Random Inputs

Cooper was doing the Moon Walk sideways across the dining room last night, whacking a plastic bottlecap as he danced. He can’t understand why he isn’t welcome on my lap just now when this strange aluminum object is on it. Shortstop doesn’t care, he just produces random inputs. You might be reading some of those right now.

My yoga teacher, Jan Pendleton, put on a retreat this past weekend, a three-day feast of yoga, meditation, massage, energy work, silence and conversation, and the opportunity to sleep under the metal roof of the Treehouse while the rain thundered on it, dripped off the eaves, and ran down into the lake past its fellow drops dripping off the leaves onto the same pathways. Oh, and did I mention vegetarian food that included breakfasts provided by her own hens and her man-slave Jon? Well, I’m sure it was a great retreat. I’d been looking forward to it for months, had it all paid for. Got home Friday noon from a meeting with the group who are planning a museum of Fort Mill history, and simply could not gather enough energy to pack. So I set my clock and tumbled into bed. Woke up after the alarm had been ringing for 15 minutes and tried again. Failed. I was totally exhausted and freezing. I took my temperature and it was 100.6. I left a tearful message on Jan’s phone, had a tearful conversation with Robert, and went back to bed. Slept that afternoon, all night, and most of Saturday. Drank a lot, ate little. Finally felt better Sunday morning, but by then it was over. Back to work tomorrow, trying to deal with missing that which I know would have made this nearly-intolerable next two weeks manageable. At least I have class Tuesday night. Yoga is my lifeline. I think it’s the reason I didn’t break my back when I fell at my sister’s house in February, and the reason I’ve been able to work through most of the recovery period. It’s also the reason I can head off panic at the thought of having half a job, less than half really, having no health insurance, not knowing if we’ll be able to keep our house or even stay in the area.

Cooper is busy supervising the birds from inside the storm door. Tiny Shortstop is lording it over the warm cable box while Tart sleeps on top of the television, unmoved by the final ten minutes of March Madness. Of course, if Robert bellows and spews popcorn all over the living room, things will change.

Our lawn is spangled with the tiny spring blooms that betoken slothfulness on the part of the homeowners. The winter honeysuckle is in full bloom, spilling great swathes of fragrance across the driveway and around the front of the house. It’s an ugly thing, really, a great volunteer shrub that gradually clenched its stems into a fist to break out of the pot it was growing in and send up its homely children all around it. Even the flowers are unattractive, little clumps of translucent off-white clustered among the yellowing leaves of last year. But who can kill the bringer of fragrance that gladdens my arrival home every evening from the end of January to the end of March? It just grows larger and uglier and more precious every year.