Laying Low

My armpits hurt from the crutches. So do the pads of my hands. My foot throbs all day and all night. I can scarcely do anything at all except lie on the couch. For weeks I had been busy with the kids' school starting, birthdays, errands, appointments, and so on but now I can do nothing. Most people who know me said I'd have a hard time sitting still after surgery--I always need to be doing something, and I even take sitting out under the stars at night seriously. But here I sit and it isn't all that bad aside from the pain. Yes, the kids have terrorized the house and Phoenix cried frequently yesterday for me to carry her and the dog is always needing something... Yet I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, which is taking it easy. I actually watched a movie yesterday (Searching For Sugarman--a superb documentary about a musician who should have been more famous than Bob Dylan, and he was in South Africa, but here in the states he fell into obscurity and wound up doing hard labor). As I'm lying here being waited on the frenzied movements of others is magnified. Is that what I look like when I'm devouring my days? I always strive for balance, but until you sit back and see the other side you don't really recognize what kind of balance is needed to offset our busy days. That's what I'll take from this (aside from pain free steps)--maybe sometimes we get in the way of things with all of our frenzy of keeping up with it, maybe we don't have to do everything for the days to work themselves out, maybe we should give up control now and again so we can sit back and see what we have been missing and what we look like in the bigger picture. So my wish for everyone is a few days of a whole lot of nothing but lying around. The world will not end. Things will work themselves out.