I need it.. I think

I am wondering if I am becoming addicted to vicotin. I feel like I need one whenever my shoulder starts acting up. I think it is the looming threat of pain that drives me there. I do feel pretty pain free when I take one, for about three hours. Today, my shoulder started aching and I went for one, but I stopped myself and decided to just put up with the pain, just to show myself that I could go without one. Also, my prescription is running a bit low and I doubt they are going to give me more. Which brings up the next question, and a big fear of mine: When is this stupid pain and weakness going to go away? Also, what the heck is causing this? It came on so strangely, in the middle of the night, and it seems to be in one place in my arm and then another. My pointer finger of my right hand is partially numb, as is the top of my hand right before it.

I am starting to have those doubts, like, this isn't a pulled muscle or a pinched nerve. Like maybe it is something more sinister. It isn't surprising that I am thinking along these lines, I seem to gravitate there more time than not. But, it has been about two weeks now. I am better than when I started, but it is like a different thing now. Before, the pain was in my back behind my shoulder blade, now it is in my forearm and under my arm...plus the numbness. I went most of the day yesterday and today without pain medicine. The worst is when I wake up. It is awful and achey.----------------

Well I woke up. I started this at around 6ish... then I went to bed. Its 2:20 now and I have been up for a little over and hour. My shoulder hurt this time. I kept fantasizing that it was just that my shoulder was out of its socket and that I could push it back in, that there would be one big crack, a ton of pain, and that there would peace after that. But no, just hazy pain and aching. I am watching tivo'd fox news... don't ask why I tivo fox news, you wouldn't like the answer. I have to work tomorrow morning. I have massive amounts of research papers to correct.. I need to sleep. SLEEP PLEASE .............................................................................................................. I am going to try to go to bed again... the vicotin is kicking in.

Life comes and goes

I fell asleep on the living room floor about half an hour ago. I have been living this twighlight existance now for a couple weeks. I wake up a few times throughout the night and pace around, sometimes take a hot shower, sometimes take medicine, then, a half-an-hour later, I go back to bed. I have been waking up for the morning around 5 or 6ish. Then, I go to work. The muscles in my arm are so weak now. I have a hard time pushing doors open. I can't throw things with any amount of accuracy anymore, even across the room. It is so weird how this happened. Still, I have times during the day where it doesn't even hurt at all. It just feels a bit tight.

Henry learned how to use the point and click camera we have today. I came home and he proudly came running up and told me that he wanted to go out taking pictures of birds with me. Funny, I haven't done that at all this year. I am just waiting for my arm to come back. I am going to go to physical therapy in a couple of weeks.... will it still be bad then?? I might go to a chiropractor before that.

I am not sure how I feel about them. They seem like so much less of a science to me. Still, I have to do something. I have weened myself off of the muscle relaxers and the motrin. So now all I have is vicotin and pain tolerance. I have these tomato plants that are so huge and just need to get transplanted into the garden, but I can't get myself to risk the injury. It might be fine, but it might set things back to the beginning, which would be .... b a d.

Jenny cooked spicy stringbeans and chinese sausage over rice today for supper and it was really good. Nora is avoiding getting a diaper change. Henry is wandering aimlessly around the house, I am on this laptop and Jenny is taking care of Nora... Life is pretty normal.

pain and toil

I am still in some pain, but it seems like the slope to recovery is steeper here. So, this entry is going to be little because my shoulder hurts while I sit and I have to wait half an hour to take a vicotin.

The main and awful thing that happened today is that a few teachers got laid off or potentially laid off, or told not to come back. It is an awful thing and I was witness to the heartbreak... really the heartbreak... of someone that I liked a lot. It is the first time that this has really happened around me and it really is an awful thing. I am not going to get specific about anything out of respect for their privacy. But I felt my stomach drop and empathizing with them about this real tragedy is really awful. In a time when work is so hard to find, being laid off is more than I can imagine. And now, those people have to report right back to work tomorrow. I don't know how I would do it. There have been times when I have had that sinking feeling in my stomach pretty severely and to come right back and pretend that nothing happened and face everyone just seems beyond my imagination.

I stood and didn't know what to say except that I was so sorry. So I kept saying it over and over again. It was a pretty awful day. And I am at a loss.

I am here

Here I am, sitting in my living room at 2:27 in the morning. I have not slept a full night for over a week. I pulled a muscle in my back and have taken more medicine than I have ever taken in my life, which is really saying something based on the chemical dependence my mother has. I am sitting here feeling irrelevant. I can blame this on a couple of things, one being the Vicodin that I just took. The other is that I work with kids and kids are innately self centered. I exist for one year, or in some cases a few, and then I fade away. And as I grow older, I fade more quickly... orbiting away from the center of their universes into the dark spaces.

I feel overshadowed by petty things, which is not a good feeling. I am going to write some songs soon... I can tell. I have an idea for a concept album. It is from the point of view of an elderly woman, looking back on her life. I think the title will have to be something like "An ode to Edna." or something similar. I was asked to jam with a band that meets in webster recently. "Pink-floydish and bent on world domination" he said. It seemed like a good time... but my time isn't my own anymore. My own Kids have taken that away and I certainly wouldn't be willing to give the time that is meant for them to the long haired boy that I met in Rutland pharmacy that wanted me to jam in Webster three times a week. The band's name is MAAR... and he said it like "MAAAARRRRR" I have his number magentically stuck to my refridgerator. I will never call it. But... someone actually asked me to Jam with their band...do you know how long it has been since I have even thought of something like that happening.

(irrelevant)

Tomorrow I will go to school, this time, not on a Vicotin, because that was in absolutely no way pleasant, and I will teach my students how to write critiques. They will probably use that information all the way through college in one form or another. And still, I feel irrelevant. Because, although they laugh, and are there, and are concerned, I will not be a part of their lives for the rest of their lives. And they know that above all else. I do have two kids of my own. And in that way they define me. But they don't really know that now. And so, my reflection is being lost.
I am writing in a blog for god sakes. Spitting my ideas into the maelstrom of people that are somehow like me. trying to find an audience that cares in some way. Waiting for a comment, like an answer from the universe proving somehow that there is life out there. Maybe someone with a similar understanding. And it would feel good to know that I am not alone here, at 2:47, sitting at my computer in the living room, waiting for the Vicotin to numb me enough to go back to bed.

blip blip blip blip............................................nothing.

Because I can

Do you think that it is true that everybody finds a place and owns it in their heart? I think my wife's is in the basement. She's down there right now trying to recover from my daughter's fit before bed time. (she didn't have a nap, my wife nor my daughter). I think that I lay claims to places. I feel like a specific part of Rutland State Park is mine. Actually, two places in RSP. I can remember thinking that a specific pine tree on my father's land was mine. Also, a really big beech tree that I carved my initials in way on the top of the hill behind my house. I had a camp across the street by a little river. I had a desk in the top of the library at UMASS that I claimed and no one else really knew about. My house now, it doesn't feel like mine. It feels slightly unhealthy to me. Not in a literal sense, but my yard is moss and scattered crab grass, there is a giant puddle lying next to my yard spawning off mosquitos by the dozens, I had to import top soil just to plant my lousy yard and didn't import enough to sustain any sort of life. I just wish this place felt beautiful to me. I also wish I had money enough to make some improvements. I want to clear the land next to me and put drainage in. I want to have some sheep and some chickens over there. I want to have a barn/garage and to inspire some sort of pastural beauty here. But instead, I just sit inside and wait to earn enough money to fix the front yard... and maybe the back.