Stripping paint is solitary. And frankly, my week wore me the hell out. I'm relieved my weekend is only laundry, yardwork and manicure. And stripping. But I have no idea how the hell I am doing this. I haven't had a relaxed weekend in ages. Some is house, some is choices. And it is telling this month, I'm kinda fried at work.

I'm kind of ignoring all the stuff I've got coming in the month ahead. Trip to Indiana with the kids, trip to Michigan and a fundraiser dinner at the end of the month. Then derby try outs. If I think about it too much, I'll freak.

Right. Don't compare my insides to other people's outsides.

Love the derby article and picture, Cash. Y'all look very cool.

-t, I keep comparing myself now to a couple years ago, and I... whoa. I don't know how I've built all this STUFF into my schedule and make it happen. But I did. And it is exhausting, but clearly I am getting something from it. But given vacation schedules, I'm going to the market alone tomorrow, and instead of relishing it, I'm kinda feeling lonesome. Lonesome to get up and get moving on a weekend, wtf?!

I still don't know how parents do it, but I have some small glimpse: because you will it. And sacrifice other shit.

Sanity, mostly.

Heh. My mother would agree with you after having both grandsons (one 3) at the house...even with their dad there. She'll cope next summer.

That's kind of inspiring, sara.

I have additional thoughts but they are not co-operating with my efforts to wrangle them into sentences that make sense. Brain has gone to sleep, body soon to follow.

Okay, this is going back a million years, and is mostly still a reaction to Gudanov "Natter 65: Speed Limit Enforced by Aircraft" May 2, 2010 8:01:11 pm PDT where Gud says he only has four scars. 8 years ago, I posted this:

Entry Word: scar Function: verb Text: to mark with a scar <burns that had scarred her face> Synonyms cicatrize, scarify
Related Word cut, score, scratch; blemish, disfigure, flaw, mar; damage, deface

Main Entry: scar tissue Function: noun Date: 1875 : the connective tissue forming a scar and composed chiefly of fibroblasts in recent scars and largely of dense collagenous fibers in old scars

I don't understand the Neosporin ads. Sure, I get the antibiotic use, but are scars that scary that they can sell it on cosmetic grounds? My scars are a map to my memories. Places and people are attached to the events. Post it notes, scribblies of my life, written on my skin. They happen. And with me, they stay.

If I start from the top, I start at the beginning. Tip of the forehead, edge of the forceps, and welcome to the world, young lady. Family rumour has it that my mother refused to pay the hospital bill. Thirty-six hours of labour, and still on the lookout for a bargain. I think my sister was half price.

I never had a shot at undamaged. Start as you mean to continue, and all that.

I have a fascination with forehead scars. My sister was similarly marked, on a similar schedule. Daniel's was a tooth, embedded during a football match. He gets points for sheer grossness, and for pathos -- everyone was paying attention to the kid with the broken tooth. And Ron, Ron -- glass table, I think. At least my sister and I don't have to remember them.

I travel down my face, to the scars I've wanted but never had. You remember those pirates of childhood fancy, or those soap opera crazies? One of those scars, rakishly running over the eye socket, but in my (imagination's) case leaving my eye miraculously untouched. Or maybe something more understated -- slicing the eyebrow. Like Molly's. Except without the getting-hit-by-a-car bit.

Back a bit, to the ears. Here we find the first evidence of self-mutilation. But I didn't start it without prompting. The first holes, one closed hole on each lobe, were put there by my mother. I rejected all things femme (shortly after discovering how much work it was to change earrings) at around age 10. But that had already given me 6 or so good years of earring wearing - I don't think my sister was speaking yet when our mother took us in for piercing.

I rejoined the wonderful world of "real" earrings in high school. By the time I left England, I think there were three holes. Two more in Canada, and then two more in Michigan - tracing up from the lobe of my left ear to the cartilage.

My examination doesn't reach another scar until my chin. And it's a bonanza under there.

I don't know which is which, so I'll move chronologically. I was no more than four. He was my best friend. Throw in a brick fireplace, a wooden wheeled giraffe, and me needing to impress the other gender with feats of physical prowess, and there you have it. Me, a toddler, being rushed to the nearest emergency room to have 6 stitches put in. I don't know if it worked. To impress him, I mean. It must have, a little. Since I still seem to think it's a valid methodology. Wait ... no ... still single. Hrrm.

