The Caucus Race

If anyone actually reads this - they might have noticed a particular whimsical theme in these here parts.  Alice, whether in Wonderland or on the other side of the Looking-Glass, faced incredibly bewildering and terrifying situations - and came out just fine.  Home in time to make sure that Dinah got her saucer of milk for tea.  Learned a lot about the world, herself, and her place in it in the process.

I cannot swear that Alice was my first fantasy heroine, but her story has travelled with me for decades now, an old comfortable sweater, worn at the elbows, but warm, familiar and reassuring.  I come back to Alice when the world above the rabbit hole moves faster than I can.

That happened this morning.  I went to the foot doctor expecting to talk about possible surgical removal of my horrid toenails...and the possible became the actual.  He cut off my entire right big toe nail.  It happened so matter-of-factly that I had no time or reason to ramp up the panic machine.  In retrospect - what a blessing!  I did not have three days of build-up, countdown, or any other cliche that implies doing nothing but freaking out about impending FOOT issues.  Instead - the toe was painted with iodine, stabbed with that kind of anesthesia that I was assured did not exist(up in Alaska), and from that point on - I only felt a "presence" at my foot.  I could feel things being moved about, manipulated, pulled at, but no other sensation - no pain, in other words.  However, the lack of actual physical pain did little to decrease the mounting anxiety that SOMEONE IS FUCKING WITH MY FEET!!!!  RED ALERT!!!  DIVE!! DIVE!! SHIELDS UP!!  WARP 6, MR. SULU!  OPEN THOSE HAILING FREQUENCIES!!!  USE THE FORCE!!!  PREPARE TO REPEL INVADERS!!!

Oh gawds.  My worst nightmare.  In broad daylight.  Made manifest and whole by the whim of some incalculably sadistic oppositional force.  Or just the worst fucking luck in the universe.  You choose.
I actually volunteered to let someone cut an open wound into my foot.  That makes my judgement so suspect that I can't decide which fate to blame.  Hardly matters, in any case.

Move on.  Keep running as fast as you can to stay your ground.  Run your own pattern, start and stop when you see fit.  Well, today I started a new Caucus race.  One that started totally randomly, onto which I must impose my own pattern.  Only I will know when I am dry enough to stop.

To mix literaryness...So it begins.  (You knew there would be a Tolkien quote eventually, didn't you?)

I am scared.  No, terrified.  I have a head full of shitty memories, of unrelenting, unremitting pain.  But what I am armed with THIS time - is cannabis.  I had access to it in Alaska,,,but I worked for the police department.  Can't have a dispatcher using medical cannabis off-duty!  FAR better to have her sitting here jazzed to the eyebrows on vicodin, eating 36 advil every day...much superior a solution!

So.  I am building a skyhook, onto which I WILL confidently hang my future mental stability.  And I mean that in the most literal sense.  This is the acid test.  IF I can come through this round of foot shit in relatively normal fashion...I can lay THAT ghost to rest once and for all.  I need to believe that the cannabis will promote that kind of good healing - in addition to cleaning out that pesky little breast cancer issue.  I am asking a lot of a plant.  But I am asking it of a plant that will deliver.  Guarendamntee it.

Make today the best day yet.  Love to all that read this far - and to those that did not.