DIY DETOX DAY 29: Things I Learned While Suffering the Cold Quit

As of Day 29 here, I'm almost, almost normal.  Well considering this is me, "normal."  I can stand having the curtain open during the day, I can speak without my head exploding, and I don't get the shocks every time I move.  Just sometimes.  And the shocks are only in my hands and face now.  I can walk without feeling like I'm about to fall over.  This morning I woke up at 6 am and haven't gone back to sleep.  I'd like to.  Boy would I ever like to have a sleep.  But I'm awake.  It's kind of good to be awake.  Yesterday I went out to the barn TWICE and today I took the dog for a walk about a quarter of the way around the yard.  (It's about an acre of yard.)  Hey I even cleaned the toilet today.  Progress.

I'd like to forget how horrible days 11 to 13 were.  I'd like to never ever think about the physical agony and mental torture.  I don't want to know how awful I was to live with for awhile there.

I just want to get my strength back, get my horses back in shape too, and man, I seriously have a whole novel to write, I'm not kidding.

I don't think I ever will forget how awful it was.  I had my doctor's supervision, I prepared myself, I knew it would be bad.  But, and this is the whole reason why I did it this way, I won't be weaning off for six months of mid-grade misery.  I will have a summer.

So... while I was spending a week or a month or however the hell long it was up here in my dark quiet bedroom, I had to occupy my brain.  I couldn't read or listen to music or even look at a TV or computer screen.  It was just me and the pain and my brain.  Wow.  What a combination.

I have a few things I'd like to share.

1) SASQUATCH IS REAL!

 It's true, I saw him in a dream I was having.  I was walking down a dirt road through the bush, not anywhere familiar, just a regular dirt road with trees on each side.  I looked down at the hoofprints on the side of the road and wished I was riding instead of walking.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a big brown furry thing heading into the trees, so I did what anybody would do. I followed!  I had my iGadget out and I was ready to take a picture as proof because that's also what anybody would do.  As I was fumbling with it I looked up and I was face-to-face with Bigfoot!  And no, it wasn't my husband.  He was doing the deer-in-the-headlights look and I said, "Dude, I need a picture of you," and he said, "I don't wanna have my picture taken!" and I was all "But nobody believes you're real" and he was all, "I don't wanna be real!  You're not real either!  Or something!"  Frustrated, I told him he would just have to go on being imaginary, after which I drove somebody else's giant pickup truck into a snowbank, parked it at a house which my sister-in-law does not live in real life, then got lost, and stopped at a garage where they were doing free hoof trims while you wait.  So yes, Sasquatch is real.  You heard it here.

2) WRITING SONGS IN YOUR DREAMS IS REALLY UNPRODUCTIVE

Man, I had these words that just broke my heart and mended it back together.  They fit together beautifully.  I even had a melody to go with it and that's something I've never been able to do.  That's why I am not a songwriter.  I was going over those words, singing them to myself to try to remember them, and thinking, "I am not going to remember how this went when I wake up, and that's a damn shame cuz when I'm awake I'll be thinking about how I'll never know if these songs are actually really good."

3) IF YOU LIE ON YOUR SIDE FOR A LONG TIME YOUR EAR GOES NUMB

Unpleasant.  Especially when the other side has already been numbed.

4) WHEN THE DRUG LEAVES YOUR BODY IT TAKES A WHOLE LOT OF EMOTIONAL CRAP WITH IT.

It's like the mood-stabilizer did the stabilizing it needed to, by suppressing a few things, and when the drug goes, it all comes flooding out.  It's good for the rest of the family to go see a movie when this is happening.

5) BOB DYLAN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY IS AWESOME.

I was reading it when I started off on this little vision quest.  I finished up about Day 8 or 9 or thirty-seven or whatever.  Just as it was getting too painful to read.  Bob.  Bob loves music.  Bob thinks too much.  Bob speaks in poetry. Bob's memory for detail is stunning, microscopic, and vivid.

6) BOB DYLAN IS THE REASON I DISCOVERED... wait for it...

FINNISH TROLL METAL!!!!

Flow chart of discovery:

Reading CHRONICLES: VOLUME ONE

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Look up a few details on Wikipedia, on account of Bob having extraordinary details for some things but not so clear about other things, like chronology, which was fine but I was curious.

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Follow link to learn about Woody Guthrie, Bob's hero.  (Who, by the way, was stricken with Huntington's Disease, a horrible incurable evil horrible condition.  His second wife started what is now the Huntington Society, to help families and victims.)

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Woody Guthrie is like, the godfather of folk music.  

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What exactly is "folk music?"

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Well there are all kinds of folk music.  There's even, gasp! a sub-genre called folk metal!

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You think I see a link for FOLK METAL and I'm not gonna follow it?  

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(and yeah, this took all day, accounting for eyeball rest breaks)

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Wow!  Wow wow wow!  A link for TROLL METAL!

Well this is just too good to be true. Turns out there's this band called... ohmygosh this is brilliant... FINNTROLL, and it turns out this is a THING, and it's been going on without me knowing anything about it, which isn't shocking since I pretty much live under a rock, but still!  

So they're Finnish, but the lyrics are in Swedish, because the vocalist was from the minority of Swedish people in Finland?  In my slightly altered state this was just the best, funniest, heaviest, headbangin'est, craziest most rockin' and rollicking thing EVER.

Not only is this possibly my new favourite song, but it also proves that there are, in fact, a few less-than angelically gorgeous people in Scandinavia.  

Now I've got to share this around, because just as I was going into the worst part of the Cold Quit, this cheered me up like you wouldn't believe.  Sometimes I'd lie there with my jaw clenched and think, TROLLHAMMEREN!  Actually the one night when I was trying to explain this to Jethro and the kids I started laughing so maniacally I was in tears, like sob-laughing, and it sent sharp shooting pains all through my upper body but I couldn't quit.  They were borderline alarmed.  But come on.  Seriously.  They're Finnish, but the words are in Swedish, so now any future vocalist has to learn to growl in Swedish, and I still can't understand a friggin word of it!  It's BRILLIANT!  It is seriously brilliant!

Warning: if you are offended or grossed out in any way by dirt, cellars, rowdy consuming of fermented beverages, dreadlocks, windmill-headbanging, scowling, growling, or large angry looking hairy dudes dressed like Friar Tuck, do not watch this video.  But DO LISTEN because this is awesome.  

And that's how Bob Dylan made the whole experience just slightly bearable.  Thanks, Bob.

Last but not least...

8) BAD TIMES LIKE THIS CAN LEAVE A PERSON OPEN TO SOME TRULY WONDERFUL BRAIN EXPANSION.

...because what else was I going to do?  

I'm going to go do some more recovering now.  Catch ya.