I’m working on adjusting my expectations but I have to be honest, it’s harder than I want it to be. Listen. I’ve never been the hare. Even at my best, I’ve never been what you would call naturally speedy or lithe. I’ve always been rather clumsy which in turn meant that I did things slower than the average bird. I also might have been described, by people who know me well, as a person who is either all on or all off. I am either 100% dedicated to my task or I want nothing to do with it at all – there was very little middle ground in my life. I believed in black and white. Gray was a shade in which I didn’t do so well.

Fast forward to the last 18 months after my diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. I was teaching myself to do life a little differently. I had to learn that my brain might want to do all of the things – but my body probably had other ideas. There was a lot of pain and a lot of feeling like I was running on empty. I was learning – I didn’t like it. But I was learning. I was learning that my life would be lived, from now on, in small chunks. In shades of gray.

I used to get frustrated by only being able to do two or three things in a row before I’d crap out. Those typical things might include…going to work, coming home to kitty chores and maybe some writing at night. Or on a weekend they might include going to run errands (one store only), getting a pedi and changing the sheets OR doing laundry (never both). I was learning.

In the weeks since my hospitalization, I’ve had to start thinking about a whole new level of slow. I’m down to one thing a day. ONE THING.

Yesterday, I took a shower. That depleted me to the level that I could  barely sit up straight while my dear friend trimmed up my hair and waxed my eyebrows in my kitchen last night. The day before that, my one thing was trying to drive to the grocery store to pick up groceries. It was super hot. I got super dizzy. That one thing was almost one thing too many. Lesson learned.

Today’s one thing was running the vacuum. My cleaning lady had to call off this week so it will be two weeks until she cleans again. The cat hair situation was becoming a bit much. Every day I come down from my bedroom to plop in my chair to try and amuse myself for a few hours before I fall into bed again to sleep more, I am distracted by the tumbleweeds. Tumbleweeds of cat hair, blowing through my home, now that the windows are gloriously open and the breezes are flowing into my home. I had to do something about the tumbleweeds.

I did it. I vacuumed. I felt better. And I felt worse. This would be my one thing for today.

Today was a glorious day! The dew point is low and the temps are more fall-like than late summer. After my hair cut last night I was so tired, I forgot to eat. I was hungry this morning and even though staying in bed was tempting, I had to eat something. I thought for a hot minute that maybe I’d attempt to go out again today. Maybe I’d walk to the end of the block – see how I did. Maybe I would run to Target to get a non-slip shower mat (my stupid stick-on shower treads were an epic fail…they didn’t last through even one shower).

But once I sat in the kitchen with the breeze flowing through the open windows eating a yummy blueberry muffin, I knew what I really wanted to do was to go back to bed. I needed more sleep. The sheers blowing in the wind in my bedroom relax me. The twinkling of the chimes that hang on the porch of my house and my neighbor’s porch calm me. When the air is on, and the 17 fans I have running in my bedroom are running and the windows are closed up tight to keep the dreaded heat and humidity outside – I can’t hear the chimes. I can’t hear much of anything. It’s like nothing outside of my room (or my house) even exists.

But today! Today was the kind of weather I live for. And while most people in the world would be outside doing outside things and having fun and traipsing around the city doing perfect weather things, like brunching and window shopping and maybe hitting up a farmer’s market or a second hand store…I listened to my body and went back to bed.

I would like to tell you that I didn’t feel badly about doing what my body told me I needed to do. I did have the passing feeling of regret that I’d waste this perfect day. I didn’t waste it though. I had a lovely sleep. I had lunch with my mom (late lunch of course) on my porch. After lunch, I came inside. I ate a fresh peach and some cherries – my latest obsession since remembering that I love cherries and they were on sale on Thursday when I got my groceries. Of course I didn’t know that, but my mom did. She’s like a professional bargain shopper. I had forgotten how much I love cherries.

And then I attacked the cat hair tumbleweeds. Only on the first floor, mind you, I’m not a triathlete of home chores or anything. By the time I sat down to wind up the cord, one important chore completed, I realized how doing that one thing felt like working out.

I have to figure out how to do more than one thing soon. I mean, I can’t stay home forever. I have to move around in the world. I have to try.

I can accept that I’m the tortoise. I always preferred the tortoise to the hare. The hare was a bit full of himself for my taste and it is the actual moral of the story by Mr. Aesop, isn’t it? Slow and steady win the race. I guess I never realized how slow slow could go.

I’m going to try a few more things next week. I’m going to try to get myself to the office. My cat lady helper is only signed on through Monday. After that, I will have to handle the steps at least twice a day to handle the litter boxes. I am already training myself to accept that this might be the extent of what I can accomplish in a single day. If I shower, one or the other of those things will have to give since I’m down to one-a-day status. I can’t help but wonder how long this snail’s pace can keep up?

I see The Great Scott on Wednesday. I’m actually a little nervous about it. I am wondering what he’s going to have to say about my whole stint in the joint and the decrepit condition of my body since then. It’s been almost two whole weeks since I got out. I’m not dizzy 100% of the time anymore but I’m nowhere near pre-hospital levels – which in and of themselves were not really that impressive at all, if we’re being totally honest.

I’m going to get a name for my PT so I can make an appointment with someone who knows MS and get that started, too. I wonder how I will have energy to do the things I need to do to make myself stronger when I’m in this one-thing-a-day phase. Where does going to physical therapy fit in? What will have to give (besides everything)?

Slow and steady win the race, said Mr. Aesop. I wonder if the tortoise had a chronic autoimmune disorder? I wonder if he resented his inching along the race track, noting every pebble, every twig, every leaf on every bush planted low to the ground while he kept his little tortoise eyes focused right in front of him so as not to get too overwhelmed by the task at hand. I wonder if he knew he would win the race in the end..Or if maybe he learned that the race isn’t really meant to be won. It’s meant to be experienced and maybe even learned from.

I wonder if he was ever afraid that he was going so slow, he was barely moving at all?

But how about this weather, folks! It’s glorious. It’s what my mom used to call perfect sleeping weather. I guess it’s a good thing then, that I am going to be doing a lot of just that. Very soon. Again. I will lay in bed and read my scary book and remind myself that the tortoise actually wins the race in the story. He just does him (he always looks happy in the illustrations). The other forest animals cheered him on the entire way. He gets there, when he gets there.

I guess I will too.