And then I kept talking myself out of it.

“I’m a writer,” I told myself. “This is where I write.”

But it really is time.

I’m writing a little here, a little for Aiming Low, and then my writing allowance is spent for the week. Yet neither of these things takes me in a direction that I truly need to go. It’s really just treading water, and not very gracefully at that.

My hospital is struggling again, so I’ve increased my work hours to help. I need to do that – people’s jobs are on the line and I can’t not give that effort 110% right now, it wouldn’t be fair.

So I’m going to sign off for a while. I’m going to spend my weekly writing allowance in other ways, and I’m going to stop fretting when I’m ignoring obligation B because obligation A is taking up all my time. I need to stop being sad every time someone reads my blog that I’m not returning the favor – blogging is about community and too much lately I have been a community of one+guilt.

But I’m going to keep paying my annual domain fees, and keep the site live. Because one day I hope to be here again, making you laugh and sharing with you. Sometimes things only feel real when I have shared them, and I will miss that.

Please email me, if you have any need to. My words and my heart are still at the disposal of the people I love if there is any call for them. I will still bounce around on Twitter when I can – too many of my friends are there for me to vanish into the night.

Some of the best experiences in my life have come because of this bright, shiny little space of mine in the blogosphere. I think it must have been the rainbow bubbles.

Because bubbles are awesome. And rainbows? Don’t even get me started on rainbows.

Much love and with grateful thanks,
Lori

My letter is written to things some things that I can’t see, but press with great weight.

Go read, if you don’t mind?

There is an entire industry dedicated to helping parents – of newborns, of toddlers, of small children and of teens – believe that there’s a magic recipe for turning children into adults who are able to drive, vote with reason, and most importantly, live at an address different than the one they grew up in.

This is because parents are easy prey and live in a state of perpetual denial.

The cold truth is that there is no such recipe because parenthood is the ultimate manifestation of Chaos Theory.

Chaos Theory postulates that seemingly insubstantial and almost statistically insignificant actions compound over time and result in far-reaching and impossible-to-predict outcomes. A butterfly flapping its wings in China results in nine-inch fur-trimmed heels on the runways of  Milan.

This is the very definition of parenting.

You can read every book that has ever been written on parenting and it will not allow you to anticipate how being out of Cheerios for breakfast on a rainy Tuesday in August of 2004 caused your daughter to pour ketchup down the front of her prom dress in 2011.

Unless someone writes a book called, “What to Expect When You Don’t Teach Your Son to Tie His Shoes Before Kindergarten” you will have no way to know that the outcome is that he will change his major from marine biology to social media to try and make it big by blogging about cocktails. Which he will do while working a day job selling re-tread radial tires at a discount auto-supply chain. All because you chose Velcro shoes.

As parents, we have a subconscious understanding that this is how it works. It is this dark, closely-held knowledge that drives us to the bookstores or to Amazon to purchase parenting how-to’s that promise a successfully raised family in 10 Easy Steps. In the absence of brains that can predict the Rube Goldberg chain that starts with “purple crayon melting on windowsill,” moves through “retainer left at Pizza Hut” and concludes two presidential administrations later with “traffic ticket for driving with fraternity brothers in trunk,” we turn to experts with lots of letters after their names.

Which is why until someone writes the software where we can plug in “macaroni art or fingerpainting” to be told which one leads to an isolated cabin in a remote location with a  hooded sweatshirt and a pair of dark glasses, we will keep buying the books.  Over and over again.

For all of my objecting to cooking with boxes and cans, I have no qualms whatsoever about baking with boxes or cans. (Side note: what is the singular of “qualms?” Is there such a thing? Does anyone really ever have one qualm?) But on Saturday I wanted a chocolate cake, but what I wanted MORE was to not have to leave the house. And then it occurred to me that I actually had all the ingredients to bake a cake without a box with an imaginary woman or pudgy pantsless dude on it.

And so I made, from scratch, a bloody chocolate cake.

And, since I am a blogger and LIFE IS REALLY SUPPOSED TO BE ALL ABOUT ME, FOR FUCK’S SAKE, I decided to blog about my amazing bakitudeness and take photos of the cake to share with all of you out in Blog Land. (Not to be confused with Lapland, which is way cold and has moose but probably not chocolate cake.)

But the cake, the goddamned cake, decided to be a primo number-one diva beeyotch and didn’t want to play.

