Blathering Bold Springs

Disappointment

2008-07-20T22:40:00.000-07:00

It didn't rain enough in June, so the blackberries went from red to rust without swelling up to their mystical blue-black and tempting me to risk chiggers and thorns for a couple of jars of blackberry jam. But this year the pears didn't get their blossoms frosted, so they are in abundance and a friend has offered to share their orchard, so there will be pear preserves this year; maybe even enough to share. Pear preserves are not to be found commercially because the commercial juice manufacturers add pear juice to sweeten everything. They also take forever to cook down into their pale pink pear essence and will scorch in a flash from the slightest inattention or momentary distraction. Chained to the cook-pot for hours, breathing the vapors, watching them collapse and bubble away until a wooden spoon will stand proud and unattended and the chunks of white pear are become translucent pink slivers. Ah, but there is nothing finer on a warm buttermilk biscuit of a cold morning to accompany a hen's egg, a few rashers of bacon and a cup of steaming coffee, sitting on a cold rock, poking a small fire, alone in the mountains, sheltered from the autumn winds.

There was a crabfest at church Saturday night, a farewell party of sorts, thrown by a member during a brief window of opportunity to celebrate having finished his chemotherapy and before he learns whether it succeeded in making him a candidate for surgery or had no effect on his pancreatic tumor and he now faces doing a slow and painful vanishing act, leaving many friends, a wife, and three young children behind.

There were more than 100 people there. Amongst them, two of his co-workers, young women fifteen years beyond college graduation with good jobs and single, yet without a spiritual home or sense of community. One was suffering from severe PBTSD --post-Baptist traumatic stress disorder-- having mis-spent her childhood attending conservative religious schools, where the mantra, the-bible-says-it-I-believe- it-that-settles-it, ruled academic (?) discourse. She said that she broke out in hives if she got anywhere near a church. And she told me that when she got to college she discovered that those folks had practically obliterated her ability to think critically. She listened to the other students and realized that they didn't just accept what they read or heard-- they actually argued with their professors. And so she began to change and ended up feeling completely estranged from her upbringing. Leaving home, though, had meant for the longest time to be without people to play with except for people from work, which is just too much of the same thing. So we talked and I enlisted their help in cleaning up the mess we'd made, whacking the crabs with wooden mallets and leaving splatter evidence everywhere of our execution and subsequent dismemberment of untold numbers of crustaceans. Her friend was the product of a mixed marriage and so didn't really feel comfortable in either a synagogue or a church. The PBTSD one reminded me much of One-if-by-sea; favored her enough in looks and demeanor to have been an older sister or cousin.

I told them my favorite Saint-the-Atheist Tex stories. Naturally, they wanted to meet him. Unfortunately, he's dead. Or maybe fortunately, depending. I didn't tell them about the day his foot slipped and he floored his van through the back of the church, where, by a series of fortunate coincidences, didn't kill anyone, although he knocked down walls and drove through three children's classrooms and the senior high lounge and certainly would have flattened twenty future liberals or more, if everyone had been where they normally would have been. Now that he's gone, I've gotten to know his long-time female companion and have learned that there was another very dark side to my snarling patron saint. The Wayward One may remember looking through a telescope belonging to an old guy with a white beard who looked like Santa Claus and seeing the rings of Saturn one night in the parking lot. Saint Tex. He drank too much and smoked his whole life; died young at the age of 75 or there abouts.

And I gave them an abbreviated version of my 'This I Believe' speech:

Life is a joke:
Sometimes it's on you; sometimes me.
Sometimes it's not funny at all.
And sometimes we don't get it right away.
but it's always a joke.
Get it? Eh?

And we still haven't come up with a symbol to put at the end of a sentence to indicate this is supposed to be funny. And don't even think about suggesting the 'smiley-face', or that :-) crap, or even worse, lol. I would go for a simple triangle, pointing up, if funny, pointing down, if not; sideways, too, is always an option, as, pointing to the left: things that will only be funny to liberals, to the right, of course, for stupid stuff the assholes think is funny.

but I digress.

This I Believe

2008-07-20T22:35:00.000-07:00

Just kidding.

I don't.

Planting Season

2008-05-06T22:50:00.000-07:00

All four of the lilacs bloomed this year-- one was so completely covered in flowers that I could smell it all the way up the driveway. The frost didn't kill the tomatoes-- perhaps wrappng them in bubble wrap helped, but it probably just didn't get cold enough.

And, for the first time ever, there are at least five little reddish lumps at the ends of the branches of one of the pear trees. The fig trees are predictably covered with the beginnings of figs. Everywhere are hillsides covered with white blossoms. I mentally note the good patches and make plans to return in July to harvest blackberries. The ones in the store have no personality or character. Somehow they just taste better if I mix them with the trickles of blood from where the thorns snag my skin, or the sweat that splashes on them from my forehead.

I put in a bed of strawberries, this time, but I don't expect them to do much this year. If the rains continue, they will settle in and I'll be able to make strawberry-rhubarb pie next year. I split one of the rhubarbs into two plants and moved them into a better spot, and I sowed the seeds they made last year. I see little plants in between the beans which might turn out to be baby rhubarbs. If they are, I will nurture them & try to coax them into dressing a border in one of the other flower beds. In addition to the tomatoes and the strawberries, I planted mounds of butternut squash, yams, crook-necked squash, cantaloupe , green beans, cucumbers, camomille, feverfew, tarragon, St John's Wort, cilantro, lavender and an assortment of hot and sweet peppers. The peach tree would collapse if all the peaches on it were to survive. They won't, of course-- the impatient squirrels are fond of them under-ripe and bitter.

We talk about expanding the garden, but the effort required to unearth the posts and dig new holes is already beyond us for this year. Maybe in the fall. The Wayard E talks about getting a goat which she plans to abandon, once the novelty has worn off, on my doorstep. I consider finding another dog to keep Virgil from being tempted to take up with the coyotes. Our neighbor has installed a camera in the woods across the street from his house to catch pictures of the herd of deer.

Spring is a good time to dream, before the dry winds wither our hopes and the fruit falls too early, leaving us with another barren season.

More than a year later

2008-03-19T20:53:00.000-07:00

I looked at the date of the past post (a la recherche du post perdu?) and was shocked to see how long it had been.

I suppose the festivities last spring kept me occupied.

And then I thought... wait a minute! I wrote something in January and One if By Sea commented... so it can't have been more than a year. And if I hadn't remembered, and had gone on and on and on about the past year, it would be just one more example of how unreliable the memory is becoming. I find things I have written, for example, and it is as though I have discovered I had an extra finger on my hand-- where did that thing come from? when did I write this? Good thing no one reads this blog.

It's not age, though. The Wee One left out the month of July in her planning calendar. Skipped merrily from June to August, and then was worried because it seemed that there wasn't going to be enough time to get everything done. Hell no, not if you take an entire 31 days out of the year-- that's almost a 10% reduction in the overall amount of time available.

I have a theory, though. (Always with the theories, I know) But this one makes perfect sense.

This past week they noted on one of the early morning (or late night, depending on your perspective) news shows that some study of a bustardillion people found that, compared with the same study done some blickedy number of years ago, there had been a decrease in the average amount of time spent sleeping from 7 to 6 hours a night, (or it might have been between some other two numbers), but the decrease was considerable. since it was either early or very late, and I was either more or less asleep, and irritated at the thought that the obvious reason why I wasn't asleep at that particular moment was because I was listening to this drivel about how we weren't sleeping as much any more as we used to.

But I digress.

The theory is that we actually create time by sleeping.

Seriously-- think back to when you were a teenager or even younger-- it wasn't hard to dissolve into 12 hours of positively blissful sleep and there was always plenty of time. In fact, there was a positive surfeit (thank you James, one of my favorite words) of time, which, it being in abundance, we freely squandered trying to come up with something to do, preferably involving ladders and windows and waking people up in the middle of the night, or mooning the local constable from a moving vehicle (without, of course, first obtaining permission from the driver to hang a hairy derierre out the window). Harmless enough, I suppose, but having an element of risk so that one could eventually go back to sleep, with the satisfaction of having, by God, accomplished something worth discussing in the cafeteria the next day. So clearly, it is the act of sleeping that generates time in an individual's life. The less you sleep; the less time you have-- and it only gets worse if you continue in this downward spiral, until you merely blink, and an entire night has been lost.

Now that I have an hypothesis, I must needs test it. Adieu!

