I can tell I am getting older by the way I check to see if the
iron is on. Now that I am nearing fifty, I have noticed it is too
much trouble to bend down and see if the iron is plugged in. I mean,
it is a long way down there and lots of things can go wrong bending
down that far. Dizziness can set in. You can pull a muscle. Wrench
your back. (I am finally learning not to reach into the back seat
while I'm driving the car for that very reason.) It is also way too
much trouble to bend down and unplug the iron to be sure the iron is
turned off. Besides, bending down that far for one thing is really
not a good use of my time. If I'm bending down that far, I better
have more to do than just check the iron. At my age, you just can't
go around wasting your energy on frivolous activities like checking
to see if the iron is plugged in. Wait until there's a few things to
do down there before you commit—picking up paper clips, dryer lint,
stray used softener sheets, etc. Getting down there to check a plug
is a high-effort activity, so don't waste it. Do a few other things
while you're there. Since it is rare for me to have any other
activities planned that I can do while I'm in the dirty lowdown
position, what do I do? Instead of bending, I feel the surface of the iron with my hand
to see if it is hot or not. You might expect that even though I am
getting old, I feel young when I scream like a girl if the iron is on
and it is hot. That's right, I scream like a girl! So feeling the
surface of the iron to see if it is on works for me, even if I
occasionally scream like a girl when the surface is really hot. Then I whip my hair back and forth, blow on my fingers and palms, and unplug the iron from the socket with my toes. I feel young when I do that too.
Today, I am feeling “off” in an “everything is fine but I still don’t feel right kind of way.” It went on for a few days until I finally became so desperate that I needed to go and sit on a boulder next to the constant roar of the swooshing brook at Flat Rock Brook Nature Center. I'm trying to let the sounds of the water drown out all of the oppressive thoughts in my head. Sometimes it takes a while. This is the view of where I station myself, and I think the video captures the sound. (I know some people use this kind of soundscape for sleeping, but I use it today to combat oppressive thoughts.) However, one unoppressive thought is conflicting with the rest in my head, a quote I used in the class I'm teaching this semester: “A man whose hands are full of parcels cannot receive a gift. " C. S. Lewis Lewis said this about spiritual dryness, and I guess this is a good description of where I am right now: spiritually dry. And my hands are full of parcels, which resonates wi