are the only chump, as I was for the first-ever cupping therapy test, chant, “This too shall pass.”

Trust issues came to the forefront of our relationship as I watched him ignite my ‘Bic’ candle lighter to flame the inside of a wine goblet as big around as a small dog, and then convince me to let him place six such apparatuses on my back.

Was not my “chi” already charged? What toxins? “I’m a vegetarian for gosh sakes!” I had argued.

With as much hesitation as I could muster in the face of such a wild and crazy guy, I conceded to the cupping therapy for all of about 25 seconds, and we laughed in stitches for most of it.

The only evidence that the procedure had worked were the six, raised, three inch round, red welts the wine goblets left behind on my back for a couple of hours.

Thankfully that did not happen same day prior to the pantyhose scare. The visual combination would have cost him his sight for sure.

30 days came and went.

Alone or not, I try very hard not to be somebody who spends all her time thinking about tomorrow.

I try very hard to live for right now so that I am not cheated of it, for it truly is all I that I am sure of.

Sometimes it is a most difficult task, but right now is the best and only place there is, despite what we wish for.

May I continue to remind myself of this over the next 14 weeks or so.