Numb, not so comfy

Sitting, beautiful evening.
Sat most of beautiful day (at work).
Birds have been singing since before I got up.
It's early enough, nearing bedtime for toddlers is all.
I can't think of what I have motive to do,
I don't think I'm thinking at all.
Dear Limbic System,
Anything up up there?
Not hungry, not tired, no creative or deadline-creative impetus goading me along.

My preference is to have been at a memorial service; I am very uninterested in getting to most people's funeral events, even when they are called celebration-of-life. I am taken off guard by how much I care about this one, how much I realize … he was really great; I got to meet him, have conversations with him in which I as a scholar floundered terribly … yes, this man who could speak and read five languages, who could understand the way human language — story — developed, who made his own research Opensource decades before that was a common term (and it is still uncommon in "scholarship") … I guess the impression on this "never going to go to graduate school" lady (albeit, I have tried grad. school twice to varying extents but with the same drop-out result) was deep.

I got to play at research as a young woman then. Outside of never having been starving, it's my favorite privilege.

He had a lisp. He was not tall. He was charming, disarmed, intense in conveying why This matters. I have multiple stories from others how he changed their lives with a simple reading of something. To a book-nerd, oh my, that is quiet power.

So, not to be there, when fellows were sure to be there making little speeches or just standing around, fellows whom I might recall from my years at MU from the Classics department, from the English department – indeed, his very wife and children whom I knew …

I would be half-satisfied with a YouTube rendition of what was said. Am sending a card/letter to wife, but it's not the same / as well.

I did send an email to him not so long ago, out of precursors to these "oh, my, you are it" thoughts; it was likely gushy. It was not met with a response. I was fine to think it was because he was great and busy and that gushy things are annoying and take people months to get to, if they ever do.

Now, though, the reason might only have been, "I have cancer, and it's not going so well."

Rest in peace, John Miles Foley.

Nearly every blog I've loved & linked to is dead

A while ago

I heard things in passing, in very limited ways.

In June, when they were moving the office, and I was learning that I did not have the IQ (selective memory) for folding up flat-engineered file boxes into their 3D shapes of usefulness), I heard yelling. Profanity. Non-cooperative language, all in one direction.

Do any of you hear yelling at the workplace? Male to female?

Later, after it was July, and after I had, again, gained/lost another year and obtained a "new" job on or around my birthday, he and I were in his car. There were fast-food bags and evidences of children on the floormats, little bits and pieces, paperclips, toys, detritus. I learned that he was not about small talk, that he was not interested in any entertaining listening. He is charming and will ask, "How was your weekend?"-type questions, but more than once we've been talking at the same time, and I am no fool; I know that's not my place. It's not enforced, but, Thank God, I haven't made a mistake yet. I have heard what is said of others who do.

Lucky they, to have someone who is as brilliant as they are = me, to do their most tedious and boring tasks. They learned their lesson with two paralegal interns who were completely non-intuitive and also rote and, in one case, coastingly non-engaged.

When we were driving back from Courthouse Instructional Introductional 101, instead of leaving me any space in which I could ask whether he was aware of the 20-years-ago hourly wage they were paying me — and when, perhaps, I might expect an improvement from $10/hr. — he talked instead of how he knew was perceived as treating his wife.

He said that I shouldn't be alarmed, that sometimes he had to get harsh with clients who were not following probate directions, for example, and also with his wife, who, despite being able to "spot a penny in a million dollars" was distracted and started and stopped things too much, perhaps even had ADD.

During this monologue he brought up the person I replaced, saying that she had hard feelings about his relationship with his wife and therefore did not cooperate in return. Well, I know both of these women, and my predecessor is not wrong. She has been through things that have taught her, and so have I.

It's an amazing fact to see both sides of many things: the obliviousness on the one hand, the acquiescence on the other.

And this week, the wife has used her vacation time to come in and do a job that could have been hired out years ago. One that will be "soon" but is late again already.

He talks to her like she is stupid, and he uses the excuse that "she's used to it" — because the men (presumably) she works for at ____ [large company making food products] act far worse, react crazily, yell and demand.

Really?

At the moment I was hearing these explanations, I was in the car and newly "employed." I was much more afraid of bankruptcy and starvation … but within a quarter-year's time, the light is dawning.

He thanks me for whatever mundane thing I do.

He does not thank her.

I have learned that she does nearly everything for their two kids. And, it seems to me, based on things I won't mention, that he only has children out of egoistic legacy BS.

Someday I do hope to learn why they ever decided to be together.

But the other week when it was evident by his conversations that he was not at all supportive or kind. I have a grand talent of not being able to not hear conversations anywhere near me; however, doors should be closed BEFORE one says the most evident things like, "I shouldn't probably tell you this but …" (to the female lawyer he runs to for emotional support on things) or "How are you … did you start? SIGH … / I just want to know do I have to sue someone …" (to his wife over the phone).

I mean, COME ON, I'm a faux novelist, and he was first trained as a journalist. I just don't feel comfortable about being there.

I know I can't change him, and it's not my mission to change her.

Once, when I was teaching in Japan, one of the teachers berated some student within ear-shot of the whole town, it seemed, but only a few feet away from where I was hunched at a desk. Japanese offices are open places. The English-speaking teachers did not feel compelled to tell me what the transgression had been, but the verbal punishment seemed disproportionate to me, nonetheless. Men who scream profanities and condemnations at the top of their lungs make me puke.

Also, such actions expose a huge weakness on their part.

I don't feel personally threatened, but I also feel the solidarity of personhood, and I don't accept being near to such evil.

I don't care if he feels he's helping strangers. Yes, probate law is a necessary evil, and one needs counsel to navigate it. But as it's not a choice, it's not as if there's an innate nobility in carrying it out (for money).

