queue the pin?

I woke up this morning around 7am from a pretty bizarre, gory dream -involving vampires and ridiculously high interest rate loans- to complete quiet.  It took me a minute to realize why it was so quiet.  "The power is out" my husband whispered to me- which explained why the four-(yes-FOUR)  fans in our bedroom were not making a sound.  "There aren't even any birds singing" I whispered back. Even the lone cricket I heard didn't sound super enthusiastic about breaking the unaccustomed quiet.  There weren't even any cars driving on the main street thru our town, 2 streets away.  It was very surreal.  

We live in a 115 year old victorian house without central A/C.  The main part of the house is plaster, and the windows are Andersen replacements, so as long as we shut the house up early and close all the draperies, then we can usually keep the house cool with a few window A/C units, the ceiling fans and some strategically placed box fans. 

This past July in Michigan was one of the hottest on record (that's my unofficial determination, cuz I'm not feeling ambitious about looking up the actual statistics) so we kept the house shut up even after the sun went down, which is not my preference.  This week, it's been hot during the day, but cool enough to open the house up after sundown, which means, all the ceiling fans go on, the a/c units get turned to fan setting, the box fans go in the window...and as if that isn't enough white noise, we also put the air filter on in our room, because we like the background noise of that.   Bottom line- we do a lot of yelling in our house in the summer, because there is so much ambient noise, none of us can hear anyone else, even in the next room. (Though, sometimes I think I can hear Beatles songs, but I think that is a story for another day).

Waking up to absolute stillness was an intriguing sensory experience. I could hear the neighbor clearing his throat on his porch across the parking lot.  The squeaky bicycle someone was riding up the street.  In the distance, the hum of the big mill that apparently didn't lose it's power.  I laid in bed with my husband and listened to the unusual sound of a quiet summer morning and waited.

Waited because we live on a river, and it generates the town's power supply (thanks to the mill), so we are rarely without power.  The few power outages that we get are typically brief and not usually caused by local weather conditions.  So, I knew that the quiet I was experiencing was short-lived.

The second thing that happened to me this morning after I woke up is that I tried to move.  This is generally a bad idea recently because of the cursed tissue expander in my chest, and specifically because I spent the day weeding my neglected garden yesterday (remember-hottest July and all?) and think I probably over did it. 

It hurts to lay down, it hurts to sit up, it hurts to roll over, it just hurts.  It hurt for me to sit up so that I could take a percoset that I've been keeping by the side of my bed now, because I know I will wake up in pain.

I keep thinking that this must subside at some point, and I suppose, at some point it will, but the waiting is painful, literally and mentally.  I am doubting my decision to do this to myself, my vanity - to get perky new boobies! versus just having the breast removed.  I was aware that reconstruction can come later, but I was also aware that delaying that option still involved pain, potentially more than what I am experiencing now, plus another surgery and hospital stay.  For all intents and purposes, I chose the least painful reconstruction option.  I can't imagine having done this to both sides (which was an option open to me). 

I saw my plastic surgeon last week and asked him when it would stop feeling like I had a 6 slot toaster in my chest.  He smiled and said....well...it will pretty much feel like that until you take it out!  This is not the answer I was expecting or hoping for.  I wanted at least some indication that it might start to feel like a 2 slot toaster at some point in the future and I could stop living from percoset dose to percoset dose.  It doesn't sound like that's going to happen, for awhile yet, so I guess the only thing I can do is wait.

I'm glad I had a little bit of waiting this morning to enjoy the real sounds of a summer morning while my percoset kicked in....trying to pick out every distinct sound as it happened.  What bird is that singing? Which neighbor is that coughing? which car is that leaving for church? 

Then, as I expected it would - about 45 minutes after I woke, there was a click, and all the fans hummed on, a cool breeze washed over me and I realized that it was time for me to get up and start my new day.