Stress test

I used to wake up in the early morning and find that I was positioning my jaws in order to threaten the roots of certain teeth.

I can't remember or physically re-create the action.

Sometimes, I would dream about it. Waking and sleep can be tenuous and mixed.

This grinding out of teeth was a huge fear of mine. As a kid and in general, I do smash my teeth together in waking life. It's like exercise, but I think it may have lessened.

The fact that I don't do this super-death-grind nor remember how to means something positive.

On an unrelated note, I think that the president (any) has a body double who goes and tries on new suits to make sure they fit, without wasting very important time.

So my body has transferred my stress from my teeth and conscious brain (and stomach) to my arteries, heart and other places. Yay?

It's interesting to me that the cardiologist called once, and the cat-dentist has called at least four times asking, "Are you coming in for that test/operation?" I find the former interesting, since I get all kinds of mis-dials on my number . . . the (human) healthcare industry does not need to fish for clients, but you would think they would have time to call more than once or send a robo-letter. Also, perhaps, the fact that veterinarians make you pay right away, with relatively few pet-havers having pet insurance, makes a difference in the profit-chasing. I don't like to accuse any health-care provider with going for the money, but my experience has shown me nothing otherwise.

The dental students who gathered at the Wichita-girl's dad-bought home last night for a "wine party" that was louder and included more varieties of alcohol than any I recall from my own college (the four-year part, not the post-grad) experience … and even if you subtract from the perception/generalized "20" that my husband who went there said said so, those kiddos didn't vote Tuesday nor see any reason to.

I am supposed to go get one of those heart stress-tests. Was supposed to do that about two months ago at this point. No one cares there, though, and I have little faith. The result is Sandy-esque, but I still want to know the answer to the whole Holter monitor affair. Didn't I buy that? Actually, I have not received any bill for that, just for the week-before E-room dealy.

Meanwhile, I have yet to compel anyone to process our 2011 taxes. They were on extension, but that's been expired for about a month. The IRS will get around to telling me so before Christmas, I expect. If I liked my former accountant, or if my prospective one had called me back . . . oh, and if I could actually pay my self-employment portion of 2011, umm, yeah.

Perhaps it's a pattern

Someone who uses her sick days … or feigns she has them to use, what a disgrace.

I do not like being closely questioned about what doctor or not I did or not consult during my mid-week illness. Would someone like to hear disturbing things that can't be responded to about my uterus, perhaps?

Looking back, my first jobs disintegrated on their own. Babysitting: the couple moved to California. Taco Bell during college: they knew my time-terms … and on the last day the A/C was out (hanging from the ceiling), and my drawer at the end of the no-electricity day [all human-based math] was at an exact $20 over. Did I take it — I who had been lectured on a few cents' difference by a manager who could not seem to keep our napkin supply adequate? No, of course, I did not steal that stupid money. What I learned was much more valuable.

I learned that I am terrible at live triple-multi-tasking, though, since then I have acquired many skills in that area; most have been while on my ass, but I trust my body could do just as well interfacing with my brain while standing. Also, no Facebook risk!

Once I quit a job with a letter. I found a replacement, though. Don't ask me why watering plants in coolers, placing pipette-tips into pipette-trays that went into the autoclave (steam sterilizer) and washing lab dishes afterhours was painful.

In many ways, I enjoyed it. Keys to a whole University Building. Flexibilty to come in whenever. Nothing difficult to do …

Then I had a job for 16 hours over one weekend during Finals (I had asked not to be put on until x-date, following Finals and a visit to my mom for Mother's Day, but …) and then I put a three-page letter in to the manager. When I went to collect my paycheck, she said something about my being an English major, but she did not note how much courage I had then to come there at all.

Having gone through the CPR and other "here are the government-approved binders of 'everyone can get this'" material at a few days' training for an overnight position at a home for developmentally disabled adtuls, I freaked out about not being able to sleep all night until my arrival at midnight, must have fallen asleep, certainly put someone's life and others' at risk and annoyance, and put the training binder into their street-side mailbox along with a letter in the morning.

