Costume

Actually, I rather like getting up in a good costume. But then there has to be a place to go. Don't got one of them. So Halloween slips by again. Particularly, as this year, when it falls on a Saturday.

In childhood, I mostly did witches and ghosts, colonial, and the odd princess, once the Carol Burnett washerwoman - mom's idea, but I was cool with it. Was a stage once, with a box covered in crepe paper around my head and shoulders, a working curtain over the front opening, and a puppet to hold the bag. My favorite by far. Rather cozy on a late October Detroit night. Very traditional trick-or-treating around the block, most of which gave out candy. Never felt afraid that night, despite the dark, perhaps just because everyone was out. Friendly atmosphere. Being alone in the dark is much more frightening.

I've since been a Refugee from a Sleep Lab, in pjs with wires stuck to my head. A fortune teller, with all my bellydance gear on. And a ghost samurai, with my hakama from when I took naginata, my hair made all white. Oh, and I had a second hand sheath dress, black, coupled with a black veil, and I went as the Widow Jackie. Mostly my own clothes, themed to suit. In the OR, temporary tattoos on my throat. I'd like to do more, but there is so little point.

There were a group of half a dozen young folks in black spandex pants, spike hair, chains, high tops, hanging near the grocery store entrance. I was a bit afraid to go past them, such extreme punk is pretty rare, and very hard core, until I remembered what day it is. They pulled it off very well, almost as if they are punks, and went retro for today. Spoke to a few in passing, seemed like a nice bunch.

A physical therapist last year put his long hair in a french braid, with ribbon, shaved his mustache, wore a pastel flowered long sleeve dress with lace collar and cuffs. He was a Mormon Sister Wife. Very believable, until you really looked at his face. In this state, understood immediately.

I never go as a nurse, or a soldier.

Really mind the "Sexy (Occupation)" costumes, an excuse to dress slutty, as D says. I think that the best costumes address, in some way, our anxieties or our secrets. Are we brave enough? Are we misfits? Can we let the world see our quirks? What is death, or pain, or decay? We each have our own questions. Generic costumes, to include showing off that one has a corset, are a sort of dress-up uniform, risk free, joining in without revealing much, save for skin. Not quite the idea behind Halloween, Samhain, when the rational and irrational meet to dance.

I've long wanted to create a really good sea goddess outfit, convincing and constructed, one with fronds and wrecked ships.

Worried

Awake way too early, convoluted and anxious dreams fading but leaving a stain. Cold, cold, cold going to bed last night, could not get warm, up several times to add blankets and socks, even after D piled a few more covers on. Woke much later, overheated and weighed down with blankets and a velcro cat. Disturbed sleep giving way to irritated wakefulness. Gave up and got up, tea and cereal, D joining me in a similar state of mind.

We are both worriers. We chew at puzzles, care how our friends are doing, strive to understand and solve and repair and prevent problems. As such, we call each other if we are going to be late, knowing the other will be concerned. We are imaginative, and the worst always comes to mind. We try not to succumb to it, but stuff happens, and we want to respond helpfully if it does.

Other people are often not reassuring to us. Most of our friends, and D's family, are, as we most affectionately put it, flaky. They are often late, don't call, cancel plans with no notice - and no awareness that they have inconvenienced anyone. It's never malicious, not intended to be offensive. They just aren't worriers, so they don't empathize. This is probably good for us, all in all. Keeps us from sinking too deep into anxiety, letting some of it go, aware that we have a bit too dark of a view on the world. They are all kind, caring, funny folks, who if asked would help us without question. But we are both glad we live with someone more attentive and chronically early. Pessimists at heart. We who savor good fortune as a rare treat.

Thinking about my Aunt Evelyn, near the end. An ache over the years since. I urged my mother to call as soon as she knew, to let me know, "even if it's two in the morning, call me," let me share her loss with you, don't leave me out of her death, since I cannot be there. Mom called two days after Aunt Evelyn died. If she'd said she was just too upset to call me earlier, I would have understood that. Instead she says "I didn't want you bothered, I knew you were busy." Yeah, I was busy, worrying that my dear Aunt was suffering so long, as well as working long hours on liver transplants. (Aunt Evelyn died of a liver tumor.*) My mother's actions felt so condescending, after I'd expressly stated my desire to be included, as though that would save me from grief, as though her own grief for her sister had nothing to do with it.

