not yet, but soon

Maybe the next place I live will not hide a tiny interdimensional portal. You cannot imagine the advantages of this set-up, from an ant colony’s point of view. Who cares if the house has been laced--foundation and yard--with anti-ant substances? Your workers materialize in the 2x4 framing, completely bypassing the dangers of ordinary entrance, march to their little heart-tube’s content toward the Terro, and shlurp it up by the thorax-load. As for the boric-acid content? No problem. Something about interdimensional travel, apparently, totally neutralizes acid. It’s a neat arrangement. I wouldn’t have believed it until I saw it.

I will not tell prospective buyers that the house contains such a wormhole, anymore than I will tell them about the little girl ghost in the basement. (She doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the ants anyway.) I’m simply hoping I can find ways of keeping the woodwork from disintegrating between now and when an appropriate time to divest myself of home ownership arrives.

There is a question of where I will put people. That, and the economy, will keep me in place for now. Some people in similar situations realize that they’re old enough to take advantage of senior housing options. But I will not realize this, since I am not.

But it is, chronology notwithstanding, clear as Terro liquid ant bait that I do not have the temperament for house ownership. I had the temperament when I wasn’t doing it alone, because relationships are like that, in a chemical equation-ish way. You can be one thing as a free-standing human ion, and something quite different, with surprisingly unexpected properties, when you become part of a relational molecule. Then, (splish), someone pours on the solvent and you realize that the personality characteristics you thought were yours were not--they were, in fact, properties of JfEm, which is a rather stable, sane type of substrate, capable of supporting many types of life, whereas the free-floating Em+ is a somewhat cranky ethereal ion which is disinclined to bond with many other elements, and tends to try to osmose through whatever container you put it in.

Hence, I will not have a house. I am too troubled by being personally responsible for a building, but--note this kids--I will try to have a little extra space for comers and goers. Not sure what/where yet. Stay tuned. Well, no actually, don’t stay tuned...it’s going to be quite a while, but at least be forewarned.

it's not always what you need, maybe.

I am questioning the value, at least in our case, of a support group.

Theoretically, it would be worthwhile if Jeff came away feeling buttressed against the isolation of being “the only one,” or was simply happy about the social interactions afforded.

In practice, he says yes, he had a “good time.” But, the aftermath does not feel so worthwhile. Driving was a dormant, and seemingly peaceful, subject until--riding home Wednesday night--he reported that “everyone else” in his group drives. Practicing my most tactful efforts at fielding and responding, I suggested that it’s not really true--some of them do, some of them don’t, but all will be giving it up soon. He has forgotten that he no longer has a license (it’s an i.d. now,) and that the insurance company will not insure him (he’ll “call and find out about that.”)

Meanwhile, this morning’s activity was brooding rumination as he tries to process why he is now labeled “a guy with Alzheimer’s.” “What,” he asks me, “are my symptoms?”

Well there’s a fun topic. I can’t imagine any efficacity in my running down a list of cognitive failings, but--after trying to steer the discussion off it--I allow as how he has some difficulty with the connection between what the brain wants to do and the body’s ability to enact it.

”No,” he says. He doesn’t have any kind of problem like that. I can only say ok. But he still wants to recall why he is in this category--person with Alzheimer’s--and he tries to recreate the scene of diagnosis in his memory: Dr. Moses saying, with a curt lack of padding “You have Alzheimer’s and you’re going to die from it.”

I cannot remember Dr. Moses’ exact words, but Jeff certainly recalls the man’s bedside manner aptly. What he doesn’t remember is the hours of testing at Johns Hopkins to assess his cognition, and the PET scan (which, to this day, I will look at if I have no other reason to say “holy shiznit.” Usually I have other reasons.)

Ultimately though, for all my carefully selected replies, the best was something along the lines of “whatever is or isn’t, it’s your life...just live it.” Which made sense to Jeff, fortunately. But I have to wonder if following that advice will be easier in the long run if we don’t put ourselves in the face to face position of acknowledging the Alzheimer’s specter any more than necessary. i.e.: “Support Group.”

A useful premise if one has no choice but to think about it, and finds the group helps process the unfortunate truth. But if one’s mind provides the loophole of conveniently forgetting that one is anything but normal, why not take that offer?

the same boring stuff, remixed?

