want a cubyrop candy?

Gabe is off all week due to Spring Break. My options include tolerating his nocturnal, raccoon-like habits which extend to rummaging through every food-bearing receptacle in the house all night (between blowing away zombies and antlions in Half-Life 2), or coercing him into the odd field trip in a futile attempt to nudge him toward humanoid behavior. Today, we opted for a field trip.

So, piled into the Soobie--Gabe and Jeff in back, Olivia riding shotgun (after convincing her dad he had more leg-room that way,) we forged the dusty--or at least exhausty--trail to H Mart in Catonsville.

The real name of H Mart is Han Ah Reum, and heaven-knows-what in Korean characters, but they helpfully gave it the pronounceable moniker for the benefit of the subset of customers who appear to hail from many latitudes of the Americas.

Our goals were, in part, specific: Pocky--a stick-pretzel snack dipped in a variety of flavors, and Ramune sodas, otherwise known as “marble drinks” for the glass marble trapped in the bottle’s narrow neck, over which the drink must flow to reach your mouth.

Things I was surprised by:
Fuji apples the size of softballs. We bought 4.
Durians. I imagined these spiny fruits to be kiwi-sized. They were bigger than footballs. We bought none.
Green bean popsicles. Gabe, deciding they would be perfect for his friend Matt’s birthday, went on to select several accompaniments: A canister of wasabi peas, a can of Grass Jelly Soda (which I can tell you, based on personal experience, is overly sweet Coke with gelatinous blobs floating in it. yum.), and one of the aforementioned gargantalossal apples.

Not surprisingly as these adventures go, Gabe’s science teacher called my Palm Centro as we were contemplating packages of seaweed roughly the size of boogie boards. Seems that Gabe neglected to mention that he needed to bring in $14 for an upcoming science center field trip. So, I am trying to get the gist of this while steering out of the way of shoppers who actually want seaweed*, and Jeff is scrambling to stick a pen and sticky-note in my face in case I need it but I am ignoring it because I’ve determined that I don’t, but am still multi-tasking while on the phone. Which means temporarily disregarding family members. Whose feelings get hurt. Jeff disappears.

You hurt Dad’s feelings, says Olivia.

I was trying to hear Gabe’s teacher, I say.

But this is just like what you always tell me, she says, He doesn’t understand.

So we hope he will not go far, and a short while later, after we’ve snagged shark-themed ice cream bars, Hello Kitty marshmallows, and mango juice, we send Gabe out to find him while we navigate the checkout lane (which is roughly 2 feet wide.)

Olivia exits ahead of me in order to corral her dad and brother, so by the time I push the cart out she has them in line.

Now I am home thinking that we should have bought more in the way of actual food, but noting that one could not identify the components of just any product offered at H Mart, due to the fact that I can’t decipher Asian characters of any sort.

*note to Fred, my brother-in-law, who did actually want seaweed. I got confused in the seaweed aisle. But don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll go back.

jazz man

Jeff bought a trumpet player when he was in Florida. He told me about it, and said he’d arranged to have it shipped here, but that was three weeks ago and I’d been wondering whether I’d gotten the accurate story, or whether details had fallen through the cracks like forgotten phone numbers, or the specifics of how locks are rekeyed.

He came today. In a big old taped up UPS’d box that set the dog berzerk and occupied way too much space on the kitchen floor. I knifed through box #1, then box #2, then finally breached box #3 sans knife after entreating Jeff not to lift anything but the payload out of box #1 lest styrofoam peanuts overrun the house.

He was mummified in plastic wrap and tape, so I carefully clipped him free. I was struck by three things: his lovely face and hands, that he only existed from the waist up, and that parts of what there was of him appeared to have been eaten away by alien flesh-eating nano-bots from outer space.

This was disconcerting and unexpected, but I resolved to focus on the positive space, rather than negative, and we set him on the piano as a sort of traumatized musical muse.

When Olivia got home from track practice we made her look. She gazed in momentary wonderment, then said ”This is relatively disturbing...I mean I like, it, but it reminds me of a horror movie I saw where this woman kills people and turns them into puppets. This part (she said, indicating the roughened, hollowed-out cavity where our trumpeter was missing part of an elbow) reminds me of the inside of one of the victims’ heads.”

Clearly we were in need of another opinion, so we pried Gabe out of the computer room to have a look. ”Heh...” (said Gabe.) ”It looks like something ripped the top half of his body off...cool.”

Nonetheless, he remains on the piano. His face is enchanting, his hands and arms, rippled with the veins of a lean musician, are inviting to caress. Perhaps we will adapt to the missing chunks. I think I can imagine what the artist had in mind. Sometimes a chalk portrait will fade out into jagged edges...and it works in 2D. But in 3...well...there’s a juxtaposition here between photographic realism and abstraction that is simply playing tricks with our imaginations. Still, we do not discriminate here against people who are gradually disappearing, whether it be to nano-bots or to other sorts of degeneration, do we?

cooties are not carbon based.

Did you smell Gabe? asks Olivia. He smells good today. I mean, he smells like a boy, but he smells good.

So I go, briefly, into the Chamber of Secrets aka the computer room, and take a whiff. Yes, I conclude. A nice, pleasant masculine aroma. Not the stink that so often occurs after a long day at school under the couple of extra jacket layers the kid always insists on wearing.

Gabe is not impressed one way or the other by having his sister and mother come in to give him the sniff test. But I am gratified, as I hope that one day other people (or person) will want him to live with them, and it is satisfying to know that he can potentially smell attractive.

I cannot yet attest to whether or not he has cooties. Personally, I most certainly do, and I have no doubt that it’s a congenital condition and, as far as I know, not contagious. Yet I have spawned 3 cooties-negative daughters and I hope that once Gabe outgrows his 15 year old boy troll phase that he too will not be the sort of person who sends out my almost palpable “go thither” vibe

Luckily, some cooties-negative folk are immune to the repellant magnetic field we cootie-positives emit, and I know that because I married one. But as my buddy continues his slow fade, I’m confronting, after 20+ years, the ridiculous fact that the cooties are still there. You would think that all that childrearing and middle-age would have eradicated the cooties, but it has not. Hence, I conclude that it is a life-long, incurable condition, and that it is my problem to work around.

Or perhaps most people are like Hydrogen, Oxygen, or even Carbon, and rather inclined to form bonds, whereas I’m Neon, and relatively non-reactive. When I do, it can be quite spectacular, but in the meantime, we neons float around wondering how it is that O and H have such an easy time making connections.

Well that’s easy. They don’t have cooties. And we wish Gabe smelled good all the time.

house too big

Fredfred the Varfolator is expressing her most irate opinion to Zoe, the little westie who lives next door and has the nerve to sniff around her own back yard.

This morning I hustled Jeff and Gabe both out the door at 7am. It was not simple or pretty, but both seemed to be more or less dressed and washed. We dropped Gabe off for carpool, then hit the Breakfast Shoppe where the eggs, homefries, and toast were fine but the coffee was tepid. Consequently, after a quick homeward detour to collect the following items which Bill had requested, last minute, that Jeff bring: sunglasses, poncho, sunscreen, we got airport hot coffee, and now I am quite clear about that. I like my coffee hot.

Now it is 2 days later and I’m feeling the way the house would feel almost empty, except for Gabe popping out of the computer room intermittently to boil pasta or peppermint tea. It is emptyish, and I don’t like it too much, but Jeff’s return on Wednesday will not quite fill it with what’s missing, and that’s the empty-houseliness problem. That it’s not easily correctable. How about a smaller house? An urban house? A beach house? No, no, not now. The fundamental tokens are positioned on their fundamental gameboard squares, and the available moves are scarce and of limited value.

But, in the meantime, I am procrastinating my way out of working on the book like a three-toed sloth and I’m not even sure I’m climbing in the right direction. So, I must now force myself to write at least one sentence. Which is what I’m going to do. Now.

off script

Not sure why I’d have even a vestigial notion that there is a script anyway, but I have had a nagging little sense of anxiety in my shoe that “the script” calls for something more mainstream than my current choices.

But nevermind. If someone asks what I do, I might just say, “I’ve gone off-script. Hard to give a one-word answer to that question.” No doubt he/she will be very sorry to have asked, and that will save me the trouble of having to explain further. (But if I did explain further it would be something like this: “I write, and try to appreciate life. How about you?”)

big stink, little stink

Jeff has just come home from exercise class, and gone upstairs to change clothes. He appears in the kitchen, shirtless, in his skivvies. "Look at me! I'm a decorated veteran!" he says, proudly displaying 2 ECG patches, their grab-tabs pointed downward on his chest like ribbons.

"Wow," I say..."that was when, Monday? Which means you haven't had a shower since Sunday?"

Jeff is taking a shower now. It's amazing though, that I hadn't even noticed. Especially compared to the amount of stink generated by a 15 year old boy (who showered that morning,) after a day at school. I guess we can call that a positive aspect of aging.

aargh, and just aargh.

I’m not sure why I’m feeling so half-crazy about having effectively put the kibosh on Jeff’s career as a driver. Because I didn’t exactly sort of mean to do that, exactly. (As Olivia used to say at around age 4: “I wasn’t gonna mean to.”)

But since I, with more or less honest intent, let slip to the insurance company our situation, by way of trying to extract an explanation of the insurance implications in a theoretical context...well, les jeux sont faits.

And if I could flutter up above my particular family situation and make a judgment as a perfectly impartial consultant, I think I would have had to recommend to myself the exact course of action I took. In fact, I would not have even advised the flimsy attempt to be theoretical about it.

I do think Jeff’s condition has had a markedly bizarre effect on his driving which he, for the most part, seems unaware of. But who wants to keep putting the screws on? Not I. It’s just my job. I don’t think the roads of Maryland (or anywhere else) need an unnecessary erratic element in the mix.

A form will come soon, requesting some sort of medical person’s aye or nay, and if it didn’t come soon, it would have come in September when Jeff’s license comes up for renewal.

But I wasn’t gonna mean to.

dresses, drams, dreadful divas...

