Where it stands...

Cindy, a Sunrise nurse, stopped me as I was entering and she was exiting yesterday afternoon. She wanted to know if I was aware that Jeff was having swallowing problems and we shared the basic acknowledgment that, in terms of disease progression, any semblance of a plateau is long gone.

The swallowing issue was not something I’d seen. I noticed something like that once, a month or so ago, but not recently. And most of my attempts to do breakfast duty lately have found Jeff still in bed. So, yesterday, I returned at dinner. He scarfed it without problem. So swallowing is not consistently unreliable. Eating napkins, should his hand happen to grasp one, is...all part of his being in a very primitive, infantile state, reflex-wise.

I will try again for this morning’s breakfast time. But he does sleep often, if not mostly. When not horizontal in bed, he is most often parked in his wheelchair, somewhere. At his most alert, he might look at you, and you might get a smidgen of a smile. He may mumble a couple words. You probably won’t understand them, and they may not be words at all...just a syllable, repeated, sometimes.

I don’t fear the falling possibility so much now. When he could stand, there remained the risk that he would bash his head on something, and bleed profusely enough that the night staff could not resist their urge to call 911, despite the firm decision--affirmed by family, doctor, Sunrise nurse staff, and Hospice--that he should remain in place with comfort measures provided.

I still see the impulse to stand and “do something.” But what remains of it is his hands feeling the sides or arms of his chair, and a slight push. That’s as far as it goes. He is undisturbed. The memory of the thought that gave way to that push was fleeting, and it doesn’t seem to trouble him that the follow-through action fizzled.

Today I will haul in a bag full of disposable undies, wipes, and bed pads. The pads, in particular, have been disappearing quickly, as one is used for each underwear change.

There’s so little more to say about this. You just go, and you give a few loving words and a back rub, because that’s all that’s left to give. Beyond that, you just have to care for what he’s leaving behind, and that’s people. Because you know that’s what he’d be trying to do if those “do something” impulses could lead to anything.

Next time, we wear...maybe Captain Blood costumes.

Trogdor the Burninator, which was partially piloted by Gabe in 2008

Every Spring, the American Visionary Arts Museum in Baltimore hosts a very goofy, and very popular, Kinetic Sculpture Race. I last attended in ’08 when Gabe was a 10th grader at The Baltimore Lab School, and the school’s entry (at the “Bush League” level, meaning non-seaworthy,) was the pedal-powered Trogdor the Burninator. The sculptures (and accompanying teams, and fans,) take a 15 mile walk along many blocks at the south end of the city, pausing (approximately mid-way through,) at the Canton waterfront where those so equipped trundle down the launch ramp into the Inner Harbor and attempt to prove their wet-mettle by rounding the pier and making it back to shore on the pedal or oar power of their crew.
On May 4 I got a new perspective on the race as first-mate of the safety boat--Allen’s nameless skiff in which he, for the last few years, has anchored just a smidge west of the main action, ready to assist any sculptures whose steering or floating equipment isn’t proving to be quite adequate.

Cypress Marine in the rear window

So, on Saturday morning, we ate big at the Breakfast Shop, and left Cypress Marine.

It's NOT ominous at all that the streetlight in the background has vultures perching all along it.

Halfway down route 10, the highway wind proved too enticing to the old blue pool float whose function was to be a comfortable sit-upon, and it flew out of the boat. We pinned it under a duffel of windbreakers and a bag of water and granola bars.

This is how you tie the rope to the cleat. Got that? Good. That makes one of us.

Hanover Street Bridge, and sittin' on the dock of the...harbor, waiting for the boat trailer to get wheeled in.

We parked the truck and launched from the public ramp behind Harbor Hospital. From there, it was a fifteen minute (or so) motor around the point of Fort McHenry (no cannons firing today) to the Canton Waterfront Park.

It's a nice green buoy.

