Loose Ends

I woke up before the sun feeling wide awake, but not ready to face the day, I forced myself to fall back asleep re-entering the world of dreams and mystery. My dreams have been fraught with intrigue, dysfunction, insanity and all kinds of craziness and no wonder! My life is a bit crazy these days. As crazy as my dreams can be, they are never too crazy for me to say. “Hey, wake up, this has gone too far!” I relish in the scenarios, the unconscious connections between everything that is happening in my life being played out in random dream dramas. It’s better than soaps. I had planned to travel to Durham today to settle in and enjoy some time before checking in to the hospital before my surgery on Thursday, but after sleeping until 11:00 am and working on things on the home front, we decided to head out tomorrow and instead spent the afternoon working out, Dan running on the treadmill and me swimming a mile in the pool of our local YMCA. Swimming for me is an old friend. My father introduced me to the water at a very young age-it was in fact in a pool. Being landlocked in rural Wisconsin, my father, an avid swimmer himself, took his children- at that time five girls- to any public pool in the winter months that he could find. Summer in Wisconsin, of course, afforded days of fresh water swimming in a multitude of lakes and that is where we could be found, coolers full of drinks and sandwiches camped out for the day. I was a competitive swimmer in high school, but not very dedicated. I think I was voted the least likely to succeed in the sport or something along those lines, but the swimming, the style of it, the finesse of breathing and reaching out for the stroke, always stayed with me. To this day I have great form and probably good potential as a distance swimmer. Today, I was happy knocking out a mile, but I am also integrating swimming as something important to my future physical well being and it feels good to conquer! The rest of the evening was spent finding the best oysters on the Outer Banks, and why not? I am facing at least five days of no eating and no drinking so Dan and I set out to eat as many steamed local crab slough oysters as we could, all washed down with copious amounts of beer and wine. All I can say is I hope those post surgery days of not eating balances out my present over indulgences! It’s hard to resist eastern North Carolina oysters in season.