It's a spring a-coming

Between society's squabbles, disinterested doctors, political muscle-showing, Easter sales and noisy neighbors, insidiously and creeping up step by step, the spring finally made it's way here.

I waited for Her, I begged for Her to come faster, and finally, She's here.

Not a moment too soon. I was getting so tired of winter. Don't get me wrong, I do like winter. I just don't like Oklahoma winter. For me winter has to happen with thick white blankets of snow, that get even thicker, slowly, from snowflakes dancing lazily in the air. The house is warm, there is always hot tea on the table and some kind of baked heaven (scones, muffins, you take your pick) and there are dogs sleeping near the fireplace, a cat purring in someone's lap, and a cinnamon stick's wisp of smoke permeates the air. And you get your warm clothing on, and go outside and walk in the silence of the winter, silence broken only by the small crunching noise of your steps in the snow and by the muffled thud of a bank of snow falling from a tree branch. The air is crisp and you feel it cleansing your lungs, and it brings on rosy cheeks and shiny eyes.

That is MY winter.

Oklahoma winter? A chill that barely goes down to freezing level - and that only after the temperature warms up enough to trick a few plants into thinking that the winter is over. Wind that blows dust everywhere and makes things look as desolate as a fallout movie. And the chance of getting an ice storm, that coats everything in one or two inches of ice, and kills trees. and maybe, just maybe, an inch or two of snow, once a winter or two or three, that halts everything in the city, makes everybody act like it's the end of the world, stops the power and makes everybody miserable.

But now, it's over. and even if spring in Oklahoma usually equates with supercell storms spawning tornado after tornado, one can't be unmoved by the revival of vegetation.

Of course, both me and the Wild Wolf have been busy - he's building fences and gates, and I'm making new flower beds, for the little seedlings that I have started inside to be transplanted to in two or three weeks. I've worked like crazy this past week, of course I popped pain-killers all day long, not just to be able to work in the garden but also because the weather was kind of "I'm going to be nice and warm, but I'm going to spawn some rain when you least expect it", so my poor body felt it in the surgery scars, in the joints, and in the nerve-damaged extremities. But still, I went on, and every night I had that "good sore" feeling before falling asleep, that soreness in the muscles that tells you that you have worked your body in a good way. A huge difference from the chronic pain I am used to.

Here's a bit of what we've done, but more was done since I took these photos a few days ago.

Today is Sunday, so besides going out to shop a little, there won't be much I will be doing. I EARNED a day of rest.

And this made me LOL. Hard.

Not there yet

Well, it did sink in, but I'm not over it. I need to find my balance, my happy place. I had thought I had found it - and that helped me go through everything, but once I got another slap from life, I got thrown out of it again.

The silver lining is that the diagnosis is not idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis - the kind that gives you 5 more years to live from the time of the diagnosis, tops; it's the post-inflammatory pulmonary fibrosis, that has a little bit of a more lenient grip on you. You have a pretty good chance to make it past 5 years. By how much? I don't know. And thinking that I have been complaining of the wheezing for 2 1/2 years, that means that I had it then - your lungs don't start wheezing all of a sudden out of the blue sky. I think that what bothers me the most is the idea of suffocation. That is the one way I didn't want to go when my time comes. I'm terrified of suffocating. Back in 1991 I had double pneumonia. A very severe case of it. It took them a month almost to keep me among the living. Maybe it wasn't a month, it was only 3 weeks, but it sure seemed like 2 years. I still remember how I couldn't breathe, how my breath stank of pus. How I had not one, but two IVs that were bringing not one, not two, not three, but four different antibiotics in my blood stream, to try and fight it. and of course, being communist Romania, they didn't have oxygen, so I was fighting to breathe by myself. I remember how many times I was hallucinating because of the fever. The thin blanket I was covered with in the hospital seemed to weigh a ton, and I couldn't move it, and there were little leprechauns that could move it for me if I would bribe them. I don't remember what I had to give them as a bribe. But you get the idea.

I've been trying to snap out of it for three days now. I have a lot of things to do and don't seem to be able to pull myself together. I have to finish the Tree of Life website, to work on jewelry and sculptures and if possible, continue my online class in medical transcription. All I managed to do today was to write two articles on the website. Two. Well, I was also able to do some housekeeping, mostly laundry and some kitchen cleaning and cooking, but that was it. I am tired. I feel like I walked 100 miles pulling a millstone tied around my waist. I don't know how much of it is the chronic pain, how much is the pulmonary fibrosis or how much is me fighting depression. I do not want to get depressed. I know I sound gloomy, but I do have a lot of things planned. Depressed people don't have lots of things planned, things that are long-range, that imply that you need to be alive 2 and 3 and 5 years from now, right?

I can't wait for spring. This is how spring is - 4 years ago, my front lawn, March 8. The first butterfly of the year. Little did I know that that fall I would be wondering if I'll ever see a spring again. And here I am, almost four years later, and looking forward to spring. Because I know when spring comes I will be here, and working my garden. And planting parsley and dill specially for the caterpillars of the black swallowtail, so the butterflies would have a place to lay their eggs, and the pretty caterpillars something to munch on and grow and become butterflies. And the photo of the catterpillars thriving on the parsley, last summer.