When I worked at a Methodist-based social services agency, itself about 80 years old, I found myself one night upset at the computer trying to make lessons and instead crafted a six-page resignation letter. Parts of older letters were used.

I drove to the site, waited in my car until the day-care staff arrived and then put the letter clipped upright to a standing folder that was labeled "Oh no" on the cramped desk in our planning basement room. Seriously.

Then I drove to Columbia, Missouri, when I still knew how to get to the parks; I hiked around the pines. I read, in its entirety, "The Bell Jar."

My holiday season job at Bath and Body Works started one November. It crashed and burned the following April (they said it was not guaranteed to last, so I guess I was done) when, one Sunday during "change all the decorations around after hours per the hand-out from corporate (never mind that your store did not receive all the props depicted)," I happened to be painting at my other FT+ job.

We all know that Killz oil-based is a bear.

And I drove home, having overstayed, hoping we had turpintine. This place has at least three cans of paint thinner in it now.

Then, no. I freaked out and could not even bear to call and say what was going on. When you work in Beauty, you can get obsessed with how your forearms are covered in white paint.

One of my memories is of driving to Home Depot for solvents. I may or may not have found them, but either way, I was discouraged and gave up.

I sent a letter a few days later through the mail. I never did get the four books back I had lent to a fellow "associate." But I did not have the courage to go and try.

The last job I had I quit all properly, with my eyes off-focus and my rhetoric spilling out.

Before that, I was not so much fired as lied to and not paid.

The IRS experiences are varied:

first time: quit during slowing down season, and legally;

later: quit by calling in a bunch and saying I was ill / I was in school and then using my ID to get in between shifts and leave notice in my "in box" folder file on the desk outside supervisor's office by the "25¢ coffee" pot;

last time: quit by calling in and never hearing back and so being labeled a.w.o.l:

The fact that they keep sending the generic postcard to sign up for next season is charming.

New Not-a-Bill Received

I would say, on the whole, that so far Aetna's 6-page missives are more explanatory than my United/American Medical Security ones ever were.

So far, it looks like nothing is going toward the annual deductible (?) and that I owe an ER-copay and a doctor's fee.

In other news, the house is getting me down. I don't know what happened to the "to do" list that was posted on the refrigerator for the first three years we were here, but I have a solid sense that very little that was on it was accomplished.

Mostly things have reached a crisis of accumulation, an accretion that threatens to bury me.

No, there are not giant stacks of newspapers everywhere, with little paths between and infested with rodents. There are small stacks of things, however, some even in proper storage containers. The problem is that they represent objects at rest upon which no force is predicted to act in the forseeable future.

There are dust bunnies that, when collected, add up to regular lapine size – and with such frequency that my ardent Swiffer-ing cannot be faulted as the cause.

A dining room table where no one dines. Upon its cloth are a few broken bowls, one containing feathers, some candlesticks, an oil lamp and a stack of postcards that represent 25¢ each were they to be processed as data entry "work at home" work.

A living room in which nothing lives. Magazines are splayed open along the sides of the couches to deter the resident feline from shredding at them. Charming decor.

The deacon's bench has not been a place anyone could sit for perhaps two years. Mostly it has items that were given to us and unwanted. I am too conservative, though, to recycle into oblivion the potentially hazardous (look up aluminum and Alzheimer's) ice-cube trays, for example. They maintain such a pleasing mid-century design and a quaint hint at engineering that I simply can't discard them willingly. There is a lidded soup-pot in the back of our car, a more recent unsolicited give-quisition … along with a few other odds and ends that obliterated the Wow, The Car Is Free Of Both Clutter And Trash that I accomplished a mere month ago.

Entropy.

I don't mind the forces of nature bringing things around in cycles of birth, decay and rebirth – what I struggle with is the human construct that it's Noble to struggle against them. A house is a place of false security. It was made once by human hands only to be ever-needy of their continual intervention.

Would I be happier replastering a hut annually with mud? I don't know. But this hut is so huge by comparison that I can't think of where to begin. I remember when, so long ago in micro-domestic geological ages, the basement was clear, its floor sweepable, its only drawback a few crickets which moved out soon after we moved in.

