No tramping around in the country

I decided to back out of my backpacking date for this weekend. I put the decision off as long as I could, which probably caused Jeff some irritation because I wasn't communicating this to him. In fact, I wasn't communicating with him much at all while I was trying to gauge Eric's recovery.

Anyway, I don't think that Eric is really mended enough to fend for himself over the weekend. He told me to go on the trip, but it hurts him too much to bend over when he's dropped his pain medication or the remote control. He also still spends a lot of time sleeping while his body takes care of things.

So I've been preparing his meals and fetching whatever he needs. I help him on with his clothes and get things from the market. He had groceries for a few meals at the beginning of the week, but he had made arrangements with some of the ladies at his church to bring him meals the past couple of days. Today I did a load of laundry.

It may be surprising to read that I'm caring for someone after I've written so much about my slovenliness. [Wow. I'd love to play that word on a Scrabble board! Slovenliness!] But I do know how to cook and keep house, I just don't like to, and my brain chemistry seems to be deficient in the self-discipline department.

Hm. So we start the entry off with how much I'm doing for Eric, which implies that I'm a decent enough human being. Then I veer off into self-recrimination. Bleah. Enough of that. :-)

Wow, man.

Mike and Rob gifted Eric and I with a small container of magic brownies to help Eric with his recovery — although they allowed that the nurse could partake as well! Mike warned us that the effect would creep up on us, relating that Rob didn't feel anything until about thirty minutes after eating one.

I suspect that you have to eat these things on an empty stomach, because they took like two and a half hours to kick in for me. I only rarely get intoxicated by any means, so this was an interesting experience.

It seemed to completely short-circuit my short-term memory. I couldn't pursue a train of thought for more than about fifteen seconds. It reminded me of the Star Trek, Next Generation episode where they're caught up in some time loop, repeating the same events over and over. Then it reminded me of that episode again. And again. You get the idea.

It occurred to me that this would make an interesting journal entry. Then it occurred to me again. You get the idea. So I took a page from the Star Trek playbook. I repeated a message to myself over and over again to bridge the fifteen seconds, so that I would remember to put this in my journal. I actually used the image of Data furiously entering the message into his little computer before the ship exploded — again.

It was as if my thoughts were like bubbles in a glass of cola. They only survived a few seconds before popping on the surface of my consciousness. The phrase I came up with was, "eternities of thought collapsing upon themselves in an instant."

I had to repeat that to myself over and over again too. Deep, isn't it?

Yeah. Don't answer that. :-)