hard to tawrrrrrrggggrrrrkkkkk.

I think I need a vocal coach. Not for singing, in particular, (though that could hardly hurt,) but for just regular speaking. This is not ordinarily a problem as, in day to day life, I am of a sufficiently taciturn nature that I rarely need to speak except in short bursts. But, in the event that I do need to utter more than a few sentences without a vocal break, my voice begins to grind like brakes without pads, or knees without cartilage. It’s uncomfortable, and probably doesn’t sound very nice to boot.

Lately this is troublesome, because I read to Jeff. There is not much excitement in a day of chair-sitting, and patio-sweeping, so, if we can break it up with a chapter of Bill Bryson, everyone benefits. Currently, we’re working on The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America, and Bill is putting his unique spin on a dinner of “ineffable crappiness” in Virginia. Jeff likes it. I enjoy the opportunity to get the inflection just right on every sentence, and employ my best thespian flair to maximize his otherwise-impaired comprehension.

But when, a couple pages in, my voice begins to acquire the timbre of E.T. in his death scene, or Linda Blair with her head on backwards, I can’t help but wonder whether I simply don’t use my vocal equipment properly.

When I was 19, I took a basic music theory class in college. The professor had us meet with him in small groups, to practice hitting notes with the one instrument we’d have with us at all times--our voices. One exercise went decidedly higher than my comfort level, and I said so. “Any female worth her salt can hit that note,” he said. So I did. I hit it, (and higher ones, a good many more times years later when I took a voice class at the Community College.) And I remember one other thing that professor said. It was an observation, that I speak in a tone that’s lower than my “natural” speaking voice.

Why would I do that? Because I learned early that my “real” voice, as revealed by the cassette recorder/player that we kids got one Christmas, was (to my ear) babyish and squeaky? Maybe, after that, I developed a habit of trying to lower my voice. Perhaps, if I actually spoke “correctly,” I could get through a few more pages of Bill Bryson without rolling off the road into the vocal gutter.

But I don’t know how you do that. So, if we speak, and you notice my tone becoming oddly light and airy, just know--I’m merely recalibrating.

a blustery, only slighty frustery, day

How hard is this to open? The fact that I took the picture with my MacBook’s built in camera, which shoots (and displays) in mirror image and is, therefore, damnably hard to hold correctly when aimed at an object, and therefore gave me this nice “vertigo view” notwithstanding, that is.

Why do I ask? Because it is a timely case study to use in considering how neuronal pathways fail. I imagine that you would insert your fingers, from below, behind the semicircular convex object at center-top, and pull toward yourself. Correct. That is the simplest technique.

But what if you’d spent 40+ years using and selling hardware (including pulls of this very sort,) and in fact, installed this particular mailbox yourself and had been using it for the past 10 years, and this happened: You couldn’t open it one day. You completely missed the visual fact that it has a pull, and instead grasped fruitlessly at the sides, bottom, and rear of the box, not even thinking to pry the door down by its front edges. Luckily, in this case, “you,” are oblivious enough that you do not object when your wife takes over and gets the mail out.

Gabe reports that he happened to see Jeff trying to exit, via the front door yesterday. Jeff opened the door, stepped outside, then attempted to find a means of pulling the door shut again. He grabbed the tongue part of the latch mechanism that pops in and out, but realized he would shut his hand in the door if he continued pulling, and instead, stepped inside and pulled the door shut using the inside handle. Then, discovering he was not on the side of the door he intended to be, he tried again, this time pulling, correctly, on the exterior handle.

It’s a remarkable failure to try to comprehend. As Gabe said, it would be funny if it weren’t sad.

I realize, progressively, that these things are catching up to us, and we will, increasingly, feel the limitations. Today, Jeff and I took a field trip to Ellicott City, to walk the 18th Century mill town’s historic Main Street, visit the train museum, and have lunch. We entered a curiosity shop, of knick knacks and antiques, displayed in 9 rooms, on all 4 levels of a former duplex, now merged into one building. At each end of each level, was an ancient wooden staircase--the type where the treads are narrow, and twist at irregular points. (Clearly these were the homes of humble mill-workers--no grand entrances into the drawing room from elegant stairways here.) I was uncertain, as stumbling is becoming a consequential concern. But, we made it up and down, with minor missteps, although I changed sides of the house, as needed, to avoid the possibility that any calamitous falls would sweep a mother with small children down the stairs as well.