The basement stairs are still insecure. The stairs leading from the back door are approaching a hazardous state. The hot water pressure is laughable. Think of how depressing it is to take a shower in America like that. Good morning! I wonder that the showers in prison aren't of better quality. I might as well hoist up kettle-water and dump it from a bucket. I might not mind that if other things were not also troubling.

How about this one-year plan:

• paint the rooms that have always wanted painting; plaster up the weird holes and paint — it will improve the mental environment in at least two ways
• scrounge up $10k and get someone to replace the roof … (keeping in mind that the IRS is waiting for approx. $5,000 presently)
• take a real vacation from work that is several days longer than a standard keep-up weekend and haul away or store off-site in plastic tubs all the items that are pre-art-projects (clothes, frames, metals, material, etc.)
• make making things something that happens in a studio of deliberate intention
• see what happens when there is more free space around
• see if someone won't buy it as-is for perhaps the size of the loan it holds
• leave anyway

When I was growing up, I saw twice and for many years the way a house can tear down a life if the life is not financially large enough to support it. I suppose I wonder most about how I did not learn a thing from this long observation. I even had the lesson repeated to me as an adult. What folly the American Dream, that it is strong enough to insinuate itself behind one's own logic and training.

It may have been easier to have just had children.

Health Care Logic

This is not a bill: $15 for EKG.

Second correspondence, a few days later, and 17 days following incident:

Amount billed: $0
Member rate: $0
Pending or not payable, "A claim that needs more review by us or an amount we did not pay. You may or may not have to pay this. Read the 'Your Claim Remarks' to learn more": $232
Deductible: $0
Coinsurance: $0
Copay: $0

… moving on to Your Claims Up Close:

Emergency Services on ____ [#random code] Amy M. Stubbs [Don't you remember meeting her? Really? Wow.] Refer to Remarks Section, $232.

O.K.:

General Remarks:
(1) You or your spouse may have other insurance that would cover this claim [which is silly because we are your only insurance, and you don't know what the claim is]. Please call or write us to confirm. If you or they [incorrect grammar] have other insurance, please send us:

1. Name, birth date, and member ID of the insured
2. Group name
3. The date coverage began
4. Name, address, and phone number of the other insurance company [because we want this to be on your Google-time, not ours — and what makes you think that our industry has some kind of handy database at its disposal? Sheesh …]
5. Employment status of the insured — actively employed, retired, or on COBRA benefits

This information may be found on the ID card for the other health plan [which does not exist].

We will make our decision within 15 days of getting the information. We'll deny the claim if we do not get this information within 45 days from the day you receive this form [a date which cannot be proven but unless you blog about it, but we have no money to look into that; also, it's confusing, isn't it, 15 days or 30 days after that — or is it really 15 days? Business days or calendar? Ah-ha, you are confused now, aren't you? You are not at all sure how you may or may not preserve your rights!].

For claims sent from Texas: Your claim may remain open if we do not get the information. [Please, do not wonder why that is … we can't just succintly say, "Laws vary by state, you know, the United States of states' rights and non-nationalization of anything means exactly this fact, because that would be inefficient and cause loss of freedom (to move to another state that has slightly different and better regulations)."]

For claims sent from North Carolina: You have 90 days to send us the information. If we don't get it [note, this is regardless of whether you send it or not], the claim will be denied. You will have one year from the date of the denial to give us the information. We will then reconsider your claim. [In other words, we often wait YEARS to get paid, and we seem to be o.k. with that. But, no, that has nothing whatsoever to do with the cost of providing healthcare.]

For NY plans [the state of New York does not need to be spelled out like the other ones]: If we do not get this information in 45 days, we will process the claim with the information we have on file

(2) Your provider may have sent diagnosis codes with your claim. [Soooo, why don't we have them — unclear! Why do you need them — unclear!] You may obtain these codes [again, your time, not ours] and their meanings [b/c such things are by no means standardized — you think this is an organized country or something?] by contacting us [not the hospital — remember we don't  really know what happened to you at the ER, and they can't tell you, either (until later in this letter)] at the number listed at the top of the first page. We will also provide your treatment codes and their meanings, if they do not appear on this statement [which you and I both know, they DON'T]. If you have questions about your diagnosis or your treatment [please, no requests about this statment itself], please contact your provider [not us, even though we just told you to call us to get the codes].