I do know that the one time he did happen to be listening when I said something about myself his face changed. He felt risk. All I said was that I felt oppressed by the personal stories I received and had to carry as a journalist when I was with the weekly paper. He seemed to think I was expressing a weakness of sensitivity that could lead to flightiness that would lead, let's face it, to a bottom-line inconvenience for him (having to hire someone new).

At that job, I don't remember what I do there 10 minutes after it's out of my task-range. I don't forget things that need to be done, but I intentionally erase everything mentally once it's over. That is a dangerous new skill, intentional but unconscious forgetting.

*****

This post's title is original, and it's about six months later still since I first drafted it. Since then, I have had the good fortune to be able to leave said underpaid job under three attorneys and be enfolded once again into a journalism-related position, one with adequate salary, paid vacation time, and benefits.

The "intentional but unconscious forgetting" is not needed as a coping mechanism any longer.

I did have to get over a period of anger (not nearly as long as the anger/sorrow at the betrayal issues at the longer-term last job) though, regarding my treatment there as a second-class brain. Also, after they had raised my hourly wage 25 percent 90 days in, with words of praise, about 90 days later, they sat me down to cut my hours to 25/week "because it's more economical." Not a tragedy in itself, if the ambush meeting hadn't been prefaced with words about how I seemed overwhelmed and frustrated (ie: not lavishing deferential). I pointed out that they were not communicating with each other and thus were expecting every job to be done immediately, something that is impossible, and that they each had distinct working personalities … and that I never left for lunch, and that it seemed strange that more would get done with fewer hours (no, not strange at all; one can sense when one is being edged out). So, yeah, I felt a little abused.

Anyway, the people I work with now certainly have their flaws, but at least I can respect them.

Leaving on a jet plane

It came out a year before I was born, more or less (at least per the published calendar years — Julian? Gregorgian?) … Anno Domini, anyway. Fact is, I and this musical were produced, so to speak, a year apart, 365 days being as precise as certain systems get. This means it was conceived before I was, before I existed on the planet as a human (the one I am now) — even by Arizona standards …

To me, and perhaps me only, it is interesting that I glommed on so to the Webber/Rice rendition of the Christian historic founder of the branch-Hebrew monotheism. Yeshua / Jesus (not Paul, who could be said to be the true founder — talk later on that) was attractive to me due to the presentation of JC as, well, "JC" — a hip, indeed, bonifide hippie, lovely and misunderstood hero.

I know the Bible, and I know some church history, and much of this musical is fiction.

But the dramatic storytelling is compelling, and certain things ring true to the post-Vatican II scholar (I am not a scholar, just someone who attended Catholic school for 13 years — with lots of interactive questioning, etc.).

Since I was born in 1974 or perhaps for some other reason, I did not ever like how Judas, the "betrayer," was cast as the only prominent black man in Jesus Christ Superstar or how he and Simon (zealots) put on these huge-toothed silly looks all the time. That seemed so transparently then-obvious. Still, even as the young person whose teachers in approx. sixth grade showed us the JCS VHS, I identified with the play-framed desert-party.

I got it. It meant something to me. I like hippies?

My mother and I stand at far-long poles of the seeming monorail of political belief, yet it was her four-album collection (eight sides), complete with a half-jacket-sized lyrics booklet that I took up so passionately. She had multiple Elton John records, the Who's Tommy, Neil Diamond — freaking Iron Butterfly, I say — and later, even The Lipps's Mouth to Mouth, featuring Funky Town, which she, I and my younger brother danced to regularly in the living room. Gold carpet. Red "Spanish" effect couch.

People are complex, thank goodness.

There is no way to count the hours I spent as an adolescent sitting on the old fake leather couch in our unfinished basement listening to the JCS LP's on my youngest uncle's rejected stereo, "old," even for-then. It had the works, by the way: an unfailing phonograph, OMG 8-track player, a cassette deck (deck!), and AM/FM radio. The radio even worked in the basement, so you know it was the olden days. The foam-covered speakers had been shredded down to black cloth already by my first and best and worst-lost cat, but it was still a delightful tool. My uncle is now a year or two 'round 50. I don't need to know which direction : )

There was one Lent season during which I think I listened to JCS every evening or at least every Sunday. And I cried every time.

Puberty was involved, then, but the play/movie/show/album still tend(s) to make me cry.

It could have been Cats or  Phantom of the Opera, but it wasn't.

The four (still four) CD set from the British '90s revival of JCS is in my collection. Not uploaded to iTunes library … but the other night, I indulged in the spontaneous super-shopping that Amazon affords and counts on, and I got, for $9.99, unlimited access to JCS, the movie (Internet connection required; ah, the cloud).

Have been dancing every evening ever since.

As a final note: no, of course — it is not lost on me that "Christ" was not added to his name until many, many years later, post-Paul / Greek era —I went to Catholic school, remember? And, as such, I also learned the literary rouse of "suspension of disbelief."

Things like

How much bacteria is thriving on the giving end of the toothpaste tube?

I don't like to think about unboiled kitchen sponges. How often is enough? I don't ever do it.

In general, no one around here gets infected.

In general.

Two birds are suffering from similar but perhaps discreet digestive infections.

There was that one two-days when he, then I, spent in utter delirious agony. The "24 bugs" are powerful things.

I cleaned some spilled, frozen multi-grease from its place around the ice-maker dispensing area. "Someone" closed the door too violently after making catfish nuggets.

Multi-grease is an amazing thought just on its own: bacon fat, beef drippings, fish-fried oil. Oh my.

Someday I want to live in a vegan household. Just us and birds. No dead animal products or live/dead-animal by products. I want to live somewhere (don't we all — let's ask the poorest of the Brasilans, the majority of Hatitians, list on and on) with correct and efficient plumbing, too … the kind that doesn't smell.

