It is pouring outside, shuddering rain slamming into the hot earth that seems to have dried out just days ago from the months of flooding. Many folks around town are upset, thinking that we’ve had enough of this. I’m thrilled. I love the rain, when it doesn’t fall every day for weeks. I love a sudden storm, the fury of the thunder and lightning and the smell of everything as it soaks clean. But Fezzik- my cat- is terrified of it, which speaks to his incredibly short attention span. The rains only stopped a couple of weeks ago. I don’t think I’ll feel so badly next time I leave him for the weekend.

I think one of the reasons I’m enjoying this storm is it makes me feel a little less bad about lying around all day. Not that I have a choice. I had violent, exceedingly painful, explosive, horrific food poisoning on Thursday, with the ugliness lasting throughout the whole night. I had no idea that my body contained that much, well, stuff, that it so desperately wanted to eject, in any way it could. The third or fourth time my body was gearing up for another one of these episodes- must have been 3 or 4 AM- I really wondered if I could die. I knew I was in danger of passing out, and if that happened, would the violence continue, without me awake to watch over it? It was crazy. And since, I’ve not been able to put enough calories in my body to function. I started very slowly Friday afternoon, with the requisite crackers and Jello, and by last night ate a piece of bread and some grapes. Today I had a smoothie, on my mom’s advice, which made me feel stellar for about 2.3 minutes (during which my dad called and got to hear me speak as a human for the first time in days). But that has worn off, and I wonder if I’ve eaten 1000 calories since Thursday night. I went to the grocery store to pick up whatever sounded remotely appealing, walked out with a bag and a bunch of flowers, and then wandered the parking lot for 20 minutes, since I had exactly no idea where I’d parked.

But I think the worst part- besides the actual losing of my lunch- was the pain on Friday. Every ounce of me ached. Every surface of my body that touched another surface was so uncomfortable, so painful, that I couldn’t sleep. I can’t imagine anything that I could consciously do to my body- workouts or otherwise- that could cause that kind of soreness. Finally, around evening time on Friday, I had enough crackers in my body to risk a few Tylenol, but the edge of pain did not simmer down until two Tylenol PMs at 8 PM and eleven hours of sleep. I suppose the pain makes sense, considering the exertions of the night before, the instant soaking of sweat that happened right before every, um, episode, speaks to just how hard my body was working to rid me of all it contained.

Three colleagues had the same meal I did. One didn’t feel so hot on Friday, but the other two were unphased. This is what my body does when it decides I’m being a total moron. This is my body’s version of saying, simply, “Enough.” It’s happened to me a couple of times before- one memorable weekend spent wrapped ’round my loo in Covina, California, after three weeks of touring in Eastern Europe, eating nothing but bread and Coke, and performing a zillion times a day, and suffering the abuses of my peforming troupe. My body said “enough” quite clearly then, and I quit the troupe the next day.

I can’t quit what I am doing, not yet. But I’ve been pressuring myself more than anyone ever ought to do a fantastic job, because so many people, I feel, are counting on me. I’ve stuck my neck way above the crowd and I’m dancing faster than I am able in order to try to keep folks from taking pot shots. It sucks, and I’m not having fun anymore. But I’ve got a job to do, and at least one more month to do it in, and what I’ve got to do is find a way to do it that is reasonable, healthy, and fun. My body has been begging me for months to change my life, and while I’ve heard it, I’ve done nothing- nothing concrete- to truly make some changes. But, boy howdy, I’m gonna change things now. I don’t know how, not at this moment, but that’s because I’m still eating crackers and lying around with my sweet cat on my chest and reading a novel a day.

Next week will be three and 1/2 days of work, and then I’m off to the Jartacular in upstate New York. And then I’ll come back, and I’ll figure out how to do this differently. In the meantime, I’m going to take another nap.

I left work today at 5:24. I know this because it was such an anomaly. I came home, did some prep for dinner, and then took a book and a beer out to the creek and tucked in for an hour of reading on a reclining lawn chair. The slightly crazy cat lady from down the block was wandering through my yard, calling “Charlie, Charlie!” Apparently one of her cats, who has never stepped foot outdoors in ten years, escaped, and she was beside herself. I came in, made dinner, and did one of my most favorite pastimes: putzed. I have a deep love of putzing, of doing small things to put my house in order.