For the moment, the evening routine has shifted to the slightly more nursely. Dose #1 of the substance of unknown composition and value entered Jeff hypodermically yesterday, and it is my duty to take nightly temperatures and blood pressures in addition to the pill dispensing.*

A large chunk of today went to early prom dress shopping with Olivia. We finally found something she likes at White House/Black Market, and additionally, I snagged something off the clearance rack for the Community Center Gala. Then I decided I liked myself just as well in Becca’s 2006 prom dress. I am rarely a fashion emergency, because I just don’t care that much.

I’m sitting in the dark, typing. It’s 7:30 p.m. Jeff is making little snoring noises behind me. His sleep/wake, not to mention his eating schedule is all wacky, but mostly at night. He may just miss American Idol at 8:00.

I’m a deep person. Can you tell? Prom dress shopping and American Idol.

*Merck, you see, ok'd us. We are now a guineau pig and his carrot-feeder.

Stop Making Sense

You know how sometimes people who become stone deaf lose some of their ability to articulate precisely? Because being able to hear yourself speak gives you a feedback mechanism by which you can continue to monitor your own clarity of speech. I’m wondering if there is going to be an interesting parallel to this phenomenon in my ability to continue making conversational sense.

It is true that I tend to be quirky in my points and style, when it comes to conversation. However, I could always gauge my general comprehensibility by whether Jeff was returning the verbal serve in a way that made contextual sense. Thus our volleys stayed within a framework that--while most likely not everyone’s preferred game--at least, for the most part, did not stray into Dadaistic nonsensicality.

And now I’m not sure. The basics remain: I can ask “how was your chicken caesar salad?,” or “did you get the mail?,” or “are you tired?” and generally get a response that logically answers the question. But if I stray into the quirky, or (to me) humorous, I am typically met with a blank stare of incomprehension. So I backtrack, and try again in plainer style.

Which is fine. Ish. It’s also boring. Consequently I may still inject riffs from my old off-beat manner into the flow, and let them amuse myself only. (Although the amusement of one is not equal to half the amusement of two. It’s more like 15%.)

The trouble will be that since Jeff is still the primary backboard off which my ball bounces, I may find--some years down the road if I find someone else to talk to--that I make absolutely no sense. And that will be strange and, I suppose, disappointing.

How to correct inflation. In the dark and rain.

...first you would gather all the dollar bills you could...says Gabe on our 3 mile trek to his carpool drop-off point.

It’s 7:05 a.m., and the short winter daylight has not yet arrived. A curving line of cars is waiting to turn left into the high school parking lot, blinkers and headlights sparkling through the persistent drizzle.

...then, you would make it so dollars were like yen...

You mean, I cut in, you need about a thousand to buy a pencil? But I cannot think about this too hard as I have reached the moment where I must watch for the “shadow children.” High schoolers crossing the road to school by jaywalking between the dark cars stretched out in line for the traffic light to change. Their silhouettes appear suddenly from behind a car, stepping in front of me with the conviction that I will spot their denim and black jackets, and have the reflexes and traction required not to smear them into the damp road. I go slowly.

...and then you set it up so all the places in the world where they store money would have fiery explosions...

We’ve safely avoided shadow children. Now it’s commuters pulling into the center turn lane, hoping to join our prevailing direction. But it’s disconcerting in the dark and rain. Headlights looming on my flank in my peripheral vision.

...so, says Gabe, you’ve stashed a couple million hundred-dollar bills...

Two-million dollars isn’t that much for an evil scheme, I say. (I am distracted, you see. Someone has to drive.)

No. hundred-dollar bills, Gabe clarifies.

We arrive. I told you we wouldn’t be late, says Gabe. You should have more faith in my sense of lateness.

I point out that Mrs. Child’s car is running and she’s already popped her trunk. He is unimpressed.

zotzotzot

The more words I add, the more assured I become that Smart Kids (which is what we’ll call it for now,) is beginning to show the contours of a real narrative. That doesn’t keep me from fearing the process so much that I hide from it via procrastination every phrase or so. Zot! I type 2 words. Let’s see how Chiff & Fipple is doing... Zotzot! I type 3 words. You know, I think a nice cup of darjeeling could help right about now. Zotzotzoot! Shiznit, I haven’t blogged in a while...aaannd...maybe Blitzkrieg Bop isn't SO hard on hard on Rock Band... Check me next month. I may have finished a chapter.

boooyaaaah...

Ok, so Wyeth has excluded us from its vaccine study on the grounds that having multiple microbleeds in evidence on your MRI (2 > 1, ergo, multiple,) makes you (particularly if you’re a mouse,) more susceptible to further such mini-hemorrhages.

Here: I have included a link in case anyone is as geeky as I. Click this if you're interested:click here (oh, wow...I think I got the link to work!)

Jeff is in a bit of a more-bummed-than-usual state of mind as a result of thinking about how he now has these “mini-strokes” going on. Truth is, it seems it is a normal and not unexpected piece of the illness. But it has not helped that he tried to install new weatherstripping on the back door today and found he just can’t get vice grips and screwdrivers to do his bidding anymore. So, for now, a rolled-up towel is serving as a draft-dodger, and I will look into installing something else once the cold chill releases its grip. Having restored two of the kitchen ceiling recessed can lights to working order today, I’m feeling that I’ve maxed out my handywoman alter ego for the moment.

For now Jeff is watching his new favorite television personality--stock commentator Kramer on MSNBC whose catch phrase is, as far as I can tell, BOOOOYAAAAAAH! I did not need boooyaaah yelled in my ear as I attempted to complete the drum part of Cherub Rock (while Becca played the guitar,) on Rock Band, but we survived.

this is today

Traffic to D.C. was sparse and accommodating for Wednesday morning rush hour. People returning to their post-holiday lives on a staggered schedule, I supposed, kept the roads unusually clear on the second of January.

Jeff and I took our preferred “beltway-avoidance route,” cutting a counter-clockwise arc around the northwest quadrant of downtown before dropping south on Wisconsin Avenue to Georgetown University Hospital.

The light commuter density afforded us another nice surprise. Designed, apparently, to approximate Dante’s 9 layers of hell, the GUH visitor parking garage normally forces us to spiral deeply into the earth until we squish into a tiny spot next to the harpies and squanderers on level 7 or 8. Today, by lovely fluke, we parked right next to Cerberus--aka the ground level stairwell--and had but a brisk run across the plaza to the main hospital building.

Above the parking catacombs, it finally felt and looked like winter. As the short, frizzy-haired nurse relieved Jeff of a half-dozen or so purple-topped tubes-full of blood, I scanned the gray skyline where the stark brick hospital campus gave way to a clear view of most of the Washington Monument obelisk, and the flat horizon beyond. The heating unit under our 7th floor window radiated reassuringly through my blue jeans. Jeff read the paper.

It was supposed to be lumbar puncture day. We were still in the screening stage for a Wyeth Alzheimer vaccine study. Jeff had scored appropriately high for overall health, appropriately middling for cognitive status, and appropriately companioned in that he had me--the required partner to schedule, drive, and fill in the blanks.

I can’t remember how old I was when I finally became brave enough to open all the drawers I could reach from the dentist’s chair when I was a kid, and push the buttons on the water-squirter and air-blower when the dentist stepped out of the room, but by now I was shameless about flipping through the binder on Jeff (known for the study as J-L-C,) which the nurse-practitioner had left in the windowsill. So I’d peeked at the MRI report, but made little of it until Brigid, the N-P, came back and explained the delay. Seems that in the brief description of the MRI reading the radiologist had made mention of foci which represented old parieto-occipital hemorrhages. While a single such point (Brigid explained,) might be discounted, more than one could possibly be a disqualifier. Thus we decided, with Brigid’s support, to postpone the lumbar puncture until she could seek clarification from the radiologist. Who, after all, wants to be spinal-tapped for nothing?

We took the cash for the parking allowance (our less infernal parking space notwithstanding,) and declined the ungarnished tunafish sandwich bag lunches. They aren’t bad in a pinch, but this time we treated ourselves to Italian, in a cozy little bistro on M Street. Furthermore, and most uncharacteristically, we ordered pinot noir with lunch. And Jeff was there as we ate chicken caesar salad and penne primavera. You never know with AD, when you’ll get the blotchy cloud of Alzheimer’s confusion, and when the sparkle of the person you love will be unmasked. And when the clouds lift, yours eyes tear up more than if you lived in full sun all the time.

We left the The News Café. (I know, I know. Sounds more like the coffee shop at the Amtrak station than a clubby Mediterranean den, but there you go.) Three doors down, (with a vagrant sitting on the sidewalk in front,) was, to no one’s surprise, a Starbucks. Jeff ordered a tall brewed. I ordered a grande soy white chocolate peppermint latte. (In whatever order that goes. It was dessert. Ok?) We handed the sidewalk man six bucks on the way out. He smiled more nicely than anyone else had that day.

So, we’re waiting to hear where we stand on the MRI reading. I don’t suppose I can blame the drug company. If you were testing the efficacy of your vaccine on Alzheimer’s you’d be looking for uncomplicated cases. If indeed such cases exist.

I do buy shampoo.

Today Helen called. One piece of her agenda was to mention something she had noticed recently. Jeff’s hair is not always washed adequately. I know, I said. I’ve been aware. Sometimes he wears the same t-shirt for what seems like a week at a time. I already know that attention to grooming is a skill that tends to dwindle in people with Jeff’s condition, but...um...I wasn’t ready for it yet? I am grateful to Helen for sharing her impressions with me. Sometimes I don’t quite want to believe myself when my own observations point to signs I’m not, as I said, ready for yet. He can wash, and that, I allow, is a good thing. How well he will take to me prompting him on one more subject--that I can’t predict. Yikes-a-hootie, as someone I know says.

We took the Odyssey to get a tire replaced today. I followed Jeff in my Soobie. He appropriately assessed and skirted the 9 a.m. elementary school traffic choke, but pulled into Goodyear instead of Mr. Tire. I pulled alongside him. “Did you mean to come here?” I asked. No, he had not. He couldn’t remember how to get to Mr. Tire. He followed me out the back entrance from Goodyear, around the traffic circle, and into Mr. Tire’s lot. 2 blocks in all.