An Yet Another

2008-01-13T16:07:00.000-08:00

It was so sad to watch the horror that wasn't a story unfold. A trail hiked so many times, past the most spiritual of glades of green ferns , mountain spring waters sparkling down under the rhododendrons, never guessing that a where the wildcats and wolves no longer prowled, a place that had become almost too civilized for my taste, a vicious creature was waiting to slash and destroy someone who, fearless, had sought the exhilaration and tranquility of that mountain top in the bitter cold of winter. Someone who came from the real mountains, who no doubt saw these little well-worn hills as safe; and did not wonder at the name.

And I do not understand. They caught him quickly, almost amazingly so. He stood rigid in orange and shackles, and looked at the camera-- and there was nothing human in those eyes-- not even insanity. They were the fearless eyes of a predator and nothing more. We will pay to defend him in this state and others; and I hope the prosecutors made a deal so that we don't waste our money defending him from a death sentence.

After all, his execution ten days or ten years from now wouldn't change anything.

We won't be any safer with him dead than we would be with him in a prison . And a quiet, dignified, painless death is just not fair.

For him, a stalker, a predator, who was at home and roamed freely in the forests, who watched and waited, and, until this one, managed to not be seen, not to be noticed-- in and out of shadows--to be trapped forever behind walls of concrete, where the smell of the woods is replaced by the smell of chlorine bleach and disinfectant, surrounded by other men and their noise unending, not softened by the wind through leaves or muffled by pine needles-- to pace endlessly in the glare of fluorescent lights--- is not too kind a fate.

And I am sad because, with every one of these, we are ever more thoroughly convinced that we are not free.

Why This is a Bad Idea

2008-01-13T16:04:00.001-08:00

What ever you say here, whatever you do here becomes the property of the host.

Betwixt and Between

2007-12-27T16:52:00.000-08:00

I finally remembered to take the little glass jar out of the freezer that I had saved a few precious drops of a long-ago summer thunderstorm from a day when the sky was dark and the rain drops hit so hard they exploded with spray a foot into the air, and I tossed the contents back into the air. I had felt guilty, withholding this bit and hoped that as an offering, it would be acceptable.

Of course it has rained often since that day, but I refuse to consider the possibility, even if the beating of a butterfly's wings in Beijing in April can disrupt the weather in Toleodo in October, that two teaspoons full of thunderstorm could have anything to do with the drought. Coincidence has led to many to perform bizarre rituals for centuries to no effect without ever entertaining the possibility that A happening did not have anything to do with B happening except to precede it in time and occur in relatively close proximity.

Lately, well, not exactly-- since I've been thinking about some aspect of these issues since I was old enough to distinguish my thoughts from other random electrical discharges in the vicinity-- I've been trying to put into words something of a modern myth to replace the one that begins, "In the beginning, God...", since, as a non-man, that myth is a pretty bad one and has provided encouragement to those who have undertaken all sorts of abuse of my gender.

I also just cannot go along with the idea that if the universe consists of all that exists, there nevertheless exists some x that is not contained in the universe and is asserted to not only have caused the existence of the universe, but retains the capacity to micro-manage the beings within the universe in flagrant opposition to whatever natural laws appear to allow some being within the universe to predict with a degree of certainty the effect C that will be accomplished by doing A to any B. And, I've always been partial to Aristotle. I like the idea that the universe, being, as it is, the collection of all that exists, is finite. Expanding, contracting-- matters not, if something is, in any any sense of that word, it is to be found within the universe. Might be a very large number of existents therein, but no matter how large the number it would would be some number. A number sequence may well be seen to have no end but the criteria for any sequence can nevertheless be defined and, as such, contained within the collection of all that exists. And not only that, but between that what is, is also that what is not, which may in some circumstances be needed in order to differentiate between this is and that is, so that they don't become utterly undifferentiated, that is, a 'they are'. Nothing, therefore, can be seen to clearly exist. This is important because I am also not the least bit infatuated with the proposition that something cannot be and not be at the same time, in the same way, in the same place. Too stultifying, if you ask me. Ok, so you didn't, but then, you're reading this after all, aren't you?

Where was I? Ah.

Back to ontological reflections a la merde, as opposed to those cartesian meditations that assure us we can sleep soundly at night, just knowing that our senses can be trusted because God is Good, and anything that is Good wouldn't play tricks on us and create a world in which what we experience bears no resemblance to reality. Of course, it's very handy to trust our senses; any other option would create considerably more confusion than is absolutely necessary.

But I digress. I wanted to come up with a sort of myth, a story, if you will (or even if you won't) that, like the old one, didn't ever even mention the previous myth. No sense raising the hackles of those who have lived and will die in allegiance to the old myth. Easier just to state the new one and if it catches on, the old one will fade away, just like belief in the Gods and Goddesses of Olympus did. But one must concur that they have clearly lost their noumenosity--they are no longer capable of inspiring our projections which enable us to see in them an independent existence, to perceive in our lives their actions, as so many are able to do these days with their crucified friend. Athena, once shimmering gold in Her temple became one day just a statute covered in gold foil; then, easily stripped of her finery and finally no one even noticed when Her sacred body and those of her sisters were carted off as decorations for the palaces of the nouveau riche heathen.

So, here we go:

We find ourselves here, between the sky and a dusty earth, in a place of wonder.

Above, a golden star, whose warmth fuels life itself; below, a cauldron of molten rock whose fiery geysers flow into black rivers of new land.

Around us are mountains and deserts, valleys and oceans, forests and prairies, ants and elephants.

We find ourselves here, where careful observation yields astounding discoveries.

We find ourselves here, the offspring of those who survived—at least long enough for one thin strand of protein to entwine another:

Our ancestors may have known hunger, but did not starve to death.

Our ancestors may have fallen into raging waters, but they did not drown.

Our ancestors may have been on the menu, but weren’t eaten.

As children, we were told stories about who we are and where we came from.

Those stories were exciting and filled us with pride:

Those stories made us want to be brave and face danger with courage—to be like the men and women in those stories.

We understood that we should do at least as well with our lives as our parents and their parents had done with theirs.

We have met people who believe their story is the Only Story and the Only True Story. We have met people who believe that anyone who does not believe that story is doomed.

But—we find ourselves here and know that we did not choose our parents:

We did not choose the lands where we were born, the languages we learned to speak, whether we were to be men or women, tall or short, narrow or round, rich or poor; whether our hair was to be smooth or curled, black or orange, blonde or brown, or who we would fall in love with when we were grown.

And we know that our story hasn’t been written yet.

So how shall we write it?

--With words of love and encouragement or words of anger and recrimination?

Will we join together with our brothers and cousins, sisters and grandmothers to fight our common enemies: disease, hunger, fear and ignorance?

Or will we be the champions of ignorance and fight one another so that even more of our family will live in fear and suffer hunger and disease, poverty and prejudice?

We find ourselves here:

Let us consider well and long how we will write our story.

Admittedly, it shrieks from one haggard cliche to another, but one has to start somewhere. A long long time ago one of my friends, after reading something I wrote told me, "Next time the muse strikes, strike back!" Good advice, no doubt.

'Tis the Season

2007-11-24T16:57:00.000-08:00

The Hillbillies just now piled into the van and headed back over the mountains to home. In the cold dark rain. A sad moment.

There is nothing like several days of intense recreational cooking and unrestrained gluttony to reassure the soul that there is, really and truly, enough fat on the bones to make it through the winter.

Lunch today was a culinary masterpiece, if you happen to be schizophrenic. We had a lawyer, sushi, Hebrew National Kosher Knockwurst, a preacher, home-grown mashed sweet potatoes, a bricklayer, a pot of fresh frozen black-eyed peas (part of the treasure trove in the freezer from last summer's trip to the farmer's market), dressing, gravy, a writer from the Northwest, corn bread with onions, (not as good as corn fritters, alas!) made from the stone-ground corn meal we brought home from the grist mill in Sandwich, a tossed salad, an accountant, green beans sauteed in butter with tumeric, potatoes , and a truck driver. A good time was had by all.

The conversation, too, ranged from the weird to the strange, with a smidgen of bizarre, and covered in exhaustive detail just how much of an impact those 5-inch spike-heeled white or red patent leather boots had in the jury's decision to let that preacher's wife off the hook when she unloaded the shotgun in him, and just how quickly a jury would acquit the lawyer if the preacher tried to talk her into wearing such gear, which got him to thinking.... ... At one point, I noticed that the preacher had hunkered up at the dining room table and blocked the writer's escape, perched vulture-like about 2" from his nose, quoting something from his pocket digital bible. Too bad my hands were covered with soapy water, else I would have digitally captured the moment.