I thought about working on my puzzle, but it was started by the guy I stopped seeing a few weeks ago and its appeal has waned. Instead, I curled up on the couch, and my cat curled up on me, and I read.

This all may sound terribly boring, but for me, it was long and lovely. I usually do not leave work until 6 or 7, sometimes even as late as 8 or 9, which means I work, roughly, ten hour days- and that does not count the work I continue to do via email when I come home.

My point is this: my professional life is going gangbusters. But it is doing so at the expense of my personal life. I met a very nice young man this weekend, and as we spent a full day talking and sharing about our lives, he kept commenting on how busy I seem to be. I think he was trying to feel out if there was any space in my life for the likes of him. I, too, wonder exactly the same thing. Do I work so much and so hard because it is the main love in my life right now? What would it look like to love my job, AND love a life partner? How good could I be at both? And what would happen if, even if just for a short time, I gave my personal life the focus I give my work life? And I don’t just mean romantic relationships; I mean friendships, relationships in my family, relationships with my neighbors and colleagues.

I have a coach in my life right now who continually amazes me with her capacity to love. Sometimes I feel saturated, overwhelmed with the numbers and depth of the issues and people who I believe need my focus, everyone from local artists to refugees in Darfur. My coach, however, has what feels like this ever-expanding heart. When I am with her, she is so totally focused on me, even though there are literally hundreds of other people in her life who depend on her for so much. And I watch her be the same way with every person she cares about. It’s inspiring, and humbling, because there have been times that I’ve literally thrown up my hands in protection and said, “No! Don’t tell me! I can’t take on one more thing!”

But now I realize that the same thing, in a small way, is happening to me. The more I creak open my life to fit in another person, or even just an hour with someone I’ve not connected with recently, the more I feel able to let in another, and another. I’m glad to be out of my last mini-relationship, but it taught me that I do actually want that in my life. And I wonder what it would look like if, just for, say, two weeks, I said “yes” to every invitation, as well as “yes” to every person who truly needed me, even if just a little bit.

Maybe I don’t yet know what I really want in my life. But maybe, for the first time, I finally want to know.

After over $400 in tests and a fair amount of heartache and scratches on my arms, the vet has determined that Fezzik, my sweet little 14-year-old cat, is in the beginning stages of kidney failure. He’s now on antibiotics and a potassium supplement, but the worst part is the subcutaneous fluids I have to give him once a day.

I used to have this terrible fear not of needles, but of people sticking needles in me. There are a number of terrific stories around my passing out whenever a needle pierced my skin (including the time I passed out with my pants down after getting an antibiotic shot in the rear to cure strep throat) but when I applied to Peace Corps, I decided I’d get over the fear. And I did, with lots of yoga and therapy and deep breathing. The last time they took blood for the last bout of tests, I even chatted with the guy while he was doing it. But this doesn’t mean I’m fond of needles. So yesterday, when for the first time I had to push that little piece of metal into my dear cat’s skin, I almost threw up. And he was so patient and sweet- I was the one squirming and battling the urge to run and hide under the bed.

Kidney failure does not “get better”. It only gets worse. And it seems like not nearly enough time has passed since I went through the same kind of thing with Zooey (http://www.mlwms.com/blog/arch/2003_09_21_index.html). Zooey had been with me since high school; Fezzik been my travel companion since early college. He’s lived in Cedar Rapids, IA, Los Angeles, Chicago, Kansas City, New York City, Brooklyn, Napa Valley, and a number of smaller places in between. I only have one close friend who I’ve known longer than I’ve known Fezzik. And I don’t know what is worse- thinking about his death, or watchiing him live uncomfortably.

I know I’m going to be faced with some difficult decisions: how can I possibly afford the $300 ultrasound they say he needs? How am I going to pay both his vet bills, and the many hundreds of dollars I owe for my recent string of UTIs? How will I know if what I am doing for him is working? And when will I know that it is “time”?

Ian and Tessa had a terrific vet that said that pets should be “happy happy happy dead”. I agree with this, but it’s possible that with Zooey, I waited a little too long. I think there was at least a few days that I was thinking about my own “happy” rather than his. I don’t want to do that with Fezzik.

But for now, at least once a day, he is still purring. Indeed, he woke me up this morning to be petted, and that means that there is still a lot of life left in him. I think that will be the litmus that I use: as long as Fezzik still needs and responds to love, it means he wants to stick around. I’ll just take it a day at a time.