Later, we had a flare-up of the usual discussion. “What am I supposed to do, now that I’m retired? What do you think about buying a house to renovate?” I pulled out my one-trick pony. All the unvarnished woodwork, all the unpainted walls--see them? Just waiting for you? Jeff did see them. He decided to start by getting a piece of plywood he could wrap with oak to build a short door for the short closet in our bedroom. I am good with that idea, because it doesn’t involve applying sharp tools to anything that’s already in place. He set out in his Odyssey with its new tire and proper alignment. He couldn’t find any of the 3 area Home Depots and came home. He says he will go to Johnson Lumber tomorrow.

Jeff has been on his full complement of meds since last February. I know they work for a time, then they stop. I don’t know when they will start stopping, but I’m beginning to wonder.

I’m already bad at enforcing hygiene practices with the intractable adolescent boy who lives here. Who thought it would be a good idea to give me this job? So, more opportunities to play “control freak.” It is impossible to explain that I neither enjoy nor wish to control anybody. That the flip side of the 45 is negligence. I would say I already list a little too far in that direction.

Can we fix it? Yes we can.

Gripe du jour: Why are there 3 random pairs of scissors hanging around when I don’t need them, and not a one to be found in any logical location when I do?

Meanwhile, Olivia and I have both earned extra stripes for our Rosie the Riveter badges. Last week practically-useless electrician #2 verified the wiring from the thermostat to the relay box to radiant heat pump #3 (installed, but as of yet inactive,) but declared that is was not within his purview to troubleshoot further. So I felt good and stuck. I visited Radiantec’s website where they promise they’ll stand behind you forever and ever, then gave them a call. Help, says I, whatintheheck to I do next?

Inasmuch as I was able to follow Darryl-the-tech’s instructions, I am proud. Undo pump #1. Hook #3’s wiring to that spot in the relay box. (Surprise--pump #3 whirred into action for the first time ever. Darryl thought it wouldn’t.) Ok, so it’s not the pump. Switch the little boxy relay plug-in thingies around. (No dice.) “Jump” the thermostat input thingy by inserting stripped wire (e.g. paper clips) in the holes. (Surprise again--the constant flickering of indicator light #3 stopped dead to nothing. Darryl thought it would light and stay lit.) So, the relay for pump #3 is just bad and we need a new box. $192 later this thing should be fixed. I will earn another stripe by hooking up the wires correctly. Not once did I have to say what the heck you talking about Darryl? Because I had studied the system. And, remarkably, I’m getting the hang of it. And why practically-useless electrician #2 had not bothered to check to see if the pump works, I’ll never know, because I’ll never call him again.

Then, Olivia came home with two flat rear tires. We jacked, we de-lugged, and we put the spare on the flattest one. Olivia did it, with me as coach, and should be able to do it again when the need arises. As Mr. Tire has now outfitted us with an entirely new set, I trust the need won’t arise any time soon.

We drive Jeff around with us and ask him questions which he very often knows the answer to...it’s just that for him knowing and doing are in two different parts of the brain which are quite unequal in neuronal supply. It has been quite a freaky thing to go from just-not-worrying-about-that-stuff (because I had a handyman onboard,) to needing to comprehend the ins and outs of an entire, somewhat obscure and specialized, house. Sometimes life is just about fixing stuff.

Sometimes I look around, and I think can someone who knows what’s going on and how things work just help me with this? And I know that I’m in that position you’re in when you realize that you’re on your own and your daddy can’t save you anymore so you’re just going to have to figure out how the hell to work it out. So far I have. So far.

declutterator

I’m cleaning out drawers. Drawers and closets and medicine cabinets. All those places where you find tiny butterfly hair clips that your daughters didn’t like very much even when they were 10, and carry out menus from places that closed 2 years ago, and packets labeled “Your Bicycle Papers.” (Who goes back and reads documentation about a bike? Who?) I’ve already done the basement, which was the worst of it. It’s pared down to objects whose existence I can justify without having to think very hard. My side of the basement, that is. Jeff’s side...well, that is for a phase of life I haven’t gotten to yet.

We’ve just cleared out my mother-in-law’s apartment (well, at least I helped,) and--though it’s interesting to see the things she found worth hanging onto--I’m determined that my children will have a very boring time picking up after me. I don’t know whether that’s good or bad, but--more importantly, and more immediately--when and if I ever move, it’ll just be a matter of throwing a few things (really. a few.) into boxes, and leaving the furniture for the moving people to deal with.

But there’s a lot. Despite my having launched major decluttering initiatives on several occasions over the past decade, there’s always more than you think. I have a digital post-it note on my MacBook desktop where I can check off the clutter repositories as I address them. Very satisfying to see the little check-marks line up. Even though I only have one, so far. There will be more soon. Don’t worry.

du jour

Tomorrow. The Assault on Georgetown University Hospital: Take 2. This time we mean business. Well, at least we mean to get in on the Wyeth vaccine trial, if all goes well with the screening. I’ve been diligent in recording Jeff’s blood pressure once or twice a day so we can demonstrate that he does indeed suffer from white-coat syndrome, and that his normal bp is pretty much under control. Will he get the Magic Juice? + Booster? or just one or the other? Or nothing? Who knows? It’s all a part of the game called Contributing the the General Pool of Knowledge. I have the avoid-the-Washington-beltway-at-all-costs route all mapped out. I better not hate Piney Branch Road.

Today I ate chicken. For the first time in roughly 15 years. Just a bite actually. Enough to determine that it was not tofu (as ordered) after all. The striations were the real give away. Happily the chef at Pad Thai was quick to send a replacement, um, pad thai, and I finished roughly at the same time as Jeff, which was remarkable.

Olivia is downloading Christmas songs to her iPod. I can hear Perry Como singing Santa Claus is Coming to Town upstairs. Gabe is ensconced in the computer room. Tomorrow he gets to take a bike to carpool, just in case I can’t pick him up on time. Not a bad thing for a kid of his ilk.

Rachel wants a send-a-sheep to a wool-weaving lady, sponsored by Oxfam, for Christmas. I’m good with that.

Today, in Annapolis, I realized how I’m not going to bother to live there unless they can put in and sustain a good walking-distance grocery store.

I'm cool.

Yesterday we got a catalog called Free People. I’ve seen clothes with that label before--kind of a fusion of Sundance chic, bohemian, and Himalayan socio-eco-consciousness. And here's the collection all in one place. I almost like them but can’t quite get beyond my impression that the garments appear designed to fit something other than a human form. Even on the models the bodices cinch at mid-boob, or sport sleeves that end awkwardly at the elbow joint. One striking image features a model posed pigeon-toed in front of a temple. She seems to be wearing hip-waders, a disco-ball dress, and oven mitts.

I feel certain the prices are high, but I can’t tell you for sure as the text is printed in a tiny wispy white font against mottled backdrops of anything from busy tapestries to rocky deserts. There should be a disclaimer printed largely somewhere on the catalog: If you can’t read this then get the heck out of here you old fart. This stuff’s not for you!

I guess the warning should be self-evident. Though not spelled out explicitly, that’s the clear message I get when I walk into any number of contemporary Annapolis Mall boutiques. If you cannot make informed clothing choices by the light of three 20 watt bulbs, go away. If angst-ridden background music blasting at 100 decibels scrambles your ability to remember where you are, go away. In general I handle this confusion by going away. But as long as you have no particular agenda--you are, for example, merely accompanying your 17 year old--modern marketing can be an interesting thing to observe.

There’s a new wing in the Annapolis Mall full of all sorts of new design schemes. The UnderArmour Store sucks you down a cavernous gray tunnel toward steps glowing with cobalt blue floor lights. Inside you’re greeted by the hulking form of a gargantuan athlete about to drop dead of a ruptured vessel. You hope he won’t topple on you as you look around for the rollercoaster you’re almost certainly supposed to get on next. But there isn’t one. Just athletic clothing.

Further down the mall corridor you come across a brick facade suggesting a London gentlemen’s club in the time of Jack the Ripper. Tiny windows, wrought iron grillwork...and a barely discernible brass plaque from which you might conclude that the name of the store is Ruehl. A saleslady stands just inside. You expect her to lead you discreetly to the private card game in the back room, but instead she points through the barely lit gloom to several strangely subdivided areas containing $200 handbags, and tissue-thin camisoles at $90 a pop. You say “thank you,” and back out, fearful that you might lose your husband who almost certainly will not remember how to find his way back to the mall entrance next to the McCormick & Schmick Seafood Restaurant--the one with the the giant inflatable tick on the roof. Well, it’s supposed to be a crab, but it looks like an engorged tick.

I may have given the impression that I really don’t like the mall so much. And you’re right, I really don’t. Not so much. But it is interesting in its own way. And I did succeed in tracking down a couple of acceptable pairs of blue jeans--as had been my goal. I did not try on the jeans at the Lucky Brand store, despite the saleslady’s assurances that they were expertly made by a factory right in the United States. At $120 a pair I would want them to be made at the lunar station, with moon-metal rivets, and shipped back to Earth via shuttle. No, I bought some at J. Crew who--several years ago--I would have lumped with the trend to try to scrape me off as yesterday’s news. But it seems they’ve been trumped by the next generation of über-hot shops. The jeans were $73. On sale from $98. It’s still a little hard to swallow.

what I do.

Ok. So I am plodding along at my 4th book--this one about a kid mixed up in the world of corporate research tampering, and....sheesh. Well, yeah, that sounds pretty ponderous, I have to admit, but plow on I must in hopes of injecting enough froth that it will make soufflé.

Meanwhile, I’ve realized with definity (is that a word? no. but it should be.) that I absolutely cannot write after 7pm. Hence this blog dross. Because it doesn’t count. I did not click the link for you, now did I?

Olivia is eating apple pie out of the pan. I would not let Jeff do that. In fact, I would try to prevent his cutting the pie with a spoon, which is his preferred style. Cut (well, dig,) with a spoon and plop it in a coffee cup. If anyone ever wonders why I didn’t turn out to be a traditional kitchen mom, well...here is but one clue. Some ducks line up in a row. Some don’t.