Out of focus, yes, (we were chopping along at a decent clip,) but significant in that it is a red marker. Here's the  mnemonic: Red, Right, Returning...or how to position your boat in the channel. Here, we're outgoing so it's on our left.

The Lehigh Cement towers, Baltimore Inner Harbor

There are some seriously big ships. Here, Navy vessels Gordon and Gilliland

A paddlewheeler as we approach the Canton waterfront

Canton Waterfront Park in view

We were early, and had a little time to kill, so we made use of the porta-potties before the crowds arrived, strolled around a bit, and lounged.

Our friends the Porta-Potties. Visit #1, pre-crowd.

Wasting time. Comparing shades of arctic blond. 

Allen is geek-bonding over audio equipment

Ok, smile, because after this it's hats-on from here on out.

As the floating entries came up Boston Street, we putted a little ways into the Harbor and took our position. By our position, I mean close enough to monitor the action, but discreetly out of the way enough not to annoy the kayakers who are the first line of assistance and consider any help from a motor to be largely unnecessary. Even if it isn’t. Unnecessary. (I should also point out that where anything having to do with managing the boat is concerned, “we” actually means Allen, except in that I was there, and also except in that I did--for the first time ever, and most inexpertly--drive the boat a little on our return trip across the Harbor.)

This kayak has a greenish mesh drape over it from which it is sprouting actual sprouts. 

This guy's got a tiny video camera on the tripod

And this guy is placing the orange markers, around which the sculptures are meant to navigate.

The Platypus rounds the pier

Here comes the Mad Scientist

The Hogwart's Express comes complete with a dementor, which may explain why they had such trouble with portside listing, and not much forward progress.

"Go Ask Alice," the Wonderland-themed entry, powered by quite a few people.

Then the entrants enter the water, one at a time, and the crowd inevitably roars. Each sculpture is piloted by from one to many riders, and each comes with an entourage of costumed pit crew, who cheer and yell from the pier as their entry either moves or flounders.

No problems yet

Mostly, we spectated until the kids in the good ship Crabtastic began to drift out to sea, at which point we motored around behind them and gave them a nudge or two in the direction of the dock.

The kids on the Crabtastic need a push. We're pushing.

Along the Harbor wall...we take turns running to the potties while a 3 year old gawks in awe at our boat

So yes, I operated the outboard for a bit on the return trip across the Harbor. Allen insists that it becomes intuitive, but I don’t think I’ve got the best brain ever for right-left differentiation, so it took some focus for me to remember to push the tiller if I wanted to turn right, and pull when I preferred left. At any rate, I got us to the Right of the Red marker as we were Returning, then turned it over to the Skipper rather than risk any unnecessary collision of boat with dock.

The Star Spangled Banner still waves--Fort McHenry

Allen backs the trailer in. I sit on the pier and hold the rope.

silly analogies.

I have had less to say this year about being an Alzheimer spouse. I am not a full-time caregiver, and we are not in a crisis phase. Jeff is in stage seven of a seven-stage disease. Things happen--Sometimes he falls down, sometimes he sleeps through meals, sometimes he feels irritable and flails people off, going unshaved that day. His responses are primitive--eating motions when he expects food, he sucks his fingers, he responds in single, sometimes-intelligible words, to questions that flit through his head, posed by no one. Apart from sometimes being the feeder, my function is to keep the underwear, bedpads, wipes, and liquid soap well-stocked. I’m the sounding board for the hospice nurse when she thinks a med should be tweaked or a procedure should be changed.

I cannot help, in a way, feeling as if what I’ve done is bought back my life. And I cannot help wondering whether my choices would, from certain perspectives, seem selfish. At the same time, I’m pretty sure that the instinct to deny oneself happiness and a degree of freedom, when it is not necessary to do so, is part of a deeply ingrained cultural belief in self-flagellation...and I’m not at all sure where that instinct originates.

We have no meme to describe, simply, the social status of a person who has become--rather than a spouse--a spousal caregiver. Nevertheless I have found, in general, that people understand and support the forming of new primary relationships under such circumstances, and for that I am grateful.