As though I'd never washed the dead. As though I couldn't picture all too well what she was enduring.

So we tumble against each other, smoothing the rough spots, and breaking away chunks to leave scars. Both together. The hardest rocks sometimes crack apart, the most delicate flowers bloom among the rocks every spring.



*A cholangiocarcinoma, that metastasized to her liver. At least I had the right surgeons around to explain the disease, since the third hand information I was getting was so garbled.

Clumsy

Today could have been worse. Nothing dreadful happened. Just an awkward, clumsy, irritating shift with four different surgeons in two rooms and three different OR table configurations. Like starting all over again each time.

The time shift, even this one where an hour is regained, always unsettles me for a week, as I readjust. The whole concept of Daylight Savings is ridiculous.

Moby still has birds to watch intently. I'll keep the seed out there as long as they come to nosh. Good entertainment value.

Furry

Why wait until the sweater is dry to get it re-furred? He didn't stay, due to unpleasant dampness.

Winter has finally made a move. Snowed all morning yesterday, leaving a good three inches on my car. The wiper was still there for me to clean it all from the roof. Pretty much gone today, save in grassy, shaded places. But we got out the sweaters and warm socks, and I washed some of them this morning.

Dimmer

I once worked with a woman - P who, well, she was kind. None too bright. Would do as asked, but never came up with any way to do more. Would disappear for hours, then when assigned to a room would claim she needed to eat her lunch first. I was talking with her about Basic Training, and that I'd never, personally, gotten dropped for push-ups as a correction, only in groups. She laughed and said she got dropped every day. And I believed her. In every platoon there is one who is, frankly, dumb. The one in mine, we all theorized, was fetal alcohol/drug damaged as a baby. P would have outshone her, but no doubt was the goat of her platoon. When I met her, she was older, and probably had always been a rather plain woman. I grew, over time, to like her a great deal. If not to enjoy working with her. Since we were hired around the same time, and our general physical descriptions were similar, we were often called each others names for the first year or so. That wore off in time. Really bothered me, because while I will accept the label of Plain, I was not like P otherwise.

Today I had to work with a young woman who is physically pretty, very made-up and polished, flirty in the extreme... and otherwise very much like P. Insisted on calling a Hewson instrument (she'd apparently never seen it written down) a Houston. Repeatedly, insistently and with great assurance. She watched several minutes of the Travel Channel before she came around to the idea that maybe the Befeathered samba dancers in gold body paint might be at Carnival. Most of the brake screechingly ignorant comments from her I cannot believe were actually said, making them impossible to remember.

I have learned to be calm, patient, and kind to her. As well as to prepare myself to work twice as hard to keep everything running smoothly. Even when she decides I'm the one who needs help. As she went to get the possible implants, and only brought the odd numbered sizes. Why? Because they were the ones across the top row. Even though they were just outside the room, we were only going to need one, and I intended to just get the one when it was requested.

She may be only a 25 watt bulb, but getting impatient isn't going to bring up the lumin. If I can't manage, it's my failing, and speaks only about my failure as a human being. Better to do my best with low light than to curse the darkness.

Fairies

When I'm too tired to write, it's not because I'm too tired to write. A creeping crankiness dissuades me from any but the most dreary thoughts, staining my writing with a dull disquietude. I can write tired, that is no real issue. But through this net of "eh" I struggle, or rather fail to bother to struggle.

I have been reading. The three Wee Free Men books. Not that they take a lot of effort, together they probably make a Pratchett and a half. I hadn't gotten several references to his other novels in them, the first time. The Goddess Anoia, and Groats, and Where's My Cow? to start. I could do with a mass of ugly blue fairies in kilts, who fight, drink and swear, and fight anything around them with great gusto.

Maybe I'll start imagining them at work. Crivens!


Moby continued to watch throughout yesterday, and more today as well. At one point he lunged, right into the screen. I felt terrible for laughing so hard, really I did.

