I slept in my bed last night. I didn't sleep well. When morning came, however, I had to force myself up. Five minutes later, Mr. Fixit showed up. My day is already upside down. It has been raining for three days and won't let up until tomorrow. Tropical rain downpours, not the misty stuff most people are used to. Everything is a mess. I am gripped, as climbers say when someone is stuck on a rock wall and can't find the next move.
Gripped.
I won't be normal until this is all done. I think Mr. Fixit will begin tearing up the bathroom today. Fuck.
I have only one interesting thing to report. I got a call from the tenant. She was walking at dusk, she said, and a bat flew into her face. I laughed about it, but she was freaked. She wanted to know what she should do. I didn't take it seriously. I told her to watch for hair growth on her arms and to keep an watch on her eye teeth. She asked me if I thought she should go to the doctor.
Yesterday I called her to see if she was o.k. She did not answer her phone all day, but in the late afternoon she called. She had gone to her doctor. The doctor told her to go to the emergency room. There, she got gabaglobulin and rabies shots. What!?!?! Reportedly, she had a nick on her chin where the thing hit her. Take no chances, they told her. She told me her mother had been bitten on the head by a bat once and had to go through the rabbi treatments, too. She told me that a number of her friends and acquaintances had gone through it.
I've never known anyone before who had to have rabbi treatments. Am I an anomaly in this?
She said that she wasn't feeling so well, that the shots were making her feel weird. This is a common side effect, she said.
I asked her where she was when this happened. I reminded her that many years ago when her son was young, I had made a treasure map for an elaborate treasure hunt I created for him, and on this map, I had written, "Thar be bats" just where she was "attacked." She then remembered.
"See. . . I tried to warn you."
The rest is just rain and disruption. He is painting as I write this, guilty in my sloth. It doesn't matter that I worked all my life to pay for this. I am still sitting on my ass while he toils. I am no good at that.
So. . .
"Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go,
"With a shovel and a pick and a great big dick,
"Hi ho, hi ho."
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/c9uXC87XF4M
Alice in Wonderland. I love her.
A NJ friend had them in their attic. She was folding her laundry one summer day and out flew a bat. Then another swiped one of her kids. They went for shots.
She called in the specialists. They went up into the attic and found many hundreds roosting. They had to move out of their house until such time as the bats evacuated on their own. No killing bats.
I've always been somewhat fascinated. When I was a little girl, Scott Voorhees and I rolled tinfoil into little balls and tossed them into the air - we believed they swooped towards the little silver spheres. We loved watching them flap and fly in patterns.
There, in the murky, humid half dark summers by the river. We stood on the stoop of my parents house and ran into the yard - bravely to let them fly close to our heads.
Everyone said that bats would nest in your hair if they landed. Seems so silly now.
I do not know if that was an accurate belief (about tinfoil). Or that it even had to be tinfoil to attract them. But we spent many summers doing that very thing. It never got old. I wonder why. Prolly cause we were in love.
I have a poem for Scott - somewhere. He had blue, blue eyes and sandy blonde hair. He was a very bad boy. My father did NOT want me playing with him. Of course - we understand Lisa knows what she wants - and therefore we had many, many and sometimes dicey adventures.
I let him feel my barely there buds and later stick his hand down my pants. I think I wrote this here somewhere - cause like, I've been here forever.
I've had a couple close encounters - they rear up and hiss if you happen to come across them on the ground (which I have). And of course, there was the Bat Cave in Boonton, NJ - going into it at dusk was sort of a right of passage. Letting them rush over your head - and then running. WTF.
Remember to breathe deeply - up and down to your toes and back. Deep, deep, deep. Exhale loudly. Blow out out what grips you.
My grandpa used to call being sick - like with a flu - the "Grip."
It's been raining here for two days now. After the most exquisite sunshine days. Soft rain though a lot of it is coming down - in long silver hair.
Keep at it, C.S.
You'll make it to the top of your next climb - remember put one foot in front of another.
x
Ah yes speaking up has always worked well for me.
ReplyDeleteI am learning the passive art of being silent. It is a minimum wage job and although I am paid for my opinions, I do not stray across into my own personal crazy land where thoughts and feelings dwell.
Today I got an offer of good money to play an old white racist in a production. This will be the third such offer in a row. I think they have found my niche.
I’ll be like those poor Asian wrestlers of the 1940s who had to play the heel roles of Mister Fuji or the Samaruai Slayer. You also had the Nazi heels like Hans Schmidt or Karl von Stroheim. Of course as the cold war came about, there were the dastardly Ruskie heels like the Russian Bear Ivan Koloff. Fast forward to the Gulf Wars and you get The Iron Shiek and Abdullah the Butcher.
Now it our turn my friend.
I will spend my golden year playing heel roles to culti-multural heroes and heroines.
It’ll be great fun, and the face wrestler has to split the purse in any case.