After this, the cake sashayed to its trailer where it demanded Evian water, a shiatsu masseuse and a Finnish Laphound, shouting that if I didn’t have a usable shot it was clearly my fault and I’d just have to deal with image quality issues in post.

Which, as you can see, I did.

So I’ve sworn off working with baked goods. I will now only photograph semi-ripe fruit and tortilla chips. Because seriously, I don’t NEED this shit.

It sneaks up on me, a gradual discomfort. A slow creep of intensity that climbs without alarms until an unmapped threshold is crossed.

It may be that the constant low hum of ache just above the place where my neck meets my skull inures me to the change. There is always discomfort – but it’s small, manageable.  The pain is mostly static – sitting in one place, hovering at the same number on the dial; a background noise that registers no more than the dishwasher or the brittle buzz of a fluorescent light. It pulses slowly within a clearly defined wavelength, a period of hours or even days. Easy to tune out, modest enough to dispel with small doses of America’s most trusted pain reliever. I could ignore the hum and surge if I chose, but that’s tiring, so I let the pain medicine silence the ache for me.

The ever present hum of mild pain lulls me and it takes a pinprick through my awareness before I realize that something is different. But once the change makes itself known I am instantly in a heightened state of alertness, taking an internal inventory.

When the pain climbs above the curve of my skull in the back, I shift my posture. When it moves from the back to the front, my breathing quickens. And if the discomfort settles over my nose and eyes, not so much pain as tightness, like a blindfold aggressively bound, my heart rate climbs at alarming speed. I sit perfectly still, sending my sensory awareness into a sphere that intersects my head at the lips, ears, and crown: a reservoir, a rain gauge.  I assess the size of the ball-shaped pain – how much space does it take in the reservoir? A small amount, surely, I tell myself.

What color is the pain? I look into the reservoir. Not blue. Never blue. Blue doesn’t register on the gauge. Blue is comfort and coolness. It is never blue. But yellow, perhaps, tinged with orange.

But here is the reason for the stillness, why I won’t move, am terrified to move. I have to watch closely, finding the edges of the pain, memorizing its color, so I can appreciate change. I have to know if the ball floating in the reservoir is getting larger or more vibrant.

It swells slowly, modulating subtle colors. The slowness itself is reassuring, in contrast to the lightening strike. I never lose track of the perimeter, the color moves only modestly along the spectrum.

And then it is static again.  A larger, brighter ball, but locked in size and color. The ache at the top of my head makes me anxious, the pressure over my nose scratches angrily at my reassuring words.  They sneer at my courage and threaten me with panic and tears. They laugh at how my iron will is truly made of spiderweb silk and taunt me with memories.

I refuse to engage with them, although I could not ever say I ignore them, until the ball shrinks again, and the color fades to a dull mustard. The barbed imps retreat, for however long, and I am alone behind my eyes again.

This lamp, in fact:

For our bedroom.

Now, our bedroom has been a bit of a dilemma.

Our bedroom has been rearranged somewhere in the neighborhood of fourteen trillion times.

Our bedroom has been painted so many times it is actually smaller than when we bought the house.

The paint on possession was white with a pink undertone. Did you know there are about a thousand different whites? There are. And I’ve not managed to move into a single house that had a white that I found attractive.

So the white-pink, the whink – if you will, needed to go.

First was the wheat color with the green accent wall. This unfortunate choice left us looking like pathetically devoted Oakland A’s fans.

So we covered up the accent wall with the wheat. Except I had let myself be talked into a semigloss paint. I am unclear why this happened. I hate semigloss paint.

So the wheat color was shimmery. Like a lame-ass teenaged vampire. So clearly that had to go.

Next was a dark green that ended up looking like the felt on a pool table.

Next was a light green that resembled nothing so closely at it resembled mint chip ice-cream.

This is the color of the room now.

The bed has been in no fewer than four locations. Which is a pretty mean feat when you consider we have only two usable walls.

There was a desk. Then there was no desk. Then there was a desk again. Then there was a catamaran. Then there was an armchair. Then there was no armchair.

Then there was a round table.

I like the round table. A lot. So much that I’m tempted to write “alot” just you can see how serious I am.

The round table just SCREAMS for a hanging lamp.

We had one. We used it. It wasn’t brilliant.

Then I found the lamp pictured above.

Which is now hanging gracefully over the round table.

Note the color. Rich taupe-y brown with gold leaves.

I can’t tell you how desperately this does NOT go with walls the color of mint chip ice-cream.

Now, it’s not news to anyone that the bedroom needs to be a different color. It’s just that I love my husband and I really do intend to get years of wear out of him and he now develops a nervous twitch at the sight of brushes and stir sticks.

So I’ve been waiting for his paint-induced PTSD to subside before insisting that the room change color again.

But now, with the new lamp…the time is nigh.

Plus, I have some seriously good medication left over from December. So if Himself freaks out too much, I’m just gonna slip a few Norco into his shredded wheat.

Because I love him that damn much.

Yep. Without my glasses or contacts I can’t see the numbers on a clock three feet away. I can’t see leaves on a tree. If a bald man other than Himself tried to cop a feel he’d probably get much further than appropriate before I commenced the requisite face-slapping.

So for the most part I don’t go more than a few steps from my bed without my glasses on, and my contact lenses are in as soon as I’m done toweling off.

But there is this brief no-man’s land of blindness – when I’m in the shower.

This creates a problem. Of a sort. It depends on how you look at it, I guess.

I can’t see when the shower is dirty.

And I don’t mean that I’m oblivious to a ring of soap scum. Although I would be.

I mean that things can grow in the shower that are the primordial versions of the next antibiotic resistant super-bug and I will be happily singing Mariah Carey tunes in utter obliviousness.

The fact that our shower is a really depressing mauve tile with dark grout makes the problem worse. If the tile were white, I would bet that at a certain point I would realize that there wasn’t meant to be a pattern before it reached out and grabbed me. But no such luck.

I have a loofah.

I bought the loofah because I was told that I needed to exfoliate before getting my spray tan in order to extend the life of the tan. (This was before Hawaii in the summer.) If this is true, then without the loofahing I would have been back to my pasty, white self before I even got in the car. I think the tan lasted about eleven glorious minutes.

So anyway. There’s a loofah. It’s been hanging innocently in the shower since the end of the summer.

And what I let happen to that poor loofah is just criminal. Wrong in deep, amoral ways.

Imagine, being an innocent piece of…of…sea sponge? Ocean whole grain? Anemone fiber?  What the hell is a loofah made out of? Starfish membrane??

Anyway…you’re an innocent piece of sea roughage and you’re just chilin’ in the personal beauty section at Target with the scrubby mitts and the lavender scented bath beads. And some pale, forty-something redhead snatches you off the shelf and purchases you along with a set of marked down storage bins and a copper throw pillow that matches nothing in the history of everything.

You perform your job one time…one time!…and then you hang on a hook in a shower.

For months.

And then the real horror starts. You see the mold creeping along the caulk. The mildew sneaks in in the night and hides behind the almost-empty-but-never-thrown-away bottle of conditioner that caused horrible waxy buildup.

You hope to be used. To be moved. To be rinsed out with hot water.

But no.

I can’t even tell the rest. It’s too wretched.

But this weekend, when I got chilly enough to want a shower in the middle of the day – with my contact lenses in – I saw it. I saw it all.

And it put Wes Craven to shame.

That poor loofah was a splotched, diseased mess. It was beyond life support. It was well on its way to Zombie-hood. It was only a few days away from needing an exorcism. A beheading. A staking? What is the preferred method for killing undead exfoliating tools? I’m unclear.

When I got out of the shower, I said a small prayer and disposed of the loofah. I commit its stiff body unto the earth in the trash can. Ashes to ashes, banana peel to banana peel and all that.

As for the rest of the shower, well, I know how to take care of that.

Never shower with my bloody contact lenses in again. That’s how.

My first inclination for decorating a living space is Bollywood-meets-Prescilla-Queen-of-the-Desert.

Then I realize that that will induce seizures and I come to my senses.

But when I can work it in – without the need for brain-wave-controlling drugs – it makes me happy.

The rainbow-bubbles on the blog, for instance.

So now it’s story time! Gather round. Sit in a circle. Criss-cross Applesauce!

Two weeks ago Himself needed new running shoes, and I went along because I am a supportive wife that way and also I wanted to go to Macy’s. While Himself was trying on a number of super-performance running shoes with testosterone-infused names, I saw them.

Rainbow shoes.

They were without question, the loudest pair of shoes I had ever seen.

They are – I am quite certain – visible from space.

I also believe that in the event of a nation-wide D-battery shortage, they could be used in place of the glowing popsicles used to direct 747′s on and off of runways.