Self-diagnosis for that patch on a place on my back-ish thigh-side that is most difficult, but not impossible, to view (sans mirror and without glasses) is that it's ringworm. It was just a tiny bug bite-type thing, and, of course, I scratch everything.

And there is this raunchy cat here, the million-dollar probably-going-to-die-anyway critter, and the infected birds, and even though I wash my hands a lot, I read that, well, this fungus is among us, day in and day out, regardless. I had a ring-worm patch once, before, on my femur area … about 25 years ago. I rather was enchanted with it. It went away with OTC cream. But I'm older now, and paranoid, and have health insurance, so I want to be sure. Hello, Walgreen's Take Care clinic. (Sigh.)

Meh, says the woman who hasn't been to a dentist for ~ years.

Meh, says the woman who sought NEW CONTACTS / REAL SIGHT last Thursday and whose intake form and comments were misread/heard so that, sigh, again she's bought glasses that are not in yet and has to, when that happens, come sit for additional exams. Another week, another seven days of just not seeing.

I've become somewhat resigned to having poor vision. One must adapt, if one can not pay $600 every year to get upgraded aids. My last optical exam, before the one eight days ago, was in advance of friends' wedding (and our driving there, across the eastern US to Salem, Mass.) on 09-09-09.

I hate driving around to appointments. Cat, self, bird, car, etc. It's like having to mail things times 1,000.

There are things here from DECEMBER I haven't yet mailed. OCTOBER, even.

Is this in the DSM IV?

Feline race

I am nearing the finish line.

Here's how:

In the past 4.5 years have had (all aging, all sickly as aging things are):

1 black-and-white (tuxedo — though more white than black) cat;

1 orange striped (Morris-style; yes, fat) cat;

1 grey cat with white socks and white front blaze;

1 current cat who is tortiseshell colored.

Therefore, the maximum number of cats I shall further have in this lifetime is four, as follows:

1 all-white cat;

1 all-black cat (mimicking first-cat-ever; KiKi, a stray we fed baloney to when I was a kid, and whom the next-door neighbor, the kind and never-married Dorothy took in; he visited from time to time; the Dorothy on the other side was married … Gus died … their houses feature too often in my dreams); back on point:

1 Siamese-colored cat (who will never, ever be as good as Tiffy, my First Best Cat Ever, who came to me as a gift and a kitten); and

1 calico cat (again; best one ever seemed to be mom's Katie, petite and sweet … sadly killed right on the curb by a car … the yard was a half-acre. I don't know; it was horrid).

There were other cats, proof that others' cats are never the same as your own. Props and occasional lap-flops / calf-sharks, there is a difference in relationship spectrum.

I do not allow for fur variations; long-haired cats are silly human experiments and too much unwonted trouble. I will make a wild-card exception for hairless cat (maybe three of those).

So, in about 5 years, if current trends continue (and I don't start taking on kitties who are not at least 12 years of age), I shall be cat-free by the time I am 44 or so.

Just in time — wheew! — not to be a crazy Cat Lady but with perhaps a few decades left during which to perfect my crazy Bird Lady thing. That is, if my two infected birds ever get diagnosed and cured.

Irrelevant Lilac

Got a Final Notice from the county asking about what property I owned as of January first. The fact that I thought I already turned this in … and that I have not located the original request form even after clearing off most of my desk, indicates a bit of negligence.

I started a new full-time job on the 12th; I worked there the week prior during my "off" hours at the was-full-time-became-part-time position with the attorneys.

The day before that, the new-old cat came to live with us. The split-job week, I tried to make appointments for the two birds who continue to be sick, but as the clinic is 25 miles into the suburbs, accessed by the one major commuter highway, trying to get there at either 7:30 in the morning or 4:30 p.m. proved to be an impossibility. I thought I could swing it, but then I'd come to the realization, usually because I was tired, that I was making up new physics.

Judge me for the fact that last year's tax forms are sitting here awaiting signatures. Granted, they were completed in extension-time October (when I had to borrow money to cover what was owed due to 2010's unintentional self-employment status). I'm not being penalized; the IRS got things electronically — and they got their money (even the extra $300, including penalties) that my accountant messed up due to a misunderstanding (another way to put this is that she did not check the 2009 forms she had prepared for us).

Figure this pattern out for me; help me correct this character flaw:

I was all set to take the birds in on some evening (before I had actually decided it did not meet the requirements of our standard three dimensions), but the receptionist/tech, who said she'd call to confirm that particular appointment slot was indeed open for Dr. B____, did not. Did I call her? No. I opted to operate on the presumption that it wasn't for me to go bothering her, that a no-call meant "no." When she called 30 minutes after I should have been there, had I known (fully) I was expected, I ignored the call. I'm like that.

Of course, the birds are still sick. I may just call my usual vet, the one who proclaimed Bird 1 cured last July, when the very next day Bird 1 threw up again, and a few months before Bird 2 started showing the same kind of symptoms. She's probably less expensive than the ones with the fancy website and the excellent "cageside manner," but I get tired of her attitude and the fact that she keeps bird-patient records on index cards.

Likewise and illustrative of the same personality disorder (me, not her), I have touched and moved and resorted the completed 2010 tax forms dozens of times since October. I think it was January or so before I actually read them thoroughly enough to discover that the CPA had assigned me a new job description (making both my husband and I artists for our 1099 income), as well as reported a business address for him that is actually our former apartment (four years ago … she has been doing our taxes for about eight …). This apartment address, granted, appears on his paychecks, because he works for one of those bosses who can't be bothered to switch things, but that address would be on a W2, not the numerous art-business-related 1099s.