Gabe is watching anime cartoons. The computer, running XP, had its regularly scheduled conniption yesterday, refusing to play videos. I asked it to please forget everything it had learned after October 1, and it worked again. I reset the PC while helping Jeff get logged onto Investors Business Daily on the Mac so he could agonize over a recent Lululemon/Athletica stock acquisition. Periodically I utter the following line: One moment please...another customer filed a complaint ahead of you...

But, most happily, I got roughly 2 paragraphs completed on the work of great ponderosity today. It does move like a slug, sometimes not even leaving something as interesting as a trail of shimmering slime behind, but I know from experience that even at such a pace, a book gets written.

Oktobersmalltalking

It’s a great Oktoberfest. Our neighbors, 3 doors down, host it every couple of years, and do a phenomenal job of it at that. Yesterday I felt more than ever like I was reconnecting with people whom I’d almost completely lost contact with as our children have grown and done their own things--no more swim team, no scouts, no school activity gatherings--and we’re missing the socializing that such regimented schedules forced us into.

One person-whom-I-never-see characterized this time in our lives as “weird.” Things begin, more than before, to change in ways that we knew might be coming but didn’t really have to think about before.

And this is what I noticed--that there’s much that goes unsaid at a social gathering of this sort. Maybe, 10 years before, most of what impacted our lives in turning-point ways were things that were easy to throw out in casual conversation--I’m expecting my 3rd kid, Frank got a new job, we’re buying a house in Round Bay. Now, a lot of it isn’t that banterable. I wondered just how many people are holding secrets that they won’t so casually toss around. One long-time acquaintance is expecting a 10th child. (I know...wow.) It wasn’t until I saw her interacting with a friend who knows her better that I began to suspect that maybe something about this pregnancy is not as expected. Maybe something you wouldn’t just toss out there at an Oktoberfest. I can’t be the only one presenting a pretty, but slightly inaccurate, picture.

Much of what we talked about went like this: Person to Jeff: “How’s the hardware business?” Jeff: “Actually I’m out. I sold my half to my brother.” Person: “Retired? You lucky dog. Let me shake your hand.” I suppose it’s fortunate that that’s as far as Jeff tends to think of it these days. Sometimes I think that, as far as he can recall, that is all there is to the story. Certainly I would be unlikely to volunteer more. “What’s new with us? You mean besides the degenerative neurocognitive disorder? Not much!” Hardly peppy Oktoberfest banter, and I’m sure that anyone else whose lives hold darker aspects--not known by all--would probably, smile and nod along with the assumption that retirement was a lark and a luxury as I do.

Where slasher directors get their inspiration...

It was our typical circuit--down the sylvan lane to the bog...through the bog-hemmed nature trail (a frequent spot for bunny sitings, and yesterday a snake...) and today, a brief stopover on one of the beach benches. (One assembled by myself, no less.)

It was one-third of the way up the heavily wooded beach road that something went plop five feet in front of us. And a rather heavy and sudden plop it was, from the treetops high above to the road at our feet. Freddi the hound took an instant interest though I instinctively pulled her back from that which had plopped.

It was breakfast. Not for us, and (sadly for her) not for Freddi, but that which lay sprawled before us was the scrawny legs and the carcass, roughly from the wings down, of a bird, stripped of feathers and skin.

I am not among those who like to examine such things too closely and diligently, but Jeff and I speculated as to what might have dropped a carcass on what would have been, five seconds later, our heads.

A further clue emerged another 15 feet up the hill. Bunches of white and gray feathers, pulled out in tufts, and a major wing bone still attached to a few. Clearly, much of the early damage had occurred here before the winner--it had to be a bird of prey--had flown the remainder into the treetops before deliberately or accidentally dropping half in our path. Sharing, I guess. We declined, with gratitude, but never caught a glimpse of the raptor.

please pass me the burnt sienna...

I liked when my kids were little. Sometimes, the only thing to do was color in coloring books with them. (I do like crayons. Really.) Sometimes the only thing to do was work on a block stacking project.

Those times do change. Soon you get to the crazy years of school events, sports, birthday parties--a schedule that can drive the most energetic of us utterly wacko.

And now, in that way life has of giving you another appetizer when you thought it was time for dessert, I’m back to coloring books. Well, not exactly. But I am back to having a helper at the grocery store, gearing my plans toward being there to help someone else with the basics, and just sitting around--not quite coloring, but we might as well be--because we’re back to a season of someone else’s agenda being hitched to my own, regardless of who’s the pony and who’s the cart.

There is an upside: This type of phase shoehorns me into putting serious effort into my writing projects, and that is good. At least there’s sure no point in arguing with it.

katzenjammered plumbing.

Project #1 du jour: Get a 2 x 4 for the cat. No, we’re not going to swing it at her, though sometimes something needs to be done, and that’s where the 2 x 4 comes in.

Hazel likes to prick at window mouldings, and she (being a standard issue cat) loves to claw. Her favorite house construction phase was before all the oak trim went up and there was plenty of exposed pine to sink her nails into.

It is likely that the 2 x 4 segments we are about to affix to the corner by the basement door, and to a wall accessible from Jeff’s dresser would not be everyone’s idea of cutting edge decor, but I’d prefer that Hazel never have to decide that hardwood is better than nothing.

Meanwhile, the new laundry tub, of pristine poly, has acquired its first layer of sewer-line back up sediment--an unidentifiable collection of black crunchy stuff which washes in with the water the drain line has rejected, and settles evenly across the tub’s surface. Somewhere below the tub, in the fittings I mucked around with in installing it, is a connection that is allowing some of that rejected water to squish its way through and form geographic patterns on the basement concrete. Fortunately (I guess) the crunch is filtered out by the pvc and makes it to the tub. I have tightened the connections as much as I can by hand, but I’m afraid the time has come to replace the 60 year old cast iron with pvc so that, henceforth, we can try to blame all ensuing back-ups on the county. We are awaiting a quote and a commitment from the plumbing guy.

With a name like Potash, it has to be good.

Jeff asks for a colored pencil.

”Do you want orange or green?” I ask, rummaging through the drawer that holds compasses, cell phone chargers, and 1/4” scale house plan templates, in addition to numerous semi-functional writing implements.

He picks green, and proceeds to draw indecipherable markings on the pages of a book called Stikky Stock Charts. When he picked up the book at Barnes & Noble, I assumed the word “stikky” had some arcane link to stock chart interpretation, but in fact it is merely the name for a brand of books--like The Idiot’s Guide to [whatever makes you feel idiotic.] There’s the Stikky Guide to Trees, the Stikky Guide to Rock Formations, and very possibly the Stikky Guide to Scraping Gum off Your Shoe.

Jeff is trying to learn how to interpret recent performance stock graphs, and thusly buy and sell prudently. He’s taken an interest in anything that is both doing well (according to the chart gurus,) and has an unglamourous, and unlikely niche, such as scouring powders for subway tunnels, or commercial ash-tray sand embossers. I must confess, he did rather well with his small pot in the course of a week with a company that makes oil-drilling equipment. He then sold it on cue as advised by one of his book authors. Then floundering about the question of how to reinvest, he rejected an early favorite with a name that sounded like Bigfoot’s hearth-sweepings, and instead--with my backing--settled on Apple. For now. With luck I won’t be the only one waiting to make my move when they release the new Leopard operating system in October.

Due in small part to uncertainty, and large part to the capriciousness of a faulty memory, Jeff will assuredly announce a wish to sell Apple before I think the plan has had time to work. But I do serve, fortunately or not, as the gatekeeper here. We review the steps for logging onto the stock-trading website daily, but it is, for him, an utterly unacquirable skill. In truth, it would worry me if he could do it himself. I seem to have broken him of the habit of phoning the company headquarters every time--because it’s resulted, more than once, in their resetting his password to something new of his choosing which he invariably can’t remember when I go to help him the next day.

“Hey Gabe-O!” I say. (I’ve just noticed it’s 10 pm.) “I KNOW” he bellows. “Make sure you...” I say. “I KNOW” he bellows. “Brush your...” I say. “I KNOW” he bellows. “And wear rubber bands,” I say.

No Robin Hood

Today we sat in the window seats at Yin Yankee Café, eating a Panang Tofu noodle bowl and a tahini chicken wrap for lunch. A young man strode into view--clean cut, in a t-shirt and shorts. If anything, you’d have expected him to accessorize himself with a lacrosse stick, or maybe an iPod. But as he sat on the bench on the sidewalk in front of Yin Yankee, what he pulled out was a pipe. A regular old smoking pipe with a curvy stem, and a pipe cleaner to start things off. He sat on the bench, the whole time we ate lunch, casually puffing away while reading Moby Dick. He also had a Langenscheidt pocket dictionary. I recognized its yellow vinyl cover, and the way the center front edge of the white pages gets smudged to a dull gray with frequent use, just like my Langenscheidt French and Spanish dictionaries. So what language, I wondered, in addition to reading Moby Dick and smoking a pipe, might the kid be studying? When we left, I peeked over his shoulder. It was just an English dictionary.

As for Annapolis--Yin Yankee and everything else--it will be fine to just visit downtown for now. My urge to flee has subsided for the moment. I keep thinking of Olivia, as a toddler. Here is what would happen when she fell down and scraped her knee: She’d run shrieking in the opposite direction--away from the house, away from me or anyone else who might provide comfort. And I’m seeing myself in that vignette. Stress or pain=urge to flee. Run away from the dang bad thing, bad place, bad whatever it is. Maybe it doesn’t hurt over there. Funny--after 3 undergraduate schools and a couple decades of childrearing, you’d have thought I would have lost that impulse, but evidently I did not. Still, and fortunately, the itch has subsided and I’m able to view here as okay.

Drat. I’m ready to watch Robin Hood--the Errol Flynn version--and Netflix had to have it sent from Cleveland instead of locally. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to be eccentric. It’ll be here Thursday.

Tights & other tuffstuff

A peppy saleslady came to the door today.

“You’ll remember me from last year! I bring the TuffStuff", she said, pulling an unidentifiable spray bottle out of an unidentifiable pouch.

”Actually, I don’t,” I replied honestly.

”That’s ok,” she continued, without missing a beat as she segued into a demo of how she could scribble blue ink onto her washcloth, then spray it clean with nothing more than TuffStuff and a toothbrush.

