Big Lue's No Good Very Bad 10 Days

The bad luck festival started with a Nicolas Cage movie. It was a Sunday night. We didn't know anything about the film but wanted to get out of the house, so we raced across our little island and came screeching into the theater parking lot just about five minutes late. Subsequently, we had to sit in the front row. Not only do I find the front row uncomfortably close, I hate that you can't take in the whole picture - you have to scan your eyes from one end to the other to see what it is you're supposed to be looking at. 

About thirty minutes in, I began to feel queasy. I thought back on my lunch that day and admitted to myself that all of it was iffy, probably mere moments from being past due, but I ate it anyways because Mom and Dad taught me not to throw away food. Deciding that my lunch was the cause for my discomfort, I forged on, watching Nicolas Cage sweating beneath a hot Australian sun. About an hour in, I realized I was sea sick. 
It's not entirely uncommon for me to get motion sickness in movie theaters. The screen is so big and the lights are so bright. Things are swirling and flashing... it's a recipe for vomit. I recall a submarine movie I saw in high school that really set me off (K-19, Harrison Ford) and most recently, one about airplanes left me queasy for a few hours (Top Gun; Maverick, Tom Cruise). And now I add Nick Cage to the list. Despite being the toughest person you know, even a rouge woosh in a hammock can send my stomach into pirouettes. Being in-transit of any kind makes me a little queasy. Even swimming in a strong current can send me out in search of a ginger tea. I've always been this way really, though it does seem to get a little worse every year. So knowing myself as I do, I watched the rest of the film with my hand acting as a visor, only glancing at the screen occasionally. For the record, and in my defense, we go on to find out that the movie was meant to be a fever dream of sorts - made to disorient and discomfort you - we looked this up on account of what happens next. 

We left the theater, went to dinner and carried on with our normal routine and went to bed feeling fine. The next morning, I opened my eyes, smiled at my beloved partner and sat up to start the day. That's when I felt all the liquid in my brain moving in circles like someone had flushed the toilet up there. Instantly dizzy, queasy, nauseous and panicked. "I have vertigo!" I shrieked to Brett. I'll fast forward and tell you that it was awful, certainly not a way a human could live out their days. Dad had vertigo once and declared the intention of suicide if it didn't go away. I have since told this to my friend, Jenn, who said the exact same thing. "I thought I was going to have to kill myself." So I'm not just being dramatic. I sat very still in bed all day, alarmed, and unhappy. What I've written up there has simplified it. It was a truly horrendous experience that I now live in fear of experiencing again. So, there's that.

I told Mom about the movie and my symptoms and shortly after we hung up, she called back and informed that I had a vestibular migraine - brought on by visual stimuli. Diagnosis made me feel better. Shortly after that, she sent me a Yahoo News article entitled "Is Nicholas Cage's New Movie Making You Sick?" It made other people feel bad too, ok? 

The dizziness retreated slowly over many days but, being the toughest person you know, I got back to work on the renovations the next day. A few days later, I banged my knee so hard that it burst open on the spot. I was home alone, and on account of the dizziness, I hadn't eaten much in days. I'm not sure if it was the deep panting one does when experiencing big pain, or the generalized weakness of my body at that moment in time, but I started to black out. Oddly, this struck me as quite funny in the moment and I heard myself chuckle out loud. I once read that if you laugh while in pain, it won't hurt so bad. I noted then, that it is simply not true. I staggered over to the couch with dark spots crowding my vision. I laid on the floor and put my feet up on the sofa and then imagined Brett coming home to find me unconscious in this position with blood oozing from my knee. That also made me laugh. I can't say why I felt so calm teetering on the edge of unconsciousness. Perhaps the lack of blood flow? Anywho, I laid there a good while but never passed out and then just got up and carried on with my day, except that I couldn't bend the one leg. No worries, I'll just limp around.

A couple days later, I electrocuted myself at the job site. A surprisingly bumpy experience. Not smooth and electric like you might think.