Boids

Moby has been steathily slinking to the window all morning, hunched and hopeful. The wee birdies have been flocking to the seed, on the other side of the glass. And Cat is Engaged. Every instinct twanging, he chitters at them, his tail evidence of utter preoccupation. There is a bird in his sights, here, barely visible over his right ear.



Later, we opened the screen, and he sat oh-so-hopefully by the stash. The birds were not as gullible as he dreamed.



Alternately, he's been edgy and spooked, hiding under the sofa. Where, incidentally, he can keep an eye on the flightpath.

Hung

On two (admittedly fairly strong) drinks, with food, I should not have had a hangover. But with a hard knot headache above the bridge of my nose through a disturbed night, awake at 0600, correctly sure that I would vomit in due course, that is what happened. This is why I am pretty much immune to real alcoholism, I suspect. Cheap drunk, but I pay dearly if I overindulge even slightly. Always have. This is probably why none of the men on my father's side were alcoholics, despite the occasional bout of belligerent drunkenness. They could not hold their liquor, nor tolerate it. Proof to me that we likely have native genetics, and lack the appropriate alcohol dehydrogenase necessary to break down the relevant molecule. How else to explain a bunch of ignorant, and practically irreligious Frenchmen who rarely drink more than the odd beer? Oh, they went to church, Catholics in name and superstition, but not a devout family by any real standard.

My mother's family were devout, Irish with some French Canadian incursions, and her father died of drink. Her mother, I suspect, was the model for her... I hesitate to use the derogatory word, but it describes the tone precisely, hectoring of my father when he did drink. I know this from what my Aunt Evelyn told me of Granny. My maternal grandparents were separated, though not in that era, as Catholics, divorced. That grandfather was "found" dead, presumably after several days, in a "flophouse." "Drank himself to death" was the happy phrase.

So I feared both that I would be a nasty drunk like my father, and die of the addiction like my grandfather. No doubt waiting until nearly my 21st birthday to drink at all, turned out to be a rather good idea. I'm a pleasant drunk (so I'm told) like my grandfather, with the intolerance of strong drink of my father. And waiting to test my limits until I could handle myself, away from parental oversight, meant I just had myself to deal with.

Odd how life turns out.

Fraught

Ok, back to dear old dad. Because I've had a bit to drink after a long hard week. And the first thought in my mind, and what I tell D is, "There is nothing that would get me behind the wheel of a car." Because I'm a responsible person, sure. But why that particular sobriety test? Because although my father rarely had more than one beer, when he did have anything to drink, he drank too much, and not only was he belligerent, he insisted on driving. Normally, my parents shared the driving, the issue of 'the man driving' never came up. And mom was by far he better driver. Until he'd had a few. Then, nothing could keep him from taking the wheel. As frightened as I always was when he drove, when he'd had alcohol, I was terrified, certain I would die in the cemetery below the curve of the Ambassador Bridge on the Windsor side.

One of my earliest memories, confirmed as adults by my brothers, was of my father's sister's wedding, when he got drunk. I knew mom was upset, and something was wrong with dad, and I was laid in some sort of car bed for babies, between my brothers, in the dark backseat. Brother'd apparently gotten into the copious liquor at the reception. My mother never spoke of this, save in snide asides. Took years for me to sort out the memory, and both brother's memories, but it turned out to be accurate. Fraught.

Since D does not drink, and does not drive, it's occasionally been a concern that I do. If I'm out, I do not drink, I drink only as much as will not affect me, or we have we get a friend to drive. Since both of us take the issue seriously, there is no debate. I have had to be acutely aware of my state of sobriety if I've had anything, because I go toxic so easily. Yes, I am a cheap drunk. And I err on the side of safety. And even inebriated, my first priority is the safety of those around me. This is ingrained.

Lesson learned. Oddly enough. I am sober, or I am passenger.

October

Autumnal ennui
Pressure in the sinuses
Suspension, then fall.