Now I have only to bide my time until the e arrives! Halloo! Hoolay!

Almost Thanksgiving

2007-11-20T17:55:00.000-08:00

It rained about fifteen minutes here two weeks ago. Other than the Lake drying up at a truly alarming rate, everything seems fairly normal. Fall was at its peak all the way up to Blue Ridge. I sailed home, down the wavy mountain roads, with the late afternoon sun illuminating the golden- hickory, maroon- red oak, and salmon-colored maple leaves to a degree that brought Notre Dame cathedral rose windows Chartres to mind. Realized, as I do every year, that it is my favorite season, always.... until the snow dusts the driveway or an ice storm coats the trees in diamonds.

I settled on the menu over the weekend. Hard to get very excited about the traditional feast without the kids here to peel apples for pie. One is in the Northwest, the other took an early vacation from her school responsibilities to join her dad in supporting the mental health industry. I went to visit her on Sunday. The oh-so-cheery social worker psychotherapist cozened up, notebook clutched to her chest-- lest anyone mistake her for one of the inmates-- and announced that we were going to have a group therapy session. "Ach, nein, meine Liebchen-- no one asked for my consent." "Oh, well, er, um, my" she said, clearly not expecting anyone to decline her invitation, "I think it's required by the insurance company for diagnostic purposes." The magic words, of course-- and words that had no doubt had slain many a dragon-- but not this one. "Really? You need to show me that in writing from my insurance company." The psycho social worker then started asking about the wee one's Dad and thought he said he was coming that afternoon, but she couldn't understand how he could have called her (the therapist) if he was in rehab. From this it would seem that they don't let the inmates have nearly as much in the way of phone privileges as his facility does. So we explained that he was about half-way through a four-month stint, and they had let him have his cell phone back this week. (I had my doubts about the male parental unit making an appearance, since that would have involved getting directions and finding it and there were only 20 minutes left of her once-a-week hour of family visitation.) Whereupon our pyscho theraputical friend toodled off to make herself busy stopping by to talk to other patients and their families. She didn't return, which was no surprise. The wee one was very unhappy and told me that I might not realize it, but I needed help, too, and that she couldn't get any better unless the whole family got better. So cute to hear the wee one parrot back the drivel they foist on the unsuspecting to jack their bills. In not exactly these words, but close, I told her "Well, then, I guess you're just s--- out of luck". I told her she needed to spend her time and energy getting through school and leave her moderately and very dysfunctional parents to their own respectively distorted views of reality. Chances of a successful outcome much higher that way. The hour was over too quickly. Dark clouds of anger behind the pupils now dilated with a new chemical cocktail, but she hugged my neck when I had to leave. Very sad business.

The next day I called the insurance company and explained what I had been told and asked if indeed, they required my participation in family therapy to determine teh wee one's length of stay. Of course not. So I asked her to register a complaint for me. She did. Without having gone so far as to have submitted charges to the insurance company, they escape being charged with fraudulent misrepresentation. Darn.

But wait- all is not utter doom and gloom-- my boss sent an unexpected email that she was taking six weeks of personal leave and that we shouldn't make the mistake she had of not valuing her personal life more than the (stupid) job, so I decided she was absolutely right and immediately cleared my only appointment the week the Wonderful e is going to be in town, and put in for a week of annual leave, so we can play. I haven't told her yet, so Shhhhhh! Immediately lifted my spirits.

For Thanksgiving, we are having blanched asparagus marinated in sesame oil and soy sauce; turkey, dressing, a couple of ministers, sweet potato souffle made from our very own organic (because we're too lazy to buy pesticides) sweet potatoes, a bricklayer, mashed potatoes, that cranberry-orange relish that no one but we two old ladies ever eats, a lawyer, Greek Salad, a truck driver, pumpkin chiffon pie with a garnish of ginger-pumkin strips in a bed of ginger snaps, an accountant, pee-can pie, gravy, sweet tea, coffee, hot rolls and butter, finished off with a diabetic coma. There is probably something else that I will make and forget in the refrigerator, as always, but even without whatever, there should be plenty. Perhaps even a tzei-tzchie demonstration, for the amusement of the guests.

Somewhere between Labor and Columbus Day

2007-09-19T20:50:00.000-07:00

The sweltering heat of this horrible dry summer seems to have finally ended. The hounds have returned from hiding out in the dirt under the truck, galloping around the yard. Two of the jars of B & B pickles have taken flight to Oregon, along with jars of Muscadong Figbarb, peach and muscadine jam.

When e was here last week, she helped to make the muscadine jam by picking, cooking and straining the fruit. The Muscadong Figbarb jam was a combination of muscadine, scuppernong, fig and rubarb. Didn't have enough of any one of them, but altogether, they make a fine jam. And anytime the Wookie wants a jar of peach jam, she only needs to call. She can even get a taste of the B & B pickles-- decanted into a half-pint jar.

Yesterday I decided to dig around and see what was growing in the way of sweet potatoes. I unearthed one, which was in the shape of an "L", roughly the configuration, color and texture of the large intestine of a water buffalo, (or the texture I would imagine the large intestine of a water buffalo to have, since I haven't had any actual experience with the innards of buffaloes, water or otherwise). So I washed it, wrapped it in foil and cooked it until it was all mushy. Now, I don't know about you, but I can't eat a sweet potato without thinking of Yula Varner, of course. And for those of you who haven't read Faulkner, you ought to be ashamed. It was just fine, too, after a dab of butter and a sprinkle of sea salt. I couldn't eat more than a small piece, though, so it's waiting for me in the refrigerator. There are probably lots of them out there, too. So I'll probably take another try at making Sweet Potato Pie the way my SU remembers it being. I know it's a futile endeavor, since his mom probably used canned sweet potatoes to make it, but oh well.

Interesting week, so far. Long time coming I suppose. Can only hope that the cure will be successful and long-lasting.

But I digress.

This weekend will be time to turn over the garden and plant collards for New Years. Maybe I'll throw in a little lettuce, what with global warming. It got cool enough yesterday that I thought I should fill up the bird feeders. Soon I'll have to bring my father's spider plants in for the rest of the winter. They have done very well this summer on the back porch with a good soaking every Sunday. This weekend, I'll repair the remaining broken bird feeders. One or two have broken rope hangers; the rest have suffered from the enthusiasm of the squirrels-- who can't seem to patiently extract a seed or two at a time, no! They have to rip the walls down.

Cucumbers, et al

2007-08-02T20:04:00.000-07:00

Once it started raining again, the okra and the cucumbers have replicated themselves at an alarming rate. Would that the tomatoes did the same. Last weekend The T and I decided to go to the Farmer's Market down by the airport and buy some water melons. For $4 we got a three-foot-long pale green-and-white splochety item that turned out to be the fantasy watermelon of both our childhoods-- deep crimson, sweet-- perfection! And after watching them empty hugh bags of peas into the pea-huller machine, we picked up 20 pounds of fresh-hulled black-eyed peas, which T later confessed, after we had spent an hour or two blanching them in boiling water and dousing them in ice water and packing them neatly away in the freezer, that he wasn't really interested in the peas so much as the hulls... which the farmer had been more than happy to fill up a big bag with, since he was going to have to tote them off to the dumpster, anyhow. Mulch. T is always on the lookout for it. Mr. Mulch, King of the Kompost Heap. And the ten pounds of okra a day out of our own garden wasn't enough, no-- so we bought a 1/2 bushel of it, too, and dutifully blanched, iced & sliced, bagged and froze it.

And then, there is that prolific cucumber vine, putting out a half-dozen foot-long cukes a day. getting themselves stuck in the holes in the hog wire fence they've covered over. We pile them up on the counter, and when I've got about twenty and a dozen medium onions, a quart of vinegar, a few cloves of garlic, tumeric, sugar, allspice and mustard seeds, I pull out the old 'Veg-I-Matic' and slice up the cucumbers and the onions until they fill up the big stainless steel bowl (20" in diameter) ; sprinkle them with pickling salt, cover with ice for three hours to brine them up and then toss them in the hot sugar/vinegar spice mix and fill up a mere four quart jars with bread-and-butter pickles. Yum. They are good. One of the ladies I work with told me they use them instead of relish, and I thought to myself, oh, yes-- that would be tasty. Funny how it had never occurred to me that I could throw a jar into the Cusineart and presto! sweet relish.

