My weekend and why Linda calls me 'Sheldon'

We had a pretty good weekend, until the third hour of it.

I WAS going for Korean BBQ that evening(except they were on vacation for a week), so while deciding we went to the local markets. The natural soap and carver was there with new products, including both mini-watermelon and apricots.
Last year a potter had been making skeleton cookie jars but had moved on to mugs as well as fossilized dinosaur pattern mugs. Cool. I was like, “Where’s the lid?” because Linda had hinted at a skeleton cookie jar. No lid.

There is an inner court of stalls, then an outer court with the foods. Inside there is a guy singing busking songs and outside there was a woman with a Celtic ‘Lap Harp’, I think it is 42 strings. We bought some cheese at the Award Winning Qualicum Cheese Factory we had visited before (now they come to us – score!). They were Finalists in the Brie category for all of Canada (Brie is the one where the stuff that normally tells you your bread, clothes, or shoes have been hanging around to long covers cheese and this makes it ‘strong’ – yeah, kind of like a men’s locker room I’m guessing. I don’t do ‘strong’ cheeses, sorry).

Off to the side there is even a play area for children which even has its own Zip Line. Pretty cool. This guy was using it to Zip back and forth.

What is amazing is he was a least a foot shorter than being able to reach the holding ring (and thus probably years too young for those who planned what age should use it – but does that ever stop a kid?). He was climbing up on bolts and jumping to grab the ring, and then would ride it across every time he caught it.

Here is a picture of the corner of the market, if you don’t get the irony, then it is just a nice tree, blooming. We left and went to the James Bay market afterward. Making a brief stop at home. While Linda went inside, I talked to the animals.
It was a sunny and warm day and people were taking out their collectable vehicles for the first big rides of the year. I think this is a Bentley beside us, I love the tires.

In James Bay, Whimsical Jam was there, and we talked to them and bought some peach jam for Linda. Then I talked to the potter who last year would not use the Amazing blue in her pottery because she was pregnant now had her baby and was using blue again! And more was going to be on display next week, this week just these two. This, according to Linda is an oil and vinegar set. While to me it is clearly perfect for making flambe’! Not enough flambe’ in this world: flambe’ waffles in the morning, flambe’ omlettes, flambe’ open beef sandwich….the ideas are endless. Next week they are having a gallery showing of the artist of James Bay…..up at least 20 stairs. DARN.

Here is the artist who blows glass and makes tidepools which Linda bought. This year he was making mini stars and Galaxy’s inside of glass balls. They ranged from $90-$150 but were amazing to look at. He also created octopus as well as these jellyfish necklaces (we are very sea themed here on the west coast island).
As for me, I found a left over Anarchy necklace. It had been left over because an older woman wanted it because she was named ANN, the owner explained before final sale that the symbol had slight other meanings besides an A. Her loss was my gain. I told the woman watching the stall for the glass blower that Anarchy is not about bad or violence, it merely supports the removal or collapse of a previous system so rapid change, for good or ill, rises in place (we hope for good, oddly, we keep getting ill).

She said, "Wha? Yeah, sure." I got it for $10 (you can see it here with my cooling ‘kerchief and a pack of ice down my back). Ah, it all comes together, the red hair, the Anarchy symbol, now I just need a big flag and a line of police to charge in my wheelchair!
Sadly the heat did me in at this point and with the fever, nausea in extreme, shaking, and the desire to have my skin turn inside out as well as my body getting hotter and hotter, I had full blown heat stroke as the dizziness and confusion increased. And voided my entire intestines. Despite the ‘warnings’ to go to a hospital (yeah!), I was wheeled to bed, lifted in, iced, and lay alternating mumbling things and shivering before sleeping. The fever broke nine hours later. The good news is that I did NOT going into a coma! The bad news is I didn’t go out for dinner, and having 2 hours out from 11-1 in May means full heat stroke, then will I be able to leave this apartment until autumn? I hope so. So, got the 1 in 3 bad disaster weekend out of the way.

Getting up, I worked with Cheryl and Linda into the WEE hours doing postcards, 54 in all, down the list, making sure that people who might have been missed for a while were getting one. I hope they come at the right time, since I have been hearing people getting the ‘lurgy’ or varients which go into the lungs right away all over the country, so I hope a postcard gets to them when they are down.

In the evening Linda and I have been renting ‘The Big Bang Theory’ which is sort of like watching some guys I knew at uni. But during one episode, at one point, returning from a Renaissance Faire, Sheldon (ASD and self absorbed brainiac!) was complaining about the inaccuracies at the Faire. However his complaints were so egregiously wrong I had to pause the show to explain to Linda about disregarding those INACCURATE complaints because the period Sheldon was talking about was late middle ages of central Europe not the explosive intellectual/artistic explosion in Florence. That is what spread not only exchanged through the emerging postal system which carried the challenges of mathematics, puzzles of art perspective, and treatises but the education centers of University of Paris, Oxford and others, quoting from the excellent biography of Layola (founder of the Jesuits) who went to Paris.

I stopped at this point because Linda was laughing so hard that she was crying, and couldn’t seem to stop laughing, as she would look at me and say, “Yes Sheldon” and then start laughing again.

I tried to remain aloof and simply restarted the show, but soon had to make a correction of late middle English pronunciation which the show had wrong and set off Linda into hysterics again.

