A couch manifesto

Sometimes you just know in a flash of sudden realization that it's time spend a few days lying on a couch watching old episodes of Star Trek and Doctor Who.  There's nothing else to do -- or rather there are a MILLION other things to do -- so you might as well get on with it.  City on the Edge of Forever is as good a place to start as any.

I had this epiphany right after the EMT and the ambulance crew left my office on Thursday.  I was fine. Asthma attack over; the inhaler had done its work before anyone arrived.  Oxygen saturation 100%, blood sugar 89 mg/dL, no wheezing in my lungs.  Dandy.  A little tired and shaky.  Nothing a sandwich and a glass of water wouldn't fix.

I've been trying to finish up a job application in my spare moments for about six weeks.  I've been fighting the manuscript of a long paper about dirt at work for about six months.  Thursday, as I walked to the cafe to get a sandwich, it occurred to me that spending a few days rotting my brain on TV wasn't going to slow me down.  Not so you'd notice, anyway.  And maybe, just maybe, it could speed me up.

For the past four weeks the kids and I haven't been living in our house.  Instead we've been juggling ourselves and our luggage back and forth between two sets of grandparents' houses, while I try, half-heartedly, to maintain something like a regular work schedule.  Our cats still live in our house, and Dane mostly sleeps there and takes care of them -- between going to work and visiting us at two houses 40 miles apart.  It's a quiet family life in the country.  In the midst of this chaos, I found an algebra mistake in some calculations I did at work last year and I'm in the process of re-creating about six months of effort.  Everyone is more or less sick, though it seems like less is gradually winning out.   I hope.  And, because the universe is a funny place, I got my fourth flat tire of the year last week.  So, that's life right now.  Same old, same old.

There is a long story about how we became gypsies.  Here's the short version:  We've been struggling with a lot of minor-but-chronic health problems for a long time.  Increasingly, the health problems seemed to be linked to problems with our house.  For about nine months we've been trying to simultaneously fix the current house (bless our lovely landlords) and find a new house.  Neither effort has gone well or quickly.  So, couch surfing became the stop-gap solution.  It actually seems to be helping, ambulance crew in my office notwithstanding.

Where am I going with this?  Ah, yes! Somewhere out in the world there is an enormous broken mirror.  I must have stumbled into it backward after tripping over a black cat under a ladder.  I was talking to a friend recently and I told her, "I feel like I shouldn't complain about my little problems.  Other people have REAL problems.  Cancer!  Car accidents! Divorce and death!  Multiple sclerosis!  What's a premature birth, a staph infection, a couple of cross country moves, a stalled career, a deformed thumb, three years of upper respiratory ailments, an awkward situation on the board of ed, and a messed up house compared to those?"  (It is possible the list was actually longer than what I've written here, but I'm trying to move this story along.) And she said, "Hanna, cancer or a car accident is a tragedy.  What you have is a spectacular run of bad luck."  I pointed out that there had been several strokes of good luck -- which there have! -- and we both laughed.  My laughter may or may not have been slightly deranged. 

"Bad luck" is a phrase that is following me around having a gentle chuckle.  "It's just bad luck!" said the allergist who interpreted Tristan's allergy tests.  Tristan has had a chronic runny nose, puffy eyes, and a non-stop string of secondary infections over the past two years.  According to a large panel of prick tests, he is allergic to nothing.  He's had bad luck.  "It's just bad luck!" said another doctor, two weeks later, when she diagnosed a still runny-nosed Tristan with a strep infection -- on his butt. "It's just bad luck!" said the kind guy at work who spent twenty minutes putting soapy water on a tire that had a 10 psi pressure drop but no hole.  It's like this everyday.  Perhaps you remember what happened to my nose.  I don't think I wrote about falling off our deck and injuring my shoulder.  Or spraining my toe.  "Bad luck!"  These are little things.  I laugh and shrug and say, "It happens.  I'll try a little harder.  Focus a little better.  Get the kids in bed a little earlier.  Take walks at lunch time.  Kill the tab on Facebook.  Listen to peppy music.  Make more calls about houses.  Take my new asthma medicine.  Tomorrow will go better."

Honestly, I don't think that approach has a great track record.  Thus my epiphany.  The correct response to "bad luck" is to submit.  The battles will be there tomorrow -- and you will surely black your eye and kill your big toe nail fighting them -- but there is a lot of great sci-fi on the internet right now.  And let me tell you, since I adopted this philosophy THINGS ARE GOING GREAT.  Yesterday I watched a bunch of Star Trek and ate some chicken sandwiches. Today, I slept late, took the kids to day care, and came back to my in-laws' house.  Since then I've been lying under a blanket watching Doctor Who.  You can't worry about all the mundane  phone calls and missed deadlines and stacked up mail when Romulans are blowing up Federation Starships!!  Similarly, wondering obsessively about WHAT IS GOING ON IN STEVEN MOFFET'S BRAIN???? is an excellent distraction from wondering, "When are we ever going to find a house?" and "Will I ever be able to really resume my career?"

The crew of the Enterprise always jumps into action and fights another day.  So does the Doctor.  I, on the other hand, am finding this couch very comfy.