Zero Whelms on a Sunday

This morning I woke up early, around half past six.  I realized it was Sunday.  No plans.  No pressure.  No hurry.  Not even a small list in my head of things to do, things to buy, things to clean, things to think about, nothing at all.  I rolled over and thought about spending the entire day in bed.

My bladder had a different idea, and once I was up, I was up.  Soon I was dressed and ready to do nothing again, just vertically instead of horizontally.  The word ‘whelmed’ popped into my head, so I wandered over to my unabridged dictionary.  It is a hardbound book, 5.5 inches thick with 2006 pages not including a bunch of maps, charts, diagrams and tables that add another couple hundred pages to its heft.  It sits on its own custom-made wooden stand.  I take a minute to fondly remember the man who made it for me.  His name is David, and he was a master carpenter.  Alvinites might remember him as the fellow who restored and crafted all the delicate gingerbread trim on the museum’s Slover-Rogers Cottage several years ago. 

But I digress.  I’m on my way to discover if I can be just whelmed.  Not overwhelmed.  Not underwhelmed.  Turns out I can.  My friend Noah Webster tells me the word is medieval if not ancient.  It means being submerged, engulfed or capsized.  And yes, I’ve felt that way often the past six weeks or so.  I’ve seldom felt like my old self since I fell. 

Having satisfied my curiosity about the word, I wandered into the kitchen.  Took my pill and my blood pressure (121/70 thank you very much) and cut up a banana and an avocado.  Opened a can of ice-cold pineapple chunks and went to my office with no idea what I would do when I sat down.

And for the rest of the day, I did whatever thing emerged from the cosmos and floated into my brain.  I sewed for the first time since the move, just mending one of my shirts.  I organized another box of craft supplies.  I did a load of laundry and gathered up five wastepaper baskets worth of trash.  I read Lesson 22 in ACIM.  To feed my genealogy addiction, I posted several obits on Find-a-Grave for the local LDS library.  Worked on the history of an old building in Rosharon.  I did my online Microsoft Word Games and patted myself on the back for solving all the Daily Challenges.  Those Word Twisters are perplexing.  But I never, ever got overwhelmed.