Of course I should have run in to fetch my washcloth and my ink--just to remove any possible sleight of hand that may have been occurring. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to waste her time. I especially didn’t want to waste my time.

She persisted.

”What’s your most difficult cleaning job?” she demanded.

Naturally I thought of the right answer two minutes after we parted company.

Blood, of course. We try to keep the salespeople on the front porch...but sometimes you get this awful splattering...

But instead I tried, as tactfully and pleasantly as possible to explain that I just didn’t buy my products door to door.

”Why not?” she demanded peppily, in her valiant but futile effort to keep the lines of communication open. And I can’t even remember what I replied, but I went in grumbling about fire-bombing the “Keep the Customer Feeling Like a Clod School of Peppiness.”

Last night I watched the ending two-thirds of Captain Blood on Turner Classic Movies. Errol Flynn sure was pretty. I was especially impressed with Captain Blood’s way of dispatching the sleazy Captain Lavasseur without mussing his pretty hair. I wasn’t worried about Lavasseur’s cheveux, as I was too impressed about his abysmal french accent to mind his hair.

Now there is no getting around it. I must put Robin Hood in my Netflix queue to see if Errol always looks pretty in tights, and if Olivia deHavilland always looks like a cute little muffin-face.

Specs

I picked up my “progressive lens” glasses today. At my optometry appointment last week the optometrist, who was roughly 14, told me that 45 is the “magic age” in Severna Park--meaning that even though “progressive lens” really means bifocals, at least I have lots of company.

Jeff said, “You look straight out of the 50’s,” and I said, “Well...that’s good. I always wanted to look like Mary Sue Higginshaw, the ‘smart girl’ in your junior high math class.” Although, to be fair, I’m Mary Sue with a little mileage on her. Although, to be really fair, Mary Sue managed to have that middle-aged air even at twelve, so maybe I’m not that far off.

My observations about the specs so far: They’re trying to cram way too many corrections into a couple little lenses. In particular, the part that's supposed to fix my astigmatisms tends to make everything I look at go from square to rhombus with a slight turn of the head. It’s a trip. The techician lady said “your eyes have to learn all over again. Fine. I hope my eyes are smarter than the rest of my head, if not as smart as Mary Sue.
I wonder though...would I have been just as well off with homemade pipe cleaner glasses?

Bryn Mawr College. July. Those are the magic parameters. So to speak. Yes...for one week in July, Tannen’s Magic (some outfit in NY...no connection to Biff as far as I know) holds its magic camp for 11 to 20 year olds on the campus of beautiful Bryn Mawr, and Gabe is actually interested. Not that I really thought he wouldn’t be now that he’s in the mode of ambushing random people to show them card tricks. Every conversation this week, on the ride home from carpool has been about how easy David (one of the other riders) is to hypnotize. Apparently several kids at school are too. I’m waiting for the call: “Would you please ask Gabe to stop hypnotizing everyone during social studies?”

But this means 2 good things: 1)Gabe doesn’t watch anime all day that week, and 2)Jeff and I can go somewhere. I’m thinking about Maine. Maybe Acadia. Maybe a quick trip to Nova Scotia. It’s a small segment from the middle of our 2 week honeymoon in 1984. I may skip L.L.Bean this go-round. And I will insist the snobby lady at the Asticou Inn in Northeast Harbor acknowledge my presence instead of addressing the pair of us as “Mr. Clement.” “Please show Mr. Clement his room. Please take Mr. Clement’s bag.” I’m not sure where I got the invisibility cloak that day. Maybe this time, if I wear my Mary Sue Higginshaw glasses, she’ll pay attention to me.

Like Elwood P. Dowd, I'll just keep Harvey.

Just for today, I’ve hit a quarter-note rest in the staccato rhythm that the writing project mamba has been thumping along in recently. Scallywags has gone to NYC for what will certainly be its 14th “thank you very much.” Remarkably though, 2 of the 13 publishers requested second, then third looks, and dialogued with me to the extent that I can’t convince myself it’s a waste of time to keep shipping it off (with the latest round of revisions.)

Meanwhile, Dewey (whose real name--for the moment anyway--is Hunting the Rose) has left the building on its maiden voyage in the hopes that one of the aforementioned dialoguers will take a gander at it.

And in that moment where I have shipped and can now do little but wait for the SASEs to find their way back to me, it’s time to pull out another blank slate, so to speak. It’s a banana paper, eco-friendly spiral notebook with a parrot on the cover--a cover which came slightly pre-mangled from Office Depot, but which I bought anyway because it was the only one, and it’s my personal idiosyncrasy that I must plan in a notebook that in some way inspires me. Plus, the mangled edge strikes me somehow as a karmic advantage, or a positive omen. Dang, anything to stay inspired. The parrot notebook is blank today, and will stay that way while I breathe for a bit. Then I must brainstorm in the way that I always do, and gradually patch together something--whether good or bad--from the strings of nonsense which float around, completely undisciplined, in my cranium.

There are times--many time actually--when I wonder by what ridiculous conceit I consider this continued pursuit of publication a calling. Because, in truth, the only conviction I have is that I must continue to write and continue to present the finished products to publishers. I feel no conviction whatsoever that I will succeed in the classic sense. So, yes, if I die having spent the rest of my life trying, I suppose I will have answered the call.

I may be every bit as deluded as the tone-deaf auditioners on American Idol who wail, upon rejection, that singing is the only thing they could possibly do in life. And if so, so be it.

I am particularly conscious of this possibility when I think about my sister and sister-in-law who rightfully should not have tushes at all if one considers how hard they work. I have voiced this, and been kindly reminded that “nobody would want my gig, anyway”(not referring to the writing life.) And I’m sure that’s true. So, perversely, I take a swig of comfort from that thought.

And anyway, I have a date with a banana paper notebook.

not Eleanor

Yesterday the i’s were dotted and the t’s were crossed. We no longer have a proprietary connection to Clement Hardware. Oh, we have a connection to be sure, and will continue to for some years. In fact, I’m now a director on the Board (rather small board though it is--3, I think,) and we certainly have a vested interest in the business continuing to prosper.

So, all in all I guess I should feel good about getting that ironed out, particularly in light of the fact that the settlements which should wrap up the last of our landlording obligations are just around the corner. Actually, what I felt yesterday--and continue to feel (and, as a matter of fact have felt from the moment we put the houses on the market, and began the divestment from the store process) is a little queasy.

Of course I’m glad, in the sense that I’m glad it has gone reasonably efficiently (though hardly cheaply in terms of legal and professional fees to hammer out the store details,) but Jeff’s passivity is sometimes hard to read, and I’m not sure he could explain it even if he wanted to. It’s part resignation, part a peaceful letting go, and part the usual fog of not being able to sort it all out anyway. My ambivalence stems from realizing that none of this is what he would want, were he in a position to carry out what he would want, were things not what they are. (gads. I sound like Jack Sparrow.)

If I were Eleanor Roosevelt maybe I could have carried the store and real estate jobs out on my own power, and Jeff would not have had to see himself as having to give them up. Ok, so I’m not Eleanor Roosevelt.

96

I now have, as of 3:15 this afternoon, clipped into a blue binder, the 96 page first draft of a manuscript which still--most unfortunately--goes by the working name of Dewey.

Dewey is, by no means, a suitable title for the story. It’s merely the name of a minor, if pivotal, character, and for some reason is how I’ve been filing the work on my Mac all this time. Dewey.cwk in Appleworks, and Dewey.doc in Word.

On a bright note, I can now switch working formats--from trudging through the story on the iBook to trudging through the story in hard copy, scribbling what notes and changes I can fit in the margins. It’s good for people with short attention spans to switch. Helps keep us stoked.

Trudging may be a poor choice of words there. I certainly hope the reading of it would not be as slow a process as the writing, but sometimes it’s hard to get a sense of that at any given point along the creation of a 24,000 word piece. Imagine if I were Leo Tolstoy. No. Let’s not imagine that after all.

Of course, I may have nothing more than another unmarketable white elephant on my hands, but as I’ve mentioned before--these efforts are an offering to the universe. The universe does not, as far as I know, have an editorial staff, and I’m sure will absorb my offering with the appropriate graciousness. Whether or not any editors, or sub-editors, will feel similarly is still an unknown longshot.

And I’ve still got much tweaking to do.

But now, on the eve of the release of Harry Potter 7, I’ve plunked the period at the end of page 96, and I can immerse myself in Harry’s world for a few days without feeling negligent.

bad bad lights

I’d like to narrow myself down to one grocery store. At the moment I have 3 1/2, which include Giant, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and sometimes Safeway.

Today I went to Giant. We sorely needed cereal. Why, I wondered as I pushed along from cat food to Lactaid, do I always discover, halfway through Giant, that I’m feeling sorry for myself? And, I’ll tell you what, I really hate that feeling. Not so much because--well, who wants to feel that way?--but because I neither admire nor aspire to moods of that sort. It occurred to me that it doesn’t happen in Whole Foods. It doesn’t happen in Trader Joe’s. In fact, I usually leave those venues feeling pretty good about life and how I’m doing with it.

I think it’s the light. I think it’s all the nasty fluorescent lights which gives the place an overly-bright, garish feel.

The Holiday Inn Express we stayed in in Abingdon was fully lit with compact fluorescents. It looked bright. It looked clean. But it still gave me the unsettling sense that I was in a weird place between asleep and awake where images are stark and soap opera characters wielding brightly-colored, cheaply made, carnival prize stuffed animals might charge into the room at any moment just to weird me out. I don’t like that feeling. Animals that rip at the seams after you whack your brother one mere time should not be.

But Giant and its ilk have that affect on me. Icky seasonal yard figurines--bleck. Endcaps of blue and pink cereal--bleck. Circular racks of books with titles like He Has Long Hair and My Blouse is Too Small or Word Search Fun for Christian Wives--bleck.

