Challenges from the floor

I hurt my back in April and have spent June, July and some of August working from my living room floor. Talk about a change of perspective… I have learned a lot. I spent the first couple of weeks looking at the floor. I "watched" a lot of TV…well, the TV was on, and I stared through it. I still couldn’t tell you what was on it. Then I started noticing things.

I discovered I definitely need to vacuum more. And the rug, it turns out, was rough enough to rub the skin off my elbows during the lucid periods when I would prop myself up to do phone interviews and type my stories. When I flipped over, I saw all the cobwebs getting a foothold above me. I felt eyes watching me all the time. Five turtles and a rabbit who live in their various cages and tanks around the room were all very curious about my predicament.

I worried constantly about my lack of activity compounding an already frustrating weight problem, which is where things get a little weird. The pounds literally melted away to the tune of about five pounds a week for the first six weeks, and they have graciously stayed away. One friend said the pain pills killed my appetite. Another said the pain itself killed my appetite. A third individual suggested physical therapy could be a contributing cause. I think it was because it is tough to eat and let your stomach expand while you’re lying on your face. Feel free not to take my word for that one. I’ve also found some other contributory causes.

We have two cats; one eats cat food, the other eats cat food, human food, inhuman food and swamp-dwelling creatures, and I now have some idea what it is like to have someone place a dish of food before you on the floor and have to fight for your chance to eat it. You eat with one hand while frantically waving the other like a lunatic. It’s like swatting flies, only on a much bigger scale, and the flies have sharp claws and teeth. You burn off way more calories than you are trying to consume, and when your shoulder looks like it belongs on Refrigerator Perry, you decide no meal is worth it.

Exercise number two is spider-sthenics. All the rain led to more close encounters of the arachnid kind than I care to elucidate. I am a confirmed and devout arachnophobic. Of the first order. I almost went into seizures one night when a daddy long legs, whom I usually let live, repeatedly attacked no matter how many times I flicked him across the room. Pretty soon, I was flailing around on the floor, waving everything that still worked, as the relentless marble with legs kept chasing me.

In any event, when spiders show up, I leave the area, and for a while, this was a real challenge; however, if there ever is a "stop, drop and roll" competition, I’ll clean up. I learned to roll and crawl quite adeptly and even considered rolling everywhere when progress in recuperation was going particularly slow. I couldn’t quite figure out how to navigate the doorways, though.

The final activity was cran-robics. My work space consisted of a reversible black-and-white comforter, folded white side out for this exercise, surrounded by my sundry tools of the trade: laptops, notes, reference books and the like. One evening, as I finished up my articles for the week, I managed to arrange for my elbow to connect with my quart-sized glass full of bright red cranberry juice.

In one fell swoop, I grabbed the laptop and held it straight up over my head and with the other hand snatched up the corner of the formerly white comforter to prevent spillage onto the rug. As cranberry juice saturated my notes, my shorts and my t-shirt, youngest daughter appeared in the living room.

"Quick! Get me a towel!"

She handed me a washcloth for what turned out to be a three-woman cleanup job. And to add insult to injury, I was out of cranberry juice. A couple of weeks later, a brand-new plastic half-gallon of pink grapefruit juice slid through my fingers. The bottle landed on its brittle plastic cap, which promptly shattered, and proceeded to bounce all over the kitchen as I stood watching in horror, able only to clean the areas from my waist up.

The spill incidents have had their benefits, though. Since then, when the girls are getting snippy with each other and I am tired of hearing it, I just say, "Hey, wanna see this trick I can do with my juice?"

And the room clears out.

Reprinted courtesy Eagle Newspapers, Syracuse, New York.