Princess

One of the mysteries of my father was this apparent belief that he treated me "like a princess.*" And, compared to my brothers, there was more money when I came along, about a decade after them. Keeping me in catholic school until graduation (tenth in a class of 137) was a real expense, but that was at my mother's insistence, a priority he would never have made. I never cared about things that much, I knew we were fairly poor, and I took pride in being frugal and doing without. I never knowingly asked for anything expensive, it took convincing to buy me anything beyond the cheapest and most needed items. I took the expense of school very seriously. Yes, I had pretty good Christmases and Birthdays for presents, by my standards, largely because of aunts and uncles and being nearly the only child in the family at the time. I was very grateful. By his twisted reasoning, that meant I should love him for giving me so much, and if only he'd given me more, I would have loved him. If my love could have been bought, he'd never have been able to afford it. Not with things, anyway.

I remember, at my mother's urging, trying to tell him about my day at school, from the back seat of the car, on the way home from picking him up at work†. He ignored me, and cut me off, not letting me get a word in edgewise. I tried again, mostly because my mother asked, because he often complained to her that I never told him anything. I got pointedly snubbed, again. I retreated to a soup of backseat hatred. I knew, knew for sure, that I would only ever get whatever things he offered. Never love, no attention, no appreciation. The last, definitive straw.

Because I also never forgot when I'd had the flu, the Hong Kong variety at the same time Roots was first shown. I had a very high fever, miserable and limp. My mother had to get groceries, and left me with him. He watched TV. I asked for water. I begged him for water. He pretended I did not exist. This was worse than the few times I was left with my oldest brother, and he only had ears and eyes for his girlfriend, and I knew I was alone. Even Dave, self involved and callow youth, would have not abandoned me if I were so ill. My own father did, though.

All this is not raw and hurtful now. Honestly, it is just history. I stand apart from it, amazed at the casual cruelty, and self serving belief system that fuels it. He is a soul to be pitied, if not indulged. He looks down upon me with scorn.

Joke's on him. The universe has no up or down.



*Historically, Princesses have been treated worse than pawns. Whores for the State. Hostages. So, he kinda got that right, although not by his definition.

†As a janitor/groundskeeper for a cemetery/crematorium. Honest work, but hardly the kind of income to impress a real gold digger.

Slink

Poor Moby. So torn this morning. A storm thundered though as we got up, and his deep habit of being up, and preferably in the kitchen with us, warred with his fear of lightening and thunder. D saw him slinking in the kitchen, so lifted him to the dryer with last night's load still there for softness. I checked on him a bit later, as he tried to mesh with the back of the drum. Distracted him with a good chin scritch, until the next loud clap.

Not like our clothes are going to have any less fur on them if we stop him getting on them in the dryer once in a while.

Just read Wee Free Men, the illustrated version, found at the library yesterday. It is better than I remembered. Going to go back and look at Hatful of Sky and Wintersmith again.

Glare

Bright October light has a special low, poke in the eye, sort of glare. I'm terribly photophobic today, and really shouldn't have gone out. But we needed food for lunch.

Especially after the false fire alarm at work yesterday. No blaring klaxon, just a pervasive, persistent strobe light. Didn't realize at first that it was getting to me, until I began to feel nauseated. Waited in my OR, delayed by the surgeon in another room, where the flashes didn't penetrate. Never quite settled after. No migraine, just the subtle threat of one. Don't feel bad, just on the edge with pebbles shifting underfoot.

Not fond of warm and sunny this time of year. Ok, ok, I'd like it cool and rainy six days of seven, fair enough. But it's worse, once I've gotten it into my head that I will need jeans, maybe a sweater, and then have to switch back to shorts.

So, I try to stay cool and still. This is good.

Laid down beside a lounging Moby earlier. He began to attack strands of my hair, leaving D in helpless giggles. Odd to see oneself as prey. He really loves my hair, especially when it was long enough to be in a braid. Not there yet, but I think the silver strands were particularly attractive to this cat's brain.

Stale

Often, I feel I fell between. Between generations, between countries. Too young for the British Invasion, too old for Punk.

But I always listened to the Beatles. They were, if anything, the soundtrack behind my life. I may have gotten a little tired of the more popular of their songs as played on the radio, but the B-sides emerged, "I'm Only Sleeping." And the solo works continued. Over the past five years or so, I've finally gotten sick of all of them. Nor have I ever really heard covers of their stuff that interested me. Too sappy, too gentle, too muzak, too sucking-up without enough difference. It took me a long time, but I got thoroughgoing tired of John, Paul, George and Ringo - as they were. I suppose it says a lot about how good they were that it took me so long. Ok, I still have a soft spot for George Harrison, who I think is the most-underrated Beatle. (McCartney could have stopped at "I Saw Her Standing There" and I'd never have missed him, long before Wings. The most overrated of the lot.)