It may be true that Whole Foods is overpriced and--at least around here--peopled with well-coiffed women Doing the Right Thing for their families. But there are at least enough Earth-mothers to keep it almost in balance. As for Trader Joe’s...Sure, you have to watch those expiration dates. If you buy a pie with a last-sale date of 3 days ago, well caveat emptor, and if you can’t tell that those cherries are past their prime then you probably should stick to frozen. But, when they’re good, they’re good, cheap, interesting, and not horrifically illuminated. But watch out for that place in the frozen aisle where you can so easily get wedged between a structural column and the taquitos. And watch out for the lady who shops in pantyhose, thinking that they’re leggings. And try not to be standing next to the ship’s bell when someone calls for a price check. Otherwise...I think I may be due for a trip there.

jetsam

In a weird process that kicks in unexpectedly, the few remaining chapters of my current project are begging to be written. I covered more ground today than I probably have in the last 3 months. In fact, I’d be working on it right now, but it’s 9:30 p.m., and I only dare approach the job with a fresh brain.

Current bathroom reading material includes a “Select Registry” book of Inns and B&B’s bestowed on us by the hosts of the WhiteGate Inn in Asheville. It is easy to want to travel when such delicious looking lodgings are featured for anywhere on the continent. On the other hand, my teardrop travel trailer (well, the one I’m imagining,) is waiting anxiously to take me on a more rustic voyage from town to town and I’m not sure how I’ll resolve the conflict.

tune in next season

I was set to truck to Georgetown U. for Jeff's MRI in prep for his first dose of V490, aka Merck's new Phase I Alzheimer's vaccine. I was determined to try heading south on Wisconsin Avenue. Downtown D.C., even not at rush hour, is harrying, and there must be a better way.

But it will wait until November. Evidently, a bungled communication between Merck and the testing sites (ours, of course, being GU,) has resulted in there not being a slot for Jeff in the "first dosing." In November though, we will be choosing between "second dosing" of the Merck, and Phase II of a Wyeth vaccine which has already done the rounds in Europe. I am inclined toward the Wyeth. If you don't have to be one of the first 70 humans to serve as test subject, then why be one?

So off we'll go again--in the Fall I guess. Yikes. There'll be the whole school schedule parameter problem. Maybe Gabe will have to take a bike, and ride home from his carpool dropoff point...

road trip

I remember what a fine thing it used to be to either drive (with a navigator riding shotgun,) or navigate (with a driver.) If there’s an advantage to doing both--the current necessity--it’s that I get plenty of photographic memory practice. At any convenient (or at times sketchy) roadway stop, the technique is this: Scan the map and lock the current location, destination, and directional trajectories into visual memory. Then, as we pass the exit for Oopsie Caverns I will be able to reassure myself that Oopsieville is 2/5 of the way from exit 731 to the Tasty-Snooz Inn where (you’ll soon learn) they’ve switched all the room lighting to compact fluorescent, and your eyes will go bonkers accordingly.

Trucking south on highway 81, you pass a sign promoting some Cavern or other every 5 minutes or so. Although I don’t think I’ve succumbed since an official girl scout trip in the late 60’s, I felt it was high time to expose Gabe to the tourist kitsch that surrounds these geologic marvels. “Why do they have so much weird stuff made out of wood,” he asks naively. I am somewhat chagrined to realize that all the parks and playgrounds we stopped at when our children were small deprived them of the sensuous delights of hundreds of cedarwood knickknacks stamped with the words Shenandoah Caverns. Still, he is not tempted, being more interested in the “lab-manufactured” unrealistically-hued polished stones. I buy him a tee-shirt.

We do not try to lose Jeff on the Cavern tour, but I know what happened. It was right at the entrance to the “Short-man’s Revenge Grotto,” when we pass another tourgroup. Gabe and I notice a couple of rooms (caves) later. While I’m fairly certain Jeff will find his way out with the other group, our teenage tourguide, who generally exhibits the enthusiasm of a sedated turtle, is concerned that it will not look good on her resume to lose a person in the cavern, so she and I scamper back a ways to retrieve Jeff while our group waits. And I am glad, when I see his befuddled expression, that we did.

We manage two days in lovely, hippie-chic Asheville without major incident. Gabe allows as how a tour of the Biltmore Estate could be much more fun if it occurred in a post-apocalyptic world and involved periodic battles with zombies.

But we collect Becca from her 6-week counselor stint at Camp Cheerio, and only get vaguely lost in Roanoke looking for dinner.

Of greater importance is that I successfully nab several bottles of Cheerwine at a roadside gas station/grocery store where the proprietress sits in a rocking-chair surrounded by cases of beer, and the young man cashiering addresses me as “mai-yim.” The Cheerwine was requested by Olivia, who got a taste of this North Carolina specialty on last month’s church-youth Habitat for Humanity, house-building trip to Iredell County, N.C. Based on one sip of the stuff I’d say that you could make your own by adding soda-water to cherry cough syrup. As we leave the convenience store I shush Gabe, who I believe is about to say something tactless. Instead, once we seal ourselves into the car, he says “that was the smallest gas station bathroom I’ve ever seen. It was also the cleanest.” And I am surprised. Not by the small part.

I love this

At the moment my mac’s desktop wallpaper features a teardrop travel trailer by Camp-Inn of Necedah, Wisconsin. I want one, you see.

People think I’m a little crazy. “Where’s the bathroom?” they ask. “Where’s the shower?” Jeff says, “does that thing have air conditioning?” (Answer: If you buy a special ac unit for it. Or you can opt for the ceiling fan/vent.)

Now I’m not supposing that just everyone would relish the notion of hitching one of these cuties to the back of her Subaru and hitting the blue highways, but I do. Oh, in case you didn’t know, it has a queen-size bed in the main compartment, built in birch cabinets, and then--around the back--once you pop up the hood, is your traveling kitchen. I’d plan on tossing a couple of pop-up chairs, a shade, and a folding table into the back of the Soobie, and I’d be ready to roll.

The shower, you see, is conveniently located at the campground, so you would want a nice thorough ready reference to good camp parks en route. The other place the shower is located is in the occasional hotel when you’d decided to splurge for the night and stay at the cute historic inn in town.

Many afficionados, as I understand it, get a kit, or directions, and make one of these things themselves. But I do not know that I will ever want to make my own dwelling, of any sort, again. I’ve pretty much gotten that out of my system, so when it’s time for my trip to Necedah, I will be buying my teardrop pre-made and pre-outfitted with all the niceties that I want.

Do not ask when this trip to Necedah will take place. The answer to that question is as nebulous as the answer to this one: When will you sell a book and actually start making money Em? Answer: When the time is right.

degunkification

Surfaces collect junk. Junk collects dust. Both are natural functions of entropy. My aversion to entropy and all its insidious functions grows in steady increments each year. People are the right hand of the demi-god Entropopo, and my people in particular make strewing things about a daily ritual.

But I’m decluttering on many levels right now. It seems to be one of the karmic features of the year and, as inpenetrable as the job looked, I’m making gratifying progress.

Houses are clutter. Mortgages are clutter. Tenants who call you on Christmas Eve because the furnace broke? Clutter. Two down, two to go in that department.

Jeff chops up miscellaneous lumber scraps in the back yard, then hauls them to the dumpster. He leaves a random, unused window in the kitchen. One step back, but two steps forward. No complaints from me. I can reassign the window myself.

By now, the basement has burped up sacks of decent used books, and numerous outgrown clothing to the Salvation Army. A second burp sends moldy, water-damaged books, and an amazing assortment of “why-was-I-keeping-that?” to the dumpster. And now it’s time to deal with the couch. We’ll chop it in half with a sawzall if necessary to fit around the basement door, but out it will go. This week. Katherine? You want that sewing machine? Best come soon. No, I’m kidding. It can stay ‘til you fetch it.

Someday--reasonably soon--I will look around this joint with the confidence that if and when the time comes to abandon ship...or house, that is...I can do it without the hours of agonizing flotsam sorting that so often characterize an empty-nester coop fly.

Oh, to be sure, more stuff will attempt to creep in. Entropopo is a demanding demi-god, and will prod his minions to collect far more than will fit in a standard dorm room. And then they will leave it on their bedroom floors. But, as long as they keep it there, I can view the future as a dumpster run here, and a dumpster run there. But a run. Not a year’s worth of shoveling out from the aftermath of an Entropopian bacchanal.

Now, it may be a while before I can realize my ideal of a trim Scandinavian cottage with a stick of furniture per room, but I do believe that--with a lot less goonk around here--I can shoulder life with more aplomb.

I got the fly out of the kitchen.

this feels like a yes

I think we’ll be participating in Phase I of the trial for Merck’s kinder and gentler so maybe you won’t die of encephalitis new version of an anti amyloid plaque Alzheimer’s vaccine. I have no reason to get excited about this. I have no reason to assume we’d even be among the 80% who get the vaccine at some strength versus the placebo. I have no reason to keep using the word “we” since they aren’t going to be sticking anything in me. But I am going to be the one navigating D.C. traffic to get to Georgetown University 17 times over the next 3 years. This may not happen. There may be a reason we’re unsuitable. And I’m keeping this in mind: It is a mission. The primary reason is to advance the research which will, somewhere down the pike, help my children just in case there is any sort of genetic proclivity involved here. And other people’s children. The secondary reason can be some good lunches in Georgetown.

grab bag. and just as valuable.

I sure wish my emotional wagon weren’t so tightly hitched to how Jeff’s doing from one week to the next. Disengagement by choice. Wouldn’t that be a handy tool to pull out of one’s pocket when needed? I guess. But at this point we’ve tripped the inseparability clause. Too late. Relationship tenure.

A fly’s been zipping around the kitchen for roughly 4 days. Always where it can annoy you, but never where you could open the door for it. I’ve taken to saying, in my best Biff Tannen voice, “McFly! I thought I told you never to come in here!"

Rachel is back from the world of Poison Dart frogs in Bocas del Draga, Panama. We have enjoyed a brief powerpoint which she compiled to show the other students at the estación what all the frog data is designed to determine. One more in my series of digital cameras is donated to a fine cause.