The text portions of 3 spanking new book covers are printed and ready to roll. But next is the dicey part: Adding ink and watercolor illustrations in the white space. I sat in the Alz. support group meeting last night sketching practice faces of my people, and it may not--if all goes well--be an unmitigated disaster.

Jeff, btw, was bored. At the meeting. He says not much happened in his group, and that he tried to chat up a couple of guys without much luck. It is entirely possible that this means that those couple of guys were still able to attend to the broader conversation, and were attempting to do so, whereas Jeff likely took minimal notice of any multi-way discussion that may have been occurring. Whether we keep seeking this type of support...I don’t know. Jeff has to like it. Personally, I’m not an extraordinarily support-groupish type of person, and I find myself losing patience with the people who do like to talk...at length.. Myers-Briggs be danged--counselor material I’m not.

Gabe is set to take ACTs next week. At which point--provided I can prevail upon him to put more than half an iota of creative thought into his application essay--he’s got everything lined up to apply to any and all of several schools by year’s end. I cannot describe the apprehension I feel relative to his readiness for anything post-secondary. I am hoping, in big-fat doses of hopefulness, that we at least pretty much like Mitchell College’s pre-freshman year concept.

According to the Farmers' Almanac, we’re in for a colder than average winter. And you know what? Remarkably, I’m okay with that. Really, for the first time since the onset of motherhood, I think I may be returning to my cold-tolerant youth. Or maybe it’s just the fringe benefit of realizing that the ants and bees who’ve decided we’ve built a pretty cool clubhouse for them here are about to get their little thoraxes frozen off. I am prepared. I have a coat. I can deal.

Posey Rosie goes splat.

Sometimes, when I’ve spent most of the day trying to ascertain where--in the minutiae of web site creation / file uploading / manuscript formatting--I’m botching it, I end up with sore shoulders.

For some weird reason, for example, my uploaded copies kept having the letters "ele" in the header. I didn't want the letters "ele." I had to assume, having recently watched Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog, that the Evil League of Evil was trying to give my story its stamp of approval, but I wasn't really wanting it.

Still, I got it. Yes, you can format stinkin’ MS Word so your file’s the same dimensions as a 6 x 9 trade paperback. And it probably wouldn’t even take you all day to figure out a) what you need to do, and b) how to do it.

The good thing about this tedium is it makes me anticipate with a bit of pleasure that the next job is art. Even if I’m crappy, MS Word has nothing to do with it. And neither do FTP servers.

The only trouble is, my posable wooden artist’s model person likes to fall down unless I carefully place her in a very balanced position. Not to mention that, for all her joints, she’s worse at yoga than even I am. Her legs only spread to about 30° , which is quite hopeless for someone whose job is positions. Perhaps, given her poor balance and lack of flexibility, she should have gotten a job in customer service with Verizon. Yes, we’re mad at them.

Japanese class is cool. What a bunch of geeks. I like it.

I think the quantum foam got big.

It’s funny that I only discovered the value of TextEdit this year, when I had to do ftp uploads. I’ve had some silly old floppy disks sitting around in files of old, containing--in an obsolete format--the book I’ve been tediously retyping chapter by chapter. Because, no, Pages 2008 cannot interpret 8 year old AppleWorks documents. Neither can Office Mac 2004. BUT....TextEdit, that little bare-boned, no nonsense, friend of file-transfer-protocols? It’s the little engine that could. Then, one need simply cut and paste from TextEdit to Pages, and--voila--maybe I don’t have to retype the entire remaining 15 chapters. Edit, yes. Check for discrepancies between the saved copy and the hard copy, yes. But type it all? Maybe not.

Ants...have I mentioned them? They like the pears Ollie brought from his yard. Quite a bit. I cannot rinse them all off--they must go inside, like James and the Giant Peach. So, I put the pears on the front porch, and am offering the ants Terro instead. What is it with ants this year anyway? I hope it’s a fluke.

I need art. Can I do my own? Iffy. Maybe. If I stare at Quentin Blake illustrations a bit more, perhaps I’ll absorb a smidge of creative zest.

The ground feels shaky lately. There are surely some subtle seismic shifts shuffling the latest status quo, and what the shape of the new landscape will be, I cannot guess. Probably won’t even hold still enough to take a reading. Hold onto your hats, boys and girls, and get comfy with regression, and pouring the orange juice, because this escalator only goes one way.