Lidocaine for the soul

The mother frog,
or yellows

The past couple of days, I have gotten up early so as to be able to be extra unproductive. This morning, I gave up. Too bad. It was a nice morning, and the afternoon is not so nice. In fact, I think it will rain again.

This must be another phase of mourning. It's unpleasant. You don't even have the benefit of the exquisiteness of pain and tears, just nothing. It's like eating the hollow fine dark chocolate Easter bunny and getting to the middle part. Your heart hurts, but as diffusely as your most acute thought, which never gets beyond something you can't quite identify tapping on your consciousness in gloved hands. Your brain seems to be wearing gloves, too, or just all the gauze you looked for when you burned your stomach ironing the skirt you were wearing.

The steam might burn you.

"Yeah. I know."

And you don't care? That was myself speaking. You probably recognize the voice by now.

"Well, of course." My thought trailed off to follow every other one I had attempted in the last three weeks.

You lift the hem of your skirt, just to get that area at the zipper that is all puckered, the one you didn't do, taking some care to step back as far from the ironing board as possible. You press the steam button and feel the pain.

So, you cared, you say?

You lift your skirt to look at the white skin of your abdomen and see the spot turning pink.

"Shit." Myself wandered off to more promising things.

By evening, you can tell your husband when he comes home what you did.

"On entend ça des femmes enceintes --" He was chuckling. He is, if you recall, an Ob/Gyn. I didn't even have that excuse.

"Oui. Le ventre. J'imagine." I hoped for him not to press quite how I accomplished this. He was content enough to continue to be amused, thinking of all those women whose bellies surprised them. Later, getting ready for bed, I showed him.

"Mais, c'est mauvais," he said, surprised. He has admired my courage since Baccarat was hospitalized and died. I can feel my value rising.

"Oui, je sais." The skin was coming up over an angry red spot now where the elastic of my panties had rubbed it. I had chosen to ignore it rather than bandage it from the first. No wonder, I thought, it hurt.

Finding no tape for the gauze, I got out my precious Neosporin with lidocaine, squirted some liberally on the wound and applied a sports Band-Aid for the knee. I wouldn't have to tell anyone of the misuse of the Band-Aid, but I might look even worse in a bikini once we left for vacation.

Maybe I'll just stay home.

Today, I saw a tadpole. We wondered why we hadn't seen any, since we had observed the behavior characteristic of their arrival. I thought I saw one the other day. They don't move through water in quite the same way as fish, but please don't ask me to describe the difference to you. It's something you sense more than analyze. It is already quite large and probably about to develop rear legs, so it has been around for some weeks, which makes sense, given what we observed, my husband actually calling me over to see. As though with the time I spend at the bassin I had never had this opportunity for observation or frog reproductive behavior.

Meanwhile, I pray I get back to normal (better than normal, actually) soon. I don't think the house and garden can take much more of my mental absence.

And, I forgot to turn off the hose and I burned the plums the neighbor left yesterday that I was simmering into a compote.
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