So, being exasperated by the prospect of having to send in corrected 1040s myself (sigh) or to ask the accountant (who did not blink about the fact that her error incurred me $170 in penalties for that aforementioned oversight) to do so while hoping it's not a job charged to me, I haven't completed the signing/mailing step.

I have not combed through all the 2011 receipts and reporting forms, either. Yes, I know this is all due in a fortnight. Once you get on the delayed train, it's very difficult to go back. I filed my own extension last year anyway.

It's the same with the mortgage payment; it's not "late" until the 16th, and at some point (hmm, perhaps due to poorly paying jobs? : ) jumping on the computer and authorizing a one-time EFT on the 15th became the norm.

The cat did go to the vet on Saturday. Unfortunately, she still has stomatitis, which means that her prognosis was not fully disclosed to me when the rescue group handed her over (with veterinary paperwork … I thought the dental work they did had fixed things / did not have a smart phone on hand to Google about this mouth inflamation condition), and that she's in pain.

To try to fix that, she will have to have a surgery to remove most of her teeth. This includes X-rays and biopsy to see whether the underlying cause is cancer or whatever. The condition is not necessarily age-related.

Behind in mail-work, as well as taxes and filing, I need to send my cousin a congratulations card for her marriage, my grandfather a thank-you card for his Christmas gift, and some copies of the product the company I now work for publishes to my immediate family members.

My excuse is that I was looking for a job and then I found one. I also had a contract job come and find me, thus adding to the time-less-ness. And I sometimes write here. And I sometimes write at another blog that has a semi-public purpose.

The things I was going to send my brother and sister-in-law for Christmas are still here; I am going to wait until after they move, which is in about eight weeks.

It starts with a parakeet

Later, you realize a few things; first, that little birds are susceptible to mere drafts as Victorian ladies were preported to have been … then, that watching anyone you even mildly cared about or cared for pass away is increasingly more difficult to bear.

One would think that habit would make anything easier, but, with dying / death, I have found it to be cumulative.

You begin as a child, coming home one day in Second Grade to find your bird-friend kindly laid out in a charming white shoe box with the lid on; inside the blue line border on top, your mom has penned: "Here lies Sammy," with his dates. You sit at the kitchen table for an hour or so, box open, crying. You still believe that maybe the bird will wake up. Later, you and mom go to the yard and dig a grave.

The second time, you see death up close in a different way: struggling goldfish — hours of crying — swimming 'round and 'round the bowl, tilted sideways.

Then, there is the runaway dog. Meanwhile, a greatuncle you knew as the one you hardly saw but who knew your soul (Joe always called me "Mean Tracy" in a dear way) passes away at the age of 35, from cancer. And you can't think of him without crying, even now, when you're past 35 years yourself.

Then, your paternal grandmother dies from lymphoma while you were on vacation at the age of 10 in Hannibal, Missouri, playing at Mark Twain's home and in a waterpark with a wave pool that nearly wiped you off Earth. And you were just beginning to understand her and have a relationship. Her Underwood typewriter, all 20 pounds of it, sits in your foyer as an artifact.

Then, there was your favorite, the suddenly vanished (banished) first cat who, to this date, still represents your only kitten-love; Tiffy had such chronic fleas in an age when Frontline did not exist … we fumigated the house many times, and still, if you went to the basement, you'd have to coat your pulled-up white tube socks with Raid and then move quickly to avoid being devoured — I used to look like a leper.

He would follow me around like a dog through the neighborhood; he used to drag my comfort blanket from my bed to use wherever. We had a fun hide-and-seek game, etc.

There was lost Chainsaw follower-cat (known only one hour in college but who was *sure* to be there in the morning but wasn't) …

Birdie, another parakeet, who was a fun friend who liked helping me type papers in college, died while I was overseas in Japan.

It has only gotten harder.

There was the dear little bedraggled cat who showed up at our apartment a few years back, black and white, sweet as pie, sans (all) claws and who seemed to be there to comfort me for my maternal grandmother's death … only to succumb within a year to the inoperable intestinal cancer that made her vomit up things that only nurses (God bless them) are used to. I'm not sure, though, that anyone gets used to things like that, though I think we should all be more aware and in touch with them.

Milo, a fat orange cat, died suddenly and alone one night while I was at work and my spouse was there to find him under my desk around midnight. I got a text, and I know that finding his tongue-out body still weighs heavily on my husband. I cried at work, and no one noticed. I cried even though this creature had cost me $900 and two ER visits due to his violent paranoia about other cats.

We have paid to cremate them all. We have all their ashes, and I don't know what to do with them.

The grandmothers, of course, are buried.

I did not mention Sugar, who, like Milo, was here about a year and also because her previous owner, like his, was old and had died, and there was no one else able to keep them.

I did not mention Superlemon No. 7, a yellow (and before the cats) free-range budgie who developed a tumor at age 10 or so that made him cry out in a way I will never forget. And I so wanted him to be able to be saved. But small things are not within human power to try to begin to handle, I was told in less ceremonious terms.

Sugar's last hours are burned in my memory, too, though she did not cry. To see her try to walk, after we harassed her with getting into a carrier she hated … to take her to her euthanasia on a Sunday and at ER cost — it was horrifying and heartbreaking how she collapsed.

Then, not too long afterwards, and not too long ago, we acquired a new cat.

It was not planned, as with most of the others. The pet supply store allows a rescue group to bring in samples on the first weekend of the month.

Not expecting to meet great new cats and an excellent dog while just picking up bird food, we thought we were safe because, "We only take old cats because of our birds."

"Oh, we have a cat for you," the representative said.

Oh.

"We'll bring her in tomorrow; we normally don't because she's not …."

So, a month ago, suckers again we became. Bree is, as billed, a bit "special needs," but she can jump better than any of her three aged predecessors. She is matt-y but in better coat-shape now that she's getting regular petting. She eats little, but I think it's from her mouth infection. She's going to the vet on Saturday.