This is actually a bit disappointing to me. That no current artists can take those songs and turn them into something new. And the nature of recorded music is that, eventually, it will get tired and old. It really is important to turn new hands to old tunes. And no artist should be enshrined, because art must be freshened and altered, constantly. Dead music goes stale.

And we get Earworms.

Confluences

Moby has been assiduously bird watching this morning. The birdseed has been attracting them lately, usually when it's raining, and Moby is hiding in the closet. Today, there is a confluence of sun and birds and cat. Of course, as soon as he gets close, they flit off. He seems to be enjoying the game.

My stress test passed, the exhaustion of Monday has not lingered past a good night of sleep and a late morning. When I've been down, the sense that I will never feel better again accretes. When D broke his elbow, he struggled with the pain, as much because it began to seem endless and relentless.

The breeze shifts through. Sun peeping through promising clouds.

Unconscious

Yesterday I got to work, went to my room to do total joints all day. Instead, got pulled to scrub, due to sick calls. Shuffling of assignments. Meaning short lunches and not a whole lot of help for room turnovers. Good surgeon, good cases, save the last one which turned it into a very long day. (All will be well, everyone alive.) Fourteen hours on my feet, with one twenty minute break. Glad I had a capsasian patch on my back, especially since I had about four hours wearing the lead x-ray gown. Knowing D would be there at then end, whenever I got home, made all the difference. And he was, with a hug, and eggs, made me a sandwich for today, rubbed my feet. He had a bad day of his own. Still did what he could for me.

Slept badly, congested and aching, awake at 0430 with the cat on my ankles. Again. Both of us restless, the apartment stuffy. D got windows opened, put on some Vaughn Williams and Bizet, just to keep us from getting up then. I don't know that I actually slept, but I rested my poor body the last hour and a half.

Work full of headache and unsustainable effort. My surgeon today, a difficult, but also warm and funny guy, rubbed my shoulders for a minute or so. Good strong hands, knew the anatomy, and it really helped. A welcome mercy. And he had a fire under his butt for his own reasons, ahead of schedule throughout. Meaning, I got home by 3PM.

Feeling like I've been up all night, despite a reasonable number of hours unconscious. Not quite the same as sleep, though, is it?

Intrusion

Moby in SuperCat mode.


I left my robe on my chair this morning.


Advantage was taken.

The one favor that cannot be requested, although probably not the only one, but the only one coming to mind at the moment, is "Will you be my friend?" The networking sites that send "friend" requests, and verb the noun, are doing more than playing with English. English loves to be manipulated, and although "befriend" seems to me a better word, I can't in good conscience object to gaming this rapacious and flexible language. It's the whiny pleading behind "friending" that evokes a kindergarden revulsion in me. The adding up, and counting how many friends, rather than the strength and depth of the friendship.

There was a little girl, you see. She walked the same way home, a bit further down the street from me. And she would call out to me "Will you be my friend? Will you be my friend?" And I wanted to run and hide. I had no other friends, but still was not so desperate as to want her. Instinctively, I drew back, since she didn't want to get to know me, she wanted me to like her. Rather like aunts who grabbed at me, or uncles who swung me up onto their knee without checking for my consent. I distrusted them afterward, and their urgent desire for my affection would be frustrated.

I've been reading Introvert Power, and although some of it is off base for me, I do need time alone. Especially after a lot of interaction. Time to think and digest. When there is no quiet place, I get unsettled. Grade school lunch time, after eating, we were required to go outside, whatever the weather. I would find a place to nestle, near a wall, away from all the noise. And be unmercifully teased. I let it go on behind me, because I needed to turn my head away. Shivering and miserable, but the world shut out, often with the help of a book, my only balm.

I've often been accused of being rude, because I don't appreciate intrusion and interruption.

