Friday morning I woke up at 5 am like usual so I could make coffee before going to teach my 5:45 am boot camp class. I love coffee so much. I had not slept well because I’ve been having headaches. After class, I came home and got the kids off to school. I straightened the kitchen and loaded the dishwasher with the 14 glasses my family of five had used that morning. Then I drove to Orange Park to get two giant shots of cortisol injected into my head.
On the way I stopped to look at a used car for my daughter Scout, who received her driver’s license six days ago. I pretty much haven’t seen her (or my car) since then.
At the doctor’s office, I lay down face first and expected a couple of quick pricks to the skull. The shots were an attempt to help with my headaches. I don’t know why I thought injections directly into my nerves would be painless, but it was not. It felt like the doctor was using a hammer and chisel to carve intricate botanicals into my brain. “I’m going to massage it a little to help,” he said, and then he used his thumb
to dig craters in my head.
After the injections, I drove back to the car dealership and made arrangements to buy my daughter a used car. The sales manager agreed to take my left kidney as payment, so we drew up the paperwork, which took approximately 700,000 hours. When it seemed close to being over, I asked the saleswoman to prepare the rest of the paperwork while I drove home to pick up Scout. When we returned, we only had to wait another 300,000 hours before we were given the keys. By that time, I was ready to break every traffic rule invented in order to vacate the premises, the area, and the general vicinity of a community constructed solely of steel, concrete, and sweaty fat men with nicotine on their teeth. But our saleswoman, who smelled like a perfumed ashtray, wanted to have a photo session to celebrate the momentous occasion, so I fake-smiled.
Scout drove home to change clothes for work. She has a job now. She works as a cashier at a frozen yogurt place. Between the used car and her minimum wage job, she pretty much thinks she’s adulting.
I, meanwhile, shuffled through traffic to go meet the husband for the second workout in the annual CrossFit Open competition. I did 55 squats with 20-lb dumbbells and 55 burpees, then worked up to an 85-lb clean, sort of puny but, you know, done.
Then I drove home to check in with the kids, and found there was nothing to eat for dinner. I put on a dry shirt and went to the grocery and promised to get the little girl a Subway meatball sub. When I returned home, I realized I had forgotten to stop at Subway, so I went back. But Subway was out of meatballs because WTF? So I went to Chik-fil-A instead.
Finally, around 8 pm, I put on my pajamas and ate a bowl of cereal plus five brownies, and went to sleep.
And that’s sort of my life these days, except sometimes I eat cookies instead of brownies. Also, my headaches are gone.
Dear Lord. Cortisol in the head? I’ve had it in my foot and that hurt like hell. The doctor had to invert the chair I was in because she thought I would faint. You are STRONG!!
Yeah, it hurt like a mutha. But upside? I LOVE CORTISOL. And you. xoxo
Tricia,
I just finished “Peace and Crickets” although it was touch-and-go there for a minute. Having four kids of my own, I had to knock the last one-hundred pages out clinging to a wrinkled, crinkly version your blood, sweat, and tears since my one-year-old thought it would look cool floating in the bathtub (along with Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow.)
FYI: Your work is much more buoyant than the Nobel Peace Prize Winner’s. Because of this, your signature and note to me on the front title page were preserved.
All of that notwithstanding, I was greatly impacted by your amazing story. As a man, I found myself grinding my teeth at times at your son’s audacity and total lack of respect for those who sacrificed so much for him. But then, was it really him or was the real him unjustly trapped somewhere in that tormented psyche? You did such a great job of framing that impossibly complex conflict over the course of your book. I couldn’t help but think what a blessed boy he is to have been hand-picked from the orphanage by a family of such longsuffering and compassion. And perhaps, in a twist of irony, you all have been immeasurably blessed by him as well.
I look forward to continuing to follow your saga through blog posts such as this.
Jathan
Jathan, thanks so much for reading my book! As hard as it was for me, it was a thousand times harder for Nico. And yes, we are all so lucky to have found each other. I’m so glad our paths have crossed!
I love you.
I Iove your writing.
Just in case you forgot.
No, I would never forget, but I love to reminded, my darling Shriverness. xoxo
Bless you, hug you, Tricia.
Thanks, Barb. Miss you and Les!! xoxo
You always make me smile. Even when you are writing “seriously!”
Thank you, friend! Always happy to inspire smiles. xo