The right side of my body is taking a shitkicking.

When Mom and Dad were here on Sunday, I had set a box of chopped, bagged tomatoes (the last of them, thank fucking god) in the porch, to be taken to the other deep freeze, which is in Farmbeau’s garage in his parents’ yard. When I was getting something for supper out of the deep freeze in the porch, I stubbed my toe. Fuck, that hurt. And it still hurts, three days later. The ache has gone up the right side of my foot. I can still wiggle my little toe, the one that got stubbed, so it isn’t broken. Okay, it doesn’t really hurt. It just aches a little. The kind of hurt that I almost like, because it reminds me that particular part of my body exists and I can baby it a little, but it doesn’t hurt enough to make me suffer anymore.

Yesterday I woke up with a sore right arm. I must sleep on it funny sometimes. It ached all day and still, this morning. This happens periodically and I wonder if it’s from using the computer mouse, or if it could be something to do with a cyst that has been on my right wrist for many years. The cyst itself is rarely noticeable, but every once in a while it will swell and ache.

Then last night, as I was about to close the fridge door, I whacked my right knuckles on a kitchen chair. My hand was literally numb for about 10 minutes. I had to ask Farmbeau to come up and wash the romaine so I could keep up my preparations for a late supper, though I couldn’t use that hand for a while. It throbbed for at least an hour, though I was able to cook with it again after only a short while.

So okay, that’s it for the trials and tribulations of my right side. But it is definitely the right side getting beat up, heavily so, though now the attacks are moving to the left and have come as far as the centre. Today my throat is sore and the back of my neck hurts, migrainelike.

I still don’t know what my body is trying to tell me. Straighten up and fly right?

<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><><><><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>

1:30 pm

So Petra returns a phone call I made to her yesterday, and we hang up and I call back. Our long distance is paid for at a flat rate; hers by the minute. We talk for an hour. At the end of that time, my sore neck is gone.

What is that about? I, and my neck and shoulders, relaxed while we were chatting?

The neck thing is hard to figure out. I ate a good breakfast at about 10:00 -- a scrambled egg, with bits of bacon and green onion in it, and two slices of buttered wholewheat toast. Plenty of protein, I’d say. By the time Petra called, my body had had several hours to assimilate the fuel and set my neck back on track, yet it had not. I was seriously considering taking an anti-inflammatory rather than feeling shitty all day.

But we get off the phone, and I am full of piss and vinegar again.

I don’t understand my body. I think highly of it — its overall robust health, its beauty, its generosity of creating my two offspring — but I do wish it would speak English to me.