Friday, December 28, 2012

Ok...what?

Edit: The experiment described below lasted about 6 days. I guess the interest generated made me feel a little like a kid on a Big Wheel in Times Square traffic.
I am ready to confess that this week, under the tutelage of two of my adult daughters, I made an OkCupid profile. They assure me that it’s not a big deal. That lots of people use the site for meeting people in general, and not necessarily just for dating. I point out that I’m only thinking about how it would be nice to go out to dinner and have a conversation, or break up the alone time. That I’m not at a point where I am, in any serious way, ready to charge into the dating scene. Whatever the dating scene is.
Alzheimer spouses discuss the question fairly often: Is it acceptable to consider a relationship with another potential partner when your disabled spouse is still living, but unable to interact with you in a meaningful way, and is largely unaware? Opinions vary. Intentions vary. Mostly we agree to try not to be judgmental about it. I’m not even sure how I feel. About me, I mean. Toward any other Alzheimer spouse contemplating the question, I accept that they will do what’s right for them. And we all recognize that humans thrive on relationships with other humans, and don’t do well in isolation.
But do I want to “date?” I would like to ignore that word. Not look at it. I expect that if it comes to a point where I’m actually on the verge, pertinent emotions will be hard to disentangle from my continuous sadness about losing Jeff.
But making the profile felt like a brave step. A doing of “something.” Across the board, I need to do a lot of somethings in order to reconstruct a sense of contentment with the world, and being slightly open to the possibility that a man could be involved in some of the somethings is a factor I’m trying to process. If my brain let me choose, I’d choose to be happy single, but I’m having trouble convincing it.
So, back to OkCupid. Luckily, the wise and intrepid girls steered me away from using a handle that bears any resemblance to my real name. Then they graded my text entries (without a red pen) into the various categories such as “the 6 things I can’t do without,” and “you should contact me if.”
More fun for them, I’m sure, was editorializing on the messages that have rolled in since. Over the last 36 hours, maybe 20-some. So much fun for them, in fact, that I will probably not continue to let them read over my shoulder.
In which case, I will have to gauge for myself which notes warrant a response and which don’t. If it’s from “Awesome4U”...well, probably not. But I will confess that I’ve found one or two to be quite appealing. I am still not brave. I am still quite petrified by the prospect of actually meeting anyone. So, maybe I won’t. This is yet to be determined.
The girls tell me to relax. It’s low-key, I can deactivate my profile at a moment’s notice, I don’t have to respond to anything. And anyway, if I ever were to meet someone, I’d vastly prefer for it to be accidental. But this is at least one more way of shaking a leg at the world.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Holiday Devolution

Every time I’m getting ready to host one of the periodic holiday meals at my house, I am slightly seized with a little niggling hang-up which I think I’ve finally thought through. It has to do with my location on the devolving formality continuum.

If we trace my small lifetime of family meals back to earlier days, we’d start in Tazewell, Virginia, where “the grannies” (as we often referred collectively to my paternal grandmother and great-grandmother) had a concept and execution of even ordinary Sunday dinner which involved family convening in a lovely dedicated dining room, and food prep relegated to the kitchen which was through a swinging door, past the “breakfast room,” and down the hall. Although we kids (and adults) freely scampered back and forth, there was a clear line of demarcation between the dining setting, and the “rest of life” settings.

While my grandparents engaged some domestic help, they weren’t quite Downton Abbey, with a houseful of servants, a kitchen on a completely different level of the massive house, and all pertinent protocol adhered to. But I think that my grandmother’s notions of meal presentation could be placed on a timeline of style, with the King’s banquet table anchoring one end, and the peasant’s kitchen-centered humble holiday bounty at the other.

My mom has a dining room which adjoins the kitchen by one open doorway. She often sets up beverages in what she likes to call the parlor (I grew up calling it the living room, and I’m having trouble adjusting to the word “parlor.”) She will put a nicely arrayed tray of veggies and dip in the family room, and the kitchen is a busy place indeed. People hang out there--it’s everybody’s quarters and there is no one but family doing the work--but there is still a line, albeit fuzzier, between prep and dining.

So, I realize that I have some relics in my head about how things at holidays are “supposed” to be done. I intellectually rejected them as requirements years ago. In fact, when Jeff and I designed our house add-on, we very purposefully made the kitchen/dining area a space to live in. There is no separation. There is no “dining room.” That’s what I knew best represented my personality and I designed out any provision for making the meal magically appear out of thin air, as happens in the Hogwarts dining hall.

Still, there’s this weird little vestigial thought that pops up when I’m thinking out what I need to do about Christmas dinner, and it says “People are going to be all over the place, and there will be blobs of mashed potatoes everywhere, a sink full of pots, and probably several people’s computers. How will you make it look like Christmas dinner?” "Frankly," I reply to it, "there is no point in worrying, since the dishes and flatware are a hodgepodge anyway."

So I realize I really need to embrace my position on the formality continuum, as being a cozy spot next to the paintings of some Dutch realists of yore--where everything happens in one room, the dogs and cats are underfoot, and there is no line of demarcation. It’s the kitchen feast. I was apparently not only NOT to the manor born, I was possibly born to the tree. Or in a tree. Or maybe under one.

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Epic Mickey U.

What if you’d had all the fun you were allotted in life? Had the major relationships you’d come to have, nurtured those you were assigned to nurture, accomplished whatever was your function, but then just had time left? You didn’t need to work, there were no doors or windows opening provocatively before you...you just had a couple or so decades, potentially, of blank slate left, but no directive?

Uh oh...I just reminded myself of Epic Mickey 2! A game which ends perfunctorily, leaving you with no further goals, no further mandated quests. The world of Wasteland remains open, and you’re free to wrap up any little fetch chores you may have left undone in the course of the main campaign...but you’re not really sure why you’d want to. The campaign is done, there is just nothing driving you.

That is among the very weirdest things I’ve ever heard of--that Epic Mickey 2 has suddenly, and most strikingly, presented itself as an allegory for life as I currently know it. I swear I didn’t do that on purpose, but there it is, and such a good fit.

I guess it’s pretty damn lame not to be able to design your own levels. I figure that’s what most people would do. I’m stuck. I can’t think of a good level idea.

I thought, actually, that back when I was still completing the “Caregiver” level (worth about a million experience points, and 3 strength upgrades,) that I’d laid the groundwork for another chapter, but it sorta fizzled. That is a flat can o’soda.

Well, I did put in a couple wish requests (see last entry.) But they are not important, they are wishes. More to the point is finding something useful to engage in which includes interacting with humans. At which point those wishes would become recognizably wants not needs.

There is a “task” on the Epic Mickey 2 pause screen--the spot that usually tells you, briefly, whatever it is your next goal is. At the end of Epic Mickey 2, after you’ve had your epic cut-screen finale, and you’ve run around for a bit saying “huh?...am I done?” it says this: EPILOGUE: Work together to use the turnstile and open the way forward. “Together,” in this context, refers to the fact that Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, whether controlled by a second player or by AI, is your constant companion throughout the game. But where is “forward?” So far, no one seems to know, and we assume that Epic Mickey 2 is a truncated game, meant to prime you to shell out for Epic Mickey 3. In my real life, there is no epilogue stamped at the bottom of anything I normally turn to for advice, so I’m left to wing it without even that teaser hint that something might be on the horizon.

A couple friends said that if I’m experiencing winter solstice seasonal affective disorder, I should sit in the dark and stare at the lights of the Christmas tree, with a warm cup of something nice. (in my case, it’s a decaf with a shot each of french vanilla soy and whiskey.) So I did that, and it feels good.

Thursday, December 06, 2012

pass the mojo, I'll put some in my tea.

Yes, this tiny guitar is hanging by my front door. I will try to fashion an explanation as to why. A book I recently finished is The Wishing Year by Noelle Oxenhandler, in which she explores--in theory and actuality--the effect of wishing, or purposeful intention, on a life. You’ll have to read the book yourself for the details of the author’s various interesting projects and outcomes. Meanwhile I have been at least inspired enough to think about what life factors I feel deficient in, and how I might make a wishful statement about them.

I am inclined to utterly toggle back and forth, like funky wiring, about whether I accept that intention can add up to effect, or whether the world is random, but it’s been demonstrated in the past that the very practical-minded Executive Function aspect of my brain does not always win tugs-of-war, and there’s little to be lost by at least being clear with oneself about what one would like.

So here’s what the guitar means: It’s a sort of talisman whose intent is to attract music to my house. I want to jam with people. A couple weeks ago I attempted to put a bit in the community e-newsletter, asking if anyone else might be up for an acoustic jam, but either it got lost in the tubes, or someone thought the request was stupid compared to “house for rent” or “babysitter available,” so that effort has not paid off. But my little guitar might just carry its own mojo, and send out a sort of homing signal for people who like to make music. That’s why it’s there.

I have another wish. For company. I watched “Hope Springs,” the Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones movie, last night, by myself. And thank goodness it was by myself, because it was not an easy movie for me to watch. I’m just going to be honest: As much as that old Exec. Function is still pushing the idea that singlehood is something I can and must learn to enjoy, my dog-brain isn’t buying it. I recognize the problems. There are statistics and all that. There is the fact that I’m not unmarried, and I am Jeff’s #1 care-minder, visitor, and supporter. But seriously, I don’t believe anyone thinks there’s a split-hair of danger that I would ever abandon that life duty, and they are correct. Since my secret crush died, and I’m pretty sure the piano tuner is married, I find myself looking around going “no, no, no, probably not, maybe,” as I mosey along, doing whatever it is that I do. Right, alright, I know. I’m dumb. But I don’t like looking at another (maybe) 3 decades, and thinking that was it. It’s all over. I’ve had the good parts. And they were good parts. No complaints there.

