It's everything

Last Wednesday morning I woke up at 3am with a pain unlike anything I'd ever experienced. It reached all the way across my torso and left me literally dripping in sweat. I couldn't lie down or stand or really do anything. After an hour I woke up Angela and off we went to the emergency room where the pain would subside two hours before I'd see a doctor. But they did a thorough workup, including checking for new blood clots, deemed it a gallbladder attack, and sent me home. No meds, no new instructions, just a new sense of what that feeling is and how I might experience it in the future.

That afternoon we picked our friend Eric up from the airport. He would stay with us for a week, visiting from Michigan. We'd spend the week/weekend enjoying his company, sightseeing, spending time together. Out of the normal routine, out of even my somewhat flexible routine. And then Angela had a tooth abscess and on Monday she'd have emergency dental surgery to pull said tooth. Trips to the surgeon, the pharmacy, the store for supplies, it has been a whirlwind. And here we are, over a week later, and I can't quite feel that the whirlwind has stopped yet. I still feel as if I am moving and the world is standing still or vice versa.

Even though we dropped Eric at the airport Tuesday, yesterday was not a normal day. There was an early morning trip to the surgeon for Ang's checkup, a trip to the acupuncturist that had already been rescheduled once, a trip to the new primary care doctor I've been assigned to (90 minutes each way) and a trip to find soup for lunch since even though our house contained the ingredients for soup, it contained no soup. We arrived home about 7pm last night and I made some mac and cheese and we both were in bed shortly after 9pm.

So today I woke up and decided it was time to get back in gear. I tackled the homemade soup first, and some cleaning along the way (a huge dust storm this weekend left my desk and much of the house covered in dirt) and as I was slowly realizing the fall bisque we made in cooking class and the next weekend at home was a lot more time consuming when it's just you alone making it, I smelled burning onions. Determined I could in fact make soup for my sister, I tried again, getting a new pan, chopping a new shallot and this time, paying close attention. Half an hour later I almost added unpeeled potato to the soup, caught myself, backed up and tried again.

I don't know what was wrong today. I can follow a recipe with the best of them. I've made this soup twice before. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized maybe I cannot be superwoman. Maybe today isn't the day I do the laundry, make homemade soup, run to the pharmacy, make a salad for lunch, write a pilot, think of a movie idea, and make it to my friends' staged reading tonight. Maybe today would be the day I ate a Subway sandwich alone in the strip mall while waiting for Angela's Vicodin. Maybe today would be the day I told myself to watch an episode of TV I'd been saving rather than write one. Maybe today would be the day I cut myself a little slack.

Those burned onions sat on the back burner the whole time I made my second attempted batch of soup. A soup which might be a bit spicy because I like the way the red pepper flakes look in it. A soup which will, despite it's lack of fancy Parmesan crisps today, taste pretty good tonight and tomorrow for lunch. And this afternoon as I scrubbed the pan with the burned onions I thought about how maybe those onions were just a reminder to slow down, to smell the flowers (or shallots) so to speak.

Sometimes life is so dull I fear for my sanity. Sometimes life is so busy I pray for nightfall and my pillow. And some days I remind myself that life is best tasted slowly, and quickly, and all at once. Life is butter foaming and onions softening and pears mixing with parsnips and everything all blended together. Life is good. Life is bad. And on the best days? It's everything.