Parallel to that scar run another six stitches. Product of the curved lip of the Senior Common Room swimming pool, and a goofing little sister. I was 8 or 9, old enough to remember adult reaction this time. My mother, swooping me up from where I'd fallen, blood mixing with chlorinated water, and rushing me across campus to the hospital.

The rumours about my injury arrived at school before I did. I think I disappointed them, unable to spin a mesmerizing tale of injury, pain or bravery. It was mostly like the first time -- my memory doesn't distinguish between the (continued...)

( continues...) Ottawa doctors looking down at me, and the Jamaican doctors.

Moving down, I reach my shoulders. The scar on my right is small and raised -- tuberculosis vaccination. I remember the line, up the stairs and into the nurse's office. I remember the doctor, and I remember the flame they used to clean the needle. I don't remember any pain. Not until London, anyway, where my new school didn't believe in Jamaican medicine. Oh, I told them I was good, but they went from viewing me as a potential victim to branding me Typhoid Mary when they saw the vigour with which my body reacted to the tests. Don't mess with us.

The left shoulder has a bigger scar. Smallpox? Polio? It predates my medical memory. I wear it like a badge. My parents have this scar too. It's a brand of the West Indies. I remember my father's the most clearly. His scars fascinated me. This vaccination, and a larger one on his thigh were shiny and striated -- like polished wood. I wondered if my scars would ever be that pretty, but genetics never tipped my skin over from butterscotch to his cocoa.

My elbows are second only to my knees as random scar magnets. Less interesting also, because you don't get to watch. On my right elbow, where I'm no longer flexible enough to see, is the mark of January 3rd, the day before my birthday. I wanted to watch The Man From Atlantis, and wasn't being allowed to. So I acted out a little, swinging in the dining room. One hand on the back of the chair, and my right hand on the buffet table. The elbow gave, and came smashing down on the corner of the table. I still didn't get to watch TV.

On the back of my left hand is a scar combination that looks like shorthand, or the katakana symbol for "so". The long dash is an old scar. I've reconstructed a memory around this, since I'm sure I don't actually remember being in diapers. Or coming out to dance, and swinging my hand past an open nappy pin. I mean, me, as a child, dancing? Not many memories of that at all. The smaller dash is an IV scar, from my first general anaesthetic. I suppose if I hadn't wriggled and thrashed enough for them to have to strap my wrist flat to a board, there'd be no scar there.

Staying on the left hand, back of, there's a small curving scar near the tip of my middle finger. Another favourite - first blood drawn by my first Henckel knife.

The scar on my thumb is from a Cutco knife. My Henckel wouldn't have skipped like that. Damn, that bled. But none got into the pork chop I was stuffing, and dinner wasn't ruined. Shame that night's Buffy episode wasn't better. I'd hoped to make a convert of P. Whose scars shame mine.

Flipping my hand over, we have two very close together - a faint remnant of me spearing myself with a rusty geometry compass (I lied to the teacher about that. I was terribly embarrassed to have done it. And it meant I was not paying attention in class). A blue dot at the base of my index finger. A little further down, at the tip of my heart line, is the proof that Sarah K. needs to keep her toenails trimmed. I could have caught something nasty from blocking that kick.

September 1993. I'm in the bathroom at work, adjusting my clothes before going back outside. My bra isn't fitting right. I tweak, and I tweak, and still my right breast just doesn't look right. Friendly palpation from relatives, a mammogram and much shock later, I'm diagnosed with a benign cyst. And not a small one.

I'm conscious for the entire procedure. The doctor, a marvellous man (along with the rest of his staff, he performed the procedure for free, a favour for my cousin's husband, and for me, new to the US with no medical insurance). As he works, he talks to me. Small talk, and also descriptions of how he's slicing my nipple almost all the way off. Would I like to see the cyst? Wow. Huge. Size of a quarter. Wait … what's that warmth at my back? Blood pooling, huh? And the smoke? Oh, that's what I smell like when I'm on fire. I suppose that noise is the fancy schmancy staple gun, huh? Yeah, thought (continued...)