Sunday, November 3, 2013

Killing the Pumpkin

Hey there.

I'm running on three hours of sleep, but I figured I'd come here anyway. Out my window is the blue-gray sky I love, yellow sunlight on deep evergreen, and just a few bright red leaves clinging to our Japanese maple. During a wind storm yesterday, the Western Red Cedars dropped a bunch of orange needles and they landed on a carpet of red maple leaves that had already fallen. It was very pretty, but Mike, in a fit of energy, blew them into a pile with his blower. I suppose that using a leaf-blower isn't too strenuous a job, but...

Today, it seems as though he has more energy than I do. We go back and forth that way. Yesterday and the day before, when I had managed to rest, he wasn't feeling well at all. It would be nice if we could get his cardiologist to understand that one of his medications hasn't been letting him sleep more than a couple of hours a night. For two days, he was dizzy and shaky. It sucked. Last night, he didn't take that medicine and he slept almost nine hours. He feels much better today. I, on the other hand, was up and busy worrying about whether or not he was sleeping most of the night. So today, I'm scattered and trying to keep going on three hours of sleep. Nick has a friend over or I'd be sleeping right now.

It takes so much energy to worry. I wish I could relax, but I'm not there yet. I keep telling myself that everyone will die, that every day is a gift. It's inevitable, so I should get used to it. How do you get used to that? More than ever, mortality is staring me in the face.I'll be glad when I can turn that around and feel gratitude for every day the way I should.

Now, Mike's on the back deck with the boys. They're using an air-soft gun to shoot up the big leaves of the weeds back there. Oh, and my cute little pumpkin is getting a new face shot into it. It's a short life for a pumpkin, this one ever shorter than it could have been.

"Look at that! They're going all the way through," Mike said.

"Dad, you want to play?" Nick asked.

"Boy, that's heavy," Nick's friend said as he hefted the gun in his hands. I heard them using words like muzzle control and using the safety and other terms Nick learned at his hunter safety class. The guys were trying to see if they could shoot all the way through my poor tiny pumpkin. It's now bleeding on its face, big drops of clear pumpkin blood.

It will bleed for a while, but the boys have gone on to the next thing. Video games. More shooting, but at least it's virtual blood this time. Boys.

Such a great sacrifice for such a short distraction, at least if you're a pumpkin.

Thank you for listening, jb

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