Sigh.

She giggled constant throughout but did turn to me at the end, when the main character broke up with the wonderful Leslie Winkle ("Come for the boobs, stay for the brains") due to what theory of physics they would teach their children. Leslie believed in Quantum and Sheldon (and the main character) believed in String. I explained (briefly) the step from the grandfather Newton to father Einstein and his theories. My own observation is that Winkle was right because Quantum physics is about TESTS and results and working equations from that to find the laws of this universe, while string theory cannot BE tested.

Life impacts theory and vice versa, so the pragmatic aspects that women have to deal with and compromise about not just historically but as part of life, makes Quantum is an extension of that. Because one can have an idea but when a single aspect of data (like recent finding of the fact that stem cells grow differently in space – hence the idea of colonies in space suddenly is less attractive to women who REALLY don’t want to see what the first child would be like!) requires a change in universe constants and our perspective. String Theory, like male masturbation, has endless variety and playing with itself but has no tangible effects or ability to test (and the idea that you can get paid to do this, oddly enough, attracts a high percentage of men to that field) – while Quantum, you get it wrong, and instead of a baby, you get cancer.

Now most of the time when we watch Big Bang Theory I point out to her that while I have OCD, a cleanness issue, space issues, tend to overthink the optimal, I keep saying, “I don’t do THAT” while she giggles at various places.

We work at getting by. We work at contact, and intimacy of space despite the pain (I fell twice yesterday, the second time hurting my elbow, hip and leg badly). Or I do, because the pain is what makes me something I would not want to be. I want to put defensive, cranky, and pain hazed interpreted Elizabeth on the shelf and let the vulnerable Elizabeth’s back out (problem is they need someone to catch them emotionally: in order to remain open and vulnerable, it creates fragility). So with my birthday midweek, I live in a future I hardly believe, of years I can’t remember. And the knowledge of the pain I live but the pain I have caused others. I know individuals who believe I deserve this, and it is my fear that Linda was chosen, or persecuted once again with a layoff BECAUSE I exist, because I am ill, and fear that deep down she wants to yell, ‘It is your fault!’, and then she's gone. She won't, because her daily acts of thoughtful kind love after years of hard caregiving should tell me otherwise. It tells me she cares. My fears keep whispering though.

Canada particularly always seeks to find whose fault it is, or rather to avoid taking responsibility and end up at fault. So to get ill, I was told, it must be genetic. It must be because I have displeased God. It is my sins come back to haunt me, etc. I live in a brain where time has stopped that day part of it died and yet I must face things every time I wake up. The day after the postcards I went for dental cleaning (Linda knew this was included and oddly did not tell me, due to the 'worry factor'), exam AND plates to avoid cracks and chipping from pain teeth clenching and seizures. The cleaning took 90 minutes. I talked to the person doing the scaling and cleaning and asked her to ‘kill it all, every little bit’, and then, suctioning blood, asked her to go back and do the back wisdom teeth as well as other areas AGAIN. There was a LOT of blood.

Linda was reading a magazine when the tech said, “um, is she…” and Linda looked and said, “Yeah, she’s passed out.”

“Does this happen a lot?”

“Oh yeah,” Linda assured her, “No worries!” I passed out twice, had a seizure and a TIA. The pain was, well, I kept telling myself, “hang on, hang on…”

A close relation was having their cleaning at the same time and talked to Linda was I was out (seizure or TIA I think), they saw me come to, use the arm I could use to raise is the air and rasp out, “Kill, kill, kill!” and back in with the tools the Tech went. The relation said, “It just isn’t fair how she gets to have fun doing this!”

Ah….er?

At the end, I had no cavities, no problems and declared myself ‘ready for toffee!’ That is, once I finished keeping the fluoride in my mouth for 30 minutes.

And thus goes my birthday week so far. No, not the greatest, I will admit.

I’d love to hear how your weekend went. And if it was a ‘SPLAT’ at least you know you have company. Next weekend we are hoping to get out to the highland games, which are here in town. I have always wanted to do the dancing with the really expensive leather shoes with lacing round the ankles (they cost about $110, I checked). Plus I can practice a bagpipe for at least 2-3 minutes (how long can it take to learn anyway?) without Linda noticing.Because I have a plan for LINDA’s birthday. I wish to surprise her with my rendition of ‘Happy Birthday to You’ on the bagpipes. I haven’t actually played them, as such, but I have read a book and am pretty up on the theory (it is hard to practice the bagpipes in an apartment and end up surprising her when the time comes, you know what I mean?). So she has that to look forward to.

Next post, I will be writing about Birthday ‘wishes’ (my number one wish is ‘one more year’ – since Linda says that 'NO, I am not actually just down with mono and daily exercise will NOT cure this' – I told her next year I can wish for ‘one more year’ again). But mostly about ‘Secret Shames’ and asking you to share them.

Yes, those secret shames like whose picture you had in your locker and which male readers got a perm (or blower drying in the school locker to look like David Bowie or Shawn Cassidy)? One of Linda’s secrets: She actually had a ‘Hang in There’ poster with a kitty. Me? I had an under the hood programming K.I.T.T. car from Knight Rider. Oh yeah, there wasn’t exactly an INNER HIDDEN geek.