Something’s Not Right – I’d Better Get Some Paint…

My right shoulder has been killing me lately.  I’m right handed, so this was obviously not a great thing, so I finally scheduled a doctor’s appointment and was told it was tendonitis.  You know, from all my years of not playing tennis, not swinging a hammer, and not being a competitive swimmer, it was bound to happen, right?  So the diagnosis and treatment plan basically came down to:  “Doctor, it hurts when I do this. …So stop doing that.”.

The point of telling you all that was not to garner sympathy for my woe, but to tell you that, of course, when the recommendation was to rest my shoulder, I thought today would be a great day to pull all the heavy pots and pans out of my very small and awkwardly-positioned corner kitchen cabinet to replace the contact paper shelf liner.  This is a task that required circus-level contortionist skills.  But I did it.  The new liner is wrinkled and there are no proper right angles, but it’s in there, dammit!  It’s clean and fresh and I feel accomplished!  Surprisingly, my bum shoulder doesn’t even hurt that much anymore.

Metaphysically speaking, there’s an understanding that back pain, shoulder pain, etc. can often be related to “Carrying a weight on one’s back (or shoulders)”.  Sometimes, just recognizing that is enough to ease the pain.  Sometimes, recognition also requires a heating pad and/or aspirin.

As I was crawling, twisting, maneuvering into position at the back of the cabinet and laughing at myself for thinking this was a good idea, I flashed to my mother helping my aunt scrape old wall paper off of walls in an apartment building my aunt owned.  This was a rough time for my mother and, as they worked, they talked about the frustrations and the more they talked, the harder they worked, the more they scraped, and, eventually, the more they laughed and felt better.

Then I realized this is something of a pattern in my family.  When things go wrong, things get done!  When I was unemployed and waiting for a solution to my husband’s health problems, I did a lot of painting.  When I look at the somewhat bizarre color on my kitchen walls (seemed like a great idea at the time!), I’m reminded of how far we’ve come.

My brothers build stuff.  Or tear stuff down.  My mother pulls weeds and grabs a shovel.  I paint or clean or craft something weird.  It’s what we do and I guess it’s cheaper than therapy.  So that stupid cabinet has been begging for new shelf liner for years.  Why today?  I don’t know, other than the very clear understanding that there are things that either need to change or that are changing that are out of my control. 

We were met with a family health crisis over the last few weeks and there was nothing anyone could do to fix it.  We’re now on the other side of the emergency but there’s still work to do.  This was something I could do.  A brother came to town last week and fixed a bunch of little things in my mom’s house.  Because that was something he could do.  That’s just how we handle stuff.  I’m not sure on which side of the family this trait originated, but I’d guess it was probably my mother’s.  We’re worker bees and I’ve seen evidence of this behavior in my aunts and uncles as well.

I have some other minor frustrations to work out so I might mop the floor later.  If you see me dusting or raking leaves, that’s when you’ll know that something is really not right in my world for the moment but it will pass.  If you see me pulling out power tools, you probably want to keep your distance.