It feels odd because, as Sugar's personality was so mild, I hardly remember her doing anything. It probably was too soon. But … old things need homes, just like young ones, and there is never any shortage of needs of all kinds.

Also, as a dear (human) friend of mine reminds me, "It would be good if we all could go as they do."

Charades

The recent Komen cure vs. Planned Parenthood battle has brought a few distractions to light:

Americans like to argue about who cares more about life.

Life, for the sides, carries different definitions.

It's a distraction, this bickering about whether a fetus is alive enough to be human; it's a distraction, these non sequiturs about whether it's a good idea to allow someone to undo a bad decision (either her own, a shared one, or one forced on her by an attacker of some kind).

The thing is, abortion is still a legal option, a legal medical procedure in our country. Sure, Ms. Roe reportedly regrets her decision. I think she regrets more the fact that she was placed on stage about it. I work for attorneys these days, and I have hints about what might go on in a trial or beforehand, the nitty gritty that compels a person to go under oath and fight for something.

The case lingered so long that she had the child anyway, and so, of course, she must face her offspring with the sentiment that it would have been wrong to have killed her/him off. Of course. And she's no one, I'm sorry, to speak for how people who have actually had abortions feel afterwards. Perhaps she knew then what the "now" felt like, but she doesn't know now what the after feels like.

We are all on different experience trains, after all.

I read that Planned Parenthood received a huge increase in "outrage" donations, supposedly surpassing what Komen's grants provide on an annual basis.

I wonder whether that was an unplanned or intended consequence — or if it was just another of those things to make me think that, no, there can't be any grand conspiracies because humans are so dreadfully disorganized. We end up so often with things we did not intend.

Intention brings me back to my reason for rambling: no one who doesn't want to have children intends for a particular sex act to create a child. Of course, s/he can take certain steps to add to the probability that procreation will not occur, but, we all know this: nothing is 100 percent effective. This does not address, either, rape victims' lack of being able to choose the act in the first place.

However, a woman who takes the daunting step to approach a doctor (whether in a "clinic" such as Planned Parenthood, albeit a safer-feeling place than the alternative — going to a hospital and asking an ER intake clerk what to do or even being terribly upfront enough to go to the primary care provider, provided one has one at all), that woman has one intention. Well, perhaps two.

The first is to determine whether she is truly pregnant. Some hope that the drugstore test was, somehow, wrong. Most know that their bodies are saying, "No, it's all quite happening."

The second is, I'm sorry, in order to find a way to avoid the physical transformation, on the one hand, and the life-long literal responsibility, on the other. Yes, women who go to get abortions want to get abortions. It's not a secret.

But they are not evil.

They are in a place most of you reading won't ever be. Abortions are still a minority experience, even when we add in men whose babies were terminated either with their consent or against their will.

It's very specific. It's very personal. It's almost always very horrible, even if the little one inside who is causing moral upheaval, physical distress, emotional turmoil … is a creation from someone she loves deeply.

And, I'm sorry, but it's still legal in the United States of America and a number of other countries.

On another law-related topic, it was pointed out to me by my husband that we abide by a skewed set of standards: women are always generally given control of whether a baby is born or not. (Please lay aside the forced-to-term births by controlling men over abused women or by obstructive laws that have waiting periods, consents, or that require women by their circumstance of residency / local politics to travel long distances for what is, to them, at the time, freedom.)

For example: a woman can tell a man she is on the Pill. She can say this even if she is not, and if/when she becomes pregnant, the man is responsible for financial support of the borne offspring. He may or may not be allowed any custody or visitation rights. Is that fair? (I acknowledge that a man can lie about a vasectomy or can take off a condom without a woman's knowledge … but that baby, if one is created, is still his responsibility; he's in a power-position, but she still retains the legal right to avoid it, and his duplicity does not change the fact that she, in the end, has the power of procreation and of what we label choice.)

For example: a woman might become pregnant without the intention or either party, even if one or both of them are using a birth control feature in good faith, yet, it is she and she alone, who gets to decide whether that fetus/baby lives. "My body, my choice" is supposed to be empowering to females, but I can't help but see how it shuts out the other genetic contributor. Is that fair? I think I am missing a feminist piece of history. I've been alive only as long as American abortion has been legal.

When I lived in Japan 14 years ago, I learned that for them, abortion was a sanctioned form of birth control and somewhat widespread. The Japanese also are the leading consumers of condoms. I don't know: perhaps they buy them on conscience but don't use them? Sounds familiar.

I also learned that a woman has to have the signed consent of the paternal entity (would you rather I say "baby's father?") in order to have an abortion. And that Japanese health care providers, like many pro-life activists in our country wish ours all did, automatically do an ultrasound, which shows, that, yup, there's a living, cute little person in there. It's not just a positive stripe on a test.

My point is that our laws are irrational. They claim one thing and accomplish another. And also that the most "life-protecting" policies do not insure that women somehow will stop using this last-resort, a choice that is often quite thought-out, and often un-blithe, very visceral and very permanent but chosen as necessary; as way of controlling their own destiny, it, in short, works.

I would encourage you to read the book, Jane, if you think women will stop getting abortions, even dangerous ones, as this story explains, if the law of the land prevents it.

I agree that all life is sacred. But I also observe that we, all the time, make choices about others' lives. I don't donate food to shelters nor offer up my own too-spacious home to shelter those who need it. I don't have resources to sustain my so-called lifestyle, yet I'm not providing a nursery for some alone-and-pregnant person. I do put my money where my mouth is, which is to say, barely anywhere. I acknowledge that we all are selfish, but I likewise can say I am no hypocrite.