*****************

Any suggestions? Obviously, I have to make phone calls. Obviously, I'm not sure it's worth $230 to try.

I didn't mention the two pages after that with each state's Consumer Assistance Program numbers. Are those to help me decipher the bill or to help me pay it?

Also, my policy says I have a co-pay and a deductible. As usual, I just don't understand this system.

And I am pretty sure no one was meant to.

A friend of ours who is about 50 but seems at least a decade younger (and hence is uninsured; a very fit man, mentally and physically) just busted up his ankle on a job site. Going to ER was imperitive, unless he wanted to end up like Jurgis Rudkis and so many others 100 years ago. Perhaps I can provide this poor dear's medical statements for our collective enlightenment at a later date.

Veterinary bills — those make sense!

What Your Amazon On-Demand Movie List Says About You

In no particular order. If I had an editor, this would be more engaging.

Casablanca: you have a thing for inevitability, impossible romances and cheesy one-liners tossed about where folks are drinking.

A Streetcar Named Desire: you have a thing for inevitability, middle-age-reaching women who have a drinking problem and like teenagers; of course, you have read the play and then read it again, while watching the movie and taking notes.

Jaws: you have a thing for inevitability, "realism," mechanized sharks (and the sea); you were so inspired as a young kid seeing this on TV that you drew at least eight scenes, from memory, with Crayola on computer paper.

Amadeus: you like inevitability, thwarted genius, and costumes; the director's cut is not so bad.

Jaws II: you are an optimist who wishes she hadn't paid $10 for a sleepy sequel (also you like inevitability and you thought it would be as good as the first one).

Cabaret: you like politics, inevitability, green fingernail polish and people whose lives are colorful and tied to things Fosse-esque. You lived with one of his descendants, who was crazy but brought a lot of cable-recorded VHS tapes into your life.

Mary Poppins: you are a whole other type of optimist, who relishes voice-over singing, cardboard sets and one of the earliest attempts at live-actor+animation; you remember that some kids you babysat watched this so many times, you thought you'd explode.

Dazed and Confused: you watched this in college a few times and think it's a fun faux-nostalgic look at the America of your two-year-old youth.

The Graduate: you like watching rich LA people from the '60s be bored with the status quo, set to the soundtrack of something you listened to at least 345 times as a high schooler after you found the record (and taped it on a tape for your Walkman) at the house.

Lost in Translation: you can't get over Billy Murray movies, and this one includes not only that lovely girl but also outdated (when you were there) references to Japan.

America: World Police: you love puppets, especially the irreverent type; you respect the Sesame Street you grew up on, but this is just as good at your age.

Office Space: you like outdated scenes of drudgery that you are old enough to find humor in — a 3.5-inch floppy with a virus? Hilarious!

The Triplets of Belleville: you like animation and dark humor.

Jesus Christ Superstar:  you enjoy the costumes, the sincerity and the extreme danceability of all the tracks; you sing them in your sleep; this reminds you of when you would sit in the basement, reading the booklet that came with the four-record set your mom had; even though she now votes Republican, the fact that she used to sing this, too, along with Elton John, Boy George, and the Who, provides a different kind of nostalgia.

The fact that you have no films that are any newer than 1990 (this is a guess): you also read late-18th to early 20th-century novels no fewer than 20 times each.


The majority of these movies have brought me to tears more times than I have bothered to count. (Not Office Space nor Jaws II).

Why Shouldn't the Heart Wear Itself Out?

Detail of table vignette in Renée Cinderhouse's Manifest Destiny, an installation of hand-made porcelain objects, artifacts, and encyclopaedia pages amid trees, that takes you into a life-sized pop-up storybook of America's ghost history. Manifest Destiny is at La Esquina in Kansas City, Missouri, and will be on view through September 30. Next Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the Denver Broncos UK fill the space with their unique (and rarely performed live) sound. Scroll down from here and go to the ticketing page.

