I woke up this morning (yay!) and while my left upper arm was still tender, it was no longer stiff and as painful as when I went to sleep. So that was a success, I think!  On the other hand, or leg rather, my thighs hurt every bit as much as yesterday.  It was hard enough to get up in the morning, and whenever I have been sitting for a while, I walk like one of the old men in a nursing home for a little while.

When I say “get up” in the morning, I mean it quite literally.  I don’t sleep in a raised bed, but on an old rubber-foam mattress on the floor of the bedroom.  I had an old double bed for many years, quite possibly as old as I, but it more or less fell apart under me during my last years in the original Chaos Node.  So when I moved, it was destroyed and thrown away. This may have been providential, as a double bed is very nearly the only furniture – at least that is not nailed down – in the Mothhouse.   Anyway, as it is now, getting up is not a matter of swinging my legs out of bed, but literally getting up from the floor.  Normally this is not a problem at all, and it went well enough today too, but not as easy as usual.  Hopefully this won’t be a problem if I really grow old. Then again if I relly grow old, I should be so thankful just for that. Growing old, for most of us, means we have lived a long time.  (Except the very few people who have progeria, obviously.)

Even though our outward human form may be moving gradually toward obliteration, our inward human can still be renewed day by day. I should take heart from that, but that  does not mean I won’t try to maintain my presence in the world of form given the chance. Thus the flu shot in the first place. To be bluntly honest, that I also avoid becoming a biological weapon of mass destruction is merely a side effect.  I did it mostly to save my own hide.  But at least I can have a good conscience about it, always a good thing.

I won’t be going to the Mothhouse today either.  Perhaps tomorrow if my legs have thawed.  So much for the plan to go there four days a week. Life is an ongoing series of surprises, is it not?  But that’s part of why it is so interesting.   At the doctor’s waiting room yesterday I once again heard an older woman (about one generation older than me, I’d guess) talk about how the seasons and even the years were just racing by. That terrifies me.  I really hope and pray that it will never happen to me in this life.  As long as I keep being surprised, keep learning something new and keep reflecting on what happens to me and on what I do, I think the days will be filled with new memories, and the seasons will be like a wide river where you can barely see the other side, not a small stream you can step over and forget.