So, maybe I’ll outgrow it and realize I love being solo. Could happen. And maybe there will be enough good parts completely unrelated to having a person in my life who makes me laugh until I cry that it’ll be a great 3 or so decades anyway. And maybe I won’t have 3 decades. Who the heck knows? But I made both wishes. Depends on which way I’m toggled at a given second whether it’s worth a bean, let alone a hill of beans.

Monday, November 05, 2012

UkeFesting

This past weekend’s trip to the (1st Annual, or so they say) Virginia UkeFest is just one of those things I’ve been doing this year, as a way of doing things so that...I’m doing things. Glen Allen, home of Cultural Arts Center which hosted this fête, is a suburb at the north side of Richmond’s beltway. It’s an area where Romney supporters put billboards-sized signs in their yards, and Obama supporters try to make up for the sheer square footage of the opposition’s signage by peppering their own yards with 15 or so “fun-sized” signs.

There is nothing, however, near the Country Inn & Suites where I camped for Friday and Saturday nights, unless you count unmown grass. It sits there, one year new, positioned starkly in a barren bit of farmland beside a road which looks ready to accept the slew of new development a hunch tells me is in its future.

In the morning, Marsha, who keeps the breakfast area outfitted, gives you a hug. Which is nice, and partially makes up for the reconstituted scrambled eggs. And the coffee is tolerable. There are cookies on the reception counter 24 hours a day, and the rooms are quite decent in a chain hotel way, but if they asked me there would be more than one place where you could hang a towel in the bathroom

I am an awkward person at a Uke (or any other type of) Fest. I suppose there’s an extent to which it’s always awkward to be a solo person floating around a group event, when there’s no sub-group with which you re-conglomerate during those in-betweenish moments. But this is one of those things I’m learning to get used to. Or at least I’m getting used to looking like an oddball without caring too much.

I attended three workshops and several performances. Food was slim pickins, but the hot dog truck did have a veggie dog option, so I ate two of those, along with some nut and fruit bars I’d picked up at a local Whole Foods Market. I felt a little bad for the vendor in the ice cream/snowball truck, since--except for a brief, sunny midday interlude--temperatures kept his line short to absent.

Take home points: I highly recommend the Bumper Jacksons. Lelehuna and the Aloha Boys were fun too.

And, I love jamming, inadequacy be danged. Anyone within shouting distance want to jam?

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Donkey Tales, part 3

P.S. (that is, pre-script, post-script): I promise that if I feel compelled to become a political blogger after this election, I will subdivide and leave those thoughts accessible by link, but otherwise utterly ignorable and avoidable.

As I compose these “Donkey Tales,” it occurs to me to ask: Why am I not simply pro-Obama, instead of also being anti-Romney? Why do I not present my case from a standpoint of highlighting what I find right about one, versus what I find wrong about the other? Because, sometimes that’s what it’s about. You support many of your guy’s initiatives, so you want to keep him, but it’s difficult to describe what’s right about how he’s running things without mentioning how wrongly things could go in another direction. So, forgive me. I’m not trying to be a basher of people, but I do think certain policies or attitudes are worthy of a good bashing.

Today I will be bashing the fingers, and possibly other parts, of anyone who would like to legislate whether I, my daughters, or any other woman, may control our own bodies. Because it’s none of their beeswax.

Floating around our house is a bumper sticker (not currently affixed to anyone’s car) which says “Stop the War on Women,” and, in smaller print, “rock the slut vote.” Fox News insists there is no “war on women,” and I’ll admit, it’s a little hyperbolic, just as is the larger-than-necessary deal that was made of Mitt’s “binders full of women” remark.

However, if you canvass the most vocal group of right-leaning legislators these days, you’ll come away with some conflicting contentions. One would be that your “right to choose” ended when you got pregnant. Ok. So, how about the fact that the guy hoping to be VP, along with many of his friends, won’t even extend you the right to choose pregnancy or not? Because rape, you see, is “another form of conception,” and they say you’ve gotta have the baby.

I’m the worst pro-choicer you’ll ever meet, because I absolutely, absolutely detest and decry the argument that it’s just a zygote until it’s born. Nah, it’s a person. Which makes me a pretty horrible person, maybe, for allowing women the legal right to seek abortion. But that’s where I have to stand--her body, her jurisdiction.

I’ve gone into more detail on this topic elsewhere, but I’ll keep it brutal and simple here--life is far, far too complicated for you to tell other people whether or not they have to have a baby. Maybe you are wonderfully responsible, and would never get pregnant at a terrible time. If so, you’re better than most women I know, myself included. Nope. Life is too complicated, and women have to decide for themselves what they can or cannot deal with. Personally, I have been close enough to the frayed end of my emotional rope that I could have considered ending a pregnancy, and that was without the dire economic situations faced by many. Instead, I chose an expensive, not covered by my insurance, permanent fix. Not all that accessible.

I came into this world with a hair-trigger negative response to authoritarian male behavior. I don’t know why. Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but I’d run off and join the Amazons rather than live under people trying to reverse women’s ease of access to (not just abortion) but birth control and low-cost healthcare services. (read: Planned Parenthood.) Sorry, buddy, that stuff’s not optional.

It will not enhance our society if we fix things so women find themselves in trouble too often. It just won’t. Ok, so maybe I can’t sway your thinking on this one (as if I could on any other point!) There’s where I stand.

Because this article expresses the main points so well, I'm appending it here.

Donkey Tales, part 2

I don’t know where to start. Fine, I pick healthcare. Ok, let’s look at this: For the first time, a president has successfully pushed through legislation that makes a strong first effort to allow reasonable healthcare access to all Americans, fair and square.

Mitt says he wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act on “day one.” And replace it with what Mitt? Mitt won’t say. Instead he says “I know what it takes to create jobs.” Because that’s what he usually says.

Maybe, if you’ve always had secure, fairly comprehensive, employment-based insurance, it will be hard to understand why I find the stance of Mitt and Paul to be quite upsetting. I could afford to buy better coverage if I wanted, but what I currently have is basically a catastrophic, high-deductible plan. It was cheaper, and I was accustomed to having, as a family, fairly crappy insurance, because that’s what was available through our business. I paid plenty out of pocket, so it didn’t seem a huge new burden to continue doing so. But here is why I have any insurance at all: Because the surgeon who excised my skin cancer more or less lied and put that it was benign. “Benign for insurance purposes,” he said. At that moment, the statement confused me. But I later realized that had he not done that, and should I change insurance, I would have a pre-existing condition and be either denied, or charged exorbitantly. I have friends who actually have or are at risk of being denied coverage for things as basic as blood pressure or ADD. IF Jeff had not qualified for Medicare, he almost certainly would have been uninsurable, and his hospitalization for med stabilization would have been absurd. (Did I mention that R&R like to make threatening noises about Medicare too?)

So, do I have a problem? Do I feel “entitled?” Should I just accept that the marketplace is a wondrous thing, Blue Cross/Blue Shield loves its clients (as long as they’re healthy,) and if one more strike gets recorded in my health book and Golden Rule drops me...well, that’s the price of life dearie?

Obamacare isn’t perfect. I would hope that tweaks could occur as necessary, as time goes on. But I don’t care what you think about “personal responsibility.” People getting shut out of the healthcare system because they have asthma is part of the “Believe in America” scenario? Really? Apparently so. I’m sorry, I do not find that acceptable.

(and if you think I'm exaggerating the problem, look some stuff up. You can start here.)

Donkey Tales, part 1.

I thought I was going to save these ruminations until after November 6. But it keeps biting at me, so I’m going to try to articulate--for myself, if for no one else--why the general elections of 2008 and 2012 have mattered to me on a scale that is a pretty new thing for me.

The truth is, there are many themes and it’s hard to pick one, lest it seem to be THE theme. And I want to be clear--this decade of U.S. political jostling is, for me, a rope of many fibers, but I can only describe one at a time.

Here is one: It IS about race. The fact that I reject race as a legitimate concept notwithstanding (please see The Journey of Man, narrated by Spencer Wells, for more info,) the notion of it exists as a bugaboo in American culture.

I remember some stuff vividly. I’m in 1st grade. There is one black girl in my class. Her name is Barbara. One day Mrs. Randall has Barbara stand in front of the class so she (Mrs. Randall) can give a short speech on how we (the rest of us) need to be kind, open-minded, and realize we’re all people regardless of skintone. I am, during this speech, acutely, empathically, aware of how much Barbara wants to disappear into the floor. It is painful. Hop, skip, jump to 5th grade. I have a friend named Michelle. We don’t live in close neighborhoods, so we’ve just bonded as buddies in certain classes, like the one where we feed bits of paper into the air conditioning unit (which Michelle has dubbed “Rosie,”) instead of doing our self-paced math cards. One day, in our large, mod, 70s “open space” classroom, Michelle and I are seated at a table with a cute redhead named Charlotte. I do not know Charlotte, but I have admired her curly red hair. Then Charlotte opens her mouth. She says, while both Michelle and I are sitting there: “I don’t like n*****s. My father told me not to associate with n*****s.” (Did I mention that my friend Michelle is black?) Cue openable floor again. I can feel that Michelle wants to disappear into it. I am 10 years old. I am stunned. In years to come, I think of all manner of fitting or inappropriate comebacks, but I am 10. I sit there in stunned silence.