I am also certain (with the same acknowledgement that the “right” choice for me happens to also be the happier choice,) that I have chosen the path that Jeff wanted me to choose. In fact, asked me to choose. I have been thinking, lately, of an organ transplant analogy. In this story, I am the organ. The former proprietor, through tragic circumstances, can no longer benefit from it, and the recipient is deserving. I can’t even write this without feeling a little stupid. At the same time, I think it’s true.

Crazy reps...

Advice: If you ever find yourself in the backseat of a little golfcart-sized jitney, where Maryland House of Delegates member Virginia Clagett is wedged in the center between you and your companion, hold on. Tight. After just such an episode, it did not surprise me to learn that Hunt Cup racing is among her hobbies. As we trundled down the hill, toward the muddy site of a run-off mitigation project, Clagett suggested we attempt a slalom-style jump over the earth-berms which had been built to help slow the flow of horse-poo into the Rhode River. The driver didn’t do it. Can’t think why. Otherwise, Ms Clagett seemed a very nice lady, and we all dirtied ourselves anyway, planting a few cypresses along the borders of the berms and trenches. I'm hoping to post a pic. The South River Source (an online “what’s-up” site,) snapped one of Allen and me shoveling dirt for a couple saplings, and it will be sort of a game to see how close the lady came to spelling our names right.(edit: Why it's just of me, I don't know. Here I am being a slow digger. I needed different shoes is the thing.)

So, karmically speaking, I may be benefitting from having a friend in the County’s Watershed Steward candidate program, in that a couple handfuls of baby trees, (and a decent sized volume of mulch,) can now thank me for my meager but well-intentioned efforts. (Final pic, from the Annapolis paper webpage. We will caption it: Emily looks lazy while Allen (on left) helps the MD Dep't of the Environment guy, who has a bad knee, dig.)

Things undone

I hope it is true that we all have things we leave undone by defaulting to not thinking about them. Dumb, often piddly, things that we “should” attend to but have somehow filed in that little brain-closet with the door that we see so many times it looks like part of the woodwork. By the way, if you don’t have this trait, you probably shouldn’t tell me about it.

Every so often that brain-closet door doesn’t quite hold, or something worms its way around the hinges. And you look at it, because--there it is. And maybe do something. And maybe wonder why you’d avoided it for so long.

Allen was in my basement yesterday, partially because some people are just the type who would be interested in what you find in basements, and he definitely falls into that category. Case in point: We paid special attention to the manifold. The Manifold (and mine is so manifestly a manifold that it does almost deserve capitalization,) is the intricate network of pipes, pumps, and valves that sends hotness from the water heater to the tubes that underlie the flooring upstairs, thus enabling radiant heat. Allen liked my Manifold a lot, and maybe it should be a source of reassurance to me that someone can examine the thing and quickly comprehend its intricacies, but at the same time there’s a part of me that’s irked by being bested in the Manifold-comprehension department. Anyway, once we’d ogled Yank the Plumber’s handiwork sufficiently, he noticed the lonely little Bryant HVAC unit sitting, unused, next to my utility sink. So I had to explain that I don’t run it, because the thermostat to it is located, awkwardly and inaccessibly, behind the enormously heavy antique dish cupboard in the kitchen. As if that’s a good enough reason not to operate one’s climate control systems more efficiently.

Yeah, so I’ve had a day or so to think about that one. I even gave the cupboard a token shove this morning with the idea that I should be able to detach the thermostat from the wall, tug out the wiring a bit, and at least place it on top of the cupboard where it could be operated.

What happened when I shoved the cupboard was nothing. On the basis of mass, it is much more gravitationally attracted to the Earth than I am.