But it was a nice day. Cold. A little blustery. But sunny, and pretty, and--with a hat, scarf, and gloves, I felt perfectly equipped.

Maybe I am a green field?

Among the mysteries of my early education is this: Why did our elementary school music books contain the song “Marching to Pretoria,” and why did we sing it so much? I discovered much later that it was a marching song, sung by the Afrikaaners during the Boer war, but this would certainly have meant nothing to me in second grade, and, frankly, has little significance to me now. I remain confused.

It’s strange that the song would be a standout point in my memory. But stand out it does. Along with the textbook: Greenfield U.S.A. Of all the textbooks, in all the classrooms, in all the gin joints of public education of the late 60s, why I would specifically recall that book remains an unresolved question. Even now that I’ve acquired a copy.

Yes, I did. It’s one of the marvels of the internet age, that the title Greenfield U.S.A. needed only flit through my head at an Amazon moment, for me to discover that I could get one. For 19¢ + shipping. “Aha,” I thought. “Here is my opportunity to discover why I am so indelibly marked by blandness that my college art professor decreed my efforts to be trite, except for the one where I accidentally smudged the chalk, and gave the child-subject an evil glint.”

Surely it all goes back to Greenfield U.S.A. Or, at least, Greenfield U.S.A. must serve as a token--a representation encapsulating all that shaped my developing aesthetic into something that now struggles, blandly, to break free of its cultural tupperware.

I examined the book. It was smaller than I remembered. (surprise!) Copyrighted in 1964, by D.C. Heath and Company, this particular copy was stamped by the Board of Education, Pittsburg, Kansas, which probably only retired it a couple years ago when they discovered it makes no reference to intelligent design.

I continued to explore the text, determined to discover--now, with my razor-keen insight--the insidious presumptions foisted upon my young brain, which doomed me now to eternal blandness.

And I think I found the key. Like it or not, Greenfield U.S.A. is a perfectly pleasant book, exploring life in front of and behind the scenes of the classic, Main Street-focused town, which we’d all like to live in, but scarcely exists. And was very rapidly going out of business even in 1964. Of course I opened the book with questions and expectations related to gender-identity and ethnic diversity; all those things that hit an assortment of fans in the decades following the book’s publication, and I will highlight a few.

I wondered if women in Greenfield U.S.A had jobs. Ever. Suffice it to say that in most of the book's vignettes, they were moms, and wore uncomfortable clothes. However, there were minor exceptions. A female store clerk did sell Mary a red raincoat, there were female nurses in starched white dresses when that idiot Fred fell out of a tree and broke his leg, and there was this: Proving that those skills learned by eager girls in their Future Homemakers of America clubs still could come in useful, even if one didn’t find Mr. Right. Most reassuring.

Meanwhile, I discovered something that I had possibly not noticed at age 7: Policeman Bill was quite a studly muffin,
and it was therefore no wonder that the teen-girl-squad pictured below walked straight into oncoming traffic against the green light in order to elicit his intervention.
Most likely, however, they got more face-time with the same starched nurses who’d helped Fred with his leg.

I wondered if every person in Greenfield U.S.A was, by decree, of Euro-heritage, whitebread stock. And the answer is, mostly. Look closely, however, at this parade scene, and you’ll note that a man of possibly African/Asiatic heritage has sneaked into the background, catching the eye of the red-haired woman who is visible between the tuba and trumpet players. She is intrigued. The rest of the town is, fortunately, too distracted by the parade to be appalled.

So, no. Not too many people of color in Greenfield, but, if you keep reading, a very small chapter at the end of the book discusses “living in other places.” One of those other places is A City Neighborhood. Here, apparently, Tom could learn to swim in an ethnically diverse crowd, and--remarkably--seems none the worse for it. Did you ever wonder what happened to the “skinny guy” from your old comic books after he used the Charles Atlas method and punched out the bully? Well, now you know. Here he is, teaching Tom and the other boys to swim at the Boys’ Club in the Big City. Do not ask me what they are doing at the Girls’ Club. You already know: They are learning to wash heads of lettuce.