More memories. I am, I don’t know, 7, 8, 9, 10. I am at my grandmother’s house in rural Virginia. The black people come and clean. Before lunch, I go into the kitchen. The black man who works in the garden is eating lunch at a small worktable. We, the family, eat a fancy sit-down lunch in the dining room. If we ring the bell (and there are several pretty bells...hard to resist ringing them when you’re 8...a young black woman peeks around the swinging door from the kitchen to see what we need. But we didn’t need anything. I just wanted to ring the bell, and no one stopped me soon enough.

But I did not grow up in rural Virginia, I only visited. In suburban Maryland in the 60s and 70s, you were aware of civil rights struggles, and socioeconomic disparities. But you also knew that they were problems to be resolved, not conditions to passively accept. So these racial “norms,” in rural Virginia, jarred me as much as Charlotte the redhead’s odious speech. I had come into this world with a glaring awareness of my unexceptionality, and I finish childhood with a certain sense that--as much as I know I’m nothing special--I LOOK like the privileged class, and I assume people will hate me for it. It is a time and place crossed with my unfortunate social awkwardness, but I assume that boys will be indifferent because I’m boring and flat-chested, teachers will ignore me because I’m not as smart as my older siblings, and non-white people will dislike me because I’m white.

I have gotten rather away from presidential elections, haven’t I? Let me try to take a short-cut back. Can you truly not sense the insidious creep of racial bigotry in the GOPs strident march right-wards? I realize there are other things--partial ownership of the party by the religious Right, lingering Cold War era paranoia about “socialism"--but I knew the racial part was there, and so did you. The photo of an empty chair hanging from a tree that some yahoo displayed in his yard in Texas, following the RNC, simply illustrated an ugly sentiment that the ugliest of humans have decided it’s now ok to bring to the party.

What do you say about this? Well, you start by saying that you are well aware this sort of ickiness does not, by a longshot, apply to all who vote Republican. And then you say--"John Sununu, you’re a moron." Of course Colin Powell did not endorse Obama because they’re both black. Also, I will be voting for Obama once again, NOT because I’m trying to correct for my lifetime of white guilt. But...and this is a big but...I am overwhelmed by the sense that substantial portions of the GOP voting block consists of white people who liked their Dick & Jane world, like their Wonder bread, and are not ok with an expanded diet that includes Ethiopian injera. Just listen to Newt Gingrich equate black people and food stamps. Then Rick Santorum does it too.

Half the staff who care, daily, for my husband Jeff (in his dementia "neighborhood" at Sunrise) are black. They are the best caregivers (all of them...all ethnicities,) I’ve ever heard of, and I cannot even think of ways to express my appreciation of them. For prominent members of the GOP to imply, in discussing the socioeconomic issues the U.S. is constantly grappling with, that there is something inherently missing in the work ethic of people who weren’t born in homes where you ring a bell at lunch, crushes my feelings on behalf of the people taking care of Jeff. And it frankly makes me want to punch those rich suits who think all “real Americans” are on their side in the face.

There is much more than I can say about this. And I end this bit here mindful, as I said, that I don’t want to give the impression that my gratitude that the current President has finally diverged from the Dick & Jane story line is why he will again get my vote, but it adds extra sparkles to it. I'm afraid though, that many Americans are still feeling a little shaken by the inexorable shift in U.S demographics. Our first non-white president, and more and more folks speaking Spanish all around...how to quell the anxiety? No matter how many times Mitt shakes the Etch-a-Sketch on his "beliefs," no matter how much he won't tell us, and no matter how many economists say his "math" doesn't work, he looks and acts the most like Father from the Dick & Jane books, and that offers at least a little comfort.

Next, I will address other parts--women’s issues, economic parity. Maybe I will begin to make sense to my mother, but it's probably just one of those things where our lenses were just forged in different glassworks.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Tiptoe through the Weltschmerz

Last night, at songwriting class, I sang & played Monster Dinner in front of Tom Paxton. It was one of those things where I didn’t have to admit that I had a song ready. I could have just sat in that room of 12 people, and let the few others who had one go. But the thing is, in the rearview mirror, would you rather say “I decided not to perform in front of Tom Paxton because I knew I’d be my crappiest,” or would you rather say, “I did it, and I was my crappiest?”

Well, if there’s one thing that’s true about me these days, it’s that I have long since given up trying to hide my abject pointlessness* from the world...I mean, hell, you might as well be honest about what you are, right? It’s not like you self-selected your genes. I guess. Maybe you did. I guess we’ll find out later. Anyway, I did it knowing full well that nerves would choke out any capacity to function, and so they did. So it was bad. Yeah, yeah, thank you very much. (*and don’t worry about the pointlessness remark. I may self-loathe just a tiny, tiny bit, but I do it with a certain fond acceptance.)

I’m taking songwriting class because it interests me greatly, but I’m beginning to laugh at my being there. Cathy Fink is a Grammy winning musician, and she heads up this 8 week course. Last night, before class got rolling, she noticed that my uke case says “Collings,” on it and, being knowledgable, she wanted to see my uke. So I got it out and let her noodle out a few notes of a caliber far beyond my reach this lifetime. She admired it. She said “two-thousand?” I said no, and gave her the actual price paid which was [not-that-much.] But the thing is...she now knows what a nice uke I have, and the level of crapitude with which I play it, and it’s a little embarrassing for someone to have that combination of facts about you.

But then again, I feel like a weirdo in The Writers’ Center, Bethesda branch, in general, so feeling weird in songwriting class is ok. The WC is housed in what looks to be an old library building. It’s full of literary journals, and just the right amount of down-at-the-heelsness, and all sorts of evidence that it’s haunted by souls, both living and dead, who are ever so much more legitimate in their right to exist there than I am. Just flip through a journal and you’re faced with a dozen 30 year olds who are being lionized for some brilliant accomplishment or other. I hate being around other writers, actually. (I had to think about whether I could use the word “other,” but I did it anyway.) I could pretend I’m worthy because I built 4 books myself, but...you know.

Tom Paxton is about to turn 75, and he has wiry, curly, stick-outy grey hair, a Gilligan cap, a Land’s End fleece pullover (in addition to other clothing,) and Harry Potter glasses. He said my song was “terrific.” He said it needed a refrain or chorus. I will write one. (Ok, he also suggested changing the line about "inviting your boss" to something more cohesive with the theme of the verse. Makes sense too.)

A couple of the guys in class did their songs. Gerry, who looks like the nerdiest example of a middle-aged engineer, did a great job with his entertaining country-style song, and David performed his song with some mean uke accompaniment. (His lyrics otoh, in the opinion of this wordsmith, need some serious editing.) His uke chops merely highlighted the preposterousness of me having custody of a Collings-made anything. Ok, yeah, so be it.

But here I am, fifty years old (almost more than 50,) with nothing else to try but what I’m trying, and I’m surely not going to pretend I’m self-actualized just to make you feel better. Thing is, Jeff’s job was to absorb and buffer my crazy, which was there in full force pre-Jeff and is back to stay, I guess. Which is why I just own it now. I think Jeff tried to help though. Apparently, he fell last night, and he got up this morning with a bruise the size and color of an large eggplant on his right hip. His carers were so concerned he’d broken it that we spent all morning in the ER at Anne Arundel Medical Center. It was not broken...just monster-bruised. It’s tricky to get a person in stage 6 Alzheimer’s through x-rays. Don’t try it sometime. He’d been sent out in an ambulance, but (as I figured) I had to drive him home to Sunrise. It went ok. His hand would hover near the door handle now and then, and I’d hit the lock button obsessive-compulsively, for good measure. Got him back. Fed him chicken, potatoes, and sweet potato pie. I think he’s pretty happy, and he’s got Tylenol on order. I assume that he was, in some intuitive way, trying to make me feel less redundant.

This weeks assignment: a song that puts a new twist on a trite topic. I should go with that Brady Bunch idea--where they incorporated Peter's awkward changing voice into their song. I'll use random mismatched chords, and sing in falsetto like Tiny Tim. That should work.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Changes

I did bring my uke to Jeff’s today. I’ve sort of been avoiding it because of any of the following reasons--I don’t play well. I don’t sing well. I play and sing worse when I’m aware that any other human ears might hear me. I didn’t want anyone to make even the tiniest of big deals out of it. And I didn’t know if Jeff would even register the sound. But I had to try it so that I wouldn’t end up having to admit that I never tried it.

When I walked in this afternoon, Jeff was stumbling in a circle in the now-normal forward list. It was a movement that suggested “bathroom” to me, so I led him immediately to do his business, thus scoring an opportunity to deploy the ukulele in the relative seclusion of Jeff’s room, with only his roommate Richard on the other side, sitting in Richard’s usual chair.

Jeff almost never sees me anymore, because he cannot look. I mean "look" as in a "Hail fellow human, I acknowledge thee," kind of way. There is virtually no “periscope up” function left. If he has a periscope at all, it’s locked in its shaft, turning aimlessly to perceive the plain walls which surround it.

But, in the auditory sphere, music worked for a while there. Lately, not so much. Yesterday, Olivia and I sang a few bars of Frère Jaques for him, and he nodded along briefly in recognition before retracting his receivers. So when I next tried Paul McCartney on the iPhone, it drew no acknowledgment.

But uke--that’s live music, maybe he’d notice. In a less bad than my worst performance, I plunked out Simon & Garfunkel’s Feelin’ Groovy, because anyone who’s capable should respond to that. I don’t think he noticed at all. I said, “do you know that song?” From the other side of the room, came Richard’s deep “No.”

