ANYONE KNOW? AND MARIJUANA

          I have no idea what this plant could be. I first saw it growing and blooming in front of the Starbucks store where Phinney curves to become Greenwood. It was much bigger than the one I now have. And, I don’t know if it wasn’t taken care of, if it was yanked out after blooming as a weed, or what, but it was never there again and that was years and years ago.

          This plant has leaves that look a bit like wide grass or gladiolus leaves. The one I found was being sold by a vendor at maybe the Lavender Festival and was blooming then…that’s how I realized what it was. Back home, I planted it, but it never did very well and never bloomed. A couple of times I seriously considered yanking it up, but just left it alone. This year, my patience was rewarded with three stalks of these blooms. I’m going to wait a bit and then see if I can start more from the seeds on the stalks.

          The last couple of days have been painful. I cannot think of anything I did that would have resulted in my joints being sore/painful, but they certainly have been. I know yesterday, my left shoulder didn’t like stretching up to pick the topmost peas, but it was sore before that. Stretching up and picking just made it sorer.

          I took an Aleve yesterday morning and again last night. Didn’t do much to really help. I took another one this morning and did my PT which did seem to help, but my joints, from my toes to my cervical vertebrae are still sore. I do have some stronger drugs, but really don’t want to go down that path.

          There were some boxes of stuff for the garage sale that son Thor dropped off and I did move them around to make the garage less messy. Some of them were heavy, but why would that make my hips hurt. I haven’t taken a walk for going on two weeks now…could that make me sore all over??? I wouldn’t think so, but perhaps my body is trying to tell me something.

          The only other thing I’ve done that isn’t usual for me is to eat a marijuana candy. I’ve had them forever and just decided Friday night that I’d be wild and crazy and get high. Of course, the fact I took it not long before bed didn’t really give me much of an opportunity to be wild or crazy. It was the following morning when I woke up all sore and uncomfortable. Could that mean I was wild and crazy in my sleep? I certainly don’t recall waking up and doing anything that could have left me so uncomfortable. And, I don’t think those things go bad…do they???

          I’m certainly glad marijuana didn’t make me sore back in the day if that's what did make me sore. I didn’t drink at all then because drinking and smoking always made me sick…the throwing up kind of sick. I did like getting high though and have many many pleasant memories of life and what I did during those times. I certainly wouldn’t go back and change anything.

          Well, maybe I’d change the first time. John began experimenting either before or shortly after AJ was born. When AJ was several months old, John introduced me to smoking a joint. First, it really hurt my throat and I couldn’t keep from coughing. Second, I ended up in the bathroom retching into the toilet. At that point I didn’t think I’d be liking to do this ever again.

          My next memory of getting high has to do with smoking it all by myself. John was who knows where, AJ was in bed asleep and I got high. I never hear Santana’s “Oye Como Va” without the memory of laying on top of the kitchen counter and floating down the musical note river of that song jumping to the forefront of my mind. It was actually a Santana album, so there were other songs that kept me floating on that river. I’d always liked music, but never had it affect me the way it did once I began getting high.

          When John and I were separated, I became good friends with a woman who was going to the UW. For a six-month period, I got high on the way to work, went out at noon with her to get high and then again at the end of the day after AJ was tucked into bed. I still managed to do my job, take care of my son, pay my bills, keep house; basically, live a normal life that was full of light, laughter, fun, and kept the harder parts of my life safely cushioned. It was a good time.

          By the time John and I resumed our lives together, he was dealing in marijuana. Somehow, he managed to never get caught dealing to the wrong person. We had lots of company in those days who were, mainly, I think, his customers, but they were always funny, interesting, polite and easy to have around. Also they were mostly male as opposed to female.

          One day John brought AJ to the UW to have lunch with me in the cafeteria. I had some celery sticks in a baggie. AJ says a bit more loudly than we would have liked, “Look dad, dope.” John and I looked at each other. I hastened to show AJ it was celery, and from that point on, John was quite a bit more circumspect with regard to his “dope.”

          Our flirtation with marijuana kinda wound down. I know I gave it up before I became pregnant with Thor. And, after, it was just easier to remain straight, especially since the majority of our dope friends had migrated out of our lives. I find myself wondering at times what happened to some of them. We still got high now and then, depending on what was happening in our lives, but it wasn’t often. Then, John became addicted to Percocet for his pain and he gave up marijuana altogether. He had to have a drug test once a year and any indication of any other drug aside from Percocet would result in his prescription not being refilled.

          The funniest thing about this story is that when I began to clean out all John’s filing cabinets, I found a whole bunch of dope. A baggie here, a baggie there, small glassine envelopes with buds. I put them all into a box and once it appeared I’d found all there was to be found, I went through it. Most of it is probably dirt weed, loose and kinda gray looking. I poured those baggies into a half-pint jar. The ones that were more like buds and had a name on the baggie, I put aside figuring that at some point, I’d try smoking them.

          My granddaughter found all this hilarious. This is the granddaughter that bought herself a pack of smokes just because she turned 18 and could…they’re still unopened. She thought I should make her a batch of brownies. I would have been happy to except her mother…and maybe her father…would have killed me. It may now be legal, but they don’t like it.

          Anyway, it’s no longer here and has been distributed to folks I know are still getting high. If that marijuana candy is what’s responsible for how I’m feeling, perhaps I should have sent that off as well.