Clement Hardware won the best hardware store category in the What’s Up Annapolis “best of” awards. Which meant that Jeff and I got to elbow our way through a multitude of people at the Loew’s Annapolis Hotel to nosh on samplings from another multitude of area restaurants. Actually, I did the elbowing in both directions as I’d make my way to the crab cakes, then work my way back to Jeff who’d be looking around to see where I’d gone. Then I’d say “ice cream--thataway,” and nudge him toward the mint chocolate chip samples. Easy to fill up, all in all. The chocolate soup was easily the best thing.

thoughts del día

There are times when I’d be less bothered by the old Kohl’s guy wandering around asking people if they want to open Kohl’s charge accounts, but right when I’m fondling the bras to see which ones have the right type of push-up pads is not what I’d call the opportune moment, and I doubt if it was for the other 6 women in the bra department either.

Jeff bought 4 pepper sprays, and attached little cards to them with hints about gouging assailants’ eyes and whatnot. I said “well...I’ll put it in the car.” Olivia said “EWWW! I’m not carrying that! Then she demonstrated how she holds her car key ready to take a creep’s eye out with an over-the-shoulder swipe. But she put the pepper spray in her glove drawer. I gently explained that it will not be practical to send one to Rachel in Panama, and Becca probably ought not to have one in a cabin full of young campers, so they’ll just have to wait ‘til they get home to register their opinions of their dad’s concern du jour.

What is it about a rabbit that says “eat me?” Freddi is blasé about squirrels and barely attentive to birds, even if they flitter off right in front of her. But rabbits? Now there’s some excitement. Well, to be fair, ducks generate a little interest too.

I tried to wrestle the canoe onto the car roof rack myself yesterday. Of course Doris Dunker across the street said "wait, wait, I'll go get Don!" and I said "No no! I'm conducting an experiment." Of course Gordon drove by from admiring a house (with no waterfront and less grounds) which he secretly wants and offered to help, and I again pleaded "experiment." But finally, I had to abort the experiment and wait 'til Jeff could come out and hoist an end. If I didn't mind removing a goodly bit of car paint and adding a few dents I could probably do it, but as it is, I'm merely left with a pulled muscle in my ribcage. So I bought a wheeled canoe/kayak dolly. You put it under the canoe, about 2/3 of the way back, and pull the other end. Easy. I think. We've yet to truck it down to the beach by that method, but I think it'll be good.

Progress, plateaus

I’m doing a little better, very lately, of applying myself rigorously to the discipline of cranking out the next paragraph...the next snippet of dialogue...the next implausible situation that my story people must, as products of my imagination, carry out whether they like it or not. I vastly prefer my world with them in it, but they can fade into such ephemeral wisps if I don’t keep them front and center.

The Scallywags crew meanwhile, or at least their first three chapters, are on another slush pile vacation to NYC. I hope they will return refreshed and ready to give it another go.

In the realm of people who live outside my head and hard drive, one in particular is doing so reasonably well these days that I scarcely know what to make of it. So the trick, I think, is not to make anything of it. Except hay. Which you make while the sun shines.

Useful hint: If you have one of those vacuum thingies for sucking air out of wine bottles so that the wine stays fresher, do not apply it to your chin like Gabe did. Chin hickies are hard to explain. Well, the truth works. And then you’ll find out that your art teacher’s 30 year old brother did the same thing.

Today’s weather has been so balmy and buoying that it doesn’t feel like 9:50 p.m. But it will feel like 5:15 a.m. tomorrow when the alarm goes off regardless.

relax

I feel in a daze of paperwork and confounding budgetary configurations. I don’t know what to make of having our social security disability claim approved. I was led to expect a couple of appeals, and at least as many years. Now I’m kind of freaked out about the whole thing. You mean the evidence really was that irrefutable? Even to the U.S. Government? It was irrefutable enough for me, but somehow having Uncle Sam’s stamp of approval has heightened my anxiety in ways that I don’t understand.(Maybe because I don't want handouts so much as health insurance for Jeff, and this is the only way to get it?) And this, shortly on the heels of the obnoxious insurance company reaching the same conclusion. Sheesh.

And then there is the ongoing logic puzzle that is the Concert Association database. My respect for Mel’s (its creator’s) multi-layered confabulation grows as I think of ways to, oh for instance, generate a list of all members who drive Buicks and prefer to wear straw hats to performances...but only on days when their mail was delivered before 11 a.m. Sort it by hat size, secondary to dog’s name...find all members whose house numbers are prime, then exclude the records of those who aren’t before switching to the Stonehenge layout. I’m getting the hang of this. But I’m still getting Filemaker Pro when Apple deigns to release the new Leopard OS.

Jeff’s mom called at 1:35 a.m. Tell Jeff he has to go see Al Gore right away! she says.

Jeff needs to go see Al Gore? I repeat.

Don’t you know? she says, the meeting is going on right now!

You’re with Al Gore? I say.

Jesus! she says, hanging up on me.

Which was another surprise. Both Al Gore and Jesus were at that meeting and we missed it.

I'll be inspired later. For now...

Thoughts, disjointed...

We did the Wendy’s drive-thru window yesterday. Jeff wanted a crispy chicken and a coke. I just wanted a coke. I sort of giggled out the order, and all because the box crackled, as usual, then said tryacombo? It’s apparently a fundamental principle in which all Wendy’s order takers are drilled. You don’t say may I take your order or what can I get you or even what? You say Try a Combo, And the words just sit there, until they flatly plop to the ground ignored, because what do you say in response to that? I guess no thank you, but then you’d be trying to transmit more sound through the crackling box portal than is absolutely necessary, and this is not recommended.

I am so behind on Anne Arundel County Concert Association database entries. They will be sorry they gave me this job.

It is a nice thing when your daughters wait until they’re in college to have boyfriends. Easier on me, I think.

Gordon just picked Jeff up to go see their mom who’s having her regularly scheduled Spring crisis. Perhaps this one will resolve more neatly than last year’s coumadin disaster.

I got the second to last Wii in EB Games this morning. Nobody looks for video game consoles on Tuesday morning. Except for me, the lady in front of me, and the guy before her. And maybe one more person. So Gabe got his birthday present 6 weeks late.

I am waiting for further word, by text, email, or phone, from the Panamanian treetops. None yet, except the one letting me know she got there.

the pyramidal nebusphere

I live at some nebulous latitude in a pyramid of reality.

Jeff’s mom thinks we (and most of the rest of the world) can drop everything and sit in attendance as she makes her nobel prize-winning call to Lou Dobbs at CNN this afternoon. I try to avoid any pointless effort to convey my disbelief or re-orient her to the plane I’m living on, and I give her a noncommital “ok. sounds good. let us know what happens...” But I can hear it in her voice as we hang up...she may be living in a mental sphere in which she holds the solution to all problems, but she still knows when she’s being blown off.

Jeff doesn’t want to take his meds. “What are these for anyway?” “Your condition,” I say. “And what exactly is my condition?” Should I even remind him? Why? But I do. He says, “there wasn’t any real evidence of that, was there? Just some DNA test?” There was no DNA test involved, and I have the tell-tale PET scan in irrefutable hard-copy. I have never shown it to him. He’s never asked. Why should I?

“You should take your pills,” I say. He takes them. Why would I even entertain the thought of giving him a choice in the matter? He doesn’t even know what they’re for. I know why I would. It’s because there is one floor in the reality pyramid on which we stand together to observe and respond to his mother who’s floating around on the LaLa Mezzanine.

But we can’t both return to the rez-de-chaussée where I think I live. As the elevator descends Jeff says “Where’s Becca?” This will be the 5th time I’ve answered the question since she left yesterday morning. “She’s in Frederick, visiting Tyler,” I say. “Right,” he replies, and putters off to move tools around in the basement.

I don’t know where I live, and I have a slight, incipient headache. Eating might help, and then I will look into hot air balloons.

Fog and coffee

I came in from a dank, too-chilly morning. The kitchen was warm, and smelled like the fresh coffee gurgling in the pot. Momentarily sublime. And you might as well notice these things.

Kicking a cashew across the floor, and wondering if there are any more. Not quite as great.

Fleeting flashes of wondering what the heck Gabe's doing have zipped through my cerebrum at regular intervals this weekend. Then I remind myself that he's at his confirmation retreat, and I must go pick him up later this morning. He will say it was "ok." Then he'll tell me he slept through most of it. I do believe that to the largest extent I'm sending my final child through the program just so no one can accuse me of neglect. There will very possibly be some sort of cosmic benefit to the world that comes from Gabe having at least been introduced--however sleepily--to the concepts which form Presbyterianism, but that part doesn't have to be my problem.

It has to come up every so often. Jeff saying, "do you think you're addicted to that thing?" He means the computer. And I've kind of reached the "well, yes...but...whatever," state of response. Because here is the truth. I seek contact for brain stimulation. Before personal computers I checked the mailbox relentlessly. If I worked for SETI I would aim my little receiver at every point in the sky, and then go around and do it again just in case. I'm always looking for something to tune into to keep my brain from drifting back into that hazy and static-filled place two inches behind my frontal lobe where I get tweaked by shadowy specters demanding to know why I can't focus on the book I'm supposed to be writing. I don't want to have to wonder why I'm not accomplished enough for me. I don't even want to look at that. I hate that. It's a distraction and a relief to search for extra-terrestrials.

Ok...I'm lifting this from Rachel's livejournal, because I feel it's important:

"dialogue of the night... beginning with a nonsequiter from gabe, as usual:

Gabe: If i had a son, I would want to name him Yellow Streaming Madness.
Becca: That sounds like pee.
Gabe: Okay, how about Blue Motion?"

Well, I wasn't there. All 4 kids took an after-dark stroll to the beach, and that was a snippet.

I'm waiting for Jeff to get back from his class on "Stock Market Basics." There is a slightly smelly kitty on my legs, and the iBook must sit off to the right--on the chair arm. We took a practice run over to Annapolis High School (where the class is) today and I think he knew where he was going, but it's still a slight worry until the Honda van reappears in the driveway.

You know how sometimes you have a really busy weekend, and get behind on stuff? And then, the first day that you think you might be able to catch up, 4 urgent phone calls come in, all of which plop requirements right on the top of the priority pile? I'm having that.

I like my kids. It's fun when they're all home. The mess is not worth worrying about.

not quite Gitchee Gumee

Hint: If you’re like me and haven’t had a boat to paddle around in for roughly 30 years, do more than check for sun vs. rain before you take your canoe out. Also log onto weather.com and see what the winds speeds might be.