So, the music appreciation patches in his brain appear to have largely been overgrown by tangles. These things do go. He is leaning forward too much, and I expect he will be falling on his face fairly frequently. Soon, I expect they will ask me to supply a wheelchair if getting him around for meals gets increasingly wobbly and time-intensive.

I’ve watched Linda. She is young like Jeff. When Jeff moved in, Linda was doing what Jeff does now--shuffling about speaking gibberish if not dozing in a chair. In a matter of a few months, she’s stopped being ambulatory, stopped babbling, stopped being responsive, and most recently has been so contracted into a bent over position that feeding her had become nearly impossible.

Today, as I left Jeff in his IKEA chair, and exited with my uke, I passed Linda’s door. Several relatives were coming out. It was not a good time to be nosy and inquisitive, but I am certain that Linda is either very far along in her hospice journey, if not finished with it. I will find out soon.

Sunday, September 09, 2012

Well, he does leave a lot of dirty glasses around...

Today, I randomly decided to have a tarot reading while I was at the Maryland Renaissance Festival. To be fair, let us not call it entirely random. I went to the RennFest thinking I might do that very thing, but with no specific plan for implementation.

The Festival operates, each year on the cusp of Summer/Fall, in a nicely wooded bit of acreage surrounded by fields of parking, near Annapolis. In a typical casual strategy, you wander shady (and today, muddy,) thoroughfares with names like Tiltyard Path and Stub Toe Lane, lined with more or less permanent structures which house, in season, shops purveying jewelry, pottery, art, clothing, and oddments beyond category. And food. Much food and drink. None of which you’d call gourmet, but certainly there is at least variety enough that even veg-eaters will find falafel, sweet potato fries, or veggie wraps.

So, at a certain straw-strewn turn, wedged between the Royal Stage and the Wine Pavilion, I stumbled (only partially literally,) upon The Tarot Guild. It was shortly after rope-drop, or morning fanfare, or whatever they call the opening bell, so the four resident turners-over of cards were sitting casually outside, awaiting people of my ilk.

I zeroed in on the lady with unnaturally red hair. Her name was...(lemme check the card...) Carrie. And she travels each weekend from the northerly town of Havre de Grace to ply her weekend trade.

Carrie ushered me into a small stall with chairs, pillows, a table and cards, and proceeded to do her thing. The thing, of course, has to do with shuffling, cutting the deck, laying out a certain array of cards, sussing out a few things from the patron, and giving an interpretation.

Ok, so I’m not 100% sensible, and sometimes I like to do weird things, but here’s what I think about tarot readings in general (this being maybe my 4th or 5th or so.) Tarot isn’t magical or more mystical than anything else in the world--it’s just a fun way to get a sort of a walk-in mini counseling session, where imagery on the cards offers ways to think about themes that occur in all lives.

My array suggested, not surprisingly, a new volume in a two (or so) part life, where I’ve got feelers out ready to see what areas of creative endeavor this segment might be about.

Interesting, also, was Carrie’s attention to The Page of Cups, which appeared in my layout. She immediately identified him as Gabe, and was rather insightful into the nature of the kid, and my role in his development. In some ways, this was as much about the uniqueness and potential of Gabe as it was about me. I sort of get that a lot. Not in tarot, per se, but in impressions from people, in general.

Jeff got kind of annoyed at me once, a long time ago, when I was saying that while I might not bring much to the world as an individual, I am offering it some interesting children. He thought I was selling myself short. I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. At least there were plenty of wands (for creativity) in the part about me. But keep your eye on the Page of Cups.

Saturday, September 08, 2012

Filling holes with various materials

Today, in addition to spackling up a messy patch on the family room wall, I’ll be continuing to try to shake a person out of my head.

The messy patch is where someone (Jeff or an electrician...it’s lost at this point) sawed a thin rectangular gorge into the stucco where an electrical box was meant to be installed. My brother-in-law Wade finished the associated lighting installation just last month, but needed only the space for a single switch there, so the stucco is in the midst of a 3-step repair by me which, with luck, will disguise the mess. The person is an actual, existing human whom my disobliging imagination has elected to insert into any daydreamed vignette, where Jeff’s decline has left a different kind of gorge.

My next step with the blemished wall is squeeze spackle, from a tube. I’ve chiseled the leftover chunks of stucco, which Wade had to remove from inside the rectangle, into pieces I could glue back in, puzzle style. Then I managed to make one of two cans of spray foam which have been sitting in the basement for x years function well enough to fill in some of the more gaping gaps. (note: Neither Touch-n-Foam® nor Great Stuff® lasts forever unopened.) Today I will hack off the foamy overgrowth (spray foam always over-expands,) then squeeze spackle into the remaining crevices and hope to putty knife the whole thing into something resembling the rest of the wall.

You can come see the finished result if you want. I will not reveal the identity of the unfortunate person who keeps appearing, without having agreed to do so, in my mental movie reels. Don’t worry, you would never guess, so don’t try. It’s that random. Even though this is a person I have spoken to on rare occasions, I actually don’t even know whether the feller is attached or not, so that should rule out any notions you might have.

So, despite the absurd refusal of my psyche to stop doing that, it’s a little comforting to know that he has no way of knowing how much time he gets to spend with me in that alternate universe. I think it’s just one of those things like mental Tourette’s...it will just have to go away regardless of my conscious bidding. In the meantime I have Bruce (see pic) to hang out with,

and a wall to patch. Busyness is the key to keeping stupidity at bay.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

ongaku is music in Japanese.

So Gabe is off for another year of adventure, and duct-taping bananas to trees, on the sylvan grounds of Guilford College, and I sustained another 13 hour round-trip driving marathon. In addition to his regular tutor, he is under agreement with me that we will Skype twice a week for the purpose of studying semester 3 Japanese.

Gabe packed simply. I came downstairs the morning we were to depart to discover, in the front hall, one duffel full of clothing, one large throw pillow, and one laundry basket full of odds and ends. Gabe had agreed to organize his things there for easy car-loading in the morning, and that, evidently, was the extent of any needs he perceived. With some prodding from me, we filled one more basket before departing. But he’s been doing this for two years now. I guess he knows how simply he subsists.

Among the additions I suggested was his Nakama 1 Japanese textbook. Based on a study of the college bookstore website I had ascertained that Nakama 2 was the needed text for third semester, but I proposed to Gabe that he might want to refer back to concepts found in his first textbook, and he agreed. Un-kudos to me that I didn’t also throw in his matching workbook, because it turns out (now that I have downloaded the course syllabus,) that they will be beginning the semester with the final two chapters of Nakama 1. This necessitated two moves: One--I quickly bought THAT way overpriced set of texts from Amazon so I’ll know what to study, and two--I shipped him his workbook today, along with one jacket and one winter coat.

Gabe is living in a small wing in the walk-out basement level of what is otherwise an all-freshman dorm. Also in that wing will be residing 8 or so other sophomores who, presumably, also have the inclination to submit their housing applications late. Perhaps they will be a compatible and cohesive group.

Meanwhile, I am giving myself pep-talks. I CAN remember some Japanese and be useful as a study partner, right? I’m not always feeling sure about this. Between refreshing the Japanese, and studying some basic music theory this year, I feel at risk of brain implosion.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

UkeFesting

It’s amazing what you can find on the internet, but you probably knew that. What I found is a four day ukulele camp for adults at the Strathmore Music Center, and I signed up.

I don’t love commuting to Washington, DC for anything, but I’m kind of used to it by now after clinical studies at Georgetown University and NIH. On the best of days, you’d better allot an hour’s driving time, but there aren’t many best of days in the vicinity of the DC beltway, so this morning--the last day of the Ukefest--was closer to an hour and a half.

Cathy Fink, who led most of the sessions I signed up for, is a ridiculously accomplished musician, but also an entertaining group leader with patience for the fumblings of those such as I, who squandered our childhoods and didn’t hone our musical wiring when the honing was good.

While I could not impress anyone with my musical prowess, collectors did notice and admire my 1927 Gibson uke. I am not worthy of a venerable instrument, but there--it’s got me.

Cathy Fink may start to think I’m stalking her, as I’ve just signed up for an 8 week songwriting class she’s teaching, starting in September. (More commuting to DC, and--in a note of exceptional coolness, there will be a guest lecture by Tom Paxton, writer of The Marvelous Toy...zip when it moves, and bop when it stops...) She’s also appearing at the 2 day Virginia UkeFest in Richmond, at the beginning of November, and I’ve got my sights set on that one as well. I’m not stalking her though--I just see a path that interests me and she happens to be standing smack in the middle of it. No worries though. I am eminently ignorable, and I’m sure she’ll manage just fine.

Monday, July 23, 2012

I won't hesitate no more...

I have a ukulele. It’s not really my uke...it’s more sort of a family thing, coming from a small collection passed down on my dad’s side of the family, and it’s spent about 40 of its roughly 85 years living beside my Mom’s piano. (Beside the bowlback mandolin and the tinny, plunky banjo, both of which, along with the piano, have a similar history.)

For a short while, during the era when I was comfortable teaching church school to wee bairns, I used it to plunk out the chords to a few easy sing-along ditties. But then it went back to its spot beside the old upright piano while I got interested in (respectively) my own 1926 mini-upright with its ivorine keys, an assortment of Irish whistles, and my sister’s old fiddle (from Holzapfel’s violin shop in Baltimore which no longer exists.)

For simplicity we’re going to refer to it as mine. Anyone who wishes to contest that usage, please inquire within, and we’ll discuss the fact that my brother Jim has custody of the Gibson dark mahogany guitar with the painfully high frets. My uke is a Gibson too. Or should we say, it’s a “The Gibson.” Also dark mahogany, and a near match for a circa ’27 Gibson U3 model, currently offered for sale at McKenzie River Music in Eugene, Oregon (snap it up Beth and Martin) for $2000. Mine has fewer scratches. But I wouldn’t sell it even if it were indisputably mine.

