I’ve been trying to think of the perfect analogy for the past seven weeks, but I’m still at a loss. Here’s the best way I have to describe it:
There’s a certain feeling that I get on the Monday after a weekend spent out of town. The weekend trip was usually fun (and necessary), and the basics were still covered (like eating and bathing), but everything is done a different level. Sure, we eat, but it’s often quick and convenient (like travel food), and sure we bathe, but maybe it’s less frequent, and it’s in a different shower, and I always forget my own shampoo or lotion anyway – so it’s not the same. The laundry piles up, the house sits vacant at home, and we’re not around to vacuum or mow or dust or catch up on bills. We get home late, the girls are tired and cranky, the grownups are stiff and cranky, and there’s nothing in the kitchen to eat for the week ahead. Monday shows up and I can’t find my deodorant and the girls are hard to rouse and the milk smells funny after it’s poured on top of the oatmeal.
I wish I could tell you what number to multiply that Monday morning post-weekend trip feeling by to get to where I am right now, but I’m not sure what it would be, though I’m quite certain it would be a large one. To the very best of our abilities, we’ve stripped the past seven weeks down to the basics – although there is certainly nothing “minimal” about the way we are feeling right now. M is exhausted from working almost around the clock to keep the basics going, and I’m exhausted from the surgery and post-surgery routine that makes even the simplest task take ten times longer than usual. I feel like I’ve been treading water on a lot of things, and I’m trying to imagine how to get through some of them in the coming weeks, while working in extra time for physical therapy and nightly contrast baths and the fact that I can’t take a single step barefoot right now which means I take my shoes on and off about four thousand times a day – which is really fun since I have to unlace them and re-lace them each time. The fact that it takes me until Tuesday to use a Monday analogy should be evidence enough that I’m behind on everything.
I have so much to talk about, if I could just keep my eyes open long enough to write.