Unless there is active cancer, then usually, yes, yes, there are also things like diabetes, car accidents, random poisonings (acute, not the cancer-type — think about things that come via blood-sucking insects and bacteria-infected food) that can kill you, but I'm just talking about when the engine itself finally shuts down.

That's pretty much the universal ultimate for most.

I have known people with various chronic illnesses who, ultimately, succumbed to heart attacks. I have known various people who seemed never to be sick (via anything outside their own control) fall to their hearts' accumulated weakness. The latter seem to live, but their attacks come earlier in life.

For the third or fourth time this growing season, we have cut the lawn and trimmed down the legitimate shrubs and tried (as unsuccessfully as usual) to kill the fast-growing woody weeds someone accidentally or intentionally imported from China years ago.

The yard was a disaster of neglect, albeit neglect during drought. The very high temperatures, for days on end topping 100ºF and of a dry, non-Midwestern nature, kept us from venturing out into the yard. We got the trees trimmed, though; I think that should count for something.

We have a tree, therefore, we have limited landscaping options in the front yard. Grass does not like shade, even if you are buying the "I Love Shade!" version of the corporate seed companies' products. Roses do not flourish; azaleas wither, etc. Vines do just great. I am wondering what quality besides speed and swirliness that vines have that make them so successful even in the crummiest of soil, even in the least reliable of light?

The latest vine is milkweed. Joy. The morning glories I foolishly planted and once re-seeded five and four years ago are finding their way anywhere, even in the tedious cracks of our "why is this yard two-thirds concrete?" yard. There are the more natural (I guess) lobe-leaved, little-flowered white morning glories, which take over everything not tended. There are also arrow-leaved annoyances. And we have some kind of pretty but suspect vine that likes the fence and the house. It always gets torn from the limestone and chopped back.

My fingernails took the most punishment. My garden gloves have been shredded at their most brushed spots. Opinions on repair options?

No snakes, only one small cricket and the praying mantis we saw a few days ago on the porch. It is amazing how tall and woody lamb's quarter (or goosefoot) can get. This is a relative to and as edible as spinach, the kind we know and get at the grocery. I read somewhere that it is also quinoa. I find that hard to believe but have not looked into it further.

Today was a bit chilly, which is just fine when doing grueling yard work. Who in their right minds acquiesces to stooping and tearing, to hacking at roots with a shovel, to cutting with inadequate tools (they are Chinese-made, so they did not last more than four years) then hauling and bundling, a bunch of stupid weeds that are choking out your intended and beloved plants (prettier)? Even when we've tried planting food …

I have not noted major changes in my personal cardiovascular concern. I feel a false sense of green-light, given that nothing abnormal showed up, nothing that would indicate a heart-attack's cause (blood clots, thyroid problems, etc.), and I know it's a stupid place to rest, because nothing has changed since before all the tests. They did all this even though there was nothing to indicate a heart attack's results, either.

I am still dehydrated. I am still stuck with some insurmountable deadline based on someone else's grand mistake, which I happened to catch (though only after a week's-worth of work from two of us — we were soooo close to meeting our original and reasonable deadline). Stress has never gotten to my body this way before; I was totally cool with just getting nauseous and having racing thoughts. Racing heart is not acceptable, especially since I can't talk it down like I can my brain. What language does the heart speak?

Certainly not bacon.

Anyway, I was referred, not to a psychologist or other mental professional, but to a cardiologist. I guess for those hours that my blood pressure was too high. Never mind that it was normal on at least one of the automated checks — I grew loathe of that horrible squeezing. Has anyone ever done a study on how compressing violently the vessels in one's upper arm affects the darn thing … when it's done every 20 minutes or so and hurts on the hospital scale of one to 10 at about, for me, a 7.5?

My heart-rate, once mentally relieved of the idea that I had experienced heart-muscle death, also went down unless someone came in to talk to me. When I arrived in my room, which had a curtain that was too short for the glass-span, the movie, "Bucket List," was on. I had never seen it, and I didn't realize what it was until the two dying main characters were off on their trips; fortunately, soon after I had lain down and been hooked up to a pulse monitor and three stick-on snaps for making those sine waves on the machine go, that the movie was at the hospital bed scene.

