800 lb ghosts

My body feels like it’s 800lbs this morning. It weaves in and out of the past. Every day is a new life, but our bodies forget nothing. Sometimes all it takes is a dark photograph of you and a person and your body remembers their smell, their hair, even the weight of their head against yours. Yesterday, they weren’t any where close to your skin. Today… when and why do these ghost limbs come back? Especially after days of genuine happiness?
Yesterday, I went to one of our photo editor’s houses and we did a cookie shoot for next week’s food section. We each had to make cookies and then think of a creative way to gift them. I made my mom’s candy cane butter cookies, spend hours Monday night braiding the dough and crushing peppermints. But the photo shoot was just fun and we ate pumpkin bread that I made in the morning and drank iced vienna coffee because it’s still summer spring whatever this weather is here and it was a nice break in the coming to work sitting on my ass routine. And then I chatted without nerves with coworkers, fun, long conversations where you forget you’re even at work, where deadlines and efficient time management doesn’t matter.
I left a little earlier than maybe I was supposed to, but when I got home Pat had tamales and this amazing tomatillo, avocado, cilantro salsa waiting. The salsa has this citric bite to it and after one bite it’s hard not to drink the entire container. We discovered it a few weeks ago, walking around a hispanic grocery store in our pajamas.
At 8:30, after we watched The League and Modern Family, I left for a soccer game at 9:15 in Tempe, which is kind of a hike for a 45 minute game, but I love playing and getting to hit people and kick them (oops the ball) and sprint my ass off not knowing I’m sprinting my ass off because when I’m playing soccer I don’t think about the exercise, which is the best kind of exercise. It’s all guts and competition. I usually leave furious because we suck and always lose and even though we lost last night by one goal, for the first time we came together as a team and started playing well. I scored a goal, I got hit a lot, I somehow did a banana peel slip right on my back on the ground. I don’t even know how I tripped I just slammed down hard on my ass and back. I have serious wrestling moves. Maybe that’s why I feel like I’m 800 lbs today? Maybe it’s the ghosts. Maybe it’s the fact they are furiously competing in my body today for the past and present.