Soprano ukuleles are really small. Truly, a baby guitar in appearance, but with only 4 strings in the classic “my dog has fleas” tuning. So, I could blame my clumsiness with fingering on the miniatureness of the instrument, or I could blame it on my personal wiring. In any event, blame will get us nowhere, and I was recently seized with the notion that I would write a song. On ukulele.

I will warn you that my being seized with any notion is not necessarily a fine idea. The last time I was seized with a comparable notion was in about 2000, and what resulted was The Legend of Logjam, 1st edition. If you do your research (and I don’t recommend that you do,) you will know that that is the first book I wrote, which was followed over the next 10+ years by 3 other works of suitably mediocre fiction. So take any notions that go around seizing me with a large grain of salt. Oh, I’m sure it will happen--I’ll write a song alright--but it will be a fitting member of my literary and musical canon, and well...that’s just how it’s going to be.

Meanwhile, I am doing some of the things I should have done when I was 12 years old, and actually performing the fingerboard stretching exercises, and strumming practice, and chord acquisition that would enable a not-so-old dog to learn a new trick. Yeah, I blew it. But I was a kid. I can’t really help that I was a lazy kid with little insight or foresight, so forgiveness is essential. As is picking up where I left off (which is almost at the beginning.)

For now, I’m doing the terribly cliche thing of trying to play “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz, and finding that sustaining the proper reggae strum pattern while singing lyrics which are beyond syncopated in their randomness is a little like patting your head and rubbing your belly. Only worse. I bet that both Jean Carper and Doctor Oz (those mercenary sillies,) would approve of this as brain exercise. But who cares about them? I approve of it as a suitable distraction in this interim between caregiving and...whatever. So, off we go.

Literally? no.

Caution: the next paragraph could be offensive to some.

This morning I stumbled upon what I think is a clear and somewhat obvious thought--it is that I can stop worrying about the fact that I can’t reconcile myself with Christian theology in any normal way (only a problem in that I am fond of the particular faith community with which I grew up.) The thought is this: For a theological theory premised heavily on the stories of a guy whose whole shtick was parables, is it not odd that they went on to insist on a literal understanding of some of the things he said about himself? The problem with Christianity is not the worldview described by Jesus in parabolic form--the problem is the next several centuries of unnecessary to harmful add-ons, and the stick-up-the-arse determination of countless ensuing “teachers” to insist on a literal adherence to their particular choice of interpretation. Christianity and the myths that grew out of the death of a political rebel are and should be parables for concepts that are more sublime than what can be captured in the rigid framework of any religion. There. I was actually going to talk about that more, but I don’t want to.

Instead I’m going to talk about the ukulele.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

What-now? You think you're scary, but you're not.

Nine years ago I left nursing school, in the throes of an anxiety attack brought on by (what I now understand to be) the dog-brained realization that my time with Jeff was limited, and that my energies (never prodigious) were now to be at the disposal of a different set of priorities.

Since then, we’ve been in a slow orbit around the black hole of Alzheimer’s. In 2012, Jeff crossed the event horizon. A definition of event horizon from Wiki: “In general relativity, an event horizon is a boundary in spacetime beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer.” More accurately for me, it means a boundary beyond which the outside observer cannot affect events. It’s where the pull toward oblivion turns inexorable, (as if it ever wasn’t.)

In the true spirit of spacetime inscrutability, I have no idea how long the remainder of the spiral will take, in realtime, to swirl to the singularity. But the path is set, and my influence on Jeff’s breathing moments is small. What this means for me is that, while I haven’t quite shaken hands with What-now, What-now is standing on the nearing shore waving at me with the cocky assurance of inevitability.

So, I’m not a nurse. So, they’d have little use for me now on the USNS Comfort, sailing into Haiti and such, delivering medical expertise where it’s desperately needed. Truth is, (and I say this not in a self-disparaging way, but in a practical, realistic way,) I have no clear-cut skills or training that make me an easy fit for any obvious next step. The only thing I know how to do is observe something and write sentences about it. Hardly an obvious market niche.

The upshot is that What-now has seemed like a bit of a threatening presence. I never have an answer to the sort of questions that What-now poses. Even though there were 700 and a few kids in my high-school graduating class, each of the 700 of us had to, at some point or other, have at least one talk with Mr. Johnson, guidance counselor for the class of ’79. My chat with him went like this: Mr. J: So, what are your plans? Me: Um...I’m going to go to college. Mr. J: Why? It’s hard to reproduce the tone of that “Why.” It was delivered in a way that was meant to convey--Look kid...know why the hell you’re doing something before you do it. I muttered something vague about possible majors, and he let it drop. He had 700 other kids to say “Why?” to, after all.

Mr. Johnson? I still don’t know why. That’s just the pathetic way I am. I settled the issue for 25 years by the grace of two things: One--I knew I wanted to team up with Jeff. On that count I had no reservations. And two--My biological impetus to reproduce was strong enough to let it be the guide, for lack of any other overriding ambition. Once you have kids, there’s no room for “why.” “Why” becomes irrelevant. There’s just stuff you have to do, and your hobbies and interests become things you squeeze in around the edges. You never have to make a significant career out of them, so if they’re not particularly lucrative or impressive it’s no big deal.

Anyway, today I came up with my answer for What-now. It’s not an especially good answer, but it’s my answer. Within the parameters defined by the remaining stuff I MUST do, I’m going to have adventures and write about them. Pick somewhere to go, pick something to do, do it, write about it. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This is a form of making it up as you go along. This is how I wrote four books. I had no real sense of inspiration...no compelling topic for fiction. Simply the compulsion to try it. So, I pulled it, like teeth, out of my own head. Like squeezing toothpaste out of a near-empty tube. The product speaks for itself. Here’s what it says: "That’s a really stupid way to write fiction! No wonder we’re works of wondrous mediocrity!”

Oops. Yeah, well, that’s really still what I’m going to do if something doesn’t roll in out of the mist to fill in the blanks. It is entirely possible that it’s lame that I haven’t come up with a more compelling, meaningful, or at least useful idea than that. But...hang on, let me check my pockets (pat pat,)...let me hold up a blade of grass and gauge the direction of the wind. (___that’s the sound of no wind.) Nope. That’s all I’ve got. I’m going to go places, do stuff, and write about it. Why? Because I want to.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Ok with nonsense these days.

I was determined to get an enormous quantity of Concert Association membership checks processed today, so I took my box of work with me to Sunrise, so I could do it while keeping Jeff company. I’m happy to report I accomplished my bare minimum (opening envelopes, sorting checks from paperwork,) but I’ve got more than plenty of databasing left to complete.

Meanwhile we paused for Jeff’s lunch (he was doing better than usual with scooping chili into his own mouth,) then Dot the visiting piano player, a brief stroll in the sunshine, a couple of bathroom excursions, and an occasional other resident wandering in. In which case, I’d have a conversation like this: Linda (the other resident:) “diddo yubba really so?” Me: “Yes, I think you’re right!” Linda: (with a bit more conviction) “do na na giddum is it.” Me: “Yeah, me too.” Then one of the caregivers called her.

Meanwhile, I put the iPod nano tunes on shuffle, sat Jeff in the bouncy IKEA chair, and spread my stuff out on the new comforter I had just bought and put on his bed.

I don’t really have a good idea what makes a difference to him and what does not. Mostly he sits and dozes or half-dozes. He doesn’t look at me much of the time, because he is frequently functionally blind and doesn’t process visual information in a very useful way. I remember once reading about a woman in the later stages of Posterior Cortical Atrophy, and she was for all practical purposes blind, but these are things you don’t really expect until they come to you. Now they’ve come to us.

When I went to Sunrise at lunchtime, Jeff was just finished getting a haircut from Valerie at the small salon upstairs. All the caregivers in his “neighborhood” said they loved his haircut but missed his curls. Exactly how I always feel.

I’m happy we’re, for now, done with the hospital and back to easy access. Does he miss me when I’m not there? I don’t know. I know he asks. I bought a wipe-off board which I leave on the counter in his room. Usually I write something like “Emily will be back soon!” if I don’t have something more specific such as “Emily is driving Gabe to North Carolina” to write. At this point, Jeff can’t read it, but I figure the caregivers can read it to him.

Monday, May 14, 2012

There and back again.

Olivia and I, on a marathon drive, escorted Gabe back to North Carolina for his make-or-break 5 week summer term, then headed home, to the soundtrack of The Muppets.

Summer digs are nice at Guilford College. We’ve stocked Gabe’s personal closet full of dry goods, and his freezer full of frozen pizzas.

One item I had failed to add to the list of things we needed from Target was a key lanyard. Gabe’s apartment takes two keys--one for the front door, and one for his bedroom. Dropping two keys in the pocket of worn-out pants seemed a bad bet, so when we got back from shopping, still lacking a lanyard, we made do with car supplies. A zip tie is now serving as a keyring, and it’s hanging from the drawstring cord we dissected out of an old Whole Foods Market shopping bag. Good enough for Gaberment work. However, we did acquire a shower curtain and rings, full-size bed sheets, a trash can, toilet paper, a plate, bowl, and cup, plus a batch of perishable groceries (we already had the non-perishables) at Target. Plus a very small battery-operated alarm clock since, for inexplicable reasons, the outlets in Gabe’s room refused to accept a plug with the standard two prongs where one prong is wider.

