Why do I curl up in the fetal position, you ask?

If that particular pose isn’t your thing, a primal scream is a good equivalent.  On several occasions in the past month, I’ve caught myself in the midst of a fervent wish to be: 1. locked in a padded, dark room, 2. myself, about two seconds earlier, before I’d seen/heard the horror, or 3. shopping for expensive leather goods. 

The only feasible choice at the moment is rather impractical.  The attic is somewhat padded (I should know, I spent my birthday loading a hopper with cellulose insulation whilst the husband used the long hose to blow it all around the bottom of the attic.  Happy birthday to me!) and certainly dark.  I don’t have the energy to procure a ladder, boost the ceiling hatch, and fling myself into the void up there.  Though no doubt that would be something to write about and very entertaining to watch.

Things I would have rather not seen, in no particular order:

1. the giant, gaping hole in my floor. And wall. And ceiling. And in that chasm, a leaking pipe from the kitchen sink that has probably been leaking for 25 years. The moisture and decaying food bits were supporting their own little ecosystem.  Strange looking flies lifted off en masse, mold flourished, and spiders scuttled out of sight.  What with the bamboo flooring ripped out, carelessly tossed into a pile of long sheaves and the stink emanating from the darkness below, it was too much for me.  I walked back the way I came in a haze and resolved never to respond to “Honey, I think you need to see this” ever in the course of my whole life.

2. those yellow leaves on the wild cottonwood (Populus balsamifera) trees.  At first, such infrequent sightings were forcefully brushed off as disease or a result of all the rain we’ve had in August.  Now there is no denying it: vandals are spray painting all the leaves around town a bright gold!  The nerve of some people.  A simple soul in the home dared bring up the word “autumn” and the result was just shy of apoplexy.  “Mommy, why are you clenching your teeth and tearing your hair like that?”

3. a story and X-ray of a gardening mishap so horrifying that I must caution you of feeble stomach not to visit this link.  To prepare you, a quote from one of the surgeons, Dr. Lynn Polonski: “It was wedged in there so tightly, you could not move it.  It was part of his face.” I will never look at, much less carry my felco hand pruners in quite the same way.  I say, he’s lucky to be alive and if his lady friend and team of surgeons ever let him garden again, I recommend a pair of child-sized safety scissors, welder’s shield, and ten-foot tongs to carry any gardening paraphernalia.

So in the last 30 days, I’ve had thrown in my face the awful fact that my basement is a smelly man trap supporting new, unnamed lower life forms, winter is coming in a week or so, and gardening can kill you.  Does curling up into a ball on the floor sound so bad?

*Pictures taken at the Alaska State Fair in Palmer last week.

 

What scares the pants off of you?