One of the doctors (the one I liked least; the best one was still a student, go figure — but they all seemed the same age) turned the volume off at one point, so I didn't have to endure the eulogy or the music that I presume was playing when the guide puts the can of ashes next to his friends' in coffee at the top of Everest, perhaps.

The round stickers made permanent circle-marks, three places on my ventral torso. Two of the, "Oh, did you get hit by a few-suckered octopus lately?" items are visible above the standard U.S. neckline of the 21st century (early). I can't believe I'm allergic to the MediTrace foam.

My last nurse told me that I'd be finding "sticky" all over for a while. "The hand-sanitizer works great," she said. I asked about rubbing alcohol. No, it doesn't work the same.

No, I didn't have trouble with EKG or MediTrace freaky glue gumming up my fine skin. Instead, I have weird marks; but no matter.

They spent much of their whole work day dealing with a slow ER-day and my petty issues.

Once, a bunch of people ran down the hall behind the middle desk. It was stressful, but that stress didn't alter my blips. I watched.

Since that desk was a few feet from my head, I heard all kinds of things. Why do they talk when they know other patients can hear them? Am I to presume they rambled down the hall about That Weird Lady Who Seems Like She Just Wanted To Hang Out?

I spent my whole day indoors without windows on the first day of fall, which was blessedly gorgeous outside here, spending more money than perhaps was necessary. A few healthcare professionals seemed to hint that I should have gone to my primary care physician. Screw him. Why drive 20 miles to him, only to drive back and wait days to see someone at a hospital a different 20 minutes away with lab tests that likewise take days? The key to my health is convenience, and the Missouri-side teaching hospital to two blocks away.

I still feel weird, though. I also feel confused that no one has any theories. What else causes continued heart pressure with occasional shooting stabs off to the side? Maybe I'm not giving them enough clues.

Wouldn't it be cool if I could post my X-ray here? Alas, I bought it, but I can't have it.

Coming Soon:
HOW much did that all cost?

Labor Day Swim

Since evolving into H. sapiens ___ years ago, did we keep a little portion of our pre-Alzheimer's brains reserved to remember passwords?

I can remember combinations that are otherwise meaningless, just by going to a familiar site that asks. Like this one.

For others, Hulu, PayPal, YouTube, I never recall.

Once I had my bank account one scratched onto the wall.

Supposedly this is the last day of summer. Only Americans would truncate something on a technicality such as back-to-school. Daylight (un)Savings time is even weeks away, not to mention the equinox. On the other hand, if summer-proper begins with the last week of May (when technical spring is still in session), I suppose it's o.k.

Still, why manipulate nature so much? It will be hot for weeks to come; yet, if you do not happen to own your own swimming pool or live near a decently clean body of water, there's no more outdoor (clothed) bathing for you. I know all things must end, but the annual arbitrary hammerline of Labor Day (as much as I admire hammers and labor and the people who gave their lives to change our standard, even if not adhered-to, work-week into 40 hours) is silly. Silly as all arbitrary things are.

I read Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods yesterday; chapter 1 was a re-read from a week or so ago. It takes a minute to get back into her reality. Anyway, humans are doomedly repeat actions of destruction. I want to read her take on Amazonia, ie: what if women were in charge. I have had this second-hand book for years. I tried to read it once before.

This person typing here has not left the house since Friday night, coming home in Isaac's rain, from a movie loosely labelled as a documentary.

That night was cold, for a woman in sandals and a sleeveless dress, made in Vietnam, polyester, off-white with a closed-umbrella pattern in black. Second-hand, as well.

The daytime has been sunny and hot enough to swim ever since Sunday.

I have work to do, the sort of work that brought me to tears of resistance for at least a fortnight, work that, as always, once I embark on it properly, will seem natural, important and good.

Tired of fighting myself. Meanwhile, there's something like a politcal party-party going on, and everyone there seems drunk and about to fall into the swimming pool and drown.

Lucky Monday the 13th

Usually silent, the street declares each vehicle's passing, as tires swish through gallons of wasted water running out for hours now from a century-old pipe.

