Infiltration

I would like to be keeping my I Thought I Was Done With This life separate from my Dilettante Traveler life but, as happens, because both those lives are, in fact, equally intimately mine, the two lives occasionally meet, and occasionally meet in a dramatic way, as happened this last week over here in Jerome Creek.

Originally I was planning to be here for three weeks--long enough to spend some time with K&A and my dogs and their dogs and all the horses and cows--no, beeves we're calling them now because they are all fixed but two are steers and two are spayed heifers--and then some time WITHOUT K&A (or anyone else), because they would be on vacation and I would be holding down the fort, blissfully alone in this wilderness heaven. Ian's singular job had us heading to the Seychelles, though, and so I planned to cut my trip here down with a razor to the very last possible day and leave here on the 13th, Wednesday, and Ian are flying out of Seattle on the 14th, Thursday (I have already packed my two bikinis and 3 sun dresses and crate of pills and medications. I'm ready to pop on the plane.).

Plans change.

I got: a migraine? Stomach flu? Food and/or alcohol poisoning (on one mug of hot buttered rum?)? A bacterial infection from throwing away a truly nasty bone the dogs were munching on, with my bare hands, and then forgetting and licking my fingers (I don't remember licking . . .)? Who knows, but last Wednesday, the day K&A were leaving, I woke up completely incapacitated. Roaring, jackhammering headache. Shivers. Nausea to the point of puking (only 4 times, I think). Orange diarrhea. Migraine auras of both visual and tingly kinds. Major anxiety.

This, of course, threw everyone (well, A. in particular) into a tizzy--because, what was going to happen with me? I couldn't be left alone (fair enough), and they couldn't stay with me. I began a preliminary rally around 3pm, A. managed to find a friend to stay with me for the night and pick up my mom from the Moscow-Pullman airport the next day, and Mom's been here ever since.

It's been a big, complicated stew of suggestions and proposals here since Mom arrived. Should she leave on Monday as originally planned, so that I have two days of renewed independence? But to save my nerves and hers for my drive home, should we have Marsh fly in Wednesday and I'll only have to drive as far as Moscow to pick him up and then he'll take over? Or, Mom can stay the whole time and, so that I don't have to drive with her, I take her to Moscow and she fly out while Marsh flies in? And how can she get to Medford, where she was planning to meet friends for the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland? Does this paragraph not make a whole lot of sense? Yeah, I think so too.

What we decided on is this. I did not sleep well last night (a ridiculous fly that would start buzzing about every 1 1/2 hours and, since it's so quiet here, rattle me awake), and I was worried this morning that I would not feel confident enough in my recovering health to take care of things for any time alone (although it was my overweening wish that I would feel comfortable), and it seemed that having two days in Seattle would be really helpful before flying to THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PLANET, and so Mom and I are leaving, together, tomorrow afternoon after a couple of appointments I'd already scheduled (therapy, for me, and a vet for Shadow to look at her eye).

Mom will get to Ashland, I will have someone to drive with me, Marsh will miss out on a lovely autumn trip back and forth across the state, and Ian will, after all, have a chance to see our dogs for a short time, the only time he'll get to see them in about two months.

I think that's the kind of cancer I have--Infiltrating ductal--and that's certainly what it's been doing the last several days, darn it all.