The Veg-I-Matic had been sitting in a drawer for years. Never thought to try it out, believing the Cuinseart to be vastly superior to any mere manual slicing gadget. I hadn't seen one advertised in years. After the fourth or fifth cucumber in less than a minute, I realized that there was nothing to prevent me from slicing off the tips of all four of my fingers and my thumb in one swipe, if I wasn't careful, which may account for why they aren't being advertised any more. There were some strongly-worded warnings in the instructions about NEVER EVER leaving it anywhere near a child of ANY AGE!!! But that probably didn't prevent the inevitable lawsuits from otherwise intelligent homemakers who had glanced away for a brief moment, only to find they'd turned it into blutwurst instead of knockwurst.

The Veggie-Matic is actually a sort-of lying down vegetable guillotine, with a wicked 10" long razor blade set at an angle and a flimsy plastic "guard" to hold the vegetable during its repetitive execution. As I turned the onions into onion slices I could see why the mobs in the streets of Paris kept rounding up the aristocrats in carts to watch their heads roll-- there is something inherently satisfying about chopping, particularly if it's done neatly, quickly and efficiently. Whhhhhaaack!

But I digress.

So there are quarts of B & B pickles on the counter, and oh! I almost forgot-- back at the Farmers Market there were a few baskets of peaches-- Firestone, glowing orbs of sunshine, scalded and then chilled in ice water to get their skins to slide off, then chopped and cooked with sugar into an enormous vat of peach stew-- that does sound bad, doesn't it? But why? The 36 little jars of peach jam are begging for biscuits and a frosting morning. And as if okra and peas and watermelons and bread and butter pickles weren't enough, the fig tree gave up a quart of figs, which are now concentrated into two half-pints of fig preserves.

So it was, from dawn until well past my bedtime, putting up the abundance of summer against the grey meagerosity to come.

Saturday, H & I head up to the Cape to see the Old People. I am going to feast on lobster and fried clams until I'm sick. Then I'm going to spend twenty bucks on the boat ride to the Vineyard and buy some fudge, and eat every bit of it on the ferry home. And wash it all down with Sam Adams. Yes, until I'm sick. Can't wait.

Almost Flag Day

2007-06-10T14:28:00.000-07:00

There wasn't any rain in May. The grass along the shoulders of the road turned to straw. The scattered ponds along my travels have all been drying up, leaving rings around the banks and small pools of black algae scum at the bottom. It's worrisome, and brings to mind the drought 20 or 30 years ago when Lake Lanier was dropping a foot a week. There were about 4 million fewer people here then.

It rained hard a few days ago, and the garden made another effort; not sure at all that it's going to produce a single edible tomato. Another rain or two, though, and we might have a stellar crop of blackberries, who seem to be much more intensely sweet when there is less rain. Ate one Saturday, walking around Mulberry Lake with the Trucker and his sister. We've been trying to get in a little walk on the weekends. Last Saturday, we hiked six miles; this Saturday we only did 5, but added a steep hill.

The Plan is for the trucker to go back to work after his visit to the doctor on Thursday. No telling how that will work out.

Full Moon

2007-02-04T16:45:00.000-08:00

My phone sang its beach tune this afternoon as I was driving home from returning the PD to her OP. When I saw who it was, I thought it must surely have been a mistake, a mis-dial, but no-- she rang me up after two years and talked for at least two hours. The usual loud and rambling complaints, punctuated with a belch and the sound of a diet coke being popped open in the background; her distorted impressions of the world as she always has seen it. I finally figured out that she was just covering her bets, just in case I actually did return. She told me when he asked her what she would do if I came back, she said she would "Just shut up and do her work." He fell out laughing, she said. I knew it was the truth. The idea that she would ever actually just shut up let alone the part about doing her work is about the most bizarre of all the bizarre things anyone has said to me this week.

For awhile, I felt a twinge of wow, am I special or what ? until it occurred to me as I was driving home Friday night after taking a junket around Megalopolis and adding at least an extra hundred miles in process of dropping the Prodigal off at her best friend's house because I was too stubborn to either a) get a more detailed map or b) call (again) and ask for directions.

But.... I digress. Ah, yes...

It occurred to me as I was driving home Friday night at midnight, after having driven from M to G to NPM to meet WTM, and catch up on the last five years of her life and watch her eat buffet Chinese food in the food court (because both she and I are too old and too cheap to waste money on a restaurant) and then to head off in the cold wind to pick up the PD and drive her to the other damn entirely opposite side of Megalopolis all on nothing but caffein and a strong desire for a cigarette and no sleep, having made the mistake of going back, just out of curiosity--- not actually expecting anything, only to find that it was really worse than I could have imagined. One of them asked if I was ready to come back. I asked if he spoke for all seven of them, he said no, just himself, and I laughed and said well call me when you do. Another said they'd decided to give her some help. He never lied or played, so I knew that was what they were really going to do. She will figure out that they are on to her eventually and then she'll slither off to make a mess somewhere else, but since no one can tell me that she's actually doing anything, her leaving won't make any difference.

But I digress.

What I realized driving home, mulling it all over, not Friday night, actually, but tonight, thinking back on Friday night and the call this afternoon is it's just a full moon, and their brains are suffering from the effects of its gravitational pull.

Me too, certainly. Me too.

I've escaped from the lion's den at least three times and yet, a bit of time passes and I hear the lions saying softly, "Ah, come back, we didn't mean it! We'll be good this time! We won't suck the marrow out of your bones this time--promise!" And I think to myself, gees, maybe it wasn't really that bad; maybe I could make it work. I even called the Dadperson -- he suggested that it would behoove me to take the present value of my future projected potential earnings and then add 15 or 25% to it. They like to horse trade, so I would have to start about eight large over what I would settle for, plus four positions, one of which would have to be my AA and then there would have to be a little variation in the reporting structure.

Just like paying a buck for a lottery ticket-- until they pull those ping pong balls out of the tank and end it, the fantasy millions can be spent so many different ways.

I will of course call W up. He deserves to get a good chuckle out of it all. .

Post Fall

2007-02-03T11:23:00.000-08:00

The hawk, according to a bona fide Forest Ranger (who saw a photograph of it sitting on the new birdbath) is an immature red-tailed hawk.

I am less certain, given the narrow white lines between the narrow black horizontal bars and the lack of any tinge of rust on his tail. Perhaps he is a red-shouldered hawk in the making. His tail is very much the same as the picture in the Audubon bird book of the red-shouldered hawk, but then again, he also looks an awful lot like a marsh hawk. And the Ranger would say, if it's immature, it could be any of them!!! The hawk is hard to photograph. Against the grey winter branches and dead leaves, he is invisible.

A creature of fixed and immutable habit, appearing on the same branch of the same sweet gum tree at the same time (just after dawn) to swoop down twice to the wooden post supporting the muscadine vine and retrieving, each time, a giblet, which T places on top of the support each night before he goes to bed. He, too, (T), is a creature of fixed and immutable habit. I am not. Every morning finds me shocked to discover that I am still alive and have to get up and go do something. The trick is trying to remember what that was (or is, depending.)

We tried leaving various other scraps and food items but discovered that the hawk was only interested in the raw (and preferrably semi-frozen) innards of chickens. If, by chance, T forgets to put out his (the hawk's) breakfast, the hawk alights on his same branch, but instead of swooping down, ascertaining that there is no bloody bit awaiting him, arches his wings, and complains, loudly, about the lack of service, inconsistency, and generally sorry state of the annoying and hairless creatures that are supposed to provide his morning vittles .

His complaints are nothing that could be confused with the irritated twitterings of the rest of the bird population when their favorite seed is no longer in one of the many bird feeders around the yard. Oh, no. These complaints are a sort of bone-chilling shriek, with the implied threat to life and limb of some pitiable songbird who will be his breakfast, instead. And of course, I am then overwhelmed with guilt. It is by then a fatal error, and not to be remedied.

I understand now, I suppose, the motivation of those who have tried to appease the gods by sacrifice. A plaintive wail, "Please eat this, instead of me." We are merely mice who have arrived at the silly notion that we have evolved. And His screams do indeed evoke some ancient angst.

