I shouldn’t be doing this

This post goes out to all the people who have had surgery and need to sit quietly. I’m a huge fan of crawling into bed and watching whatever Netflix has to offer. I typically choose a genre or an actor and run with it for days. I’ve seen every episode of Weeds, Breaking Bad, Black Adder (including that horrible time travel one), Doctor Who, Charmed (yeah, whatever, shut up–and I tried to look up the funniest Charmed scene, but all clips were, like, 4-6 minutes long, which leads me to believe that Charmed fans are crazy, so double shut up), Touched by an Angel (see Charmed), The Office (and I know that blooper clip I just linked is 18 minutes long, but I could watch Office bloopers all day, which makes me realize just how crazed Charmed and Touched by an Angel fans really are), Mad Men, Rome, The Sopranos, anything with Ryan Gosling (except The Notebook, can’t do it), anything with Steve Carell (here’s part two of the clip I link to his name), every Mission Impossible, Iron Man 1, 2, & 3, The Avengers, Captain America, every Hulk movie, and a really depressing black comedy called Visioneers with Zach Galifianakis, who is perfectly cast in that part but seeing him also reminded me with great joy that my brother bought me a dickie as a get well present. My bout with pneumonia has ruined all streaming period dramas I can find on Netflix, but I continue to look for ones I haven’t seen, such as the Billie Piper movie version of Mansfield Park (as opposed to the Frances O’Connor version, which I had already seen, and not to be confused with the BBC series from the early ’80s). Billie Piper also happens to play Doctor Who’s companion when the absolutely wonderful Christopher Eccleston was the Doctor. She’s carried throughout the series and showed up as The Moment’s conscience in the 50th anniversary episode, which I had to watch twice because I was so hopped up on pain meds, I couldn’t figure out why there were three Doctors and why they were all locked in the Tower of London together.

Wow. I totally Jack Kerouac’ed that intro paragraph.

And, I just turned a name into a verb.

I am boooooooored. And I’m not supposed to be sitting up, never mind typing on a laptop, so if you know Groom or see him in the halls, don’t mention this post to him. I just want to get back to work or go do something. Oxycodone makes me really restless, but my brain gets so goofy, I can’t really do anything. I totally tore apart a flower arrangement the other day because I couldn’t sit still and I can’t leave the house.

Groom is a saint, dealing with the dog every morning, coming home to make lunch, walking the dog in the afternoon, going grocery shopping, dealing with the laundry, making dinner, walking the dog after supper, and then sitting with me to watch reruns of Arrested Development until he falls asleep–god, he must be so bored with his life right now. Every time I walk up from my basement recovery room, I have flashes of Boo Radley (“Hi Boo!”) and Flowers in the Attic. I’m this person secreted away and not talked about. If someone named Jane Eyre (“I must shut up my prize.”) shows up, or more appropriately and even worse, if someone named Mattie Silver shows up, I might lose my mind entirely. Lordy. We have the snow for sledding and Groom has an Ethan Frome limp already. Hm.

All right. I have to sign off. I overdid it the other day, which means I walked the dog, I sat up for too long, and I received a visitor. That was too much. Yesterday, I slept until 1:00 in the afternoon and was running a fever by 6:30. I’ll admit I was in pain and therefore I was unable to meet my goal to be off the Oxy by yesterday. Today, I’m just taking Tylenol. Yeah. These crazy ramblings are coming from a sober person.

This is what recovery really looks like. Nobody talks about the boredom.

Sarah Devlin

About Sarah Devlin

Sarah Devlin has been writing about the recreational industry since the late ’90s but ironically can’t run, swim, or bike a mile.