Well, anyway, at least I now know what’s wrong with me. Greenfield U.S.A presented life as it “should” be, and I--apparently--believed it. More or less. I don’t know. Maybe if Mary had said, “No. I don’t want a red raincoat, I want a lab coat, like Dr. March.” Or maybe if Mike had said, “No Dad, I don’t want to go fishing, I want to wash lettuce.” Maybe then, just that one slightly unexpected twist would have--like the butterfly effect--launched my immature neurons into a lifetime where feats of the imagination are easy, fresh, and unexpected.

But that didn’t happen. So, like acquiring a second language post-childhood, I continue to attempt to acquire creative spark, and a mind inclined that way. And Greenfield U.S.A has supplied a clue. I am bland because I was raised in abject blandness. I know now why thinking outside the tupperware box--to a mind forged in Greenfield--is as tough as learning Japanese.

being mobile's not so bad for la donna.

I wish I could work at a coffee shop. (and by “work,” I mean “write.” I realize one could well quibble with my definitions, after seeing what I write and how I don’t get paid to do it. But for purposes here, I mean “write.” Ahem...)

I wish I could work at a coffee shop. (doesn’t La Donna e Mobile start something like this? Yes, I’m inspired by Verdi. He looked just like our plumber, Yank. Ahem...)

I know it’s a cliche, the whole shtick of the earnest scribe, with laptop, in coffee shop. I’ve seen it plenty of times myself, and I always think, that’s cute...look at you...what a cliche...hope you have better luck than I have. But I’ve also tried it. More back in the day when I had two conditions present--children in school, and husband at work. Now that I am a companion almost 24/7, you would think that--at the very least--such circumscription would afford me ample freedom to write. And it does, in theory. But as almost everyone who has tried to work at home knows--sometimes home is just not the easiest place to achieve mental clarity. It is true that, with writing, you cannot let lack of mental clarity be a stumbling block. (If it were I would have scarcely written a word by now.) But the weird thing is...writing in a coffee shop really works. Maybe it’s a combination of factors: You’re out and in public which brings a fresh sharpness to the thinking process, yet it’s a comfortable setting where most distractions can be safely ignored. I have had some breakthrough moments in that setting. Not that you would know, reading my stuff...Show me, please...just where is it that you broke through?...Well, that could be the wrong metaphor. Maybe they were more like finally getting my rubber rain boot yanked out of the mud moments. It may not have yielded something pretty, but at least I could stick my foot back in and resume trudging. And drink coffee.

eReading

Let’s deviate from existential angst and situational bellyaching for a spell, and give 3 cheers for technology.

I’m aware that not everyone--self-proclaimed Luddite friends, and frustrated relatives being notable exceptions--will want to cheer, but I’m going to do it anyway. Ok, I know that Amazon is big and unwieldy, is taking over the world, and will soon change it’s name to Buy-N-Large (or Monsanto...not sure which,) but--for the moment at least (or until I notice they’ve implanted a chip in my brain via “Whispernet,”)--I’m delighted by my newly discovered ability to share already-purchased Kindle books between the Kindle itself and my iPhone. Using free-to-download Stanza software.

Here’s why I experienced a minor note of insignificant frustration prior to this discovery: Kindle downloads are roughly $10, minus a cent or two. Certain ones--sometimes very large files or very new and popular titles can exceed this amount, and others (such as the complete Les Mis) can be dirt cheap. But, having acquired Stanza software free on my iPhone, I observed--upon scanning the online catalogs for books of interest--that most ebooks that are not public domain, are carrying a price tag in the $26 echelon.

So today, as I was scouting for a downloadable edition of something that has caught my eye: Fingerprints of God, by Barbara Bradley Hagerty, I was also contemplating whether I’d prefer to Kindle it, or try it out on the iPhone reader (which has the advantage of being with me at, essentially, all times, but would not serve well as distraction on the elliptical trainer. That is the Kindle’s job.)

For $9.99 I could instantaneously download the title onto my Kindle. For $27 I could get it on Stanza. Not such a tough call, but a curious dichotomy that set me to googling why. And I google-stumbled across the previously-unknown-to-me fact that Amazon bought Stanza, and if I simply download (free) Kindle software onto my iPhone, then I can also access everything I’ve already purchased for Kindle. (seems fair, true.)

