Saturday, November 14, 2009

What's Wrong With Dave

EEEEEEEOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWCCCCCCCHHHHHH!!!!

I woke up feeling this incredible pain. It took me a few minutes to decipher what it was. I went through the old age checklist: no, I don't have to poo; no, my heart is just fine; no, I'm not tangled up in the sheets. Then there were the tests, 'OK, Harry, release tne gas' ... OK, that wasn't it. 'Check the arms for feeling,' OK, that's not it, 'Double check the poo meter,' Really, that's not it.

So, it wasn't physical.

Hmmmmmm, emotional.

There is a minefield at 4:40 in the morning. Before dragging myself through an exhausting emotional checklist that is as traumatizing as it is diagnostic, I took a breath. I'm in a hotel. I've been lecturing for two weeks. It's Saturday. ... Wait, wait, wait, .... I'm homesick!!!

Travel and work are fine on the days that you travel and work, but they can be long and lonely on the days you have nothing to do. People are always nice and offer to entertain you but when you want to be enterained by your couch at home in Toronto, no one can compete with that bit of love and affection. So, we are going to drag our selves up, and go do something. I think that that's the problem. At home, weekends give permission to do nothing but on the road you think, 'This is the one time I'm going to get to see where the prostitutes were all killed at the Aberdeen docks in the MacBride novels, I'd better do that.

So we will drag ourselves down there and somewhere over the day the spirits will pick up. Besides, tomorrow is Inverness and travel and work again. Our minds will be filled with activity so we won't quite notice the growing hole in our hearts. For home, for friends, for soft couches, for my office at work, for my power wheelchair, for my own ... here I'm getting teary ... bed.

4 comments:

Kristin said...

2 weeks is a long time to travel for work. It's no small wonder you are homesick.

theknapper said...

HOME IS SO IMPORTANT....AND TO SIT AROUND DOING NOTHING CAN BE DIVINE. HOPE YOU HAVE SOME HOME TIME BEFORE WORK @HOME TIME

Belinda said...

We miss you too. It's been warm here for November and it hardly seems possible that Christmas is as close as it is.

Hurry home!

Belinda said...
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