Closures and Apertures

The serpent bites its own tail, and this hoop snake year comes to an end. A few things that describe my life at present:

Frustration: The thing that most summarizes the year for me is that it’s the first full calendar year in my adult life that I have been neither employed nor a full time student at any point. It is an uneasy feeling . Couple that with the statistics that the longer you are out of work, the longer you are likely to remain without a job (a fact that I’ve had several people report to me, coupled with “of course, that doesn’t mean you”) and I’m not feeling all that sanguine about the new year.

Hope: The preliminary culture results have come in for Satan’s Little Fart Cloud: no growth after the first week. I was hoping to reculture her today, but we don’t have the final results from the first culture, so that will need to wait for the new year as well. No closure here; not yet anyhow. She’s asleep now, wearing her sweater, in front of the space heater. It will be good to get this resolved.

Skill Sets: Beading remains a personal challenge and delight. Now that Christmas tree season is over, I’m practicing a new technique to make striped beads encased in clear glass. I had tried this six months ago and the results were uneven and unreproducible. I don’t know if I’m using better glass now, or if my technique is that much improved, but either way it’s a pleasure to have achieved yet another new trick in my repertoire.

Health: I’ll have some issues that I’ve been putting off dealing with checked out in the next month or so. The tinnitus in my left ear is so loud it completely drowns out most people’s voices. The neuropathy in my feet that they checked out this past summer (all tests came back with normal results) has now spread to my hands as well, and I unfortunately will have to pursue this with some more invasive tests. And, most distressing, although easiest to fix, that pain in my side that I thought meant I’d pulled a muscle coughing is now self-diagnosed as small incision hernia, which I suspect will eventually need surgery to correct. My transplant scar is big, and scar tissue is weaker than regular skin, and I suspect the mild cold I had finally bust the seam (so to speak). While I’ll get a licensed doctor’s opinion of it, I’m well aware there’s nothing to be done until I deal with the next item on my list.

Stupidity: Food is my friend. It shall lead it lead me into the Valley of Temptation, and any other damned place it wants me to go, and I’ll follow like I’ve got a ring in my nose. When I was laid off, I was at my ideal weight. I now have put on every single fracking ounce that I’d taken off on Weight Watchers. I have refused to purchase new clothes; it just isn’t in the budget, and besides, it would mean admitting something. My entire wardrobe that fits me now could be stored in a small shopping bag with room left over for a gallon of milk and box of Ho-Ho’s. Next week I rejoin Weight Watchers and do the whole damned thing all over again.

Strength: And yet, through all this, The Prof sticks by me. He alone knows what I’ve put him through on occasion, but I can guess. I don’t tell him enough, but he’s the center beam to my life. I figure if he can put up with what I’ve become in the last year, we’re pretty much fated to make it through thick or thin

Prognostication: Never my strong suit. I have no way of knowing where I go from here, but it’s got to me up.