8:47 a.m.

Phone rang at 8. Warm, snug, relaxed. Ah, I don’t have to get up, it’s the weekend. But once I’m awake, I have to pee. Up I get, stop at the bathroom, stop at the woodstove to add a stick and reposition what’s already in there, mount the stairs, pour a coffee, find a note from Farmbeau leaning against the monitor.

Gone into town to put up gyprock until noon. See you then. xxoo
S, B, and Dad will call. Pass on that message please.
Love you,
xxoo
I’ll get water on the way home.

I can hear the boys giggling in their bedroom next to me here.
Weekend mornings are a luxury.

Farmbeau came into the house at 10 o’clock Thursday night, walking like an old man and barely able to get down the stairs. He was nauseated, he ached, he had chills, oh it was pathetic. I have never heard anyone moan and groan as often or as loudly as he does when he gets sick. He went to bed, then crawled to the bathroom to spew several gallons (that’s what it sounded like) of puke at rocket velocity, then made his way to the woodstove and curled up on the floor.

I insisted he get into bed and I’d get out the electric heating pad and add the down-filled quilt to the covers already there. He couldn’t unbend himself from the pretzel position on the floor. I forced. He yelped.

“Get up!” I said, concerned that the fire would warm only one side of him and the other would chill worse if the fire died down later. “Don’t make me lift you; you know that’s going to damage my back. But I am not leaving you here.”

He managed to get to the bedroom, with my help. I slept on the couch to avoid exposing myself to his flu during the night — who wants those little monster bugs creeping over the pillows and swarming my defenceless slumber? — I’ve had enough of that shit lately. It was as well, since I could hear him groaning and talking until I fell asleep.

Yesterday he was sick enough to skip chores, stay home, and rest all day. I told him about Stubblejumpers Café> and gave him a printed copy to read. He took it to the living room, left it on the coffee table, and went to bed. That’s a bad sign, I thought. He is not even interested enough to read it.

“Are you feeling bad again?” I asked, laying the fingerbacks of my right hand on his brow. “Doesn’t feel like any fever.”

“Get in here with me; hold me.”

I did.

“You’re not very interested in Stubblejumpers? or you’re feeling too shitty? which is it?”

“I had to get warm and lay down.”

I offered to read it to him. “Just tell me if it bores you or you’re going to fall asleep. I won’t be offended but I don’t want to be reading out loud for no reason.”

“Okay.”

I read, pausing here and there and again at the end of each day’s entry to say “Still awake? I don’t have to read it all, you know.”

“Keep reading.”

At the end, he said “You’re a good writer, Kate. I like it a lot.”

“Really?” I asked. “Wow! Well, I know it’s nothing special. I’m a very plain writer, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it interesting. So I’m going to relax and have fun with it, not take myself too seriously.”

“I don’t think you’re a plain writer.”

“I mean, there are all kinds. Lots of people describe things way better and far more beautifully than I do. My writing is almost conversational.”

“That’s one kind of writing, too.”

The upshot is, I was surprised and delighted at his response.

I had two appointments a half-hour north of here, so headed out at 1 o’clock. Along the road I saw the ubiquitous coyote and, further on, a buck deer with a rack of antlers about two feet high. He stood near a copse of trees and watched me drive by. The coyotes are healthy this year, large and fluffy instead of skinny and mangy. Not long ago, Barney and I saw a big red fox pouncing on something out in the field.

The first appointment was with Dr. Attagirl, who flipped my chart open to the page with the mammogram results and informed me that the lump is a something - something - something and not cancerous. Nothing to worry about.

I asked for a prescription for Zomig, a drug that my sister Jill has been using for her migraines. Doc gave me samples and the prescription, which I plan to fill as soon as the samples prove effective.

At 2:15 I went for a Reiki treatment.

I was asked to lay on my back on the treatment table, and immediately my friend passed a hand in the air left of my neck and said “Did you have a headache this morning?”

“Yesterday.”

“There’s residual energy here,” she commented, and then carried on with her work.

The left side of my neck is what ached and hurt on Thursday when I spent the day trying to avoid pain and discomfort by sleeping.

I lay there for the next hour, becoming more and more relaxed as she laid her hands over my eyes, on my head, here and there on my body and in the air near it. When she first sat behind my head with her hands on my neck, I thought I felt a strong swoosh of energy move through my head, toward her.

When asked to turn over onto my back, I was surprised at the heavy sleepiness.

“Am I going to live?” I kidded her.
She smiled and said, “I think so.”

We were in a tiny room off the main hallway of her pointy house. An electric heater fan turned on and off during the treatment, and Middle Eastern music played. Out in the livingroom, her daughter was watching Pride and Prejudice on television. We could hear it, but it was not bothersome.

I asked my friend afterward what she had done, exactly.

“I didn’t really,” she said. “I just let go, and let the energy do its work.”

“I mean, what did you do? I don’t know enough about Reiki.
Moved the energy around? Balanced it?”

“Something like that,” she nodded, and I never really did get an answer.
“Drink lots of water over the next couple of days. Your body may start flushing out toxins. And other stuff might come up — thoughts or feelings that are intense and you wonder where they came from — just be aware and let them move through. Well, you know all that. I’m just reminding you.”

Before coming home, I went to Farmbeau’s sister’s new house. When I arrived, her teenage son informed me that I’d had a call. I phoned home.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing. I just want you here. I love you.”

I had tea with my sister-in-law, stopped at the grocery store for a few things, and drove home beneath a dusky blue sky edged along its western horizon by a glowing pink sunset.

My life, and it's a good one.

xoxo
etc
Kate