The sky is a little cloudy, and so the sound is bringing a bit of peace, tricking my brain into that lull of rainy-day lazy.

Only, it's Monday evening, work is over for a while, and I've collected about 10 gallons of no-charges-required water for I-don't-know-what-purpose. I'm not about to buy clean distilled (petroleum-plastic-bottled) product just to flush a few toilets every 24 hours, at least not until I have to.

We have a few gallons of washing water, and a few gallons that can be imbibed. Or given to the cat and the domestic caged birds.

There's a statistic about how the five-minute American shower uses more water than a developing country's inhabitant uses all day.

Our standard of clean here is impossibly high, yet entities like Water.org and others are to be admired for helping to bring basic sanitation to the millions of people living in thousands of pockets of filth (which most of us de facto ignore). Naturally, I'm not 100 percent convinced we all would have enough to drink, even if there were more pipes, more distillation spots, more of what a Little Sister of Saint Francis characterized to me three days ago as bore holes (wells) for her Kenyan hometown where people still use the river.

Millions of people, which sounds small if you call them 14 percent of the world's human population, walk miles and miles every day for water.

And lots of children die from easy-fix, water-borne illnesses.

I admit it sounds idyllic to visit a river daily. To respect what it has, to conserve, etc. Our collective population has become too large for river-visits to work anymore.

Today, I took a relatively few meditative steps back and forth between the sidewalk and the drought-stricken maple tree in our yard. For about 10 minutes, I stooped, gathered, moved, and dumped. I do think of water's scarcity anytime I use it. There is no way I would pay the City to allow me to turn on the hose and douse the suffering plant, and what I transferred can't make much difference to something 80 feet tall. For all I know, its roots are inches away from costing me thousands in "on your territory" pipe damage anway.

Thinking about water's scarcity doesn't help, though. No one will change, less I, from this micro-experience of "want."

People, even the vegan neighbors, even the gay neighbors, seemed to think I was overreacting. Why not collect muddy-swirl-free-water and stash it on the porch? It's just like gold to me, only for now I can leave it outside untended without the fear of anyone's stealing it.

Don't ask me about 2043 : )

Despiteness, or Defiance of DNA

The Summer Olympics are nearly upon us.

Gymnastics, while 100% an indoor sport, are part of this season.

After 1984, when Mary Lou Retton did so well with her stocky (it could be argued) yet very toned and in-tune self, somehow her 2-record 33 set of exercises for kids became a part of my life. It came with a full-color booklet of her demonstrating the moves. This was before our household or most had VHS/Betamax.

The songs were good, actually, and she can even sing.

At this point, in terms of details, I only remember the tune and a few moves to "Crouch Like a Tiger." The rest of routines are lost to me. I don't know what happened to the record, but I regret not having it around now for fun.

Fitness, likewise, was lost.

Even though my brother and I dutifully went through more than 90 minutes'-worth of quick movement and slow stretches, I didn't see much improvement. This makes Ms. Retton's accomplishments, along with any other Olympic-level athlete's remarkable. Think of how much harder I need(ed) to work.

In the basement, we even danced around to Jesus Christ Superstar (four album set) and a probably free Stag-beer-sponsored album that had only one song, the first, that we ever listened to. (It had a man screaming after a few bars, "Ma-ma, mama, ma-ma, mama, ma-ma!")

We also giggled at the cover artwork, concept (not having seen the movies), and the silly drama of the score from "Thunderball." The songs went well with the 1960s National Parks series View Master reels, I can see in hindsight.

Because his music has a dancable beat and his lyrics are narrative, Kenny Rogers' songs gave us a good amount of fun calorie-burning, too.

I can't say I agree with, though I do support in theory, things like Michelle Obama's get up and move [sic] initiatives. As with Nancy Reagan's pet-project, I think that top-down change is mostly ineffective.

My gradeschool and even highschool days were loaded with gym classes of a bygone era.

