Years ago, I think on the Captain Kangaroo show, there was a book about a
boy who was having a bad day, so when he came home from school for lunch he went
back to bed and started all over. He took his clothes off and put his pajamas
back on and literally went back to bed for a few minutes. Then he got up and got
ready for school all over again and insisted on eating breakfast again instead
of lunch before he went back to school for the rest of the day.
A number of years ago my dad said something I have never forgotten. "If I
knew then what I know now, I'd have gotten more rest."
This is one of those days. I'm stuck in a brunch state of mind, even though
I've been up since 3 a.m. and it's almost 11 now. I am in no mood for lunch and
whatever the afternoon brings. I want to go back to bed and start all over
again, I want another shot at breakfast, and I want to move the hands on the
clock back and feel like I got something real done this time.
Recovery days are like this when you're a spoonie of any
kind. Yesterday I made an extra trip into town for someone during an emergency
and then sat in a waiting room for a few hours. Doesn't sound too hard, you say.
Well, yeah, unless you've had multiple spinal injuries and ongoing fibromyalgia
spasms from the base of your skull to your knees. I don't sit well even on my
best days, to put it succinctly, and it wasn't the sort of event where standing
around or walking hallways would have been any better. Nothing triggers my whole
body harder than sitting for extended lengths of time. Extended, for me, is
anything beyond 15-20 minutes. I don't sit in movie theaters or church or long
car trips. Sitting is evil.
I learned long ago that recovery days are crucial to getting back on track.
If I want to be any kind of productive, I *have* to take days off and rest. I
*have* to allow my body time to reset back to something besides fight or flight
response. If I get impatient and try to keep going or do more to make up for
'lost time', I wind up taking more steps back until I wind up in bed. I used to
take handfuls of pain pills and muscle relaxers to keep doing what *I* wanted to
do. Joke's on me, pills are really hard on livers and kidneys and immune
systems. I had to stop that.
So today I'm grinding through depression and self recrimination and all
that other negative stuff that only makes things worse. I'm trying to look out
my window at the pretty day and think about a second breakfast for lunch
sounding nice and another Harry Potter movie being a good distraction while I
'rest'. I'm so grateful we have washing machines nowadays, at least I can get
all the laundry caught up with minimal effort (compared to hauling water and
using a wringer and hanging things on a clothes line, or even having to drag out
to a laundromat, all of which I've done in my life). I can piddle my way slowly
through a few dishes (I've never owned a dishwasher) and poke around the kitchen
putting supper together later. But I really can't do much more than that if I
want to have a much better day tomorrow. It's either take a real day off today
and spring forth tomorrow or tolerate a succession of mediocre days. The hard
part is being patient, because I had other things in mind to be doing with this
day.
I'm spiking my pain level higher sitting here typing, but I just needed to
gripe before I let go and go back to bed and start over. I'm actually looking
forward to some bacon and cream of wheat for lunch. Maybe after I get back up
I'll meander outside and let my chickens out of the pen and then fold a load of
clothes. Getting a load of laundry done cancels out the day being a total loss,
right? 