Anyone who’s wondering whether this kind of stuff is all I have to worry about maybe doesn't know me. What this kind of stuff provides is a fun distraction from the other stuff, and I share it here with the tootly fanfare of a digitized trumpet, as is appropriate given the subject matter.

Yes. I admit in all dorkiness and apologetic contrition and tendency to create redundant phrases just because they sound cool that I’m an iPhone junkie now. (who, for example, could not love a device on which you can play a game called "Ragdoll Blast," where you complete physics puzzles by shooting ragdolls out of a cannon?)

Regrettably though, even if I turn out to like the new book, I have no way to share it with you.

potluck...

Nihongo is a no-go for next semester, I know. The vital energies are just being demanded elsewhere, it turns out. In fact, I’m about out of juice already in the mental kana generator. Oh, for sure, I’ll keep it from totally rusting with a bit of Rosetta Stone here and there, but sometimes you’re like a shrub, hunkering through the dry season, and you’ve gotta know where to lop the excess branches.

Now I’m trying to figure out how to sleep. I’m pretty good at the basics, mind you, but the game is getting a bit more complex, what with aging equipment challenges, and I’m finding myself faced with decisions other than just how early to bed and how early to rise. I was a stomach sleeper up through the child-bearing years. As a kid, balling up face down gave me a sense of virtual carapace, and stuff (you know, stuff) couldn’t get me. When my back started to hurt, I compromised and went with side sleeping. A 5 foot body pillow has been my helper for years, but now the shoulders say no. Bursitis? Rotator cuff? I don’t know, but a little online research suggested that by careful placement of 3 pillows, I could fashion myself a sort of arm and shoulder channel, thereby taking the crunch off. Tried it. Maybe it’s just that I’m in an acute phase with the shoulder pain, but it still hurt. The best solution seems to be on my back, 2 head pillows, and a chest pillow for my arms, to keep the shoulders in unstressful alignment. As for the gradual segue to more “vulnerable” positions, (back up, side up, belly up?) I guess I may have to just get a scary pillowcase for my chest-top pillow.

Here’s what’s funny when your person is in the Medicare Part D “donut hole.” You go into the pharmacy requesting the bare minimum of pills to carry you through to January 4 (the first business day of 2010, when the health plan resets,) and even though you’re only trying to obtain a month and a half worth, the counter lady still looks at you pityingly, because she knows how much each of those stinky little pills costs. And you explain that it’s okay--that’s why you’re only getting the bare minimum, and not 3 months worth.

Highlight of the day: The owners of the Good Life Organic Market now have daal and rice on the hot bar! It was lunch. Yum.

maybe?

Weirdness. I’m actually looking, with potential interest, at a service called “Comfort Zone,” currently being promoted on the latest Alz. Assoc. email. Makes your AD person (who, of course, has to have the transmitter on him) trackable online via GPS and a mapping site.

Not that my person wanders off. As of presently, this has not been a problem. But I’m interested in the technology’s potential to be employed in “travel” mode, when--should we become separated in a place other than our hometown--I could googlemap him.

Well...let’s see if a) Gabe has a situation for next Fall, and (if “a” is true,) b) it actually appears that we may accomplish travel. Other than to a college dorm and back. There are also “safe return” bracelets, which are imprinted with info needed to contact a nerve center, whence the responsible party may be contacted. I never did this with my kids. (didn’t exist.) Well, we’ll see...

where to go, where to go...

Paul-san and I had the briefest of pre-Japanese class conversations on the matter of whether we’d be signing up for semester 3 in the Spring. We wondered jointly about why--of all things--we’re studying Japanese. He does not figure that he, at roughly 70, will do much traveling to the Orient. (I don’t know why not--we didn’t get into that,) but he supposed that I was young enough that I might indeed have such a future. Again, we didn’t get into it, but I merely demured that I can’t see it. And I can’t. I would not choose Japan as the user-uber-friendly kind of excursion I’m willing to take Jeff on.

I think there are plenty of good relatively low-stress options, and I’m looking forward to trying a few, but surely a place where they have special subway people whose job is to push on commuters so they’re more compacted (so as to get the car door shut,) is not our number one choice. Small towns of New England? Maybe.

anchors aweigh...but only if there's wind

please, s'il vous plaît, por favor, doozo...someone from a college which Gabe could possibly function at--especially Mitchell--tell us something. Tell us you have all his stuff. (because I don't even know if you do, and have no other way of finding out.) Tell us you want him. Tell us anything. My Myers-Briggs J is doing a little berzerker dance all around the kitchen floor.