A couple days later, Brett took me to a concert so loud and aggressive that I had a panic attack. Brett suggested this might happen, but I scoffed at him. "I'm really quite tough," I remember telling him. Sure, screamo punk isn't my preferred genre, but I didn't want him to miss it just because no one else we knew could go. A concert is a concert, right?.... turns out, no. 
The thing about panic attacks, is that you don't just have one and then go back to your routine. There's a sort of "come down" that takes a few days - like any wound or pimple that you just have to wait to let heal. This means I was unable to eat for a few more days, which most certainly added to the dizziness I still had. 

Still hobbling around with the one knee that won't bend, a few days later I ran into a bench, right at knee level, which caused me to hyperextend the injured knee, during which time I heard a loud and distinct pop come from the area, and know I can't straighten that leg.
And to top it off, on day ten, I put in some earrings that assured me that were nickel free, but they must have lied and now I have disinfectant for my achey earlobes.

Do I think this is funny? Sure. 
In the debut moment of each of these experiences however it's a sort of frustration marinated in fear. Many times over the last ten days I have thought about people who live with these kinds of limiting ailments; perpetual dizziness, headache, hunger, or mobility woes. Ugh. What is this life? For the first time ever, we were watching an action movie, and when the main characters jumped from a balcony to the street below, I felt the impact in my own knees, right there in my living room! I commented on it, just like my parents do. "Oh that would kill my knees!" Brett, with his double ACL surgeries agreed. 

I am so accustomed to not feeling badly and being able to move in any way that suits me, that the sudden realization of what aging is going to do to me, has me entirely spooked. It's going to be awful!

And I have never been burdened by the thought of aging before. I've actually looked forward to it, but I realize now that my mental picture of aging was incomplete. It was only the visual stuff. I love gray hair and think people are their most beautiful in their 40s and 50s. Before that, they just look like they aren't done cooking yet. But I left out the physical parts of aging. I couldn't dream up the aches and pains because I hadn't felt them before. Somewhere in all this, my good knee took on sympathy pains for my bad knee and then they were both hurting me, just getting up for a glass of water. My ankles took the brunt of my walking strangely and suddenly, they felt like they were made of glass. What's happening? This isn't my body? What do you mean I can't change it?

It has reinstated some enthusiasm for going to the gym, and I know that will help heaps, but there is a part of me that knows I'm kidding myself. There is nothing I can do that will keep my body moving the way it does now. That is terrifying. How is no one freaking out about this?

As it stands today, I'm only dizzy for the first few minutes of waking up. I have a gash on one knee but I can straighten and bend the leg if I do it gently. The migraine is at 5% of what it was and the sense of panic has finally retreated, resulting in reaching 90% of my usual meal consumption quota. 

My earlobes hurt the most.

The Flip

As it is my morning routine to fix a hot cup of something indulgent and then sit at the computer and look at houses for sale, I stumbled upon a little foreclosed apartment right around the corner from our house. I took in the sights of this little place; the surprisingly low asking price, the cute little patio, the way you could really open up the place if you knocked out that one wall.

I showed it to Brett. "We could flip this. It just needs paint and an updated kitchen." I kept the demolition bit to myself for the moment. Brett's eyes glittered with intrigue. 

I called Dad. "Hey Dad, there's this place around the corner..." While Brett and I were still working through the very adulty idea of an unnecessary real estate purchase for the sake of making a profit, Dad called back. "I've set up a showing at 11:00. Meet you there."

Well, I guess we'll just go look at it. 

Brett's and Dad's excitement built as they wandered through. "You're right. Just a little work would have this place looking great!" That's when I mentioned my solution for the awful kitchen. "So I was thinking, if we took out this wall, we could make this whole side into an island."

As is common with both of these precious men, the initial knee-jerk reaction is that of denial, or often in Dad's case, the exclamation of "it can't be done!" But mere seconds later, they began working out the logistics, and piling their ideas on top of each others. "I think y'all should put in an offer," Dad said, "I think it's a good investment." Brett and I looked at each other. "Want me to draw up the papers?" Dad asked, as though it's a simple as buying groceries.