He is, to those my fragile songbirds-- the sort of birds that my beloved Wayward One once rescued from the jaws of a cat-- a featherless baby with crimson skin, so red I thought it was sunburned and was laughed at by the ornithologist at the zoo, who met us that Sunday afternoon to take custody and eventually to release back into the bushes more or less from whence it came -- a monster with a wingspan ten times theirs, a demon who drops silent from the sky and plunges His talons into their still beating hearts, the embodiment of Death sudden, Death inescapable, but Death, which, is perhaps also most merciful in that life is over before there is even recognition that life is endangered.

Winter is, of course, is the season of Death. There can be no illusion during this time that we can survive without our customary props.

We --or rather, to be honest-- he-- maintains an enormous pile of firewood, although we almost never light a fire in the fireplace anymore. The firewood is insurance for when the ice coats the power lines and the trees fall across the road and it is cold, dark, wet, and getting colder. We don't live where these conditions are such that Death is a guarantee-- a simple pile of blankets would keep the two of us entirely confortable in all but the absolute worst of weathers-- and if we were to include the three cats and two dogs in the pile, there would no doubt be sufficient heat to keep water from freezing. But... the firewood means that civilization is maintained. With a fire, there can be hot water; with hot water, there can be everything.

T is able to do Tai Chi, which is a wonderful thing to see again. I have started to learn, and find it exquisitely calming. Because my arms move in counterpoint to my legs, it is impossible for me to do this without maintaining focus. After an hour and a half of having had no other thought in mind than are my hands & feet doing what they're supposed to be doing? Being released fills me with a sense of peace and relaxation that I have only felt after, say, hiking over the top of Mt Washington and finally being able to take off my pack and boots, fire up the stove and eat a hot meal . (Or maybe not quite that good, but certainly worth devoting several hours to after work.) My goal is to be able to rmember all the moves and start practicing in random public places, (shopping malls, grocery stores) wearing a T-shirt that says "No, I'm not Chinese".

One of the joys of being old and grey is that no one gives a rat's ass what you do and they are afraid to try to stop you.

This January has brought many returns-- a prodigal child; good conversations with two old friends, one of whom will be leaving here to return home across the ocean; and a few other utterly bizarre exchanges with people from my past. All of which have left me with very mixed emotions.

Fortunately, there is no action item requiring my decision. And I am old enough to be able to truly appreciate just having mixed emotions. Good solid card carrying members of the ruling party that they are, they will undoubtedly make the same decision as their fearless leader and agree with one another to send in and pay for as few more warm bodies as they think they can get away with, knowing, when they lie down at night, that this route cannot possibly salvage the situation.

Gen. McClellan lacked what was needed, too, and 400,000 more Union troops wouldn't have solved that problem, either.

But procrastination is always the popular choice when faced with an unpleasant task.

The Fall

2006-10-10T19:28:00.000-07:00

We woke at 4:00 in the morning to get dressed and drive to the hospital. Not much to say. I sucked on a cup of coffee; he had to be satisfied with the smell.

They took away his clothes and started an IV at 7:30; told me to move the car to the other side of the hospital and wait in the waiting room. Hours to spend studying up on partnerships that have partnerships as partners and contemplating the posibility of fomites while flipping through months-old copies of Better Homes and Gardens and The Economist, US News and World Report, donated by the medical staff, their names blacked out, all the while forced to endure Judge Hudy and Dudy feigning astonishment at the antics of their plaintiffs and defendants-- women trying to find out who the real fathers of their six-year-old children are. Listening to the unending litany of atrocities-- a mother using her baby to beatup her boyfriend (who was also the presumptive father). The baby suffered a fractured skull. The mother sobbed that she didn't mean to hurt her child. The father explained that she was drunk and got mad and started throwing things at him-- a lamp, table, a dish... then she grabbed their baby and started whaling away on him. Never thought of a child as a weapon.

But I digress.

The waiting room was tastefully decorated, without the slightest consideration of comfort. Might as well have installed wooden pews.

Meanwhile, they cut him open and installed a titanium cylinder, about 1/2" in diameter and two inches long to take the place of a gelatinous disk that had flattened and oozed out of where it was supposed to be, and used a piece of bone from his vertebrae where they had drilled holes for the nuts and bolts to make it all fit together nicely.

Around 11:00, a nurse called the phone in the waiting room and said that the surgery was finished, and he was heading to recovery.

Around twelve, the Syrian strode in and said he'd done well. He looked tired. It's probably easier to do what he did to littler people.

I got some lunch in the hospital cafeteria and read some more on partnerships, then continued on in Stiff, a delightful romp through the boneyards and mortuaries, plastic surgery training camps and cadaver schools.

Back in the waiting room, wondering what was taking so long. Went to the nurses station and inquired. "Oh, they're having a hard time getting his pain under control after he emerged from the anesthesia-- shouldn't be too much longer-- 20 or 30 minutes.

An hour-and-a-half later, they finally rolled him into the room. He was not feeling too well, and was hooked up to a morphine pump. I suggested that maybe he should take a couple of extra hits and see if he couldn't dull the pain some. So he did. His pupils shrank to pin pricks and he started talking out of his head. He started to feel a bit nauseated, so the nurse (a young one) ran off to get an ampul of phenergan. As she was injecting it into his IV, I remarked that phenergan always pretty much knocked me out. She got a funny look on her face as she clearly remembered some warning about giving these two drugs at the same time. Meaniwhile, as expected, he became semi-comatose and started doing his usual apnea-snoring routine, only with a vengence-- not breathing and then ripping and snorting. His oxygen monitor started going off, and the nurse took off to find someone to consult. She suggested giving him Narcan to counteract the effects of the overdose of CNS suppressants, but the other nurse said "Naw, you don't want him waking up screaming in pain in the middle of the night-- but we probably ought to take away his glowing green button for a while, so he can't pump any more morphine in his system."

It was bedtime, and I had an hour to drive, so I went on home, having determined earlier in the afternoon that the recliner was actually an inverse gravitation device. The footrest would not open without the head of the chair resting on the floor.

The cats and dogs were relieved that someone had returned and settled in to meowing and barking. The meowing quit as soon as I settled into bed, but Lu felt some need to bark every twenty seconds or so at the full moon. Twenty seconds is every so much more annoying than a steady barking, so I got up and thoroughly cussed her out, which was apparently all she wanted.

And at 4:00 I got up and cleaned out the cat boxes, fed & watered the animals and drove back to the hospital.

To be continued...

Tonight, the internist came in and told us that he had a small bloodclot in his lungs and that the vascular surgeon wanted to install a filter (like a little umbrella that opens up in his artery or vein or somewhere) in his femoral artery. Phooey on that. Cutting him again will cause more blood clots, to say nothing of misery. And the surgeon overruled them putting him on blood thinners.

**sigh**.

Going to sleep... now......

When

More Dog Days

2006-07-30T15:17:00.000-07:00

Weather: The thunderstorms finally rolled through in the evening.

The Question of the day is: What is demylinating polyneuropathy as in chronic inflamatory ?

Answer: An auto-immune disease that attacks the sheaths covering the nerves. Exposed wiring, whether in a building or a body is not a good thing.

Discussed whether to waste energy putting in a concrete ramp to the basement. After some discussion, decided that a better solution would be to put a ramp from the front porch to the driveway. Looked on the internet for ramps. Found skatebored ramps, which were interesting, but not exactly what we were looking for. Found ramps to load ATVs into the backs of pick up trucks, showing a guy driving one at a 45 degree angle into a short-bed truck. Didn't exactly look plausible. Found a illustrated caution about using ramps to drive a backhoe off the back of a truck. The caution was that it would flip over and the guy driving the backhoe would be injured.
Found some aluminum suitcase ramps, as in, they fold & have a handle, so are portable, but only 5 to 6 feet long, at best. T said, what about those things they use to get into ships... I said, "Gangplanks?" So we went meandering through Cyberia looking for gangplanks. Once I saw a picture, close up, I realized that for all the world a gangplank looked a lot like an extra-wide aluminum extension ladder with decking and wheels on one end. Which got me to thinking....
(always a bad and dangerous pasttime)... the distance to span was 20 feet, and the drop was somewhere around 36", give or take a few, so something .... like... a... 28-foot aluminum extension ladder... Eureka! We have one around here somewhere, no doubt. I have a distinct recollection of seeing it with the remains of a tree growing up through it that had been attacked by the Buzzsaw Man, who, for reasons known only to himself had decided that the proper height to top this particular tree was 13 feet up. The Busssaw Man, tired of looking at pictures of ATV ramps, had left to go return some DVDs and get the last volume of Season 5 of America's favorite dysfunctional crime family. So I decided to leave Cyberia as well.

