I’m sitting, rather hunched, in the rolling chair at the desk that holds the computer. I’ve been working on my blog book for 2010 and am almost finished with the last bit of editing: updating the table of contents and adding the page numbers. Then I can upload it to Lulu and order a printed copy and the row of little green books with my name on them will lengthen by one more.
As soon as I typed the word hunched, I straightened my spine and heard it crack with three small pops. I try really hard not to sit hunched, but often, at the various desks I spend so much time at, at work and at home, I rise to consciousness and find I’m once again bent over or leaning one way, putting stress on my shoulder, my hand, my wrist, my back. I stop and throw my shoulders back, pull my elbows in and around, tip up my head, roll it in circles.
A few days have passed since I posted and I feel the need to fling myself out of my head and put something down, but I don’t really have anything to say. No news to report, nothing special that’s happened, no story to tell. If I was a child, sitting at dinner with my family, and a parent asked me, “So, what did you do today, dear?”, my answer would be the dreaded, “Nothing” …or better yet, “I dunno.”
But I do know. It’s what I do every day. Get up, shower, get dressed. Go to work, work, eat a couple of meals. Come home, pick up stuff, etc., sleep. The mainframe outline of a daily routine. Some days, there’s a deviation from the usual, and some days that’s okay. Others, it’s just too much and the stress builds another little layer on top of the calcifying moments of the past that lacquer me.
Last night we were rudely awakened at 1:40 a.m. by the wind. Or rather, winds. Gale-force winds that slapped and whined around the house for the rest of the night. The vents in the walls of the house hummed and shivered with each gust. This morning, one of the plastic sleds, which were still parked outside the side door despite the disappearance of the snow, was in the driveway, and the other has vanished. The plastic watering can which was on the back porch was also at the front of the house and there were tree branches and twigs scattered all about the streets.
It wasn’t as bad as some of the “hurricanes” we’ve had here since we moved to Sweden. One, during the time we lived in our first house in Flyinge, ripped part of our porch roof off and knocked down huge swaths of trees all over Skåne, but you sure couldn’t tell from lying in bed listening to the storm shake and howl around the house.
Tonight, I’m hoping for a long, silent night of solid slumber, and I shall go now and put myself to bed, stretching out my limbs and spine and slowly relaxing, until dreams take me and hold the howling winds at bay.
Cracking Me Up: The Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator