I didn't feel like writing much today, but I always feel like editing. Editing is where the real writing takes place. The first words are always a mishmash of loosely connected misspelled and out of syntax blathering. Pulling prose written like poetry with intelligence and verve out of that mishmash is where the fun lies. Someday I'm going to do that.
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So I'm sitting at my desk at work and I notice my right elbow seems a little tender. Every time I put my elbows on the desk top, I get a sharp shooting pain. I look at it and right on the point of my elbow is a little red pointed sore -- like a pimple, but small and no whiteness showing. Funny.
Later I notice my whole elbow is red, the "pimple," gone. That night at home, I see that my elbow is now swelled and very tender. Next morning I go to work and people comment on the size of my arm, all of which is swollen. I go to the doctor's, they say to take some time off, rest -- come back if it gets worse. I go home.
Next morning I wake up, and am talking to my wife. I feel fine -- got a day off work, feel good, got sympathy for my "injury," all in all, a good day. The only thing wrong is my swollen arm, but it doesn't hurt, so feel pretty good about the whole thing. Then out of the blue, I feel very nauseous. I run to the bathroom, vomit and let loose some liquid excrement. I don't feel good no more.
I think what happened there was that the poison in my arm let loose into the blood stream all at once.
I take it easy all day, the next morning I go to work.
I still don't know what happened to me, but I remember that the day before I got the "pimple," I was under the house, pants tied at the ankles, long sleeved shirt on, putting up insulation. I was dressed this way because under the house were a lot of black widow spiders. A lot! I wasn't too afraid of them because it was my experience that if you disturbed the web, they would hide in a hole. All I had to do was be sure I saw then in order to avoid them. I didn't know at that time that they not only lived in cracks, but in holes in the ground and I think this is where I got my "injury."
The part I don't understand is why it took so long - 24, maybe 48 hours from bite to appearance of injury. Of course I could have been bitten the same day I got the injury, in the office. Maybe I was carrying one on my person although that doesn't seem likely. There being a black widow spider in the office doesn't seem likely either, though.
Maybe not even a spider bite. Who knows? Just anther mystery to take to my grave.
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I used to walk a lot. It was my favorite thing to do. I loved it. One day I'm walking through the Safeway parking lot and a car pulls up and stops and waits for me to pass in front of it. I hate that. I figure I'm on foot, not using any gas or brake lining or rubber, so I should wait for cars to go in front of me. Besides that, I used to walk really fast and I hated any impediments in my path. So what I did, and usually do, is to make a sharp right turn so that I am parallel to the auto and we both can go the same way until it passes me and I can make a sharp left turn and we both keep moving with no interruption. When I did this, I hear a woman's voice yelling at me from the car, "Dirty artistic bastard!"
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