After talk of contracts, finances, interest rates, and a remodel cost analysis, our low-ball offer was accepted. Something like four days later, we were the proud new owners of yet another fixer-upper. 

Now, I grew up on the fringes of the Chris Union School of Renovations. He had a roller my hands at six years old, repainting a townhouse over on Crosscreek Drive. I have absorbed a surprisingly large amount of knowledge simply from listening to him bark at contractors on the other end of the phone. I know that you need to move quickly. Every day you spend working on it adds up to another month of interest payments. Dad likes to stack the contractors on top of each other, but in this case, Brett and I were mostly going to do it ourselves. I know that you will have annoying surprises along the way and that "you have to spend money to make money, baby!" 

Now, I've also been living with Brett 'the sloth' Eisenhauer. As the one with superior knowledge on this undertaking, I barked at him on day two that we weren't going to be treating this like the projects at our house. "We've got to move fast. We can't go piddle around for an hour or two each day and then come home to read. We have to treat this like a job..." and blah blah nag nag to which Brett responded graciously, and then I woke up sick the next morning and was in bed for ten days while Brett did all the work. "What was that about wasting time," he'd ask me at the end of his highly productive days.

Dad came in initially to help do some electrical work and to let us run our plans by him to make sure we weren't way off. After helping knock down the kitchen wall (men can't resist demolition), Popples politely left his little birds to renovate the nest. Off we went. Quite quickly I realized that my superior knowledge on the logistics and paperwork of this undertaking was much less important than Brett's superior knowledge on how structures, appliances, and plumbing works. Turns out he doesn't really need help from anyone with less upper body strength than he has. 

I'm the brains, but he's the brainy brawn.

So I started painting. I went into it real cocky too - on account of wielding a roller since the first grade. "I can paint this whole place in a week tops!" I declared with pride. I have since determined that there is likely a little pocket of hell where you paint an entire room white but come back the next day and can still see the purple wall through your new paint. Again and again, day after day, like that guy carrying water around in a holey jug. At least Sisyphus gets to be outside.
Painting took about four weeks but I became enraged about it somewhere around day three. "I can't do it anymore, Brett! It's like painting with milk!" 

That's when dutiful Mama stepped to help trim out the rooms. It helped as much mentally as it did literally. Also, we got to chit chat and yammer like we used to at my flower setups. 

Meanwhile Brett hit assorted snags, we took odd detours, we'd purchase things in the wrong size or finish., We found out too late the refrigerator we bought sticks out too far, but we should have tried putting it in sooner because you can't return it after 48 hours, so we had to buy a second refrigerator and find somewhere to store the first one. We've learned lots of little things about such undertakings and while I think it's an exhausting way to make a living, Brett is enlivened by it all. His problem solving brain gets to run wild and I've had a hard time getting him out of work-mode at the end of the day. "Are you thinking about PEX fittings?" I'll ask him while we eat dinner in silence. We've both been falling asleep pretty early.

As we wrapped up the project, it became a family affair again. Dad had to come troubleshoot a real plumbing conundrum and Mom clocked-in touching up doorways with the milk paint while I tiled the kitchen backsplash and Brett installed vanities, mirrors, fans, and light-fixtures. 

We kept everything white and bland (bleh!) so that it will appeal to the masses, and now we're getting the place ready to be listed and shown. What a ruckus. 

Brett wants me to find us another to flip.

For years now I have started my mornings peeking inside peoples' houses purely for thrill of it. What wild decor decisions did they make? The multi-million dollar homes for sale Downtown are usually garish and tacky, and I enjoy cackling at the pompousness of their owners. On the other end, I really love the small, old, dusty places. I redo them in my mind and make them bright, airy places with a new lease on life.  

There is something to having pulled the trigger on this little apartment flip. It suddenly all feels very possible and not that crazy, so now I find myself at my computer in the mornings, hot cup of something in one hand, scrolling through the listings with the other, while a mild sense of urgency and competition builds as I make my way to the end of the hot sheet.