Perhaps it was a bit of retribution for my talking ’smack’ about Pearl and her problems, but I was hit with the consequences of some food poisoning overnight. It meant I barely slept and today I was weak and sore.
Chick was not pleased with me, and, although I did “my turn” eldersitting while she went out first to the pharmacy and then to the Fresh Market, the fact that I was dozy and weak and not rushing to clean my bathroom really annoyed her.
As Snowy went to bed about 4:30, when the Patriots had just won their conference championship (a good football game will sometimes really engage her, and this one had definitely done the trick), I headed back to work in my room.
I had been wanting to rearrange my furniture for awhile to make the layout work better, but hadn’t done it because the carpet needed to be cleaned first so ‘bad’ areas didn’t get covered up. I was determined to finally have things placed where my mind had been so busily ’shoving’ them for a couple of months.
The problem was I was so weak I could barely push the furniture around. This was frustrating because I am an incorrigible furniture-rearranger, a hobby going back to my childhood. In a room that feels unbalanced to me or blocked, I will feel so bothered and uncomfortable until I finally can change the layout. Sometimes I feel that way in rooms that are not my own, however I do have enough control and social sense not to move other people’s furniture.
I have been known to move baby grand pianos, giant sofas, beds, tables, chairs, dressers, mirrors… you name it, I’ve probably moved some version of it.
Once I tried to move a huge 250-lb TV from the top of a high dresser to a lower chest only to have it slip and fall onto my legs and pin me down. That shook me up for a bit, but as I lay there on the floor with this beast hunkered over my lower extremities, I had to laugh. I pictured the poor schnooks who ended up finding me when nothing was left but a skeleton with a big tv on the legs and they had to figure out, “How could this be?”
After about 20 minutes of wriggling and wiggling and pushing I eventually freed myself with only scrapes and bruises, and counting myself very fortunate.
However, that was a clue to me that I wasn’t as ‘mighty’ as I’d always thought I was. In the back of my mind I feel that my general weakening is probably one of the ways “my” MS manifests. My strength is no longer anything I can count on. It’s okay. I’ve had to make small adjustments in how I live and deal and thus don’t really think much about it or rail against it as some unfair blight on my ’superpowers’.
So today I set myself the task of moving the dressing table, an antique that had been my great-grandmother’s, over near the window where the natural light can hopefully keep me from making as many blunders with the makeup brush.
Next to them went the twin chests of drawers. The bench/table on which I had my TV (not the behemoth, which I had gifted to someone else before I left T’Town) turned 90 degrees and was now in easier sight-range of my bed when I swapped it to the other side of the room from where it had been slumbering. Much vacuuming was necessary as kitty-fluff just collects.
Once I had things pretty much set up anew, I finally opened the bathroom door and let the herd come rolling out. It was extremely amusing to watch them each come into the bedroom and stop and do a double-take. Everything was DIFFERENT.
They immediately began exploring in their own ways. The brown kitties flew and bounced around, racing and screeching to a halt as each new furniture placement was encountered. The blue kitties moved slowly and sniffed and then once they found comfortable spots, they just sat in their puffy splendor and purred.
Pearl and Earl sat on each side of me on the bed and wanted to do head butts. Earl threw in some cold, wet nose kisses. No one seemed annoyed or upset that they had spent the night in the ‘other room’. I was glad to see them even as I know it is going to be a crowd in my single bed tonight now that the chaise is gone.
In the bathroom I dumped and changed the 2 litter boxes and scraped up what was ready. It still needs a real cleaning and steaming, but I have not got the strength to do it just now.
If there is one thing I have learned it is to know when I’ve hit my limits and that trying to surpass those limits no longer works. It only depletes any reserves I may have and takes me longer to get back. I know this for myself — I don’t seem able to explain it sufficiently to others who just have no way of grasping the bone-exhaustion that MS can impose.
But some days I have those wonderful feelings that used to be always mine to claim, those feelings of infinite possibilities and the capacity to make anything I wanted happen. I am an optimist and I live for those days to come around.
It will help to get a good night’s sleep!
Thank you for leaving me your thoughts!