The ladder wasn't where I last remembered seeing it, so I went and looked behind the shed. Not there, either. A glint in the woods drew my attention, and sure enough, there was the extension ladder, halfway down the gully, leaning on the remains of a sweet gum. What th' f---? So I waded through the brush, and carefully stepped from one pile of branches to another until I had worked my way down to the ladder. I stopped. I looked at the extension ladder. I looked at the tree. I asked, "Why would Buzz drag this damn thing all the way down here ? The tree was only 6" in diameter, maybe 30 feet tall-- not even a big tree. The ladder was angled upward from the ground over the four-foot-high stump to rest on the tree, six or so feet past where the tree had been cut. There was only one possible interpretation for the ladder's position-- he had dragged the 28-foot extension ladder into the gully and propped it up against the tree and then cranked up the chainsaw and cut the tree down, instead of throwing a rope around the tree and tying it off in the direction he wanted it to fall. He had, it would appear, used an extension ladder to "push" on the tree, while he was cutting it, with a chain saw. Now, did he do this when there was anyone around to call an ambulance if anything went wrong (as in the ladder falling on his head?) No, of course not. He did this when I was a thousand miles away. When he got back with the DVD, I asked him about it. Sure enough, he had dragged the ladder down in the gully, propped it up against the tree and then cut the tree down. But it wasn't to push the tree over; it was to keep the tree from falling uphill, that he had propped the ladder against it. When asked if he had considered what would happen if the ladder had fallen on his head, he pointed out that unlike some people he knew, he didn't run into curbs. Stumped, it took me a couple of hours before I realized he was referring to my scraping the bumper of my car on the low curb at the doctor's office on Friday. I don't think they fall quite into the same category.

But I digress.

I dragged the ladder up out of the gully and around to the front porch and laid it on its side and propped one end of it on the porch and the other on the driveway, and decided that it needed to be extended a few feet. Twenty-five, to be exact. But, as a gangplank, I could see that it had definite possibilities. Would need to be stabilized, and floored, but would be certainly a contender for a means to get the Buzzsaw Man from the car into the house on a short term basis (after surgery) for a minimal expenditure of cash, assuming that he wouldn't be able to walk up the steps. These days, that may not even be the case. Real ramps to cover that distance run into the thousands, and take weeks or months to have installed. Buzz thought it had possibilities, but wanted to see a drawing of how the pipe would work.

Always comforting to have a project to focus on, instead of the real horrors of life.

Dog Days on the Horizon

2006-07-29T09:08:00.000-07:00

Weather: Humid, hot; not a breeze to move a leaf. Thunderclouds on the horizon; not a drop yet today.

A green lizard is running around the edge of the deck, pausing every few feet to look over the side. He was up in the screen porch and may have just escaped from the Cats who lie there in wait for unsuspecting reptillians. The Reptillians seem to like the porches and the deck and I am always happy to have them, their being basically bug-eaters. An eight-inch long striped skink was flailing around between the glass storm door and the front door last week. I opened the storm door and he took off, but it left me wondering how he had managed to get trapped there. Had he been lurking behind one of the dog-food tubs and made a mad dash for the house the last time I came home? Had he hitchhiked and fallen off at precisely the correct moment to be stuck between the two doors? Or is there some opening above the door frame that he fell through while running along the top of the doorframe? One of the minor mysteries of the order of reptillians habiting my environs, I suppose. Like finding the treefrog sitting on the toilet seat in the upstairs bathroom that morning last month.

Ken came upon a five-foot-long black snake lying in the driveway a few days ago, while walking out to get the mail. This is the first one we've seen here (other than the little dead one that materialized in the kitchen underneath the table in the kitchen where Fabulous and his friend were living while they were staying staying with us). As I have said before, I always considered the appearance of that dead snake to have been a gentle hint from the Cats, who have a sly and evil streak, and were undoubtedly frustrated that we were feeding and protecting creatures that should have been their play toys.

There is , I should relate, a surfeit of bold and brazen bunny rabbits in the yard. They have an extensive warren. They look annoyed when I pull into the driveway at night and none-to-swiftly hop out of the way of my car, disappearing into the woods.

I suspect, since the bunnies don't seem to be eating anything in the garden and the Dogs are notorious for their penchant for patiently observing the squirrels cleaning out the birdfeeders (until we open the door and they remember that part of their job description is to chase everything that moves on the off-chance that it will run up a tree and we will want to kill it, cook it, eat it and give them the leftovers) that said Dogs are actually sharing their food with the rabbits. Tahlullah does, as a matter of fact, like to drag the dogfood bowl off the porch into the middle of the yard and leave it there. This could also account for the hundred-pounds-a-week of dog food we are going through.... Virgil, too, used to invite the neighboorhood over for a snack, which Tahlullah put a stop to, but she still might like to watch the bunnies at night.

Some day I'm going to set up one of those cameras that can film in the dark and see what is really going on around here at night, and why the Dogs explode off the porch at 2:00 am every night wooffing and snarling, and come back at dawn, exhausted, to sleep the rest of the day away. But I digress....

The snake may be here because he has found the entrance to an underground passageway in the woods to the den of some tasty baby bunnies. Or perhaps because he has found the haunt of the rest of the neighborhood rat population that was trying to survive on fertilizer in the the shed, (or were doing so until Ken collected a few in some fairly impressive rat traps, designed to instantly and humanely break their necks with a cold hard piece of steel when they tried to pull the bait off the trigger. )

Last week Ken got a lumbar puncture at the hospital and I got a chance to ask the neurologist what he was trying to rule in or out by doing it. And he explained that what he thought was happening with Ken was that something (a virus perhaps) had initiated an auto-immune response in his system that was destroying the protein sheath that covers and protects the nerve fibers, causing them to not work right. If there were evidence of certain proteins in the spinal fluid, there would be justification for doing a round of IV immuglobulin to see if it wouldn't halt the process. If not, then he had run over everything that could cause the peripheral polyneuropathy that was treatable, and ..... ... .

He will have the results soon. We're off to see the orthopedic surgeon, too, for a review of an MRI from 5 years ago against the one done last week, to see if surgery will help to at least reduce the pain and the numbness in his legs, by either removing the disk(s) & fusing the vertebrae or by microwaving the part of the disk that is hanging out so that it will shrink up and quit pushing on the nerves. (I suppose it's a sort of mini-liposuction, if its like anything. )

At the moment, the plan is to do the IV Ig, if indicated, and once completed, schedule surgery, since if the degenerative process is auto-immune, doing everything possible to beef up the system before any further insult is probably the only way to go.

The likelihood of their scheduling surgery anytime in the next 30 days is fairly remote, so we may still head out to see you, provided we can get a wheelchair & handicapped assistance to get through the airports, which shouldn't be a problem. He only really crashes when he has to stand; if he can walk, sit or lie down, he's ok. He can even go grocery shopping, because he can lean on the cart. But standing still he can only handle for about 2 minutes before he's got to find a wall to lean on or a chair to sit in. The airports, of course, are a maze of opportunities to get stuck standing and standing and standing. But we will know more soon.

He also got a call from his regular doctor who got the other test results, which are screwed up, so he gets to go see him on Wednesday.

Amidst all of this, he got called for jury duty. They called and told him that he would have to send in a letter from his doctor, which we faxed to them on Friday. Haven't heard back, so I will send it certified, registered return receipt mail on Monday.

The Elders are doing well, sound chipper on the phone. The Other Sibling should be home from Europe as of a few days ago, so there will again be someone nearby. Ma is listening to a book-on-tape about Andrew Jackson, which she is thoroughly enjoying, and the friends down the road are now comming every Sunday to have dinner with them, so things are settling into a liveable pattern.

Other than rumors, no word from the Other Child. No news is good news.

Since we quit following the Vet's advice to try to get the Dogs to lose weight, they haven't had their hair fall out and get skin rashes like they did this time last summer. Other than wanting to take their afternoon nap in the basement, they are fine, as are the Cats. Ken feeds them hairball catfood, so they don't puke nearly as much or as often as they used to, although Max still gets a kick out of trying to hack up a hairball in the middle of the night about an inch from my ear, which causes me to awaken and throw him, still hacking, off the bed. That maneuver seems to work well to clear whatever's sticking in his throat, and he's usually back in bed and asleep in no time.