When I was only 13, I could barely finish, much less do well at, running a mile. Our eighth-grade class had trained and trained and trained. Once, I did really well in a 100-yard dash. I always could climb the rope. Was not terrible at table tennis or badmitton. I always was on the B-team of any organized sport, even though I would go out on nights as hot as this, bored in the summer in a small town, car-less, and play basketball by myself at the high school.

Never, ever, could I do the splits.

Life-long skills: I don't know where they come from. I had plenty of remote role models, through the media. I have a surplus to this day. What I don't have is someone to enforce it in the flesh. I certainly lack willpower (obviously). I guess I need three or four dogs to make me get outside all the time and move.

The fact that "if you sit for eight hours a day, you might as well kill yourself now, even if you excercise" hasn't helped matters in terms of motivating me : )

Post

You look at the clock and think, it's not that late where he is. I might give him a call. Except that you have never really talked on the phone, except once, except for a few factual exchanges of logistics of meetings. Long ago.

Even so, you take a few seconds to rehearse a few lines, and then you see that little wall of nothing, the fact that is something, that is, that anything you can think of to say is utterly meaningless.

You have no passion.

Or activity.

Or. Well, you two never were in it for the conversation.

It's only one example, but like all good examples, it serves a rhetorical purpose. To illustrate:

There are 'current events,' but what once seemed fresh and vibrant 20 years ago are just repetitions; there used to be 'philosophy' and 'poetry,' and, above all, possibility.

Now, there is a very narrow passage of workplace, homeplace, commonplace. New recipes fail to excite, even when shared, which is what food is for.

Others seem enlivened, and I am bored, by the immemorial recounting of the usual growth stages and the way they are a delight to behold, apparently, by anyparent witnessing such firsthand.

Is childbearing, for the unsuffering, the unpoor, the unstarving, the unoppressed, the only new stimulant remaining?

After all, I have poured out words after words after words.

There were pages, hundreds, of hand-written letters. Then diaries, journals, notebooks. Both dried up. Both became unimportant; albeit, it took decades, but still. Is growth something that does end, when cells stop adding to their numbers and mere maintenance sets in?

Email arrived while I was still vibrantly interested in the word. Chatrooms were the pre-Facebook but more personal, exclusive. I used to have 'conversations' on screen with people who were literally feet away. The land-line was within hand's reach. Teenagers haven't changed. Most of these verbal transactions/transcripts were lost all the same as all the typed phrases of endearment across text-phones become — accounts suddenly shut down, clouds dissipated.

My mom told me that when she turned 18, she burned her diaries.

Those 'letters' I wrote were commonly thousands of words long, and even you know, have you been here long enough, that something was driving sentences from me at a rate far greater than the bimonthly trickle of late. Very long late.

Dried up, perhaps. And thoughts now are reduced to a dribble as dull as the neighbor-did-this, neighbor-did-that gossip of my grandmothers. It used to bore me as a child. As what we'd now call a 'tween,' I used to rage at my immediate family's mundane conversation. They have quotes to back this up.

The brain has been proven to have its window moments. The things scientists say now about babies' minds and opportunities … well, such things only make me sick, because I read the news, and the news is full of mothers who lock children in closets, children who are only 32 pounds, fewer than 4 for each year of miserable life.

Not all parents delight in their lot. Mine did, but I was still all cranky to know more, to have adults about who were artists, doctors, bullshitters (philosophers, lawyers, artists, doctors, bullshitters : )

Yet these horrors — children deprived — are not stimulus enough to motivate me to action. Having spent a life working to quell anger, I can't do more than weep quickly, suddenly and without action. Frequently. I suppose I am afraid still.

What to do? There are taxes. These are spent killing abroad and, at home, failing to prop up our weakest members. There are churches; their job, for the most part, seems to be to absolve the living from taking part in anything but ones own spiritual comfort.

I might find cause in the way things are written; facts march at us with their heads turned, and the writers are paid and are content to show only one side. Facts in 'the news' (or in blogs) are never chained together in any reasoned cause-and-effect, but rather are presented as messy lace, and you won't mind, you won't have time, because layer after layer of incomplete cloth, riddled with holes, is piled upon you hour after hour. You feel warm enough, but burdened.

To make a canvas whole enough itself so that it could be used as a sail …

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.