Well friends, I’m pretty excited right now.

This week, I’m taking a couple of days to myself to R & R, but also to decide on what I’m going to do about my bowel issue (do I try the laxative my doc gave me, or the salt water flush my nurse friend uses? I’m going to meditate with my body to decide.) I’m going to devote this Thursday just to my intestines, to give them some love. I will continue with a nightly dose of castor oil, and eat only kindly as a prep for Thursday.

You know what is really interesting? As I’ve been slowly treating this constipation that I didn’t even know I had and is horribly embarrassing yet somehow hysterically funny, I’ve been experiencing terrible nightmares.

Last night, for example, I spent the entire night living through the horror of moving to – and living in – a new house and *knowing* it was a mistake from the first day.

As I talked it through with Sweetie in the morning, she pointed out that I was just reliving the emotions from our move to Tofino, and the crazy landlady. I knew that wasn’t what it was cracked up to be within the first week of living there, but for financial reasons and just the sheer shittiness of the Tofino housing market, we had to live there for nearly four years.

Let me pause to give another prayer of thanks for our lovely, quiet, private home and the wonder-car that made it possible.

I’ve talked before how I *know* that I process emotion and stress physically, and I have experienced huge upwellings of memories or emotion from doing breathing exercises, or certain yoga poses, or by losing weight.

Now, it seems, as I lose my shit, more memories and emotions surface too.

This is why I’m waiting until I have 24 hours off before I engage in a complete bowel cleanse. (And, just in case I have to go to the ER again, I want to make sure I have time to recover! I’ll make sure I have Benadryl on hand from now on…)

It’s funny that it’s surfacing in the form of a really vivid, all-night nightmare.

Let me describe it to you:

The house was in the middle of a beautifully landscaped ground. We were assured by the landlady that it was a quiet, private place to live, and we believed it was going to work for us.

The day we moved in, there was nowhere for us to put our stuff. Every room was PACKED FULL of someone else’s furniture! There were three dining sets, three different couches, every bedroom had a queen or king bed that was took up most of the floor space, and bedroom furniture crammed all around.

Through the windows, a stream of people appeared. Turns out the beautifully landscaped grounds was a public park.

I remember crying “I had an office! Why did we move???” It’s funny how important having an office has become to me. I really need one and I just love having one.

There was really ugly, dusty art on the walls, and shadowy old mirrors (which I hate) or really gaudy bronze-framed fixtures from the 80s that clashed with the hardwood floors and Victorian antique furniture. Of the furniture I did like, it was too delicate to use, or was broken, or was in the way.

The place had three effing kitchens. THREE. But none of the kitchens had all the things I needed, like enough counter space, or a fridge AND stove AND dishwasher. Two of the three kitchens appeared to be very nice, but weren’t equipped with basic stuff like glasses or cutlery – and every cupboard, drawer and every inch of counter space was crammed full of crap.

I remember crying and wondering why we moved from a three bedroom place to a one bedroom place, since the rent cost the same – but as I cried, I started to discover new bedrooms. They were all crammed full of furniture of course, and I examined each new room for possibilities of becoming an office. But each room lacked something essential like windows or heating. Of the rooms that did have windows, people from the park could look right in!

We had to bring in a professional interior decorator, because our landlady insisted we needed a professional to remove the unwanted furniture. (Gee, now that I’m thinking about it, professional removal of crowded furniture could be a metaphor for constipation too…) But we had to choose which of the furniture we would keep and live with, we couldn’t just have it all removed and use our own furniture.

So of the three dining sets, I had to pick from a plastic patio furniture set, a really heavy, uncomfortable bar-height table and stools, or a really ugly set I couldn’t stand to look at. From the three couches, we had to pick two. One rather nice mid-century Danish sofa that we were not allowed to damage in any way, one beat up and smelly ikea ektorp sofa, and one ancient plaid pullout couch.

This interior designer would argue with me about my choices, and refused to remove *everything* saying the landlady only had so much room in storage.

Finally, the pièce de résistance, it turned out the landlady actually lived in one of the rooms and liked to play loud music all day.

What a weird nightmare. I haven’t been so happy to wake up in a long time! I’m so grateful we have *good and decent* landlords who mind our privacy but fix problems immediately. I was so impressed when I let them know the eaves troughs appeared to be clogged, and they were there the following weekend to clean them out. They even replaced the old-ish hot water heater *before* there was a problem!

Well, it sounds like I’m furnishing my gut with a lot of other people’s furniture. It’s not my responsibility to keep that shit safe. It’ll be interesting to see what I experience when I clean the whole house out…