On another note, if you find yourself in Greensboro, NC, and you like Indian cuisine, Saffron Restaurant is worthwhile.

And now, Gaberment work or not, it better be up to GPA snuff, or we’ll be putting him on Craigslist as an available ship’s swabby. Stay tuned.

Sunday, May 06, 2012

It's a different kind of liberty I guess...

Gabe and I drove north from Greensboro, North Carolina, making a pitstop for lunch in Lynchburg, Virginia. In ferrying Gabe to and from Guilford College, or visiting for parents’ weekend, I’ve had a few opportunities to scan the hilly vistas that line route 29, as it bypasses Lynchburg, and I’ve seen Liberty University’s enormous dome-like structure which houses sports and campus mega-church gatherings. The residence buildings at Liberty cling to the hillsides like terraced tree-fungi made of red brick, but our lunch stop on Wednesday was the closest I’ve gotten to a Liberty U. edifice, and it took me a little by surprise.

Right behind the strip mall where we ate at Panera Bread, and where I’d stopped for a Starbucks coffee (on my southbound trip the day before,) stood the fortress-like entryway to LU that you see here. I knew this was not the main campus entrance, but it was an odd one, seeming to lead you into a subterranean lair under the train track running above on the embankment.

I might struggle to explain what intrigues me about the whole concept of Liberty University. Founded by the late evangelist Jerry Falwell, it serves to educate several thousand young people of fundamentalist Christian ilk. I read a book once, by Kevin Roose, a Brown University student who attended Liberty for one semester in order to research a milieu that departed from his usual experience. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/22/kevin-roose-infiltrates-l_n_190124.html So, while I know that LU holds no appeal for me, nor is it a place I’d ever recommend to my children, I looked around at the Panera full of well-groomed students in LU sweatshirts, and couldn’t help wondering whether any of them were cramming for the final in one of the first classes a student would take there--one that establishes agreement with a worldview in which the Earth is 6000 years old, homosexuality is a no-no, and you’d better vote against “socialism.” (In other words kids, vote Republican.)

I guess that in what we bill as a “free country,” it shouldn’t be particularly novel that such a place (and others much more rigid in view,) would be thriving, but it’s still a strange notion that I find myself flipping around in my head with a touch of bewilderment, much as I would a Rubik’s cube--that real live ornery, skeptical, learning-focused college students would tackle their studies while accepting that Genesis is a literal depiction of what followed the Big Bang.

Anyway, I had to go and examine this immense passageway close up, so Gabe and I walked over and had a look. Just inside the opening is a black metal gate of rather prison-like bars, next to which sits a card reader. So qualified students or staff may pass through, but no gawkers such as we. I stuck my iPhone through the bars and snapped a pic of the tunnel.

It looks like a good choice during an air raid. I hope that, in such an event, shelter would be proffered even to those of us who do not plan on being raptured. Meanwhile, it made for an interesting image.

I noted with interest that the name tag of the order taker in Panera identified him as “Jesus.” I’m pretty sure though, that he pronounces it “Hay-SOOS.” Gabe and I hit the road, fortified by a cream cheese bagel and a tuna salad sandwich respectively.

Monday, April 23, 2012

for now

This is the Bayview Campus of Johns Hopkins U. Hospital. The second floor of the Burton Pavilion here is designated the Lakeside unit, and seems to be all about geriatric (or pre-geriatric) patients with pharmaceutical adjustment needs in the psychiatric category. (It took me a few looks to find the lake in the hospital’s urban setting–I guess it’s the small rainwater overflow pond with a little spraying fountain in it that you can spy out the window of rooms on Jeff’s side of the hall.)

You stop at the front desk on your way in, sign the book, and get a paper wristband from the on-duty person before taking the elevator to the second floor. Once off the elevator, you are in a small foyer where you must push a button which elicits an electronic doorbell noise. Then someone from the nurses station inspects you by means of the built-in camera and pushes a button to unlock the door.

You enter a busy unit where, generally, several older people are nearby in wheelchairs or recumbent rolling chaises. Usually they are fussing about something or other. There are two lovely parakeets–one green, one yellow and orange–in a large glass terrarium by the window. They seem very happy and chirpy even though a little old lady told me “no,” they were not happy, “they want to be free.” Maybe they do, but I suspect there was some projection going on.

Then you go down the corridor to the right and press another electronic chime. This one plays the opening strains of “Für Elise,” then nothing happens. Nothing connected to the chime anyway. Instead, you catch a staff member on her way in or out and enter on her coattails. Jeff shares room 248 with Mr. R. Mr. R isn’t independently mobile, and is often situated in the small day room, which is actually a regular hospital room which happens to have a couple chairs and couches instead of beds. Many days, I find Jeff in the day room dozing in a chair.

They are still trying to regulate Jeff’s medication so that he is at least semi-functional, but not apt to pull cords out of the wall on a paranoid tear, while blocking the access and egress of nurses and aides whom he may have mistaken for tranvestites and/or robots.

As of today, we’re a little bit on the side of too-medicated. Today was better than yesterday in that he did not topple like a tree trunk into my lap face first, but it still took some work to get his entire lunch into him. Then I snagged a chocolate ice cream cup and a tiny carton of orange juice from the fridge down the hall, and fed him those. Those things are favorites. He still muttered a fairly on-going stream of non-reality-based observations (we need new boots, that’s a nice forklift...things like that,) but he sat with me in reasonable contentment while I read a snippet of The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, by Bill Bryson, aloud to myself.

When I called to make arrangements for Jeff to check in for a med adjustment (due to his disastrously escalating aggressive, delusional paranoid episodes,) they were very clear with me on one point—they are NOT a long-term care facility. He WILL be discharged. No argument on that point from me, but I suppose it must be an issue they deal with–families who do not wish to take their difficult elders home, med adjustment or not.

Yes, I expect Jeff to be discharged. I just do not know when, and in what cognitive condition.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

this is long

I wonder if one of the greater attractions offered by religion comes from the fondness we human animals have for narrative. We sure like stories. Ambiguous endings (ever see Picnic at Hanging Rock?) may be fodder for philosophical discussion, but our blockbusters almost invariably offer roundly satisfying closure.

Religion may offer a means of thinking about our otherwise confusing lives as stories in which, somehow or other, the struggles must make sense. Personally, my nature requires me to reject arrant materialism (by which I mean the philosophical, not consumeristic sense of the word.) There is a bit too much synchronicity in the universe for me to utterly discount the experiences we tend to categorize as “spiritual.” Whether there are guides at work, or whether it’s a matter of the ineffable magic of quantum entanglement, there is interaction on a plane that has always prompted humans to imagine beyond the absolutely tangible. I’m just not going to try to tell you exactly what, and I don’t think that’s anyone else’s job either.

All this is just a way of saying that—whatever I proceed to write in the following paragraphs—I maintain a meta-view of the whole business as inexplicable and quite possibly nonsensical. Or, to put it another way, when I describe states of “mind,” or things which occur to my own brain, I am as aware as anyone of the weaknesses inherent in that particular organ. Caveat Cogitor.

About 13 years ago, when I was 37, I was struck—quite instantaneously—by a calling. I’m going to call it a calling, because I don’t know what a calling is if not that. A sense that you’ve been handed a destiny...please proceed. Because it is the only calling I’ve ever downloaded from the cosmic cloud, it is unique in my experience. It was to write. It didn’t come with any further instructions, which is kind of a nuisance.

Thomas Edison is reported to have said that genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration. When that ripe patch of my neurons lit up with my “calling,” they fished around a bit, but couldn’t find the missing 1%. Apparently (I had to assume) it was either invisible, or to be provided later. So I proceeded to do the 99% part. You can find that 99% at my website, www.emilygillespieclement.com. Don’t do that right now. There’s something missing there. (hint: 1%)

Meanwhile, Jeff got unwell. It may not be obvious, because I am of a fairly stoic persuasion and do not like to cry at movies and so forth, that Jeff was, for 20ish years, the ballast of my emotional schooner. People who know Jeff will understand this. It’s true.

Ok, so here’s where ballasts, missing percents, and narratives all fall into the same stewpot:

A few years after that light bulb moment I refer to as a calling, Jeff began to malfunction. Within a very few more years it was hard to dispute that his malfunction would be progressive and terminal. I won’t go into excessive detail here about what that realization meant to me, except to say that an essential and depended on nutrient had been yanked from my diet and I was going to have to learn to live without it.

And somewhere in that confusing fog of years which contained increasing failure and a hard road to diagnosis, I accepted a sort of plea bargain with the cosmos (or at least my sense of it) in an effort to recapture a whiff of purpose. (As someone recently said to me, purpose is largely imaginary, isn’t it? Probably so, but it does help feed that yearning for a narrative.) Anyway, it went something like this–While there was no parity whatsoever in the exchange, I reckoned that in losing Jeff I would at least not be left without a life objective. Because, see, of that calling. Obviously I was supposed to write, and obviously the cosmos would provide some sort of external validation for that, sooner or later.

Sooner or later. My function--because it was the only part over which I had any control--would be to keep applying the 99%. So I did. The results are there.

Okay, so as it turns out, those four books basically stink. I can accept that, and I can die whenever that becomes an appropriate move without being mad at myself, because I did my part. (And I don’t mean anything by making that past tense. I’ll almost undoubtedly keep trying.) I would be mad at myself if I got to the end of the road and could make no sense of the narrative because I’d failed to produce. So, if you ever wonder why I keep doing it, that’s why.