Chances are, you’ve already thought ahead on this one: Emily, you may be thinking, why don’t you take the dishes and junk out of the cupboard and THEN try to move it? And the only answer I can supply is--because the whole idea of doing that was locked firmly in the overlooked brain-closet, until events conspired to pry it out. At the moment, I’m not going to look around for more things that I should have gotten to years ago, but haven’t. And if this particular task stays out in the open, the empty space will not remain, because ignore-it closets, like nature, abhor vacuums. I’ll just ignore something else.

joinery

My friend Katherine pointed out that I haven’t blogged in a while, and I am well aware of that! 2013 washed in like Spring ice-melt down a parched gully, and while I can’t complain, I’ve been clinging tenaciously to exposed tree roots, and trying not to get washed too far downstream. Stress is stress, even if you mostly appreciate the causes.

I spent a bit too much of today trying to improvise a way to cut a beveled edge on a piece of toe-kick trim. This is the veneered stuff that lines the lower edge of the kitchen cabinetry, and it’s only been waiting 12 years for me to get around to it. The trouble with my carpentry skills is they’re only ever acquired on a need-to-know basis, and this is something I’ve never needed to know before.

I have had a prior need to know how to do some of the other stuff I’m working on this year, such as how do you begin to interweave your life with that of someone else? Thing is, last time I did that, life was a bit less complicated. I don’t seem to have any lingering useful know-how, now that I’m giving it another go. Muddle through. Relax. Don’t worry. Enjoy.

You don’t want to relax and muddle so much when it comes to circular or table saws. So, before I go whacking the wrong levers, it might behoove me to solicit advice on just how to flip my table saw blade to a 45º angle. Sometimes when I push on things, and they don’t budge, I’m not sure whether to push harder or to assume I’m doing it incorrectly.

As for the other thing--the person thing--I think I’m doing that ok. It is scary but lovely. Haven’t gotten washed away yet, and sometimes it’s ok to ride the current a bit.

F.L.Wright never dreamed of light-emitting diodes

I’m thinking about my house, and how long it’s taken me to get around to a resolution to tackle some of its remaining projects myself. I wonder if a house is ever just a house, or if every dwelling place absorbs and reflects the struggles, angst, joy, and satisfaction of the lives being lived in it. Maybe they all do, or maybe it’s just that the art and craft of houses becomes an indelible feature of any place shared with Jeff Clement. Nah, I bet it happens with other people too.

After painting the hall this week, I had to replace the bulbs in the ceiling fixture which apparently decided to pop in celebration. It took two of us--me standing on a ladder bearing some of the weight of the metal and glass square thing with my head so my arms didn’t collapse into jello, while Olivia stood on a counter stool and applied the two tiny screws that hold it in place. It is a typical arts & crafts fixture--designed with such heavy materials that it can barely support its own weight if not handled just so. Not for practical people. At least not for practical people without access to LED bulbs. I installed LEDs. Maybe, like with the too-high-to-reach fixture in the family room, they won’t need changing for 20 years.

You would think that someone like me, who has installed >50% of the existing hardwood floor, tiled the bathrooms, and corked the kitchen floor could now do some finishing up with relative aplomb, but it’s been convenient to think of it as above my skill level.

Well, parts are, for sure. But I can do a lot. I just was having trouble overcoming the instinct to farm it out and run away. This wasn’t supposed to be Emily’s solo house, and it’s taken some processing to think of myself as the rightful and capable heir to Clement’s Folly.

Not that sticking it on a sluggish real estate market and high-tailing it to Eastport would have solved the underlying condition. I’d still have woken up, looked around at 4 walls, and said “what the hell am I doing here, and what am I gonna do now?”

Nope, might as well own it. Might as well emerge from caregiver limbo in place, one project at a time.

Ok...what?

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

Holiday Devolution

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Epic Mickey U.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UkeFesting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Donkey Tales, part 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Donkey Tales, part 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

Donkey Tales, part 1.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tiptoe through the Weltschmerz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Changes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Filling holes with various materials

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

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

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

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

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

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

ongaku is music in Japanese.

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

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

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

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

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