See, I don't want a next year that is the same as this year, and that means moving things (and by things, in this case, I mean Gabe) along. Plus, once I have a clue what next year could possibly entail for him, I can latch onto that like a terrier onto a pants-leg, and plan and plan and plan. Planning, you see, is the opiate of the perpetually anxious. You can overplan, you can triple plan, you can make plans A,B,and C thru Z, and it feels like doing something.

Indeedy, I am a ship which has utterly lost its ballast, and that is why we stay busy--we are busy getting lunch/running errands/studying Japanese--because if you just weigh anchor and float, then...whoaa (not to mention avast...) you notice you are listing heavily to port or starboard, or perhaps just taking on a bit o' water. Whereas if we skitter about with the bilge-rats, we're less inclined to notice that the crows are about to fall out of the crow's nest.

Anyway, those college peoples would be doing me a big fat favor in terms of serotonin bursts to drop me a tantalizing piece of acknowledgment, and I'd be as grateful as a rat can be!

such a gifted avoider

I’m thinking I can’t take Japanese and get writing done concurrently. Hence I think I will have to decide to give myself a chance to get the writing done after this semester. Why? Isn’t it silly? Probably, but the condition of silliness does not exempt it.

Or maybe it’s the flagging and revival of my enthusiasm and its shifting emphases. Sure I like Japanese. I like languages in general, but the story wishes to get writ, and I know I throw myself obsessively into language acquisition the same way that (at other times) I heave into a crossword puzzle. It’s escapism. Not writing saves me from writing crappy. But crappy will do. And no...I do not want a 5 night stay at the Marriott Singer Island resort for the special price of...whatever the special price was. Don’t call back. Thanks.

Ok, now I go watch Comedy Central.

Jeff could tell me, approximately, nothing. Was there any good stuff? Did Bill or anyone come by? Did you get dinner? To the first two questions, I got a definitive ”ummmm” To the second, ”yes,” but there were no available details as to what and where.

Gordon, Jeff’s brother, and now the sole “Mr. Hardware,” had bought out the inventory of a small South Baltimore corner store when the long-time owner’s health collapsed, and yesterday he took Jeff on a field trip to “help” collect the unknown grab bag within.

For my purposes, here is what was so illustrative about the day: It was long. Gordon collected Jeff at 6:15 a.m, and returned him at 9:30 p.m. I wondered how Jeff would hold up. Apparently tolerably well. But there was, in fact, company, and company--in this case--constitutes help. Help with the task at hand, and help with the Jeff-sitting. In the form of Bill and John, who did take time off from their personal SoBo efforts to help Gordon spend the day loading the panel truck and sorting the wheat from the chaff. The wheat went into the truck. The chaff--sets of dishes and other flotsam which Clement Hardware doesn’t bother with--went on the sidewalk with a big “FREE” sign, which attracted a multitude of better-than-flea-market minded SoBo residents. Occasionally, such a guy would stick his head in the door and holler “Got any wrenches?” At which point he’d have to be disabused of the notion that anything highly desirable was to be put in the “free” pile.

A full and colorful day, based on the briefest of synopses I got from Gordon today. Jam-packed with the sort of stories that, seven years ago, Jeff and I would have laughed and chatted about over our evening Chenin blanc. But now, I get ”ummmm” and ”yes.”

Nor does it help if I initiate. I can tell stories about the girl in Japanese class who reminds me of a wallaby in the headlights, or wax incisive about the pluses and minuses of Lulu versus XLibris, and I get a blank, uncomprehending gaze which wants to process what I’m saying, but utterly cannot. And, to be fully disclosing, doesn’t actually want to that badly, because it’s forgotton what it ever cared about.

There is no Alzheimer spouse who does not hate the disease with all the resigned, pathetic, punch-in-the-face, simmering abhorrence she/he can register. So, here’s the thing. I would go on a date. And the purpose of the date would be as simple as dinner and conversation. So, yes...it’s cheaty, and completely out of the realm of the possible or available, but I’d totally do it. Or at least I’d totally want to. Don’t worry mom.

this is awkward.