Inspiration, the elusive 1%, must come from somewhere. If it doesn’t, well...someone/something/some ethereal other didn’t uphold its end of the bargain.

I have used my Salieri (from the play Amadeus) analogy before, but that’s because it fits. Yo...cosmos...don’t go handing out callings then fail to deliver inspiration. Not to worry. I will not try to poison Mozart, or Philip Pullman, or Louis Sachar, or any of the local writers you wish to point out to me who are being featured in the Annapolis paper. But I will be reminded of the 1% that isn’t there, and I will need to find a quiet way to quell the anger it stirs up.

Nonsense, of course. This is all a misunderstanding of life, flowing from my very human preference for a narrative. Meanwhile, I have fine things to enjoy, in the form of some of the loveliest people to have ever borrowed some of my DNA. Not to mention plenty of other folks. No argument.

But maybe this explains, a little bit, why I think it’s more therapeutic for me to think about spiritual practices that are more about relinquishing attachment to outcome. I guess you might say I pray sort of...but never as a petition, or adoration, or expiation, or any of the ways by which prayer is classically defined. I’m looking more for a sense of openness to whatever is, and also I don’t like going to bed alone. As for the tradition in which I grew up, it seems to like to place too much emphasis on narrative. And narrative, as far as I can discern, is a booby-trap. Let’s leave that to fiction. Preferably, fiction forged in a mind where the 1% actually made a pitstop.

Sunday, April 08, 2012

Ok Fontaine, you're goin' down.

Tomorrow I will probably kill Frank Fontaine and thereby complete the PS3 game BioShock. Can you believe someone who is presumably a standard-issue half-centenarian would play BioShock? I mean, especially BioShock. Epic Mickey was one thing because there are plenty of people who have never outgrown a taste for Mickey Mouse, but BioShock is, frankly, kind of gross. It is (in the parlance) a first-person shooter in which you are constantly beset by murderous crazy people in an underwater Objectivist utopia gone to dystopian seed. It took me about half the game to adapt to that. The violent part, that is. So, based on a case study of one, I conclude that video games do not make humans more inclined toward actual violence, but rather they simply make humans less sensitive to video games. Don’t base a sociology paper on this study please.

It is a distraction, is the thing. These days I am spending about 2 hours each mid-day visiting with Jeff and overseeing his lunch at Bayview Medical Center where he is an inpatient in the geriatric psychiatry unit. Well, no...64 is not exactly geriatric, but his condition is, so that’s why it’s a fit. It may take up to 3 weeks for them to conclude that his medication regimen is sufficiently adjusted so that he can be a newly functioning assisted living resident who will pose no danger to himself, the residents, the staff or his wife. Or it may take 3 weeks for them to conclude that he is pharmaceutically intractable, and then I don’t know what. He says he wants a job. Where can one send a severely brain-damaged person and say...”Voila--there’s your job. Enjoy.”? A submarine? No, feeling trapped will make him throw people around. Seattle, his dream city? No, being impaired in visual processing, he will walk into traffic and cause accidents. I’m out of ideas.

So tomorrow I’ll be back on the second floor at Bayview helping Jeff not miss the ice cream when he goes for it with his spoon. Either before or after I kill Frank Fontaine.

I do some other things too. Such as walk the dog, do basic housekeeping, and walk in slightly hyperactive circles. This chapter of life has taken me from slightly out of focus to lost in inscrutable static. I think my head will clear up during some future year and I will do at least something. Although I think, for now, it will be best to accept lack of purpose. I hope purpose is highly overrated. Pulling one out of thin air has never been my strong suit.

Sunday, April 01, 2012

The Wonder Games.

It is on my schedule to meet some folks at the mall early tonight to see The Hunger Games. At this moment, I intend to go. Since Jeff went crazy on Friday morning, he’s been at Baltimore Washington Medical Center for...a medication adjustment, I guess you’d call it. It just is not a stint that feels like it’s being overseen by any medically authoritative practitioner, so I might characterize it more as: Time away from Sunrise in the hopes that a quadrupling of Seroquel will make Jeff into someone who can live there without episodic eruptions of his wanting to put furniture through the windows or use wrestling moves on people trying to calm him down.

Ok. He had a hospital-provided sitter here in room 599, 5th floor West until 2 hours ago. Apparently, no facility, including Sunrise, will take him back until he’s been “sitter free” for 24 hours. Ostensibly, if nothing horrible happens, this could mean he will be discharged tomorrow.

I don’t know if I have an opinion about that. I do have plenty of confusion about that. Since arriving here at 9:30 on Friday morning he has remained tranquil, if delusional and completely disoriented. Thing is, nothing happens on Saturday and Sunday. I presume that tomorrow, Monday, I’ll be able to re-establish some form of contact with the neurologist and the nurse at Sunrise to discuss whether those parties have agreed on whether Jeff’s new medication regimen has the stamp of approval or not.

Personally, I don’t know how you can feel sure. I guess you can’t, in any 100% kind of way.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

just for today

Becca is making lemon cupcakes. I had two reasonably satisfying visits with Jeff at Sunrise. The Daily Show is on in 12 minutes. So, based on an in-the-moment assessment, things are ok. At least in the moment.

Out of the moment, who knows? It is probably good for everyone, whatever her life situation, to just-be as much as possible, and not tap into the static of the surrounding craziness on your existential timeline. But Alzheimer’s likes to bring you that lesson in technicolor, so you might as well learn it. The sooner the better.

Check with me tomorrow and I’ll probably have forgotten it.

Friday, March 23, 2012

I still don't have too much to say about it.

Jeff lives at Sunrise now. It is an assisted living site, and his specific “neighborhood” there is the Reminiscence wing, first floor, Cypress Creek entrance. It’s hard for me to know what to say about this, which is why I haven’t said much as this process got underway and moved to completion.

There is a hole here in the house where his presence is meant to be. Sometimes someone walks in a way that sounds like Jeff walking downstairs. Yesterday, the timbre of a voice gave me a similar sensation.

I’ve been going by twice a day. This is easy. Sunrise is a two minute drive from my house, and--with my credit card bonus points (which I’ve been essentially unaware of for a decade plus)--I’ve ordered a bike, so I can go the eco way.

Before he moved, I played multiple roles in the confabulated parallel universe Jeff slips in and out of. Sometimes I’m my mother, Gale. Sometimes I’m Julianne Crough, his tomboyish childhood nemesis. Sometimes I’m Dr. Miller. Sometimes his sister Helen. Now, maybe there are enough other people around that I am not required to embody so many players, because so far when I drop in I’m always Emily.

Jeff assumes he’s still at home. The rocking chairs in the fenced yard are our front porch. His room is his room, nevermind that there is now a bedbound Mr. Schaller around the corner at the window end of the room.

Jeff doesn’t spend much time in his room anyway. There are many alcoves to wander in and out of, many windows to look through, and many places to stop and take a seat. I am told he was a willing participant in “RU-Fit with Sheila,” the bringer of group exercise. Three days in, I am willing to say (with cautious optimism) that Jeff is as content at Sunrise as he was at home. Maybe more. It is possible that the planned activities, and greater availability of people to interact with, use up energy that might otherwise be spent fretting about law school or other perceived goals.

He crashed in a big way in 2012, cognitively speaking. I have all sorts of thoughts and second thoughts about the “rightness” of putting substantial family funds into his care. This is one of the two things I just can’t really think about too much. The other thing is what will I begin to fill my life with? I don’t know. Yes, I’ve had plenty of fun with existential angst in my life, but now I will just have to be a zen master. Best option.

Friday, March 16, 2012

Broadcasting live from Queasy Square...

I’m not doing much this week. Well, a few things...I’ve loaded a laundry basket full of Jeff’s clothes, gathered hangers, toiletries and picture hangers, prepared a small photo album, and designated a comfortable IKEA chair as the one which will initially occupy a little of the space in Jeff’s room at Sunrise.

Jeff just asked me if I’d like to go back into broadcasting. Thinking of how to answer...”I’m not sure I’d like broadcasting,” I say. “I guess I wouldn’t mind working behind the camera.” What I don’t say is “Who do you think I am today?”

Soon I will pause, mid-paragraph, and follow him down the street again. Today, he is identifying every house in our neighborhood as being either “the old WBAL weather-station,” or “the new WBAL weather-station.”

There was a lot of paperwork. I’m pretty good at paperwork and convening the necessary documents. My accountant always thanks me for being organized. My contact, Kim, at Sunrise also seemed surprised that I got everything together so efficiently. I rarely feel either efficient or organized. I think I’m just apt to latch onto tasks as distractions.

Sunrise is 2 minutes from my house. 10 minutes if I walk. I can be there often. I can provide context even if I’m a broadcaster. Everyone from my Alzheimer Spouse cohorts to the move-in staff at Sunrise tells me that this will be more difficult for me than it is for Jeff. I don’t care how difficult it is for me. I’m used to difficult. Mainly I don’t want to bring him any distress. But if he stays here and I completely lose my equanimity (and it has threatened to depart many times recently,) I will be of no use.

Thursday, March 08, 2012

Otterbein

Most of my yesterday was spent on guard, trotting outside as necessary to walk with Jeff as he strode purposefully down the street, on a hunt for the “New Otterbein Street.” The house Jeff built from the ground up, and which we lived in for our first two years of marriage (as he completed it around us...a theme was to recur in our lives,) was on Otterbein St, in Baltimore. But I can’t tell you precisely what this “New Otterbein” was meant to be, and I’m sure that even in his head it was little more than a waking dream, believable to him, but connected to reality only by the most tangential of threads. I can tell you that there was, apparently, a sign in virtually every yard we passed telling him that this one was the “Old Otterbein.” A distracting dish of ice cream bought me a few minutes, but mostly, yesterday, I stood guard.