There have been comments, which you probably have not seen, because I have simply deleted them, over the last few months. People who come to comment only to ask us to come to their site. Mostly not commercial phishing, but coat tuggers, wheedling for us to "come be my friend/read my blog." They are welcome to try again, leave a thoughtful note without a link (we can go to their site from their name, anyway.) If you have to ask, insist or force, then the answer is no. A yes would not be real friendship, after all.

Moby never begged for our love. He earned it, as we earned his.

Gestalt

Only a few weeks late on the Derby finals. Finally got these off the camera. The Leave it to Cleavers won over the Sisters of No Mercy, but no one stopped giving their all in this desperate battle. Which is part of what I love about it. They play for keeps, every minute.

And the spectators blanket out the most dangerous seating early.


Our dear friend ND is using his prodigious computer skillz to keep track of penalties. I won't point him out, but he's there.


The light is awful, so the best shots tend to be the milling about before the game starts.


The refs really get into the whole gestalt. This one not only has a mohawk on his helmet, but this match added googgly eyes as well.


Only wish I'd been more conscious during this. Glad I went. Wish it were this weekend, while I'm only rather tired.

Human

*
Thinking about those who knew me during my metamorphosis from abused child to bewildered adulthood gives me pause. Lots of awkward pauses. I have no idea how I looked then, so wrapped up in the shreds of my cocoon, fitful attempts not to be shy, angry and ugly and whiny, but also curious and intelligent and radiant with youth and health and hope. Lovely and off putting, intentionally dumpy and urgently sensually needy. All oatmeal with thistles.

I ate terribly, ramen noodles and stolen chocolate bars and cola from where I worked. Malnourished and sore most of the time. Excuses for every failing. Achingly lonely and aching for solitude. Friends with anyone who didn't out-and-out rebuff me. Inchoate dreams listlessly driving me. Ill, raw and inadequate, I focused only on keeping my grades up - to sustain the scholarship. I worked very hard, but not at all well. Wallowed in adolescent fantasy of my parents' death, gothic loss, and hollywood starshine.

Perhaps that path lead the only way out of my fuckedupedness. That muddy, lonely and self-destructive road held the lessons for the skills I needed. Four years of self-directed psycho analysis mixed with pragmatic behaviourism. The Army became my charm school. Nursing school to finish me off. The OR to harden my Crème brûlée. Each new day to age and mellow me.

Maybe that's the real reason a hard science curriculum eluded me. I needed to work on my humanity.



*gods I look like my mother in this photo

Salad

I brushed Moby with one of those de-shedding brushes. At about once every three or four months, it really seems to get the loose undercoat free. He purrs until he gets too excited, then jumps off, and has a nibble. Which is why some of it is still on him. The stuff by the side is the wad removed.

Home way too early, but in no mood to actually mind. Wonderful to be greeted by a cat doing a Full Flop Of Welcome. Better still, because he thereby reminded me that I'd got him wheatgrass... which was still in the trunk, along with the rest of the groceries I'd stopped for on my way home. It's just that it took me a long, long time to get through the various school zones, with four way stops, that I'd utterly forgotten I'd shopped.

Good cat.

And after my hike back out to the car, he greeted me again, then tucked into the grass. His one real food treat. Cat likes him some salad.

A friend at work talking about food, since that cable channel had been on in the breakroom. How she loved everything about food, from growing it, shopping for it, preparing it, that she would eat anything even if she didn't really like it and wasn't even hungry.

I had to admit bafflement. To me, it's all washing the dishes. Oh, I like a good meal in front of me if I'm hungry, preferably something nourishing. And I'll nosh on chips or nuts, or good chocolate, and will rave about good beer or tea, but I can leave it all alone without difficulty. If it's Tootsie Rolls, Budweiser, Lipton, Pringles or walnuts, I'll pass. Grocery shopping is simply a chore, cooking a bother, washing up a pain, putting all the condiments and spices away has been known to leave me snarling.

Oh, and I eat way too fast. Both D and I do, comes of mess halls, where the Drill Sergeant on KP push duty truthfully shouts, "If you can TASTE it, You are EATING TOO SLOW!" We've been trying for nearly two decades to slow down, but perhaps we prefer our food hot, and the habit got too deeply ground in. Even using chopsticks only delays me slightly. We just don't linger over meals.