And I wanted them. I wanted them soooooo much.

I didn’t have any rational reason for wanting them. My current running shoes are fine for at least another season.

And these are gaudy.

They are outrageous.

And I look at all the colors and the sparkles and it makes me happy.

The part of my mind that keeps me from buying an array of fuchsia and tangerine paper lanterns for the living room says, “They will look silly with white running socks.”

The part of my mind that thinks wearing rainbow colored fuzzy hats would solve any number of international conflicts answers, “I don’t have to wear white running socks.”

The part of my mind that doesn’t let me buy purple-mirrored-tile picture frames says, “They’re going to make you look like an albino.”

The part of my mind that has been known to tell that famous drummer to screw off and let me play my goddamned tambourine answers, “That’s what tan-in-a-bottle is for.”

I originally planned for them to be a reward. When I worked my way back up to being able to run a continuous 5k I was going to celebrate with the rainbow shoes. But then while price hunting discovered that at many outlets they were sold out or only available in sizes that could be worn by professional basketball players.

And I couldn’t take the chance.

So I bought them.

And instead of my reward shoes, they will be my motivational shoes.

I will walk, and smile at my feet.

Then I will run, and smile at my feet.

I may then hit a tree, but I’ll go down smiling.

And then I’ll get back up and run some more.

If a loud or tacky or silly or dated or ill-fitting or worn or tatty thing makes you happy, go for it. Go for it with all you have. You deserve a happy-making thing no matter how ridiculous or unconventional. Let it carry you forward, smiling all the way.

And screw the judgy types. If they’re lucky, someday they’ll discover rainbow shoes too.

And then they can happily march into ridiculousness with the rest of us.

If you’re working with someone who had some degree of impairment before you got your greedy little health-care hands on them, your target is their baseline, which may not necessarily be clinically “normal.”

When people ask me how I’m doing and I say, “Almost back to normal,” invariably one of my staff will pipe up and say, “You mean ‘back to baseline.” Suggesting that “normal” is not a viable goal since I was not “normal” to start with.

Ha Ha Ha! we all laugh before I beat them with a commode.

However, the truth of the matter is that I am getting very close to normal.

Ok..ok…baseline.

Geez. You people.

My back is almost fully recovered. I still have some discomfort with long car rides and some positions. (Like getting socks on! GEEZ! You people!)

The headache will probably linger another month or two, but I can mostly knock it out with a heady tylenol-advil cocktail.

The big limiter is still fatigue. I have about 6-7 hours in the gas tank. This pretty much gets me through my work day. And then that is all people. Seriously. Don’t talk to me. Don’t ask me silly questions like which patients you should see. Don’t expect me to preheat an oven or unload a dishwasher.

This is frustrating for someone who is used to just pushing through until everything is done. There is no pushing. Have you seen the commercial with the giant stuffed bunny trying to knock down the building? Yeah – that’s me. Not so much precision, power laser-cutting as much as impotent, dusty “fwump!”-ing that draws crowds of confused spectators.

I’m not exercising yet. I know that despite the improvement I have a choice right now – use my energy for gainful employment or use it for working out and training.

My mortgage company would like to officially register its vote for the “gainful employment” option.

I had semi-committed to doing another sprint tri with Amy, Rachel and Mandy in April. That just ain’t gonna happen. But I am going to put the October Tri on my schedule. I want it right now in a way I haven’t wanted it before. I did a tri two months before the hemorrhage and right now I can’t walk up a hill. That is also hugely frustrating.

So I need to do another one.

Because  that is my baseline.

“Kids,” he said, “We’ve decided to sell you all on the open market and use the money to buy a beach house.”

Or perhaps he said something along the lines of, “It would be a big help to Lori if you would make dinner once a week.”

Which is cool and all, but totally cheats me out of a beach house.

So for the past few weeks the kids have been making dinner. There was a squash soup that was delicious, and stuffed manicotti. And tonight there was katsu chicken.

I wish I had a photo of the lovely meal that awaited me on the table, because it was both attractive and tasty.

But, this is how the meal got there:

I am fairly certain that every pot and pan in the kitchen was called upon to make personal sacrifices for the creation of this meal.

It’s mesmerizing, in a zen-destruction sort of way. Don’t you think?

And here’s a Batman-Violence shot, but without the ka-POW!

I think it’s best if we all just focus on “tasty.”

And keep the Department of Public Health out of it.