Have you ever had a prolonged period of being so hysterically busy that having the luxury of time to scratch yourself is as likely as a snowman enjoying a good sun tan session?
Welcome to my October, which would in some way go to explain my glaring absence from these fine pages for so long.
I do humbly apologize to you, dear reader, and I would love to be able to give some ripping excuse like I was abducted by aliens and brain scanned for 31 days, or that I’ve been asked to be a regular guest on Oprah, or even that the dog ate my computer, but I know I just couldn’t snow you like that.
No, I went mentally ‘walkabout,’ and the ability to put pen to paper in any meaningful manner proved impossible.
So, being flat out like a one-armed wallpaper hanger, flat out like a lizard drinking, if you will, it was a very salutary exercise in keeping one’s sense of humor firmly in place at all times.
And at some times, a grueling exercise it was. I am not one for the gym, don’t tend to go on eight-mile hikes through the woods, get so bored on a treadmill I could weep – well you get the drift.
My sense of humor is pretty good, until I get frustrated at which point my sense of humor backs away with its hands up in the air muttering such epithets as “whoa” as it sees my adrenaline levels reach ‘danger Will Robinson’ status.
My darling Sir – and he really was a huge darling all month – was very understanding and caring and wonderful all October inasmuch as he pretty much left me to my own whirling dervishness knowing full well that if pushed too far I might have been forced to remove his liver through his left ear and thenceforth make him eat it.
And although the deadline has passed, with a pretty good reception for my output I thought, having such gorgeous clients you could positively eat them, my adrenaline just won’t go away.
I find myself being faced with a mountain of work – that which got left in the too hard basket throughout last month, and armed with a steely resolve I launch into it in the morning and then find myself thinking of fleeing the scene. That’s the adrenaline see…. its opposite, if memory serves me well is endorphin…. fight or flight, it’s very simple, and my mind goes racing off in a startling ADD manner.
“I will achieve A and B today,” I say to myself in the shower, in the car, at my desk. And then all of a sudden out of absolutely nowhere pops “Cod fishing off Newfoundland.”
There was a series on BBC many years ago on the brain, the effect of strokes, the left brain/right brain argument and all manner of gray matter experiments. It was absolutely fascinating, so if it ever crops up, do see it.
In the series, scientists dealt with phobias – notably of the arachnid variety. I have a very healthy fear of spiders, but these people were way beyond healthy.
One guy found one in his sink and managed to turn on the hot water, thus scalding and drowning the poor thing at once, but having dispatched it, he could not go the next step and actually remove the creature which was now stubbornly straddling his drain. He ended up going to the kitchen, finding a long chopstick, and in various stages, poked it through the holes.
There is another condition of the brain where there is no bridge between the left and the right brain. You just don’t think of these things, do you. A woman suffering from this condition would go to her closet in the morning, thinking “red shirt, black pants” and would emerge wearing a green blouse and brown pants. She had absolutely no control over it. Fascinating, I’m telling you.
And the stroke victim who was shown flash cards. One would read “sword,” and he would say “dagger”; “orange” and he’d say “lemon.” His brain almost knew what it was, but the electrical paths were scrambled.
The adrenaline/endorphin experiment was cunningly simple. The scientists wired an athlete up and asked a series of innocuous questions which resulted in zippo. Then, with horrifying speed, asked him loads of 7 times table questions. His legs registered huge levels of adrenaline. He wanted to get the hell off that table.
Off on a small tangent here, one of the joys of the month was to jump into my new grown-up car and listen to the comedy channel on satellite radio which had devoted two solid weeks to Monty Python. I grew up on this troupe, and I was amazed at the reaction from callers to the station, thinking that Monty Python was so odd that it just wouldn’t have appealed to Americans at all.
But I was so, happily, wrong. A 10-year-old – 10 – managed with William Tell accuracy to recite the entire skit about the Spanish Inquisition. If you’ve not caught that one, I understand. But know that I laughed till I hurt.
So I’m certain if a scientist got hold of my brain right this very minute, he too would be amazed.
In the immortal words of Python:
“My brain’s full!”
Lee's Summit, MO —
