I have candles burning around me as my husband suggested. They smell nice but don’t give the same comfort holding a cigarette in my hand does. The candles are sitting in a bed of salt, surrounded with sage and rose blossoms to help clear all the negativity surrounding us. If only there was enough sage to smudge the world so all the negativity vanishes.  It’s easier to take Charles Bukowski’s advice …“Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes.”

Our town issued a curfew last night and again tonight because of the violence they say is escalating in our area. I’m not convinced it was necessary, because people are always blaming Trenton for everything. Old prejudices linger from the sixties and seventies after the riots. Crime and violence have haunted Trenton even though they have worked really hard to clean their city back up.  Princeton and Lawrenceville have no right to point fingers, because the crime rate has increased in their communities too! Shame on those finger pointers… judge not for you may be judged as well.

I had this overwhelming urge to go for a walk more than anything. In truth, I felt imprisoned by the fact a curfew existed. No different than when I was a rebellious teenager, I was always pushing buttons and resisting. Patience isn’t one of my virtues, as everyone who is close to me knows.

I read until I was exhausted again. I woke several times during the night but fortunately did fall back asleep. In fact, the telephone woke me confirming my blood work and to ask me the corona virus questions. Have you had a fever? Have you had a runny nose? Have you been exposed to someone with either symptoms? Has anyone you’ve been in contact with tested positive for the Covid-19?  I dislike that this spiel is our new norm.

My persistent shoulder pain is still an issue after eating or drinking. It calms down after I have my morning coffee but returns as soon as I have something to eat at lunchtime and subsides just before dinner then returns when I eat and drink. It only lasts for a couple hours thankfully at a time, but unfortunately during that time it is very painful. Nothing seems to ease it… Tylenol, Aleve, Diclofenac, even applying heat directly doesn’t ease the pain until the food has processed in the pancreas. I have discomfort in the pancreas as well but it is tolerable unlike the shoulder which brings tears to my eyes.  GRRRR….

Tonight is our writing accountability. I’m still toying with writing about my gram and Mrs. Albright in my head. I’ll be the narrator in the story, seeing both of them. Although, at night my story with Thanatos spins in my head daring me to ask for that one wish.  Us writers know.. “Writing is the dragon that lives underneath my floorboards. The one I incessantly feed for fear it may turn and devour my ass. Writing is the friend who doesn’t return my phone calls; the itch I’m unable to scratch; a dinner invitation from a cannibal; elevator music for a narcoleptic. Writing is the hope of lifting all boats by pissing in the ocean. Writing isn’t something that makes me happy like a good cup of coffee. It’s just something I do because not writing, as I’ve found, is so much worse.”
― Quentin R. Bufogle

I considered Imagine by John Lennon again for today but instead went with Phil Collins’  Another Day in Paradise because my sarcasm is on the rise as well as my patience. I know one more day and we begin the tests to get the ball rolling. I know some of you are hanging on to the thread that the doctor is wrong and the tests will confirm something else. I hope you’re right but for me I need the damn proof, yesterday.

I’m not pretending I can’t hear you. Truly I’m not. I’ve walked this road before. Every time I’ve gotten my hopes up that the tests would prove the initial report wrong they haven’t! After a while, it’s easier not to hope.  I realized this morning, it’s been six months since the first onslaught of pain began. June 8th it will be six months since they removed my gallbladder and promised I wouldn’t hurt anymore. Problem solved. If only it had been that easy. Paradise and me do seem to have a hard time hooking up.