My Aunt Alma used to say that "some people live to eat, and some people eat to live." She was one of the first, growing her own strawberries and carrots and baking her own bread. And much as I enjoyed her food, I am certainly one of the latter. If I never really got hungry, I'd probably never eat.


Some giant magic.

Crust

A day to forget. Nothing bad. Nothing much, just ran long. One of those days when I'd have loved a nap. Or two.

An exceptionally flirty patient. One that makes me a bit glad I'm not working recovery room these days, since anesthesia will kick in and silence will reign. I could simply be amused, knowing I had about a minute of his effusive personality. An hour or so in recovery would turn into a challenge for the PACU nurses. I stayed with him then as long as I could, to give him a focus as they got themselves organized. At least he was somewhat charming. Most of those heavy flirters are simply obnoxious, the drugs lower any brakes they might (or might not) have normally, and trying to take care of them as they come out is a dynamic balance of engagement and deflection. Thankfully, they are pretty rare customers.

I can tell I'm still a bit off, recovering from that Swahili Death Flu. The words clunk. My typing is worse than normal.

Thinking about old friends, and what a wet little dweeb I was. I've certainly crusted over.

Balm

Spent the morning reading. Fun, smart, interesting book. (See previous post.) A delight and a balm to the soul.


Went to lunch with D. On the way, saw a guy stopped at a red light decide to just go through the intersection. Lucky guy, didn't get hit, but I can't quite imagine what he was thinking. Caught up with him at the next light, which he did not run. Numerous other examples of poor driving on our sojourn.

Stopped for groceries, and the drivers of grocery carts weren't doing much better. Stopping, wandering, seeming to go, then stopping, then blocking my way. I waited for two elderly folks, jammed between them, and just as there was an opening, another woman came up behind me and tried to cut me off. As if I was just going to stand there, or something. I cut through and shook my head. Then the bagger saw my canvas Trader Joe's bags, and put the gallon of milk and orange juice carton in the cart, not in either bag. I told her to use the bags, I didn't have a car I would be walking. So she put both in one bag, and the other items stuffed in on top of the same bag. I gathered the rest, and moved away from the line to do a balanced packing. This Is Not Rocket Science, People! Even if I had the car, I'd have wanted to A. Use the bags brought and B. Keep the heavy items shared between. and C. Not stuff everything in one bag, when I have two.

Home is a haven from the multitude of intrusions of the inattentive and incompetent and idiotic. D and Moby are both very smart examples of their species.



Went to Roller Derby a week ago Saturday. Surreal for me, since I still felt awful, sore ears, stuffed head. But R and D got raffle tickets, one of them hit, and we got this T-shirt. It was a medium, so it became mine. Got to be my favorite one ever.

Unseen

Academicals.

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Volcano

Watching a show about volcanos. And wish I'd felt confident enough to go into hard science when I was young, and had a scholarship, and been brave enough to risk failure. Because I think I'd love to be doing meteorology or vulcanology or geology. The arithmetic would be less critical now that computers do so much of the grunt work. I watch and read and feel rather dull that I can only grasp so much, the ideas, the principles, but not the details, at this point. When I was 19, I could have, if only I'd had to. The ideas certainly caught me then, but the nuts and bolts seemed beyond my abilities, given my difficulty with pinning down numerals.

I think we teach children backward when it comes to mathematics. It should be a different class from arithmetics. One to make change for groceries and measure for paint, one to understand scientific principles. My own discalcula with numbers barred me from the rest, which I adored once exposed to them. By then, I'd missed the scientific boat.

Courage came late into my life. Welcome, nonetheless, yes. This isn't real regret, just a passing wistfulness.

Found a few fellow students from the theater program, (that bad fecesbook habit of mine.) One ignored my 'friend' request, and fair enough. Who knows what kind of creep I may have turned into, or how irrelevant I ever was to her. The second I simply wrote to, with a "glad you're alive, that is all." I expect nothing back. I certainly don't like who I was then, and that's all they have to go on. I want them to know that their younger selves are remembered kindly.

Not sure what to call this impulse, to pat a back from long ago and far away. Not nostalgia, those were not good times. Not even reminiscence, I can't even remember the last name of the one person from that time I would like to hear from. More along the lines of acknowledgment of the nudges that influenced me, however glancingly. I remember, and it made a difference of some sort.

