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.