i always forget about spring.

i mean, i remember, in the abstract. it's going to be spring, my arthritis will flare up because it always does. right? right.

but i don't remember.

i don't remember how i have give up wearing some of my pants because they catch uncomfortably at my swollen knee.

i don't remember how the problem isn't so much that i can't bend my knee, it's that i can't straighten it.

i don't remember how walking from the handicapped parking spot by the door to my desk at work wears me out so badly that all i want is a nap.

i don't remember how i need painkillers to get to sleep, that no matter how long i lie there, i can't get to sleep without them.

i don't go shopping for a month. i don't mean an enormous shopping trip, i mean grocery shopping, or anything more strenuous than picking up my prescriptions (which i can, gods be praised, do through the drive through).

i sit all the time, although i'm constantly wiggling around, because there is no position that doesn't make my knee hurt.

if i'm really really lucky, my wrists hurt so badly that i can't rest them on anything at the same time. this spring, i am not that lucky, and my hands have remained usable, although sometimes i pick them up and think, just think, about whether or not they're starting to hurt and if i need to give up all non-essential everything so as to not stress them out.

i already am beginning to forget. it's been raining here, y'see, which means that the pressure goes back up, and my joints stop hurting. we had a week or two where it was going to rain any second now, but could never really get around to it. constant low pressure. constant cool weather. constant pain.

but it poured like crazy early this afternoon, and i went to bed last night without taking extra painkillers, and it's getting better.

i write this so that maybe i won't be as surprised next year. maybe i'll remember.