While recovering from recent hip surgery, I needed late-night diversion. Unfortunately, I had trouble sleeping because I could not find a comfortable position. So I sought distraction from magazines. As a result, I now have a large stack of woodworking, model railroading, and gardening magazines that I’ve read from cover to cover, ads included.
The fear that my sleep routines would be permanently affected created a tension that seemed to ease if I concentrated on intently reading every article and ad in the magazines, not the sort of thing I would typically do.
Usually, I’m skeptical of the way the magazines groom every inch of a photo presentation. In woodworking magazines, the shops are pristine. In model railroading, the layouts are incredibly complete and perfect, and needless to say, in the gardening magazines, the grooming is exquisite.
Mainly because I’ve been physically challenged, my shop is a bit ( Ha!) worse for wear than usual, my model railroad dusty and ignored, and the garden obscured by a jungle of weeds. It would take a generation or two of laborers to correct all the defects and make it magazine perfect. This sort of idiocy does not usually get to me. but this was different. I became fixitated on things I could not control.
While hobbling around on crutches, I’d stare out the door into the dark and imagine the weeds sadistically growing to spite me. Today my broccoli. Tomorrow, my porch. Once I could climb the stairs, I could barely stand the mess in my office/ storage/ train room. The dust bunnies seemed to whisper, “We are the future!”
The shop was a disaster. The dust had settled over everything, and it looked like it had been abandoned for years. I started up the air cleaner but could do little else on crutches.
As my sleep returned to normal, I paid less attention to the magazines. I’ve begun to make peace with the dust bunnies and the dust in the shop. My fixation on getting things perfect receded. We are now approaching normal.
The weeds, you ask? They have continued to grow and encroach on the porch, inch by inch. A particularly nasty clematis vine started to cover the gate. A rogue tomato joined the rebellion and made a common cause with a pigweed. I fear for the Brussels sprouts. I have not been able to make it to that garden section. The area still under my control is a small section by the workshop; it’s never been this bad in all the years I’ve lived here.
I ceased worrying about it; I’ll win in the end
I am in this for the long game.
The first hard frost is coming. There’ll be a rematch in the spring,
I’ll be ready.
Feeling out of sorts and physically vulnerable brings on those fears and anxieties- perfectly normal, no doubt about it! Sounds like you have started to make peace with the disorder and disarray which surrounds you at this time- that’s a good thing. Wishing you all the best in your recovery from hip surgery- not easy. 🙂 Amanda
That would be me reading Southern Living magazine and drooling over the gardens and interiors. My husband always says, “You know these people all have money?” I know nothing about ‘these people’ except their gardens and interiors are perfection. So unlike mine.
Better to tend to the garden of our mind, sweep the dust bunnies from our souls.
No rush, Lou. Take it easy over winter. You don’t want to slip and fall.