I have committed theft, but I have only twice lied, and only to a lover, when I was quite young and very confused. The stealing amounted to taking a five-dollar bill from a sidewalk, a coffee maker from a college psychology department "chill room," and, when I was five, a daffodil from a neighbors' yard to give to my mother; around the same time, I ate a gumball from a five-and-dime, because it was spilled on the floor and seemed like a sample.

Therefore, I find the touted "must save all life" rhetoric of the mislabeled pro-life side to ring untrue.

Yes, some have adopted disadvantaged children. Many, many children remain.

Yes, killing anyone is wrong; however, we don't seem to mind the death penalty, the trillion-dollar military wars … including the "war on drugs" that puts tens of thousands of people in jail in our country and also at a disproportionally non-white rate (creating orphans) and that kills, especially in our coordination with Mexico (through violence I can't understand) tens of thousands of people who don't even fucking smoke pot.

Humans will always have contradictions and anomalies. I just wish we could be honest about them. We are wasting so much time pretending.

Pretending is something I understood to be something children did.

I used to play house. Not the sexual kind, just making food and tending to dolls.

I used to play army. Not the malicious kind, just going through maneuvers with toys in the gravel driveway.

I used to play office. Yes, the exact kind I feel a bit condemned to to this very day.

Circa Dec. 2001

i am tired:

tired of paper,

shuffling steps,

slick edges that bite

and keyboard hunches,

florescent light,

skipped and rushed lunches

then dull, lonely nights

of dry tasks at home,

darkness of walls

under high, cracked ceilings

with a brain unbright, sad,

yes, those are my feelings

between working and bed,

the dull, lonely nights

despite constant company

from a lover, no less,

whose profession is passion,

which both delights and drowns,

like seashores, where inaction

leads unswimmers sinking naturally down

into dull, lonely nights

unflickering with transluscent wings

lofting insect smiles that could buzz

the heartstrings of one

for whom dinner was made

hours after the sun

faded and my hunger set, delayed

for dull, lonely nights,

small, unseen cages to catch joy

and throw it away

while he studies and draws

i stumble, fall, locked into petty tasks,

floors followed with broomstraw,

profound questions unasked

during dull, lonely nights.

Things To Do

Finish lunch.

Find job for me.

Find job for him.

File bills.

Deposit checks.

Write check to IRS.

Pick up spewed medicine cabinet contents from bathroom floor.

Wash bathroom floor.

Move bathroom mirror.

Patch bathroom plaster.

Sweep and swiffer every other rooms' floors.

Clean birdcages.

De-dust multiple surfaces.

Determine why I'm unable to part with old magazines, tourist publications, and other mail that is "pretty."

Determine why I'm unable to part with old clothes that are not ruined but do not fit.

Determine why I still have:

Christmas ornaments, an aluminum tree and two color-wheels;
a box of yarn my mom discarded, some skeins of which are older than I am;
a box of t-shirt fabric my grandmother left behind;
a porcelain doll in the original box from my great aunt;
a gold rosary from my grandmother;
an Austrian crystal rosary from my other grandmother;
bottle of gunky dark blue nail polish purchased in Paris for $2 in 1996;
two extremely outdated laptops I'm afraid to turn on to see whether any data (old writing) is salvageable;
my original bed from childhood;
ashes from two cats and one budgie;
a carafe-less Boden French-press coffee pot;
two hammocks from Vietnam that have never been hung;
an office chair in the hallway from a former job;
four Duncan Phyfe chairs that no one can sit on;
a small pile of rusted found metal objects on the patio;
a filing cabinet full of old artwork, school papers, paints, Sun Magazines and other people's manuscripts and art-postcards;
a box of fossils;

the original wood-frame windows from my last apartment when the landlord did an upgrade;
10 plastic alligators from a 2008 Mardi gras costume;
a Kelty hiking backpack that hasn't been used since 2003;
a black velvet dress I found in a roachy box at an antique store during high school that I took in clumsily and ruined;
a pale silk dress I found at a thrift store during college that was always too big and has a pen-mark on it;
storage tub full of copies of hand-written letters I sent to boys before the Internet existed;
two antique and very heavy bicycles;
two fishing poles and one reel from the 1980s that my dad gave me and that we used to use;
a 10-foot circular wool rug that my mom didn't want anymore but that will never match my decor;
cookie cutters;
unpaired earrings;
my first pair of earrings,
two punch bowls and associated cups that I got for a 2000 New Year's party;
my wedding shoes that are stained;
a box of bird feathers;
a tooth, whisker and collar from my first cat;
my first grey hair;
a book a friend wrote that I purchased in hardback that I think sucks;
two books another friend wrote that are excellent but that I can't read;
four high school yearbooks;
birthday cards spanning decades;
diaries that I wrote but that sound like they are from another human entirely;
this blog.

The answer for most items is the same. Or similar. It does not rhyme with hoarding, but it also is why Buddha won't come over to visit. I am excruciatingly sentimental. Not just with things. I am the kind of person who can re-connect on Facebook with an ex-boyfriend after 20 years and quote to him what he told me about his grandparents. I am the kind of person who can write a letter to my younger brother on his 21st birthday and list all the things we used to do growing up that I loved, only to have him tell me he had not remembered any of them (until then). The kind of person who didn't have to look at or for any of the things listed above with my eyes to know they exist and where they are stored.

In the house, we also have a piece of slate and a broken salad-oil bottle from Joplin's giant tornado. They were supposed to have been used in an artwork that would have been sold or auctioned in a benefit, but the artist I live with is like me sometimes. You can't always get to creating; items pile up as ideas unfulfilled. The ruse is that it's all potential energy and materials.