All in all, I'm glad I took the paths I did. However lost I was, it all leads me here, and here is pretty good.

Fair enough.

Whole

This has been on my mind since I read it. It's so easy, when we are inexperienced, to be charitable to people who are flattering to us, and ignore their frightening traits. The ex had charming traits, of course he did. And I thought I was being kind and tolerant about his 'demons.' Oh, yes, he could be mean, but only when he was tired or stressed. He always apologized when he demeaned me, though leaving me knowing it was all my fault. My own temper and character were nothing to be proud of. I didn't want my faults too much criticized, so I tended to let his slide.

I wonder, then, how useful it would be to teach Relationships as a high school class. How to avoid abusive situations, and identify manipulation. Not that it would keep everyone from bad marriages, but maybe give some people the tools to avoid the worst ones. And the insights to recognize the good ones.

That contempt is toxic no matter what the excuse. Any name calling, however provoked, cannot be excused, ever. That we need to look at that person's worst traits, multiply them by ten, and assume we might have to live with that. And we need to learn to be the kind of person we'd like to live with, holding ourselves to the same standards, no whining,

I chose better the second time. I have heard D lose his temper and yell. Never, ever AT me. Nor do I ever shout AT him. (Just, say, to keep each other from danger, like - "Look out! Duck!") He gets pretty withdrawn at times, and inattentive. I've learned to just ask when I need him, and let him hide when necessary. He has taught me to be calm, and not give into my rages, without ever making me feel something is wrong with me.

I'm sure I saw his worst during our sojourn to Gulf War I, scared, sleep deprived, annoyed, but never unkind. And again when he smashed his elbow, and never once asked "why me" nor "poor me" only doing all his therapy and grimly going on. Not an easy time for either of us, but my admiration for him grew through watching how he dealt with unremitting pain. He seems to feel the same about me, taking me as a whole. And I try to live up to this all encompassing acceptance.

LIfe is hard. The person you live with should make it easier, not harder.

Clean

My first night completely without antihistamines or decongestants or cough suppressants, or nyquil, in weeks. Curry chicken from Canton Village, hot, hot bath melted me, while D called out crossword puzzle clues and Moby wandered in to look quizzically at us, then leave in bafflement, then I crawled in bed and slept and slept and slept.

Had a dream of living with a dream spouse, a kind sort of fairy tale dwarf. There was some dark evil danger, so he enchanted our ramshackle hovel so that it only opened with a magical key, and looked like an imposing ramshackle castle. When I entered, after walking up several invisible stairs, then, with the three prong key, the brick-sized door became a real size door. At each step, I asked it politely to do what I needed it to do. It just seemed the right action in the circumstances. Including returning to the impenetrable dimensions. I went on for a long, long time exploring rooms as the house changed into something more like a lodge or a hotel, and guests arrived and our children romped and cats needed feeding.

I woke to Moby purring loudly, and settling on my arm, between us. Normally, he prefers belowtheknees. But this time he came to be petted by us, licking my fingers and getting a good face scritch.

My energy is pathetic, still feel like I'm the mole in the whack-a-mole. But being able to sleep normally is a blessing beyond words.

Guilt

I'm not alone, in this town, of experiencing waves of impotent guilt. Because I saw Elizabeth Smart, veiled and robed, with her captors, walking in my own neighborhood. No one knew to look for people in white robes. I had no idea, of course, that they were anything other than an eccentric group. They were hardly the only oddities on the downtown streets. There was corner meditating dreadlock guy, and shopping cart guy (who has since progressed to a riding mower, and supports himself doing yard work) and crazy evangelical guy, and badger-the-mormons woman, and brown robed nuns. They were noticeable, but strangely camouflaged. Never, ever occurred to me that the smaller woman was an abducted child. Until she was freed, and the news hit me very personally.

We can only see what we have some experience of. Even if just in a story. And if someone can come up with a whole new version, they can be truly invisible. Seen, but not categorized. A threat, but misunderstood. We avoid, without further questioning.

Her testimony today saddens me, that if only I'd thought about it, opened my mind, maybe, maybe... but no. And the most guilty feel no guilt at all.