Things seem to be going fairly well in my life, all things considered. There are probably a lot more positives than negatives. My new job is ceasing to feel so new and proving to be a very good fit, and some really exciting opportunities are already before me. This week, I embark on a challenging and ambitious project that will occupy a large portion of my time, and I’m looking forward to getting moving on it. Raymond, Allison’s son, is up here with me, and we’ve been managing to keep the house together as we anticipate Allison’s arrival, sometime in the next month or so. The house is comfortable, and we have everything we need.

I even went to not one but two airshow performances at MCAS Cherry Point this weekend. One was on Friday evening. Night airshows are becoming quite popular, but this was my first, and it was truly wonderful to see some seriously gut-wrenching flying without risking a sunburn. Of course, I was in the sun all day Saturday for the day show, and convinced Raymond to join me. The Blue Angels performed their full high show in perfect weather, and turned in their usual breathtaking performance.

With so many great things happening, I was a little surprised to wake up on Saturday morning and find Winston Churchill’s black dog at my bedside. It won’t go away.

I think, at the heart of it, I’m just lonely and feeling disconnected and isolated. I’m pretty sure that since we met, Allison and I have never spent nearly this much time apart, and I think I underestimated how much that would affect me. With shorter trips of a week or two, I was always able to cope. At the end of the trip I would be very, very ready to be home and with my loved ones, but it didn’t reach a level where it interfered with my ability to function. Unfortunately, the stress of it has been escalating over the last few days into something that refuses to be ignored.

This is ultimately my problem. Allison has a huge, busy, stressful life down in Atlanta as she finishes up her school year, discharges her responsibilities at the Renaissance Festival aviary where we volunteered, deals with her daughter Chelsea’s move to her boyfriend’s house, tries to get vehicles repaired and a house cleaned and vacated, and deals with myriad other tasks. There is precious little time for her to even talk to me on the phone, and I understand that because I don’t even think I could get it all done if it were me down there.

At the moment, my mission is to grit my teeth and tough it out, because I’m the one with the easier job. It shouldn’t be so hard, but I’ve spent three years of my life being loved and cared for by a really outstanding, compassionate, affectionate partner, and living among (in order of increasing mass) six birds, two cats, one dog, and two young adults. I’m now down to just the one young adult and a small cadre of pholcus phalangioides spiders who hang out in the garage. Ray is good company but the spiders are decidedly non-cuddly.

Some pain might be clouding my judgement, too. I recently had what can only be described as the most monumental of dumbass attacks.

While walking around our new house, checking things out, I noticed a hornet’s nest which I’d never seen there before. It was perhaps 15 centimeters in diameter. I had not noticed any hornets in the area, either, so in a momentary lapse of judgement, I considered the nest dead and went over to have a look. This was merely the first of many mistakes to come.

As I stood on my front porch, three or four feet from the nest, bending down to peer idiotically at the nest for signs of activity, I suddenly realized I hadn’t given a moment’s thought to what I’d do if I saw movement. Then I saw movement. A hornet stuck its head out of the nest, looked at me, and apparently sounded the “get off my lawn” alarm. Three hornets had launched and were headed my way before the idea trickled into my milliwatt-level consciousness: MOVE!

Move I did. Similar to a fire-evacuation exercise in a large Asian country, my brain sent messages to all parts of my body, signaling them to spring into massively uncoordinated action. I lurched toward the five brick steps leading from the porch to the front lawn. The hornets followed. I know they were back there because I could hear them laughing.

Taking an odd number of steps two at a time does not generally result in a smooth descent, and as I hit solid ground, my center of gravity shifted dangerously forward. My body was now outrunning my feet, which were in full Wile E. Coyote mode trying to catch up. I was running across the lawn at a 45 degree angle, unable to stop without face-planting. I was just beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t just let myself fall so I wouldn’t run into the street, but at that very moment a tree the size of my torso intervened on my behalf.

Seeing the tree approaching at the last instant, I decided to avoid a nasty head injury by cocking my head to the right and raising my left shoulder to shield my face. That seemed to work; the left side of my rib cage took virtually all of the impact. Then I fell down, and my left hip found a piece of metal landscape edging. The world exploded in a bright red fireball of pain. The hornets must have considered their mission accomplished; I received not a single sting, and they returned to their nest after I fell, probably so that their comrades could paint portly human silhouettes on their sides.

This happened at 8:00 AM on a Friday, and I actually went to work that day. The pain responded slightly to large doses of ibuprofen, so although i looked like an invalid trying to walk, stand, or sit down, I got lots of work done. I expected the pain to have faded by the next day, but it had become a lot worse. Every breath was painful, and a light cough felt like being stabbed. By Sunday, it was unbearable and I sought medical attention.

A quick X-ray showed that no bones were actually broken, but that two left ribs were cracked. I’d suspected that because of crepitus (the sound and feeling of bones scraping together) that I could feel when I moved. The doctor’s orders were simple; I was to take pain medications so that I’d breathe deeply and avoid pneumonia. It hurt to breathe deeply, but I was instructed to do so and given a nifty little device called an “incentive spirometer.” It measured how much air I took in with a breath, but it must have been designed for people with smaller lung capacity than I. I could easily exceed its 2.5 liter capacity without even really filling my lungs, but I did the exercises as directed.

It’s been about three weeks since that happened. For the first two weeks, I slept in a recliner because I was unable to lie down without being in pain. I’m able to get into bed now, but I must sleep on my right side. Getting up in the morning is still a painful adventure, and bending to retrieve anything at floor level is downright impossible. Even when I’m not moving around, there’s a constant background pain from those two ribs. The medications keep it bearable but I’d really like it to go away. I’m told that cracked ribs can take months to heal, so I guess I’m doing all right at three weeks.

At the moment, I’m keeping the black dog at bay by concentrating on work, and on writing. Dousing the hornets’ nest with chemical death in a can helped my morale a bit, as did stomping the nest itself to bits and washing it into the storm drain. They won the battle but lost the war.

More anon. Thanks for reading.