Your comments made me cry, guys. Miss you, too.

The Fireworks are Over

2006-07-16T14:36:00.000-07:00

Weather: too hot, too dry, and now there are just way too many tomatoes.

Stressor #1:
The Trucker is out of work on family-medical-leave act. His back has been causing him serious discomfort for about a month now. About a week ago, though, he told me that his left leg was numb, he couldn't feel where he was putting his left foot and was having trouble keeping his balance. Being the CF that I am, I told him that he couldn't go to work, and went with him to the doctor to find out what the prognosis was. The Internist said he hadn't gotten what he expected from the neurologist the Trucker saw the week before-- only the results of some nerve conduction test, which were clearly abnormal. So we went to the neurologist's office to see where the rest of the report was, only to find out that was it. The person who made the appointment decided that all that was needed was nerve conduction tests. So we went back to the Internist (they're on the same floor) and told him what the neurologist's office had said. He then pulled out what he had written on the referral, ie, "neurological consultation to determine source & prognosis of low back pain". So we went back to the neurologist's office to say that nerve tests were not what the Internist ordered and to schedule an appointment for a neurological exam. The earliest appointment she could find was two weeks away. This was a major frustration, since The T was in constant pain when he stood for more than a minute or two, and not knowing what the problem was did not help the stress level, particularly since the neurologist and the internist had both said that his nerve function wasn't normal, but hadn't said why it wasn't normal or what he should do about it, to say nothing of not being able to work, since as soon as he told them that he had numbness in his leg and couldn't keep his balance, they told him that he was out on 'personal injury' because if he worked and anything went wrong, he would be personally liable. The idea of him driving 70,000 pounds around and clambering up on that rig and not being able to depend on his left leg was a fairly frightening prospect. Of course, having him home where he has access to chainsaws and axes is almost as scary, but I figured that if he was in pain, he'd probably just read or watch TV and leave his other toys in the shed. [The last time he decided to take down a tree, when it fell, it hit the edge of an eight-foot-long 2 x 4, studded with nails, laying across the corner of the chain-link dog fence which did a complete 360 in the air before one end of it came down and whacked him in the head. A blow that would have undoubtedly shattered my flimsy skull only made him a little dizzy. If I hadn't seen it happen, I doubt that he would have even been able to figure out what hit him. ]

On the following Monday, though, the neurologist's receptionist called me at work and said that they had an opening on Wednesday afternoon and wanted to know if he would want to come. [I refrained from saying what I was thinking which was something like, "No, you damnned itiott, of course he wants to lay around in pain for two MORE weeks wondering what the hell is wrong with him!?!", and said instead that would be great & we'd see him then. This time, the neurologist did all the "Can you feel this?" "And this?" "And this?" tests, but when he told The T to walk on his heels, he could only walk on one, and he would have absolutely failed a field sobriety test if the cops had stopped him and asked him to walk heel-to-toe in a straight line-- he just couldn't do it. After the N got done, he said that there was unquestionable neuropathy, but the cause was not clear, except that it was more generalized than just his left leg. So he ordered an MRI, 11 different blood tests, to check for Lyme's disease and everything else including a 24-hour urine collection test to detect the presence of heavy metals, all toward the end of determining if The T had any kind of neuropathy that could be treated, along with physical therapy to see if some stretching might help ease the low back pain.

After the MRI, it may be that he will have to go in for back surgery to fix whatever is interfering with the nerves in his left leg; but the generalized neuropathy is more worrisome. His short-term memory is also pretty clearly impacted, too, which I see, but he doesn't. At all. This morning he calmly filed away the lab test orders he needs to take tomorrow morning to the lab. when I asked him why he was filing that --he clearly didn't have a clue as to what he'd done wrong or what was special about that piece of paper, since he was putting it in the right insurance folder in the file cabinet, even though we'd talked about it no less than three or four different times in the last two days and put it on the kitchen table so that he would have it to take on Monday. Of course, he may have just not actually looked closely at it, just recognized that it was something with his name on it that belonged in the insurance file, but even after he looked at it, it didn't seem to register.

Stressor#2:
S-F-B has apparently applied for and taken a job with some scum-sucking lowlife outfit that is operating the old 'ship-office-supplies-never-ordered-and-bill-for-'em' scam.

It used to be copier toner 'samples', and other things that the scam operators would try to slip in and get paid for before someone in an organization would say What the hell did you think you were doing ordering that much toner or printer catridges or whatever. The scammers always try to get someone's actual name so that when the bill shows up, it will show that the un-ordered stuff was ordered by 'Jerry in the sales' or Susan, who answers the phone. If it's a big organization, (but not too big), Jerry does have some vague recollection of telling someone he wasn't interested in buying something a while ago, but the payables people, who know he's a little flakey, feel guilty about having the product and think that they are somehow obligated to pay for it, even though it doesn't seem right, try to either figure out how to make the shipper pay to ship it back (which only gets them more crap shipped from the scammer), or pay to ship it back, (which inevitably boomerangs, since the return address is always bogus), or, worst of all, go ahead and pay for it (which really gets them more worthless junk and a re-curring basis for the scammer, who also sells the mark's contact information to all the other scammers around) depending on whether or not there is anyone around who knows what the actual legal obligation to pay for anything that arrives, uninvited and unordered, on one's doorstep-- which is to say, knows, [as if it were carved in stone on those proverbial tablets] :

THOU ART NOT OBLIGATED TO PAY FOR, OR TO RETURN, OR TO PAY TO RETURN ANYTHING THAT THE SENDER CANNOT PROVEST THOU HAST ORDEREST, BY PROVIDING THOU WITH A BONAFIDE COPY OF THOU VERY OWN SIGNATURE ON THOU VERY OWN PURCHASE ORDER;

SHOULD IT BE THAT SENDER HAST GOOFEST, AND SHIPPEST TO WRONG CUSTOMER, SENDER HAST VERILY MADEST A GIFT TO WHICHEVER THOU, WHO DIDST HAPPENEN TO RECEIVEST IT, AND IS IN NO WAY RELIEVEST OF OBLIGATION TO SENDEST SAME TO WHOMSOEVER DIDST REALLY ORDER IT AND DIDST PAY FOR IT, OR ONLY DIDST AGREE TO PAY FOR IT.

Nevertheless, associating with scammers, aiding, abetting, participating and benefiting in a in material way (getting paid) is something that any other person of reasonable mental fortitude would be expected to recognize immediately as the wrong thing to do. One senses that S-F-B is indeed troubled, and ascribes her moral discomfort to being distainful of those who are not of her "class. " As if being repulsed by those who perpetrate financial fraud on the unwary is somehow a moral failing on her part!!!???!!!

This is a major stressor because it reveals that S-F-B does not understand how she-who-cannot-be-scammed is likey about to get scammed, to wit, the scum sucking lowlife WWF boss is only using this telemarketing job as a magnet to attract his real prey, the young and unwary, who are then (and unbeknownst-to-them) interviewed for their next, purportedly better and so much higher-paying job, which will be something ever more morally repugnant, if not clearly criminal. And the reward, if S-F-B falls for the 'better job'? She has managed to get herself trapped, although she may not realize it until she decides it is really not ok, and tries to bail-- ah, too bad, so sad-- SSLLWWF has a handy videotape, excellent quality and perfect sound reproduction, and it's not the sort of thing that will be much of a recommendation for a legitimate job, or worse.

One would hope that if S-F-B wants to be a telemarketer, she might contemplate getting a job with whoever's raising money for her local PBS station, Zoo, etc.. Try and see if she could maybe stay away from the offal-sucking scumbags of the world, so that she would have some chance of having a life.

How one earns one's board and bread does matter. If one does it at the expense of the gullible and sees the rest of the world as chumps and marks, to be used and then blamed for their mis-placed trust, one's future happiness and one's very soul are in the gravest of danger.

Stressor #3

The Old folks. Pure, unadulterated unremitting guilt. Not because of what they say, but because I know that they really need to have one or the other of us there with them all the time. Every day is a little harder for them, a little less easy to get through. And they are there, and I am here, with spouse and house and little green growy things that wilt and die when it doesn't rain and dogs and cats and birds.

