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.
