The other day when I woke up, there was still a bit of snow on the ground. Wait.

I just wanted to say that today there is not a bit of snow on the ground – not any at all – because apparently we are in the midst of another storm with bombogenesis potential… and I’m kind of pissed about it.

Because, come on.

I mean, the first time I wrote about it, I actually had to google ‘bombogenesis’ because the weather people weren’t even saying it. Then came warnings of ‘bomb cyclones’ for another couple of storms. And today Washington DC shut down!

You know what we used to call this?

A gustin’, that’s what.

Nah, I’m just being cranky.

It can certainly be ‘not good’, results-wise, and I hope everyone in this one’s path will be okay.

Like, look at my neighbor’s dock. I took this an hour ago…

I know.

And that’s the dock. The ramp attaches to the end of it and then, as its name kind of implies, ramps down to the float that sits on the water.

Not today, though.

And normally that boat house (which I love) is not casually soaking in a salt water bath.

But… that’s the whole living on the water thing (not that we are usually living on the water, except for days like this). But if we are here, and we live through these super high tides once in a while, we also get…

HA!

And you thought I’d never get myself back on point. This is called a ‘smooth transition’.

So.

The other day there was still a bit of snow on the ground and, as the light snuck up on The Inn, I woke up to the promise of some great pre-sunrise color.

It was one of those nearly tripping down the stairs to grab the camera mornings, where I end up outside and snapping away before I realize I have no coat on. Again.

I’d had a really quiet week last week, because I was feeling like something was brewing, and I was also super tired. By Monday, I was so sick of lying low that I couldn’t wait for my trip to the Y and the 8 a.m. aerobics class (I am telling you, I do not do aerobics, and I love this class).

I should note that I am a terrible, terrible sick person because boredom creeps in quickly and makes me very cranky.

Halfway through the aerobics class, as we were all being wicked strong and doing bicep curls, I suddenly lost all my energy.

Like, all of it.

My arms wouldn’t lift up my weights anymore and I felt all tingly. I could also see that my hands were pale.

Oh My Gawd.

I was certain my heart was working funkily and I was a goner.

Now, I knew (logically) that I’d just spent six months living life with Granny’s cardiologists and pulmonologists, so may have been jumping to a post traumatic stress-induced conclusion. But I was still kind of freaked out.

I slowed down and finished the class and then I went to the ladies’ room to splash some water on my face and I felt a little better. That’s when I noticed three hives on my neck, which meant I was right all along.

Exercise gives me hives.

So then I went to my spinning class because… I can’t even explain it. Because I’m an idiot and I said I would, I guess. But I took it easy, I swear.

As we peddled (slowly), one of the women in the class was laughing at me when I said that I got hives from aerobics, and she said that she’d heard hives were a sign of the flu.

Psssssht.

I was all, “Oh I was sick all last week. So…”

Yeah.

I got home and felt worse and worse and worse during the day.

Then things got positively awful overnight.

Fever, headache, body aches, cough…

Total.

System.

Tsunami.

Then the next morning, the only writing I got done was to tell my friends that I’m now calling ‘aerobics’ by it’s rightful name, since it made me so sick:

Amoebics.

Man.

When my brain and my body don’t work, that’s hard.

I felt yucky. I couldn’t concentrate. Sleeping was tough. Even the systems that control my ability to read were overrun with the amoebas. Dammit.

But I did what I could.

Watched sunrises.

Watched the birds at the feeder, and the squirrels torture the dogs from the ‘safe side’ of the back door.

Slept on and off through too much Netflix.

Complained to JoHn.

Looked at the entire Benjamin Moore Paint fan deck… multiple times (I’m considering Palladian Blue (from the Historic Collection) and maybe Williamsburg Wythe Blue (from the Williamsburg collection)… but I also like Carolina Gull (I’ll let you know).

In addition, I washed my sheets, a lot.

And I breathed in, and I breathed out.

It’s been quite a month.

We are never quite the same after someone we’ve loved leaves our everydays.

I like to think we are deeper, richer human beings, even as we are in the midst of grief… as long as we aren’t denying grief.

It is like a bit of a conscious rebirth, if we’re paying attention.

Painful with the promise of New.

I’m looking at this dance with the flu – whether technically ‘The Flu’ or not – pretty metaphorically. It showed up, somewhat coincidentally, just as my decades of day-to-day caregiving came to and end, and something new was coming into being.

There was a fever and everything…burning what was, calling to the phoenix within.

I don’t know what will come, and what will come with it.

The fever broke more than 24 hours ago. I’m still tired, but coming back to life.

And that last Calvin and Hobbes strip is pawing at me again.

The one about new beginnings.

Yep.

Hope and anticipation embodied in a boy and his tiger.

I’ll take it.

Thanks for readin’.

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