Stressor #4

I used to have another child, but she turned 18 and has joined some psychiatric cult with her narcississtic no-longer-heterosexual drama queen father this summer, and, save for a brief electronic note, has remained incommunicado since the beginning of June. Her brief note expressed her love and justified her actions by expressing concern that I would get into a fight with her NNLHDQ father and try to rescue her. I think not.

Neither her father, who certainly knows, because I told him, nor the members of her psychiatric cult, who could have easily explained the relevant law to her, bothered to tell her that having a fight over her at the House of Fruits and Nuts with the Drama Queen or trying to forcibly remove her, were, without a doubt, two of the very last things I would ever contemplate doing.

In her little note, she also told me not to call her father's house because he didn't want to talk to me. No surprise there. But it did leave unanswered the obvious, and What about you? But I don't know whether she is there with him or someplace else. I have respected her request. Knowing that receiving no word from her is by her choice and no one else's, and, considering that she is an adult, I merely mourn, as any mother would. Like that father in the Old Testament who had a son who took his inheritance and left home to waste it in a faraway town, there remains the hope that someday she will come to her senses and return. I'm sure he had that hope and mourned, too.

Mourning, though, is much less stressful than worrying and wondering if something horrible has happened. People do what they want to do. They may make excuses and claim they were forced or coerced, but, in the end, eveyone does exactly what they want to do. When they don't like the results of their decisions, they often try to find someone else to take the fall, but that's bullshit.

And on the other side:

Non-stressor #1:

Went up to LWS with one of the Biker Chics from Hel, and spent a quiet afternoon talking and drawing and walking around the lake, cleaning up the remains of an illegal campfire and associated trash. It was one of those bittersweet sort of days, because the place has always been where we went. And, of course, there are all sorts of memories:

One camping trip, the Wayward E stepped on her still-hot marshmallow-roasting fork and branded her foot. The only relief available was a muddy leaf puddle, which probably had as much tannic acid in it as any over-the-counter burn remedy, as well as being cool and there, instead of a long, painful car ride away. The rest of the time, The Wayward E was in one of the creeks, flipping rocks, hunting the elusive mountain salamanders. She was Athena incarnate, when it came to those amphibians. I could only catch the littlest ones, mostly by accident, because they can't move very fast. She could spend hours, systematically driving the biggest, fastest, slipperiest ones into someplace where they didn't have any coverage, and snatching them.

When she was really little, she used to catch frogs. At one point, there was an aquarium with about 20 in it. She most likely had a name for every one of them, too. I was feeding them with live crickets from the vegetable stand/bait/ bluegrass-on-the-radio shop run by a former Vietnam Vet in town. Eventually, I think the frogs all got repatriated alive.

At home, there were hermit crabs, who inevitably escaped and found they could climb 10-feet up the screens on the porch, which seemed and still seems weird. And spice finches, who sang a a staccato 5-note tune, which also escaped from their cage from time to time and were both ultimately killed by Oskar, when we weren't able to catch them with a pillowcase before he grabbed them with his clawless paws and choked their tiny lives out of them.

And hamsters and pregnant gerbils who gave birth to little gerbils who could get through the bars of the cage and liked to congregate under the refrigerator because it was warm, there, and dogs and cats. And even a couple of bats-- one that was waterlogged at a lake she found and another that crawled out from under the stove one day.

And a gold fish, that lived and grew from one inch to four, until the Other child decided to feed it an entire piece of whole wheat toast, which floated invisible under the light, but within 24 hours had choked the filter entirely and caused the demise of the fish as well. The Wayward E held a full-dress formal tea for its funeral, and laid it out on one of her tea set china plates. she served red kool aid and cookies, and said a few words over its departed soul (having, I think, recently accepted Jesus as her Lord and Savior at the Baptist Church that her father had gone to for most of his childhood), afterwhich we put him in a white letter envelope and buried him across the street. A week or two later, she wanted to exhume its remains to see what his skeleton looked like. The child was always a little on the macabre side. When one of the Old Folks' gold fishes died, she and her best buddy of the time, did a careful and complete textbook dissection of it on the work bench in the garage. It was disconcerting to see each and everyone of its internal organs teased out from its proper location. They clearly knew what they were doing. This was, after all, the child who insisted that I come to school when they disected a pregnant shark. Not a good smell.

And a large and very soft Chinchilla, which died while she was away on vacation, and which I put in a cardboard box and took home with me to bury in the back yard, along side old Codger. And a ferret named Ziegfried or Siegfried, who lived to be very, very old, although he lost the better part of his tail along the way. Siegfried liked chocolate, and was a thief. The floor under her bed was littered with the peanut butter innards of Reese's peanut butter cups, which he liked to peel open and lick the chocolate off of. When the free dogs were puppies, we'd let Ziegfried and Virgil and Tahllulah play together. Ziegfried liked to play the big, brave Ferret of the wild and arch his back and bounce around, like a prize-fighter, daring the dogs to try anything. They would clumsily slide on the floor and chase him behind the entertainment center. He would show off by coming back at them from out the other side and bouncing around until they ran to him and chased him back behind it again. It only took Tahlullah about three times to send Virgil to the other side while she waited for him to come out her side; he obliged and she grabbed him with her teeth, and he squeaked and we rescued him. After that, he only got to visit with the dogs from the protection of his cage. For some reason, I don't think Oskar ever tried to kill him. Aside from smelling fairly bad, Ferrets don't actually cuddle. Extremely cute, real comedians, but not cuddly.

One Flew Over

2006-06-14T21:05:00.000-07:00

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

2006-06-08T20:46:00.000-07:00

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.

Memorial Daze

2006-05-29T04:48:00.000-07:00

Weather: blue haze, heading to 90's

Activity: Filling bird feeders. Almost as good as procrastinating. Second only to watering the garden.

Plans:

1. Continue chemical erradication campaign against tri-foliate skin irritant. Five gallons selectively dispensed; need to buy more. TFSI is turing pale yellow in areas from last weekend's campaing. No new blisters on skin, but being extrememly careful where I put my feet when walking through the infested areas.

2. Transport 25 pounds of bird feed from storage containers to bird feeders strategically placed around the yard.

3. Design and install device requiring squirrels to exhibit some ingenuity to get to peanut(s); anticipated collateral benefit: entertainment .

4. Prepare outline of TIB on what it means to be a true American

5. Find out if the Wayard e has returned home safely.

6. Resolution related to mysterious loss of oil from car engine, prompting long distance late-night question regarding whether 10w-30 can be added to 10w-40 without adverse effect.

7. Hypothesis: smoking exhaust indicates oil becoming mixed with gasoline in combustion process. None of the ways oil gets into gasoline in old car to create smoking exhaust are cheaply resolved. SU suspects leaking piston rings.
a. Unless-- oil is being added without allowing sufficient time to elapse (15 minutes) for oil to pool in bottom of engine before checking to see if more is needed, i.e., repeated inadvertent over-filling.

8. Figure out why cat has taken to sleeping sitting up. Seems unnatural.

Recent activities:
Sunday: went to pool party/beer tasting. Tasted several beers from the Rogue River area; very good. Decided to add "Visit Rogue River" to "To Do" list while out there. Weird beers were paired with everything from Irish cheese and mocha lentils to fresh strawberries and chchocolate malt balls -- not a single chip or salsa in sight. Clear, clean cool pool without small children was sheer delight in the heat .

Monday: Coffee and a nap. Time to put on bug repellent and brave the wilderness.

Its Not Raining Here

2006-05-27T07:52:00.000-07:00

Weather: blue sky, occasionaly occluded by cummulus clouds, back to normal 90+ temp for May

Activity: Procrastinating.

Plans:
1. Continue procrastinating and occasionally irritating people I know by posting annonymous irrelevant comments on their blogs, so that they will wonder who is reading their blog.

2. Writing an NPR "This I Believe" about what it means to be a true American.

3. .Waiting for the Wayward e to call.

4. Bouncing on the bed to wake the cat.

5. Poisoning the poison ivy. I tried to erradicate it 8 years ago, but it has managed to re-infiltrate, using the honeysuckle, muscadine and English Ivy for cover , but I have a brand new sprayer and fifty bucks worth of herbicide. We'll see who wins this time. Better living through chemicals.

6. Writing an NPR "This I Believe" on what it means to be a member of homo sapiens as opposed to homo asapiens, or whatever the latin might be that would allow me to offend the maximum number of people.