I did not do that today. Nonetheless, we battled our way through the choppy and noncompliant 2 footers that splooshed and slapped me (in the bow) all the way across Round Bay. I did feel a little like I was on the log flume ride at Dutch Wonderland, but we persisted, and were rewarded with a lovely, serene, and quiet paddle around the shores of Sherwood Forest across the river. (yes. It’s really called that. Furthermore, every house there must be painted forest green or brown. No joke.) Well, we made it around St. Helena’s island, heeding the warning not to trespass (and noting the abandoned chair at the top of the bluff. A sharpshooter sentinal’s perch?) It was the return trip that got dicey. The wind could have kept blowing in the same direction and been at our backs. But it didn’t. Instead, we forged our way through 3 footers, at about half a mile per hour. No, probably slower. By the time we reached the north shore, about 3 neighborhoods down from our beach, the conditions had become so ridiculous that if we didn’t both work our paddling muscles into lactic acidosis, the tide would simply slap us around into the opposite direction. Fun indeed. So we gave up and hauled ashore a couple beaches too far east. Oh...first we had to wade the canoe along 50 feet of shore to even reach the beach. We were soaked. We thanked the nice ladies who were chatting under the gazebo for tolerating our intrusion while we went to fetch our car. They very kindly offered us a lift, but we walked.

At this point I will have to confess to not maintaining the patient composure with which I try to handle Jeff’s not-always-perfect comprehension. But then, to reach our point of disembarkment I’d had to shout “paddle right!” or “paddle left!” over the wind, the water sloshing against docks and boats, and my patience was worn thinner than Paris Hilton, what with Jeff’s tendency to um...fail to maintain a straight course under the best of conditions. But here is the good thing. He remembers today as a fine adventure. And it was.

I am grateful that we have life vests on board. Because, you never know. After all, look what happened to the Edmund Fitzgerald. (I mean the legend lives on from the Chippewa on down, you know?) Granted, the Severn River at its widest doesn’t hold a candle to Lake Superior, but I’m sure checking on the wind speed before we go out again.

There is no way this is my 80th post

Sometimes when I walk up the stairs, I rub my fingers extra hard over the handrail--feeling the edges, gliding smoothly along the top. It’s nice to really notice that it’s there. Now that it’s there. I don’t want to ever take the house’s details for granted, now that they’re there. The doors bear looking at. So do the floors. So does the porch railing.

Yesterday, at Spring cleanup day at our beach, Jeff and I got bench duty. We’ve got a whole fleet of benches at the beach, and I have no idea how old they are, but they’re comprised of two concrete frame/leg pieces--one for each end--straddled by seven bolted-on 2x4s. A couple years ago, when several needed new slats, someone decided to try the new plastic lumber. The recycled coke bottle, or plastic bag, stuff. It warped within the first season. So, armed with a drill, a tape measure, and our circular saw, we set to work on the fresh, pressure-treated pile of lumber. We were into the cutting to length part when Jeff had to leave for his sax lesson. Then, forgetting I suppose, that it might be useful to come back, he spent the rest of the day puttering in the basement. As for me--I was intensely grateful not to be doing mulching or beach-raking, and it was quite interesting to field the reactions of neighbors who weren’t used to group efforts of this sort where a woman got the power tool job. But I cut, measured, drilled, and bolted--tweaking a hole here or there where the fit wasn’t exact--and now I am dang proud of those three benches with the fresh green, newly installed lumber. I hope everyone will sit on them at least once.

I think I’m learning to appreciate Namenda. Surely we are living on borrowed time--and time still marked by patchy memory function--but things are pretty good, and who can argue with that?

Jeff’s mom is 85. She called us with “the best news” two nights ago. One always worries when she calls with the best news. Sometimes it means that we are as rich as the Rockefellers--something she has just realized, and sometimes it means that she’s buying her entire 2000+ resident retirement complex where she will reign as queen. This time it was because she’d had the revelation that her dysfunctional, emphysemic lungs need trouble her no longer. She’ll simply have a lung transplant. After all, lung transplants are as common as pulling teeth these days, right? What could I say but “I guess you can ask your doctor about that.” Oh, she would, she assured me.

Tomorrow looks like a good canoe day. I will wear sunscreen.

paddling

Finally the weather accommodated my itch to take the red canoe out on its maiden voyage. Since we did not declare it unsinkable, karma felt no need to subject us to icebergs or other unexpected hazards, though we did hit one rubber buoy and veer closer to a hawk's nest than she would have preferred judging from her posture as she squawked at us.

I do believe we need a captain's hat we can pass back and forth. I'm unsure whether it should be a black one with a jolly roger, or an Indian chief headdress, but in either case the wearer would be eligible to call the directional shots without being considered a control freak. When it's Jeff's turn we could steer relentlessly into piers or moored sailboats. During my turn I would be able to say “Hey, maybe we should paddle on the left a few strokes just until we clear those pilings.”

Instead, and most unfortunately, I felt compelled to continuously suggest a directional change or point straight ahead and say “we're going that way!” knowing full well that at least one of the two people in the canoe believed I was being my usual bossy self. It didn't help that to start today's adventure the canoe needed to be lashed to the Soobie roof rack with two cinch straps which worked by a simple pinch and thread (as in thread it through once) mechanism. Jeff was clearly struggling a bit with the buckle but would not let me take over even though I asked very nicely several times throughout the ten minutes it took him to secure it convolutedly enough for his satisfaction. My toes were curling, oh yes they were. So when it came time to release the straps at the beach I undid mine and resorted to the subterfuge of pulling the buckle to the other side of the car, running around, and undoing his before he could get around to start messing with it. There are probably some excellent reasons why I am not a kindergarten teacher.

But what a great outing it was, despite our conflicting navigational styles (that is, picking a direction and going in it versus picking a seawall and running into it.) We saw an assortment of large birds which I should be able to identify but can't. We saw just how much stuff wealthy waterfront landowners have to maintain. (Including, I believe, Pat Sajak, but I cannot vouch for the fact that the spread with the brick stairs widening voluptuously toward the boathouse was his.) And we got a mighty fine upper body workout which I'm going to feel like crazy tomorrow.

how are you doing?

This is how Jeff phrases the question. It's a kind of random, out of the blue inquiry and my typical response is something along the lines of “I'm fine thanks. How are you?” He may ask several times a day, and his intentions are the very best, but it's been clear for a long time, even a long time pre-diagnosis, that even if my standard response is not always entirely honest, there is nothing to be gained by answering any other way.

As an interesting parallel, many who know of Jeff's situation will ask me the same question--the variation being that they put a heavier emphasis on the word you. “How are you doing?” They understand, wisely, that no one in a similar chapter of life could be completely “fine thanks,” and asking is a way to demonstrate that recognition. But pardon me, if you ever find yourself asking. I'm still most likely to say “fine thanks.”

And why wouldn't I? Because I am fine. (thanks!) Now it is undeniably true that my status quo boat is floating with its keel a little lower than it was a few years ago, but so are lots of peoples' for lots of reasons. I have swell kids. Four of 'em. (Well…we do wonder what the heck might become of a 15 year old boy who apart from a keen fondness for anime dramas and fantasy novels is a bit of a slug. But he's a good person. Gotta trust it'll add up to something.) My house is--for the first time in a decade plus--a very nice, and comfortable, place to dwell. And the odds are that if I manage well and frugally, I will not need to get a job at Trader Joe's at the exact moment that Jeff becomes most in need of my availability. So, while Jeff's diagnosis is inarguably horrendous, I find that I'm set up to manage it as well as anyone could.

But…in the interest of disclosure for those who'd really want to know: The most difficult thing about this is the reason I will almost always say “fine thanks,” to Jeff's regularly scheduled question. An early loss among the many faculties that diminish in a person with his illness is an ability to empathize. I don't mean that they have to become mean or unpleasant. Jeff is, as always, a fine person who asks how I'm doing because he wants me to be doing well. But, there is a quality to interacting with another person--particularly one with whom you are very close--which I will call “being on the same page.” That is, you can share things with that person and you know, that at least for that moment, he understands you. He is on the same wavelength. You are vibing. You are communicating at a deeper level. This can be what makes a relationship great, and nurturing, even if you have your bad moments. This is something that requires the higher cognitive function called empathy. This is something that people with Jeff's condition can't do. It is a huge, completely unquantifiable, loss.

And other than that, I am fine thanks.

It helps. I think. (maybe)

I’m trying to write, but the words don’t flow. They more like splutter out in a barely usable mess, as if from an almost-empty shampoo bottle. For want of a back up supply, I keep banging that upside-down bottle, to get the dregs out. I have my story, and it wants to be told--but for fear of failure, or ADD, or constant supply of more pressing needs--it is being coughed out in fractured bits. Oh heck...that’s better than nothing.

Jeff is rambling around with an iPod in his pocket, and earbuds in his ears. I was unaccountably enraged when he came home from his sax lesson Saturday with Sinatra, The Beatles, and all the jazz eradicated by Lou the music teacher in favor of healing words from Andrew Weil. Not that I have a problem with Andrew Weil or healing words, but after the iPod inexplicably decided to start communicating exclusively in Korean, and I got it to cut that the heck out, I was unthrilled to find that a day’s worth of downloads had been nuked. So I nuked right back. Jeff was characteristically willing to let others decide what he should listen to, and I decided with him in mind, but I’ll be danged if that iPod’s ever going back to Lou’s house.

Here’s what you get when you read the drug information for Namenda, paraphrased: How it works: We don’t really know but Frankie in the mailroom says that it has to do with Froggy plucking his magic twanger. When to use it: Late in the game. Unless you decide to use it in the middle of the game. OTOH, you might use it early in the game. How to tell if it even is working: It might be, if one of the following is true--a)you feel better. b)you feel the same. (because you might have felt worse.) c)you feel worse. (because you might have felt even worse than worse.) If one of these is true, you can assume it’s working even though statistics suggest it doesn’t work for everyone. How we derive our statistics: We rrlllllm diczzzz. WHAT? I said we assxk rrrrdggg. WHAT? Um. We ask Frankie.

Seriously. That’s actually more info than you really get. In spite of which I think it helps some in our case.