It started as I was stepping out of the bathtub the other morning.\u00a0 I slipped, one leg in, the other out, into a sort of bare-butt split that landed me down hard on the tile floor.\u00a0 The only real injury I sustained was a badly stubbed middle toe.\u00a0 But within two hours, the bruise was a brilliant black and purple and it hurt to walk.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t put on a shoe.\u00a0 My toe swelled and pulsed, as if my heart was beating inside it.<\/p>\n
Wincing, I made it to my book group that evening, to a meeting the next morning.\u00a0 But by then a few other things were going wrong.\u00a0 A son called, in some trouble at school.\u00a0 A wild storm of gusty wind and heavy snow knocked the power out, not only at our house, but at 300,000 other rural New England homes.\u00a0 I drove around for a while on slippery roads, buying coffees I didn\u2019t really want, in search of Internet access at cafes with wi-fi so I could get some work done.\u00a0 No luck.<\/p>\n
That night, as it became clear that power wouldn\u2019t be restored any time soon, Steve and I returned to our cold, dark house, fumbled around for a flashlight, and gathered up a few things.\u00a0 The house plants were dry as bone. A week\u2019s worth of dirty laundry was piled in the bedroom.\u00a0 I thought of the bags of summer raspberries and blueberries thawing in the freezer, and wondered why we hadn\u2019t bought a generator after last year\u2019s ice storm.\u00a0 (But aren\u2019t generators a bit like umbrellas?\u00a0 Who buys one when it\u2019s not raining?) Camped out at a friend\u2019s house, I discovered that the \u201ccontact\u201d part of my website hadn\u2019t been functioning for a while, and that all e-mails addressed to me were apparently disappearing into some vast spam file in the sky.\u00a0 (If you\u2019ve written to me within the last three weeks and haven\u2019t heard back, that\u2019s why!)<\/p>\n
By the end of yesterday, crews had removed the fallen trees from our road and the electricity was back, though it turned out that our heating system had failed.\u00a0 Wearing long underwear, a hat, and my down parka, I fired up the gas stove, flushed the toilets,\u00a0 watered the poor plants, and began to unpack and set the house to rights.\u00a0 My neighbor Debbie stopped by, to fill her water jugs from our tap and see how we were making out.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo many things aren\u2019t working!\u201d I complained, feeling exhausted and annoyed and sorry for myself.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d she answered cheerfully.\u00a0 \u201cBut think how many things ARE working!\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, she had me.\u00a0 Beyond the window, huge snowflakes were drifting slowly down, softening the hard edges of the world.\u00a0 Inside, the water was running again and a flick of the switch brought light.\u00a0 All over town, people were still waiting for power and ours was restored.\u00a0 My toe had just about shrunk back to normal size.\u00a0 The food in the freezer was still frozen.\u00a0 And after a few phone calls and a $200 emergency visit from the heating contractor, I knew we would be warm again, too.<\/p>\n
I scooped up the pile of laundry from the floor — summer clothes, the contents of our California suitcases.\u00a0 And then I had to smile.\u00a0 Suddenly, instead of seeing a pile of dirty clothes, I saw a reminder of our week\u2019s worth of west-coast adventures and good times with friends old and new.\u00a0 I looked around at our house, cold still, but just fine, full of\u00a0 books and paintings and afghans and tables and chairs. . .the stuff of home.\u00a0 I could rummage around in the refrigerator and find enough food for dinner.\u00a0 The e-mails would wait. Yeah, I had to admit, a few things in my life aren\u2019t working.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t have to look far to see plenty that are.<\/p>\n
Today, the house is warm.\u00a0 My son Henry has somehow fixed my website and retrieved the missing e-mails (answers to come soon!).\u00a0 My toe has healed enough for me to put on sneakers and take a run. \u00a0A quick look on YouTube shows that my video of A Gfit of an Ordinary Day has been seen by nearly 800,000 people. And the book is selling slowly and steadily. After a good night\u2019s sleep in my own bed, I\u2019m feeling decidedly more cheerful.<\/p>\n
Debbie, an e. coli survivor who understands more about chronic pain than anyone I know, just completed twelve weeks of IV iron treatments and still spends quite a few hours a week curled up with a heating pad.\u00a0 She makes a daily practice of ignoring what\u2019s not working and focusing instead on what is.\u00a0 As always, I learn from her example.\u00a0 Someday, maybe, I\u2019ll get it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It started as I was stepping out of the bathtub the other morning.\u00a0 I slipped, one leg in, the other out, into a sort of bare-butt split that landed me down hard on the tile floor.\u00a0 The only real injury I sustained was a badly stubbed middle toe.\u00a0 But within two hours, the bruise was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,30,14],"tags":[57,198],"class_list":{"0":"post-187","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-acceptance","8":"category-gratitude","9":"category-soul-work","10":"tag-acceptance-2","11":"tag-gratitude-2","12":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/600x600.png?fit=600%2C600","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}