Fiddler on the Roof is always poignant, no matter how you slice it, but the current tour--and Topol’s farewell run, as I understand it--hit me at several particularly vulnerable spots, such that bare finger skin had to suffice, during Act 2, for the tissues I forgot to bring. There’s the whole 3 daughters on the verge of flitting thing, their interactions with Tevye, the father, and the moment where the parents--married 25 years--evaluate the meaning of love. (How long ago was 1984?...25, right.) Ouchy. It probably didn’t help that I’d been having a run of ring dreams. Ring dreams are when I’m just drifting into REM and something/someone/somethings swoop in to rip my wedding and engagement rings off. I don’t exactly wake up, except just barely...enough to realize I must remove the rings and place them on the bedside table. This, of course, is where dream logic and logic-logic do not coincide: How the table is safer than my fingers, I cannot say, but apparently it’s the taking of rings from me that is pertinent, as opposed to mere taking. And it’s just occurred to me that to take the rings off, but keep them, is a perfectly adept metaphor for the “emotional divorce” advocated by counselors to Alzheimer spouses. It’s a sort of emotional cantilevering, without a nice sturdy iron I-beam. Rather awkward for years on end. But life is, in general, awkward. Awkward is not entirely bad. I’ve liked many an awkward creature.

hmmm...

What dumb thing did Emily say 5 minutes ago? She said to the dog, (while helping Jeff pet said dog, because--heaven knows--one person is never enough,) "Fredfred, you should get a job. Help earn your keep. Become a tv mascot."

Here's the thing: Never, never, never talk about getting jobs with Jeff in earshot. Because then he'll say, most decisively, "maybe I'll get a job. Yeah, that's what I'll do. What do you (meaning me) think about that?"

And then I (meaning me) will make a funny non-committal face to match my funny non-committal utterance, which basically sounds like this: "Huuh." With a slight shoulder shrug. Because I cannot, in good tactfulness, say "that probably won't work, seeing as how every psychomotor skill a person needs to perform work has pretty much flown the coop...your brain being the coop, that is."

This is, of course, what "huuh" means, but as long as I don't provide a translation it can mean anything a person wants it to mean. It is also correct to read the following shade of meaning into "huuh:" It's probably good that you'll forget this job idea by 5 o'clock glass o'wine time.

Emily is dumb, Part 2:

Jeff did not drop it, and wanted to know what I thought...what I really thought...as we waited to pick up Gabe. Well, silly me. It's going to take more time yet, apparently, before I fully realize that, in the face of Alzheimer's, you lie. Or at least you evade, with whatever Clintonesque panache you can muster. But, owing to my deep respect for what was our relationship, and mindful of a preference for honesty, I admitted--when pressed--that his cognitive limitations were unlikely to make any kind of job a successful endeavor. Hence, I got cranky sullenness for most of the evening, and an unmistakable blamatory vibe. I made up that word, but it fits.

The best one can then do, is wait for the short term memory to reset.

I (do not) regret that I have but one life to give a swift kick to...

One can discern that Gabe doesn’t especially want to go away to college next Fall, but one is completely unable to conjure up a good reason for him to stay here.
And, forgetting one for a moment, I can think of a good reason for him not to stay here: Life, and the fact that burrowing in the computer room while Jeff snoozes in a chair and I try to buck myself up on St. John’s Wort and mental distractions does not constitute it.

I mean, life is weird, but you might as well try it. What else are you going to do?

In that light, our trek to New London to visit Mitchell College seemed a valuable distraction. A less valuable distraction was Janet the GPS, who was bound and determined to lose her suction and plummet off the windshield as a way of marking miles. Between that and...recalculating...every time we got within the shadow of a NYC bridge tunnel, she was a fun(?) companion.

As for Jeff, and do-it-yourself hotel breakfast bars, I am recalculating. He was extraordinarily resistant to help this weekend, in direct proportion to his increasing inability to distinguish between a bagel slicer and a toaster. Hence, he ate little for breakfast, and I think it might go over better if we all three just sit down and order.

Additionally, I have every intention of recalculating any route that takes me within shouting distance of the George Washington Bridge in NYC. Cross between 10 am and 4 pm? Yes. Then you’ll only add 1 hour of traffic-sitting to your trip, instead of 2 or 3.

