One Flew Over

Weather: Cool, dry, blue skies, a few white clouds

Activities:
1. Driving over the mountains
2. Driving back over the mountains
3. Seeing the Lake House Lady and that Horrid Little Man
4. Talking to the beloved Wayard E and equally beloved Sweetheart, and best beloved, Old Sliderule.
5. Trying to maintain tranquility and peace of mind.

The Lake House Lady is happy to have moved into her new house at the lake, as well as into her new office condo. Her son has come to work with her. He does testing-- a lucrative field, if ever there was one. I saw her with that Horrid Little Man, aka, Mr. Hyde, for those who know his alter ego, this evening. As always, it was a thoroughly unpleasant encounter.

She asked what she could do to help. Hm. A fleeting image of her being whacked upside the head by a wrecking ball on a 30=foot chain for saying such a ridiculous thing passed through my mind. What could she do to help? Whah, not a thang, dear. Not a single solitary thang. You've pocketed $140 two or three times a week, seeing her and her dad, and well, frankly, the wee one is more miserable than ever and he's about as bad as he ever was. You, however, have a new lake house. I suppose all of Mr Hyde's alter-ego's referrals are helping make the payments. What can you do to help? Not a damn thing.

The best of it all was the idea that we would have a meeting to "fill me in" without providing any relevant information, because, alas, she was now 18, and they couldn't do that without violating Hippa laws. So I asked what sort of track record this unnamed institution had with adolescents losing weight. Oh well, she didn't know; neither did he. She shared that she knew someone with an eating disorder who had gone there and "got better". So I asked how much weight did she lose? "Oh, well, (grimace/smile) she was (pause) an- or- ex- ic" (carefully and slowly pronounced, as if this were some sort of ancient mystery she was divulging). Oh, well, indeed. More extraneous and irrelevant information. How much does it cost? Oh, well, don't know that either-- but it doesn't matter! They will take insurance! They have a gym; they have a SPED on staff. (Specialist in Eating Disorders) What? An MD? No, of course not. Another bullshit designation to extract more insurance reimbursements. I asked just exactly what it was they were going to do to keep her from overeating-- was she going to be fed separately?Were they going to physically restrain her? Were they going to run over in the middle of a meal and snatch food off her plate? Oh, no! But they will be watching her, I was assured. As if that would make a gnat's ass worth of difference. They will note in the chart, "Patient ate 16 porkchops at dinner, and all the anorexic's pudding." The next day, the SPED will talk about what she was feeling while she ate the pork chops and the anorexic's pudding and will suggest that she only eat 15 pork chops next time and remember that the poor pitiful anorexics will die if they don't eat their pudding.

The psychiatrist will add some new drugs to her current pharmacopia to make sure she doesn't cause anyone any trouble. A little haloperidol is always a nice touch-- that speach impediment may go away someday, if she ever gets out. In the meantime, her anxiety levels will bottom out concommitant with her developing proficiency shuffling. That Horrid Little Man will be distressed and cry and beat his breast, and tell everyone how hard it is for him; he's another one who should have had a visit from the wrecking ball.

In the end, it's just immeasurably sad. The Wee One believes that somewhere over the rainbow a pink fairy can wave her magic wand and all of her dreams will come true. She thinks she can enter as a self-hating hideous blob and emerge a beautiful butterfly.

Not being a caterpillar to begin with poses something of a problem.

The Mark of the Beast

Weather: Early summer -- hot afternoons, cool nights.

Activities:
1. Watering garden in the dusk; listening to the whip-po-will's after the fireflies settle down for the evening.

The green beans were hiding under the leaves, but I managed to find them and pluck them from their stems. There were quite a lot of them, too. Too bad The Wayward e and the Prodigal son won't be here to snap off the ends and drop them into a merrily boiling pot of water and sautee up the yellow squash with onions, to which I would add a steaming pile of fried corn fritters.

Last year I planted hollyhocks in front of the white shed. They made a disappointing clup of leaves. This year the stalks topped five feet with crimson clusters of flowers. Around the corner are the new tea roses. The have the fragrance of old ladies, which is a comfort. One is yellow; one is blood red; one is lilac; and one is white, and together they form a living bouquet with the Hollyhocks and the day lilies.

In the front, the Confederate jasmine vine is climbing the porch and blooming with the gardenias. So classically Southern-- rich, exotic, overwhelmingly sexual. I expect to hear the strains of Billie Holliday singing "Am I Blue?" in the distance.

2. Commiserating with a friend whose mother is (finally) dying after succumbing to Alzheimers ten years ago. She is curled in a fetal position, unable to unfold her arms. This week, when she got dehydrated, the doctors put a feeding tube down her nose because they couldn't find a vein to insert an IV in. She couldn't swallow, and was choking on the feeding tube, so they recommended doing surgery to put a tube in her stomach. My friend said that her father just wasn't ready for her mom to die. How utterly sad. The surgeon came back after cutting her open to say that her stomach wasn't big enough for the feeding tube and that they would have to put it in her intestine. But they didn't. So now she's going to be allowed (finally) to die.

We would never make a beloved animal endure such an end.

3. Reading a book on evolution; another on reality; and a couple by Shinoda Bolen.

4. Wondering what makes people insecure. I'm thinking that it may corellate with leaving one's natal shore, where one has a place, well-defined and secure. But then I think back and realize that I was probably never more insecure than when I was with the people I'd known since childhood. I don't suppose we ever get over the comments of the rulers of our kindergarten classes-- the ones who decided who was popular and who was not, a designation that oddly never changes as we grow older, or at least, not in our own minds. Needless to say, I was one of the ones who were always chosen last for every game, left waiting for , "Ok, you get... and I'll take ..., my co-equal in undesirability. Why was it that everything revolved around some game or another? On one of my endless drives it occurred to me that every human culture hones hunting skills with games children play. Baseball, football, soccer--- all sharpen one's aim, strenghten ones' ability to work together to accomplish a goal. So even now, although we don't use a bow and arrow, we still keep those sills at a high level.

5. Sleeping.