no-hands-cartwheel

in which I visit the snow-beach, narrowly avoid fainting into a wheelbarrow and press the hellhound into hard labour

New Year’s resolutions are for people who think they are in control of what happens to them. I have no such illusions. No one’s in control of what happens to me; in fact, I’m out of control. So there.

I had a random thought the other day that I’d like to be able to do a cartwheel with no hands. You know, where someone looks as if they’re going to do a cartwheel but then at the last minute they jerk their hands out of the way and the air miraculously supports them? Like that. The thought made me smile, partly because I then imagined how my rheumatologist’s face might look if I asked him when in my recovery process would be the best time to try to do a cartwheel with no hands. But I also was pleased that I still have thoughts like that. Considering doing a cartwheel with no hands barely two months after recovering the ability to get around without a wheelchair feels like a fundamentally Celandinian impulse. And you never know, it could happen. After all the weird things my body has done in the last few years, nothing would surprise me anymore.

The full moon was very in your face this week, peering in all the windows and shining loudly even during the daytime when I was trying to focus on other things. Then it snowed and Nettle and I wanted to go somewhere so we went to the snow-beach. The sea was grey and ferocious. I hadn’t been on a beach since the start of my flare in June and I love the sea, but I didn’t cry, just grinned a lot and really noticed the feeling of the cold wind on my face. The sand was frozen and crunchy and the lighthouse burned extra-white with frost. I cried later, at home in my bed, for all the beachless months.

I discovered recently that my hellhound can dig holes to my specifications, which I believe officially makes it a service animal¹. We planted twelve daffodil bulbs in this fashion, me making an indent with the spade to mark out the hole and then pointing and enthusiastically yelling dig! until the hellhound obliged. It dug very vigorously and was paid a salary of cheese which it consumed on sight. I guess that means it lives paycheck to paycheck². Sometimes the hellhound tested the proposed hole with one foot and then refused to dig in that spot, staring at me pointedly until I investigated and inevitably found a bit of broken brick or large stone just below the surface. The lesson here is that if you are able-bodied enough to dig your own holes in life you may miss out on such brilliant moments as discovering that your rescue-demon can do gardening.

perhaps it is actually trying to return to hell

In other inadvisable endeavours for the newly-well, I sowed a wildflower seed mix in our paddock last month. Trying to make my flimsy months-in-bed-body move a wet polythene sheet and rake a layer of clay felt a bit like trying to use a cheese string as a screwdriver. It took forever to do a six foot square and as I was still in cortisol withdrawal I periodically had to put my head between my knees so as not to pass out into my wheelbarrow³. Anyway, being myself I then sort of forgot I had done this and was delighted to discover that the area is now furrily green, like a chin attempting its first facial hair. I keep going out there to look at it and exclaim delightedly at how clever the ground is to grow things.

Longtime Odde Chroniclers may remember that we had to curtail the hellhound’s freedom around the Pightle due to it commencing a career as a chicken serial killer. I am dismayed to announce that The Long Tube of Freckled Chaos has also been put on house arrest due to extralegal chicken-related activities of a slightly different nature. This week TLTOFC kept disappearing for about fifteen minutes at a time, and would later reappear running down the road, on one occasion pursued slowly by a pick-up truck⁴. We have a gate between our drive and the road but unfortunately TLTOFC is immune to all barricades due to being a cross between a border collie and a slinky. Anyway, a couple days ago Nettle surreptitiously followed TLTOFC and apprehended it running out of the neighbours’ farm. In its shame and embarassment at being caught, TLTOFC promptly vomited chicked feed all over the driveway. It appears it was ignoring the chickens themselves and instead breaking into the henhouse to eat out of their feeder. From this we have surmised that it is on a quest to become the world’s longest chicken⁵.

this may be my magnum opus

This concludes this week’s chronicle. I do think I might do that cartwheel at some point. The nice thing is, even if don’t ever do it, I’m still allowed to want to. You’re allowed to want to do your no-hands-cartwheel too, whatever that is for you. In the end the doing is not everything. The wanting is worth something all on its own, and it’s yours⁶.

Thank you as usual for reading, and wishing you an odde week,

1. The service is landscaping.

2. Perhaps I should offer it some financial podcasts to listen to so that it feels inspired to start a cheese savings account.

3. In the earliest days of my muscle weakness I once collapsed while gardening and landed shoulder-first in a bag of compost. Random collapses trigger a lot of screenings so I then had to explain this to four or five medical professionals in a row who wanted to know the details of how it all (it all, in this case, being me) went down. Well, luckily I broke my fall with compost. In the end perhaps everything in life (me included) comes down to compost.

4. The driver was just kindly making sure that TLTOFC made it home safely, but from my vantage point at the upstairs window it was a bit like watching a very slow car chase where one car is a dog of unusual length.

5. A quest that we must sadly thwart for the good of all the regular-length chickens.

6. If you’ve read this far and feel so inclined, please share your own no-hands-cartwheel (a thing that the world might not let you do but wanting it makes you you) in the comments.