Knowing so ridiculously intimately about all the objects/things I possess, I wonder, truly, what it's like to lose them all in one fell swoop, such as by tornado, fire or even theft. I imagine their absence would plague me as much as their presence. I still lament and catalog items and places from childhood, high school, college, Japan, etc. that are no longer with me in a literal or tangible way. I carry them around.

One of the science shows on PBS that I have only seen clips of told us that there is a high probability of multiple, simultaneous universes. I wish I could live a very, very long time and see so many more things like this explained. When I was a child, I used to believe that, "When you died and went to Heaven," all would be revealed — you would have access to all time, all places, and all knowledge. You could travel anywhere and look down on Earth and watch it unfold. I still want that to be true, though even a so-called new-age view that we all are one / all is energy, etc. does not provide enough hope/faith/comfort to me that there is anything to look forward to once you don't have access anymore to your things, such as your body.

I have been working for about 150 days at a small law firm, and one of the attorneys specializes in probate-type matters. In other words: "What Happens to You When You Can't Take Care of Yourself and/or Your Money and/or You Die." Having a man who is approximately my parents' age come in to drop off his annual conservatorship report for the court about his aunt who has been in a decline for more than a year, hearing him explain about his photocopies and lists that the safe-deposit box was closed out, the headstone was purchased, the furniture and piano were sold off, shows what it all comes down to.

Unless you have some progeny who will do things like save a carpet, a box of yarn, fishing poles, a four-postered bed frame that originated from the nurses' quarters at Barnes Hospital 80 years ago, your religious objects … or, I guess, someone who attaches her own new meaning to objects that came from others' families ('70s punch bowls, clothing, furniture) … or who can't let go of certain gifts or items that represent experiences … no — there is no unless. This just is what it is: humans who are post-agrarian and whose memories seem to depend now on things.

Yet, I do sometimes detach myself from items.

I do give away clothes. I even gave away a wedding present that was perfectly fine, had some functionality and was from someone I love. Clutter. I donated away a waffle iron my dad had gotten for me at an estate sale. Impossible to clean. Last week, I set the television, a DVD player, the digital converter box, and another TV that only worked as a VCR-playing device (and VCR) out on the curb because I was irritated with the accumulation; three of the five objects had been in a cabinet for months, if not years.

To be fair to my sense of recycling: I did not expect the city trash service to take them; I was hoping someone who wanted them or who was a wire-salvager would be on the receiving end. The electronics were not in a bag — in this two-bag-limit, our-landfill-is-too-full town. The city trash collectors are the same ones who, a few weeks ago, would not take a large charcoal bag of trash because the contract recycling collectors had put a sticker on it that said: "Oops, not recyclable." Or they had gotten there first and presumed it was a "leaf bag."

I still have six aluminum ice cube trays, and they are not in the freezer.

Next to them on the deacon's bench is a snowman-shaped vase filled with candy canes from last Christmas.

2 random

******

1984 prediction

Someday when all your "stuff" is on "the Cloud," and the only "stuff" you care about is not tangible but only intellectual property and data, don't come crying to me when "they" pull the plug and you are more destitute than someone who's just had a house-fire.

Do they sell Cloud Insurance?

All your books, bills, writing, music, photo-memories, etc. — gone. Likely you will have paid to have it there. And it's likely that the System won't have the resources to care or to act. It might be the System that de-Guttenbergs us all for reasons that should be, in 2011, quite obvious.

I want the cloud to be my surrogate hoarder so I can live like a Buddhist, but there's no way I'm trusting something that is made of vaporous water, server-farms (powered by coal/nuclear/etc.), and profits. I loathe to carry them, and I can't get far with 100 boxes of paper, but I like books.

My Depression-era ancestors, if they had perhaps been the gold-in-the-well / currency-in-the-mattress types, have me as progeny.

"And that's the way it is, blzzzzzz." — L.T.

Vacuous

We measure things in months, which vary in the number of sunrises, on a cycle of 12. By that standard, it's been more than one. By another standard, it's been about three.

I think it's a consequence of A) my not being at liberty to be on the Internet any time I feel inspired; B) the fact that I am not often inspired in general, even as unrelated to my so-called indentured v. free time.

Tasks include: photocopy and sort; shop for supplies; endure leers and odd comments from process server known to be inexpensive, effective, and creepy; re-sort 1,000-page items into categories sub-arranged by date, ascending … given that said pages are as randomized as a jar of sand; answer door on lower level 3-7 times a day; answer a cheery, "Yes?!" whenever one of three beckon-ers decides to call (and it's not like we're all that close — shouting, it's some kind of wave of the future … I am subordinate and so send "you get to it when you can" emails — some of which are answered with a shout) … it's a bit like living with the bad parts of certain stepparents and others from my past.

For 10 dollars an hour. No benefits. No paid vacation, not even Labor Day.

Wrecking my chances? To sell you my time and rent you my brain? Maybe being hungry is just as well. I need to lose 20 pounds anyway, and I'm always "lamenting" the surplus of odd items and things (all old; nothing here is new by any means, except certain foods) collecting up in this glorified treehouse we have a mortgage on.

So, I haven't blogged (can't get used to this verb) in more than a month. Not since it was 100 degrees, 50 more than it will be tonight. Tomorrow is Monday, and Monday in the proper capitalized sense. Some people have to work on them, so I can see it's no great leap to have me have the day off but without pay. It's only convention, after all.

I think I have a mind to go cemetery-walking. I haven't seen collective personal monuments in years. I let a silverfish live today, and I'm not sure whether it was out of laziness or fear of having it fall into the bed, or a false sense of "live and let live." To the gross critter that has come to symbolize my failure, it doesn't matter; it's doing fine.

Laugh-Rite

As has my signature, over my lifetime, my laugh has changed. I noted this phenom. decades ago, and I didn't know how to explain it. I didn't engineer the changes, either; they just happened. I did sometimes act to correct or curtail them. The process has always felt … meta.