There is something that impressed Gabe at Mitchell. It was the statue, situated mid-campus, of Nathan Hale. Of course he wanted it to be Moses Cleveland, who “invented” Cleveland. (Sorry, I can’t help you, other than to suggest you look up “Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video” on Youtube.) But since it was not Moses Cleveland, he was still pleased to meet a statue of the main character in one of his favorite PS3 games, Resistance: Fall of Man. The thing is, I’m pretty sure that that Nathan Hale, being a video game hero, does have more than one life to give for his country.

Anyway, let’s hope they take Gabe. There are 36 slots in the program to which he applied (“he,” meaning “we,” which really means “I.”) But he really did write the essay. And it’s not bad. And seriously, would you rather live near a statue of Nathan Hale, or have your mother ship you off to the Merchant Marines?

wakarimasen!

I pretty much never say "why me?"...just not my way of thinking. But I am almost saying it as of last week's random "Japanese culture project" groupings. For Japanese class that is.

Truthfully, I foresaw this before it happened, but--due to a random draw from a bag of colors, in which I selected むらさき (murasaki), otherwise known as violet, I found myself in a group with the following 2 individuals: A quiet guy who may be completely participative if I can get him to speak or return emails, and...oh my goodness...crazy girl.

Can you picture Little Orphan Annie's face, with anime girl eyes? Of course you can't. But try. Then add overly processed hair (dyed black) that reminds me of a doll that went through the dryer, too much makeup, and (the crowning touch, so to speak,) a plastic tiara. Throw in strangely erratic impulse control, such that she blurts tangential thoughts out mid-class on the days when she speaks. The other days she comes in late and says nothing. And, she told me with the expression of a stunned bushbaby--she doesn't email. But she texts. Ok. So, I've typed up two proposals for what we might present in our allotted 10 minutes, and how we might divide duties. I will give them to these children tomorrow. They will think I'm a pushy old middle-aged person. But here's the thing. They can either communicate and do something, or they cannot. And if they don't--oh well, I'm auditing, they're not.

Meanwhile, I do enjoy everything else about Japanese class. I am a bit befuddled, this chapter, by the introduction of a page-load of adjectives. It's not that adjectives require conjugating in Japanese, I can deal with that. It's just that Japanese vocabulary doesn't adhere to my brain in the way the more familiar Euro-based lingos do. Japanese adjectives all look something like this: hagazukimurasagii. (except in hiragana, like this: はがずきむらさぎい。) Only you can take the syllables, shake them up in a bag, and reassemble in any configuration that pleases you. And it all seems meaningless to my Euro-cooked mind grid. I realize that, in some way, this must be good for me, because my brain hurts.

info junkie.

I confess: I got an iPhone, and I like it.

The thing is, I wanted to be different, and have a phone that would not be instantaneously recognizable by 90% of the population. So I looked and looked, but nothing would do quite all the things I wanted the phone to do...and here was the clincher: The problem with my Palm Centro was that the screen and buttons were too small and too hard for presbyopic eyes to see. iPhone is screen from head to toe, and it runs my Ultralingua conjugating dictionaries, budgeting software, Scrabble, a good calendar, a functional Wifi browser, an excellent note-keeping program, Googlemaps, and get this--a built-in compass! How could I not want that? Ironically, the feature I don’t make good use of, seeing as how this is an iPhone, is the iPod music thingy. Maybe if it plugged into my car I would, but it doesn’t. And I’m just not an ear-buds kind of person. Too visuo-kinetic dependent. My ears need to follow the lead of eyes and body, or I go nutso. It’s why I like speakerphones. The ears don’t operate well on their own. They get cranky.

Tomorrow, we lose our backdoor. Only for a week or so I hope, as the water-rotted threshold gets replaced with something that won’t allow rainstorms to backwash into the kitchen. Chessie will be perplexed by not being able to stare at us through the door’s window panes. Fredfred will have to adapt to exiting through the garage. We will lose some sunlight. I hope the job will go swiftly. This, in case you wondered, is why I don’t hire someone to paint the upstairs hallway. Because there’s always something else that must be done.

I am pleased to report that I’ve added at least 3 paragraphs to Bea and the Smart Kids. Seriously. This is progress for me.

not yet, but soon

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

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

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

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

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

it's not always what you need, maybe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the same boring stuff, remixed?

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

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

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

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

Posey Rosie goes splat.

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

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

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

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

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

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