Friday Random 10: Driven by a strange desire Edition

Here is something I am looking forward to, more than I can really express: being able to sleep on my sides. I had been accustomed to avoiding sleeping on the left side since I started having trouble on that shoulder, but I am SUCH a shoulder sleeper, that I spent much of the night on my right side. As the pain in the shoulder got really bad after the arthrogram, though, even that got difficult, because having the shoulder lean left or right felt bad. And now, with the PICC line in place, I cannot do it at all.

Occasionally I have tried sleeping on my stomach with no pillow. I told my mother that on the phone recently, and she said, "I thought that was bad for you." I asked her, "What, are you worried about SIDS?" She laughed and reminded me it is bad for your back. I told her I was not really thinking of this as a long-term but rather a temporary solution. But that does not work so well either.

So it is all night on the back for me. Not that I sleep that constantly, because of the drugs and all the napping.

But one of the interesting things about all this is that I seem always to be on the verge of dozing off. That means that often I start dreaming before I even fully fall asleep, which makes the veil between the waking and sleeping times a very thin and fluttering thing. These are thin times, as the Celts would say.

Or maybe it seems that way because of all the time I have for contemplation, which makes me more open to noticing small pleasures and surprises in life. Yesterday the doctor changed my antibiotic, so I had to go to the infusion center at the hospital to have it infused (instead of doing it myself at home). When I got there, there were three people receiving their own particular infusions. I was struck that in however long they had been coming there daily, they had all gotten to be . . . I am searching for my adjective here. They all seemed to enjoy talking to each other, and seemed to enjoy each other's company, and seemed to be doing something more than just passing the time. They reminded me of the retired men you see eating breakfast together at Hardee's, or a knitting group, or people taking a water break during a pick-up basketball game, or a Red Hat Society, or a book club, or the French Table, or any such group of people who do not necessarily have more in common than that one shared interest, but there they are, having a great time. They had given each other nicknames, they liked to tease each other and the nurse, and it was the most warm, friendly group of people you could imagine. As people came and went, the conversations shifted slightly, and of course there was some talk about the infusions themselves, but mostly it was this strange warm thing in an otherwise sterile, artificially lit room.

I felt like I had been given a glimpse of something special, a world usually roped off from the well. It made me feel less bad about my own situation, and not because these people were so worse off, but because they had taught me something, all without really thinking about it.

Haven't done this in a while:

1. "The Carnival Is Over," Dead Can Dance, Into the Labyrinth
2. "Jolie Blonde," Queen Ida and her Zydeco Band, Caught in the Act
3. "Come Running," Van Morrison, Best of
4. "The Kraken," Squirrel Nut Zippers, Perennial Favorites
5. "Anansi Abstrakt," D. J. Spooky, Songs of a Dead Dreamer
6. "Great Balls of Fire," Jerry Lee Lewis, Best of Sun Records, Volume 1
7. "Grace Under Pressure," Jade Fox, Gilles Peterson Presents: The BBC Sessions, Volume 1
8. "What Is It This Time," Jamie Lidell, Multiply
9. In 3's," Beastie Boys, Check Your Head
10. "Alla Gossar (All the Young Men)," Triakel, Nordic Roots: A Northside Collection