I could tell it was destined to be a tricky day when he first asked me about Otterbein Street, and I told him that Gordon still owned it. “Which Gordon?” he asked. Which Gordon? This would be his brother and business partner to whom we sold the house at Otterbein (which was serving as a rental at the time,) when Jeff’s powers began to fail.

2012, the year of change. Maybe that’s all the Mayans meant. That 2012 would be the year Jeff lost any grip on reality or the ability to be remotely re-oriented to the world as we know it. Fortunately, I am able to find life funny, ridiculous, and sad all at the same time as I remind myself how much, in 2011, I was wishing for an end to the “doldrums.” So, okay...thanks? I believe I will have to be buying my way back into life soon. I hope Jeff will adapt.

Sunday, March 04, 2012

I will say though...

...as each day comes and goes, it feels less premature.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

I don't know.

I am thinking about assisted living, and I don’t know if I should be.

Tomorrow I will visit one of two nearby places which have special units for the memory-impaired. A week later I will visit the other.

It is not uncommon for people in my gig to swear, at some early point in the process, that they will always keep their damaged-other at home, no matter what. I never swore that. I never thought that. If I had made a pronouncement, at any time, it would have been to simply say that I would take each day as it came, and make no decision prematurely.

Right now, frankly, feels premature. I have not, however, made a decision. I haven’t even done my visits yet.

February has bowled me over like a giant rolling snowball. Two months ago I would have told you that this in-betweenish time—these doldrums of a diminished spouse who appreciates me, but cannot be left alone, would continue for years. This month, the creeping damage of plaques and tangles has staked its claim on his last hold on reality. He is in a different world. It’s a world the real and present me has been left out of.

So, I don’t say this out of hurt feelings or personal regrets...but here—this house, this life, this place, this relationship—has left him, and I’m not sure it has any role left to play in his ability to live out his days contentedly.

So, what now? If knowing me no longer remains his anchor, is it time to let go a little and try to rebuild some version of a life for myself, or not? It’s a heavy question, made no lighter by the fact that—should I find Jeff alternative care—I would be committing substantial family financial resources to something which has, as its main goal, the release of my life from indenture, maybe only a few years early.

This worries me a lot because I do not, at this point, have the vaguest clue what my life would then go on to be about. I feel like I’d have to justify its release through meaningful living, and I don’t know if I can do that.

Well, as I said...no decision, premature or otherwise, has been made. It could be a good ways off. And if there’s a facet to that decision about which I’ve become very clear, it’s this: Wherever Jeff is cared for—whether here or near here—family and friends must have relatively unfettered accessed to him, and whoever I am...I will remain in primary charge of his care and comfort.

still me

I’m beyond wigged out. But I’m fine.

Here are the questions for the universe. (Unless you are Miss Universe, you probably don’t know the answers.)

This week, Jeff usually doesn’t know quite who I am. He knows my name is “Emily Gillespie,” if I ask him. (The “Clement” part has fallen into a roadside ditch somewhere.) He does not think I’m his wife, even though her name is “Emily Gillespie” too. If I point out that we are, therefore, the same person, he reacts with a bit of a start, as if that can’t be true. Today, we had lunch at Punk’s Backyard Grill where he asked me date-like questions such as whether I have brothers and sisters, and what do I like to do? He also regretted that he had no cash on him. When I said, “that’s fine, I can buy lunch,” he promised to reimburse me later. So I decided to go with the therapeutic approach as we drove home, and I asked him what his wife is like. He replied, in the faltering way of expressing himself which has become the norm, that “my wife is...my life.” Then he told me that she died.

There is a book entitled Learning to Speak Alzheimer’s which espouses the theory that the goal with AD people is not to correct their misconstrued notions of time and facts, but rather to go with their flow, and distract as necessary. In general, I agree with this approach. But what—as in our case—if someone wrongly has the notion that his wife and son have died?

The part about Gabe seemed an easy fix: “Oh no,” I said. “He’s fine. I just texted with him today.” Jeff was glad to hear this and expressed mild relief. But is it not a bit of a shocking confrontation to insist that you, the stranger, are in fact the missing wife? I tried a sideways approach later, and showed him pictures from our wedding. “Who is that?” I asked, pointing to 22 year old me. “Thats...Emily,” he said. “And that’s Jeff,” I said. “That’s you. That’s you, that’s me. We’re a lot older now.”

He did that slight back-jerk of the head as he looked at me, because this was a bit of an unexpected revelation. But he showed neither relief nor denial. Just sort of an “ok...let me think about this...” kind of look.

Not that it matters. It will all be gone tomorrow, and whoever I am, he seems to accept my presence and help.

Monday, February 27, 2012

weird

I will just say this:

I was just watching the next-to-last episode of The Bachelor. Not sure how I got sucked in to this season, but it happened. It’s such a surreal combination of appalling and intriguing that I can’t utterly write it off, even though I probably ought to. Unquestionably, the producers don’t care about the appalling, as long as they can ratchet up the intriguing.

But anyway, after tonight’s episode I walked away wondering why, at this juncture, any more humans would subject themselves to such an absurdo-tragedy. Too crazy, too awful, and glad it’s not me.

Then I remembered that my husband of 27 years doesn’t reliably know who I am. I’m pretty sure he hasn’t known who I am for 3 days, and may never again realize that I’m the person he’s been married to for a quarter-century plus. Speaking of surreal absurdo-tragedies. Pretty silly.

still overwhelmed.

February has been a rolling wave of changes. Mostly I can't write about it yet. I will.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

in de air

I am on the plane. I have probably had enough catfish in two days (2 po-boys and one overly-crusted with pecans fillet) to hold me for a bit. I also ate those beignets and downed some of that chicory coffee. So don’t get on me about not going N’awlins-native just because I didn’t consume anything with claws or pincers. Fish with whiskers will quite do it, I’d say.

Louisiana bayou climate is considered sub-tropical. What this means is that I will, while in that state, always look like I’m trying out for the role of “bedraggled villager” from Braveheart. The air there adds about an extra pound of texture to my hair, mostly in the form of frizzy bits and random lumps.

Just now I’m looking out the airplane window at the left-side engine, painted in Southwest Airlines blue, yellow, and red. On the yellow stripe is painted the universal restroom symbol of your basic hombre, surrounded by a red circle with a diagonal slash across his torso. This means “gentlemen, please do not hang out on this engine.” It makes no reference to whether Yeti may ride on the exterior of the plane. William Shatner, take heed.* And also, don’t count on the flight attendant bringing your tea, as her ability to serve seems to have plateaued at row 5, and you are in row 6.

I always read the in-flight magazines when I’m in the air. This particular issue of “Spirit” magazine contained an article designed to point you, by way of a flow chart, to the specific Arizona resort that will be perfect for you. The first question is: Which view would you rather wake up to? There are three choices, in pictorial form. a) a city skyline, b) the rocky peak of a mountain, and c) a horse’s head. Unable to resist, I took out a pen and wrote on the page, next to choice #3: “Wait...is it still attached to the rest of the horse, or not?” I think the layout staff set themselves up for that one, don’t you?

Flight 890 may be bringing an outbreak of something viral back to Baltimore (and on to Chicago.) Some overly-relaxed mother was allowing her 2 year old to demand high-fives from every human crammed into the waiting area of Louis Armstrong Airport, Gate B4. And, like a bee pollinating every flower in the garden, she made at least three rounds. How can you refuse to high-five a two year old? You can’t.

*please refer to a certain episode of The Twilight Zone.

Friday, February 24, 2012

ok, I did it.

On Thursday morning, I actually walked into the Café du Monde, then left, deciding that I needed something other than carbs with extra sugar for breakfast. The menu took me by surprise. Like a walk-up stand at Disney World, it had a very focused and limited selection--coffee, o.j., beignets. I think that’s about it, although they do offer a choice as to whether you’d like your coffee au lait, or black. The whole thing was a little Disneyesque in the sense that it seemed a bit too packaged...a little too Mary Poppins to be a local breakfast. Except for this: Café du Monde had real chipped paint on its cove molding, and genuine slight tinge of high-usage grime on its surfaces. At Disney these would have been present only in the form of artfully faked wear and tear.

Nevertheless, having been advised by at least 3 people that this must be part of my adventure, I went back there this morning on my way to the bicycle tour. And I sat, and ordered a coffee (the New Orleans kind, complete with chicory,) and the requisite serving of 3 beignets (whereas 1.5 would have been perfect.)

So now I’m am qualified to say: beignets are very tasty. Every once in a while carbs with extra sugar aren’t a terrible thing.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

ask me

While I have never had my mother's superpower which causes every human she encounters to spill their life story, I have a related one. It is the "ask me" bubble which floats over my head. I first noticed it when I was a 16 year old, pedaling a barely functional bicycle along a country road in Lyon, France. A truck driver asked me (in French of course,) how to get...I don't remember where. And of course I didn't know, even if my direction-giving skills in French had been up to snuff. On the same trip people stopped me in the mall to ask for directions to "la librarie." I didn't know. But I did know it meant "bookstore." I don't look French. I just look askable. Same thing in London. Same thing everywhere.

Including New Orleans. Two different British people and an American couple wanted my advice on the St. Charles Avenue streetcar. A lady at Tulane wanted to know a good place to eat. And everyone, including the two guys in the hotel lobby, liked my shoes. So maybe it's the shoes. No, can't be. I didn't have those shoes in France when I was 16. Just the "ask me" bubble.