The ABCs O' Me

See Ya
December 1, 2003

13 years ago, at 10:10 p.m., he died from AIDS. I was going to wait until 10:10 tonight to write this – ah, symbolism – but really, I just want to curl up in bed with the dog and my tears and thoughts and memories. But I knew I couldn’t do that before I wrote something.

As his neurologist said to me, when we discovered It had attacked his brain, “It’s hard enough to die from a fatal disease; it must be Hell to be die from a socially unacceptable one.”

The memories are both blessedly fleeting and Stephen King horrifying: 4 year old Sam matter-of-fact pointing out to me, “Oh, you always cry.” My mother telling me repeatedly how I’d shamed her. Having to hold his hands and walk backward to lead him to his destination. His month-long sleepless nights during which he asked such questions as, “Is my catheter in France or America, Debi? Do I have foreign waste or US waste?” Telling him tonight, 13 years ago, at about this exact time, that it was okay to go that he was tired and didn’t need to hold on for us, that we would understand. Watching the white foam bubble out of his mouth as he tried to tell me something that I never could understand and haunts me still. Spying on my father, standing in the driveway before coming inside after the call that he had died, crying. Watching his dad sitting alone in the livingroom, after the mortician had taken his body, just sitting and staring. Going to my parent’s home the next day, where Sam (proving that timing is indeed everything) had spent the night and ooohing and aaahing over the birthday cake that he and mom had made for me. Hearing him say, “Oh no,” when I told him that his Daddy had died. The funeral, the horrible funeral where the minister echoed our president in an unexpected speech about how Russell had lead a sinful life here on Earth but God would accept him anyway. Spending the ensuing 13 years alternately making him a martyr, a devil, and finally just a man who made a mistake.

And now it is 10:10 p.m., December 1, 2003. I miss you, damn you. I miss you.

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Dammit, I CAN Have Fun
11/1/03

But before the story o’ fun, let me just insert: This is the weekend of Daddy’s annual family reunion in North Carolina. They go every year. When Mom was initially told earlier this week that she needed yet more test, they offered her an appt yesterday (10/31/03). She declined, saying she had to go out of town. They called her (and please note, the universal “They” is the medical profession/basically her primary MD) to tell her that her blood counts had fallen even further and He (i.e. her primary MD) called and said she couldn’t/shouldn’t go but should stay instead and have the tests done yesterday.

This morning, I called to see how she was doing. She said Daddy was going (at her insistence, which she wouldn’t cop to but I know her – when I was Sick, she had him go on a pre-planned trip to NC; when he returned, he said he would NEVER leave town again when someone he loved was ill) (does today’s turn of events give you a clue as to her….um….well, nagging?). When I asked how she felt, she admitted to still feeling “tired, just tired” and started to cry, saying that she was sick of feeling sick.” I totally understand that feeling – that pesky UCE may have been 6 months ago, but I STILL remember that. She said she didn’t want any company; Daddy got on the phone and cried and asked if I’d come over, so I think I’ll take her a plant or something goofy and just drop by. I also made sure about a zillion times that they had my cell number and Sam’s. So….

On with The Good….

Last Saturday, we (i.e. Andy, his wife Edith, Sam, Willie, and I) celebrated Willie’s 43rd birthday. With the exception of Andy and Sam (Andy – member by marriage proxy; Sam member of me proxy), the rest of us (you do the math – I’m tired) attended college (“Go VWC” [i.e. Virginia Wesleyan College, a tiny school that literally straddled the Virginia Beach/Norfolk border – the first 6 steps in the library were in Norfolk; the remaining 7 were in VA Beach]) in the late (sigh, age) ‘70s. (Note: Wendy and Shelley come from that experience too and are by NO means proxy members.) Anyway – we’ve managed to stay relatively close, a task more easily performed by the fact that we all live in the DC area). Many years ago, we agreed that a birthday was not just a day, but rather a season, which was really a way to get us off the hook of getting together on the actually date of birth and even the weekend immediately before or after; we’ve been known to officially celebrate a good month or so afterwards.