If you are of a certain age, you can peg Rosanne Barr's 'ha,' or even Johnny Carson's chuckle, Chris Rock's blast-laugh, etc. We could all come up with many examples; a favorite would be Mr. Jones's doing Darth Vadar.

My first passport (I'm only on the second) had amendments to my signature on the official first inside page. I was conscientious to note for the state departments that I acknowledged a seemingly sudden change in my "legal" way of representing myself with a pen. It went from having most of the 10 letters to a mere stylized version of my initials, a joined set of two marks.

I don't know why.

There was no circumstance to make it so, such as having to sign 100 Christmas cards or business letters. Suddenly, one of my driver's license had A, and the next and subsequent documents B.

People remark on it, more often than I'd think is warranted. I have never commented out loud on anyone's "john hancock," though I'm very interested in calligraphy, especially as it pertains to "the signature," be it on a painting/drawing/etc. or on a legal document or just a letter. The latter in this three-part example-chain is quite rare, I know. But I continue to study people's signatures the way a dog studies smells, perhaps. I just don't have any conclusions to draw.

So I do things like save cards from mom, dad, grandparents. Their signatures (only the lattermost) have changed over the years. Like their land-line home-phone voicemail messages, the signatures of my parents have not moved as long as I've known/seen them (with the exception of my mother's — but I never read her name when she used to sign it using mine/my father's; the font is the same).

My signature has not changed in at least a decade. I have an alternate one I use for business letters; it is in part so I can't be "stolen," but mostly so it looks more human, thoughtful and readable.

One of my college-era diaries has a frontpiece where I would record my new signatures. Some were experimental, some were actual documentation of a rapidly changing personal history. I'm pretty sure I could revert/resurrect any one of them.

My laugh of late reminds me of my sister-in-law's. This would be the younger one, my brother's wife. I think I have a subconscious desire to mimic her genuine happiness. It's consciously known now — look, I discovered it.

No one I know has ever remarked upon my laugh. I have heard things like "don't smile enough," "are you having fun?," "what are you thinking?," etc. My laughs have always sounded outside of my head, and I am curious what they might mean to anyone else. They are supposed to sound like music or at least be usefully infectious.

Incomplete comprehension and poor rhyme (meter is decent but not perfect)

Fat-footed giant fly

likely emerged from the woodwork

Like all the arthropods in this domicile do,

I find you less intelligent than the spiders,

and conveniently that explains a lot.

It makes sense to a human trying to

Order the world as we do.

We don't take in things

at face value but attempt to

Create just as so-named God is supposed to do.

I find us less intelligent than the spiders,

and conveniently that explains a lot.

It makes no sense to me watching my bird die

while I then choose to kill you.

Safari (Mac web browser)

this house (orig. of Mr. Price, who made his fortune along the Missouri River somehow) has belonged to the sisters (Benedictine of Atchison) for a while now, perhaps 20 years or so, and if you can find any data on his first name, etc., you are a better search-engine guru than I; it is not right not to have such data ((heard from a nun's head)) easily found on a library site online; it's a pretty house ((I was inside)), and I envy anyone who lived there or works there now, except I'm sure that 150+ years ago it was not a "fun" place to be, nor would I like to be a sister up in nowhere-KS)

RE: subject line — it does not seem to offer anything better than "delete history after 1 day."

Google/Firefox says it does not store at all, if one choses "do not store."

I do not know whom to believe. I should say "which company" in lieu of "whom," but the Supreme Court and then … (that one fellow running for president) said that corporations are people. Long live English-as-it-evolves.

In other news: 1.5-hr. call with Dad today = he sounds like life is all about having trouble breathing. He called around 2, and I was cleaning; I called back around 4 and he was "just getting up from a nap."

He will be 75 on Saturday.

My mother's father turned 82 on Friday; he had quad-bypass surgery on my birthday (about a month ago) and is doing well enough (better than my dad).

Both have heart disease and are thereby way American.

Both have excellent health care (yay, Medicare + union pension / fed. gov't insurance). They both have opinions that are political (and opposite), and that makes me laugh (until I look at my own prospects).

Guess which is which, and I shall send you something random and perhaps valuable from my home/art/collections. I promise it will not be a 12-year-old cat that howls randomly, unless you are in need of a grey-and-white being who "can see dead people."

I had a point, but now it's just a tech rant

Thank you, Firefox, for so-called blocking redirection notice but then letting what I typed in myself through. I surmise you have a special agreement with the Google. Funny how "hard" it is to post to one's own stupid blog.

I used to use two different browsers, FF for "work" and Safari for "play," and now I remember why.

It's the same annoyance at not being able to have two Excel files simultaneously open at once on the Windows 7 (you know, the one that's like Mac OS X and beyond); Word is different — umm, are you not all the same program; do you think we're all so silly we can't tell which XLS file is in view? Me no get it.

PS, there's this silly stuff as evidenced by image above. Google+, anyone? I think not (I).

Have stopped photo-posting

Not having images is a death-throe (is the hyphen necessary) to any online (or printed article, except for the WSJ, and we all know who bought that old thing).

I agree.

Throes can last quite a long time.

Brown recluse spiders apparently can live five to ten years. I once met one who was about that age.

I am tired of meeting certain things (in specific circumstances).

Curb Girl, as she was / as it were, does not walk about as much; it is a known fact that many of her digi-pics were produced with the aid of a motorized vehicle (that died from oil-spill and led to a mere blah tax deduction, a full year before "cash for clunkers" was concieved, and that fact still rankles me : )

When she does, she's usually late (read: can't spare time to stop and snap), or, the route is so routine that there is nothing of interest to note.

Also, the camera is heavy.

As is water.

Choices are not Sophie-like all the time; they are easy.