Anyway…, we did pretty good this year and managed to get together the day before Willie’s actual b-day (the 25th instead of the 26th). The b-day King or Queen gets to elect what they want to do for Their Day, and Willie announced he’d like us all to go to a pumpkin patch and come back to his house, get hopped up on hooney, and carve pumpkins.

So off we went.

He and Edith had gone out that morning to a craft store and bought 3 sets of those stencil kits that come complete with carving utensil, gut scooper, patterns, and a roller with ink with which to copy the pattern onto your pumpkin. We all met up (even Sam came – a)he had nothing better to do, but b) he truly looks up to/enjoys Willie – Willie’s gay and LOVES music – their 2 commonalties) at Willie’s, got hopped up, and off we went to the “pumpkin patch” (yes, please note the quotation marks) that Willie had found advertised in the Washington Post.

We (against my protests) let Edith drive. Yet another sidetrack: Edith is a severe (“brittle”) diabetic AND brings manic/depression to a whole new level. I can only take her in small doses because her mania is…well, real mania. She doesn’t put it towards the good, like spending hours cleaning, but instead gets loud and hyper. And yes, even more frightening, she takes massive medication for this condition and sees a therapist. Anyway (part II), we let/she insisted on driving.

Oye.

Evidently, traveling on one’s side of the road and following, or coming close to the speed limit, is not a possibility with a brittle diabetic/manic-depressive. We were all over the joint. Andy, Willie and I crammed into the backseat and let Sam sit up front with her (because I am, after all, Mother Of The Year) (but really, my initial intent was that he, given his own driving or lack thereof skills would be the least frightened, and I feared that obvious passenger terror would just make her nervous, yadayadayada.

Ok, for those who don’t know, let me point out that we all live in the DC suburbs. Willie, in fact, is the -closest to the city (approximately 20 minutes). Yet we found ourselves – or rather Edith - driving and driving and driving, while the 3 of us in the back clung to one another for dear life and laughed through Bumfuck, MD. It took forever (ok, 40 minutes) to find said “pumpkin patch” – a cute lil shed perched on the edge of what looked to be a friggin farm (remember – DC suburbs – not many farms around here), complete with a couple of scarecrows, a table of Indian corn and tomatoes, and several pumpkins.

And no one in sight.

After quite a bit of discussion (“Is this the right place?” “Why isn’t there anyone here?” “Maybe they’re in the shed…”), we decided to put caution to the wind (ok, it’s late – forgive my cliches), parked the car and got out.

Indeed, there was no one working there. Instead, on a table, was a metal box with a slit in the top that was fairly well fastened to the table (not that we tried to take it; the fastening was obvious), with a note instructing us to put our $ in here. Further investigation revealed a rather large board with various sized holes cut out in it; beneath each was written, “If your pumpkin fits COMPLETELY through this hole, it costs $4.00/$6.00/$7/50/$10.00.” So we picked 6 pumpkins (we are, after all, all about excess) and a batch of Indian corn for me (I love it) and tomatoes for Willie (he loves them), shoved $35.00 in the box, and left.

Remember: DC suburbs. The honor system is a foreign concept to us.

On the way home, over the hilly and curvy roads, we all laughed at the sound of the 6 pumpkins (placed in the trunk) rolling from one side/end to the other. I can only imagine that’s what a mortician must hear.

So…back to Willie’s, where we braved a few knives (we are truly not the group you’d want to give sharp objects to), we began carving.

Willie and Sam chose patterns (Willie: cat; Sam: Dragon). For those of you who’ve never invested the whopping $3.00 on these kits, they are well worth the money. Edith and I, unbeknownst to each other, wound up doing a mother/daughter set – girls with big hair, fancy eyes (complete with lashes), and big ol’ mouths. And earrings. Big ones. Andy, however, won the prize and proved himself to be an untapped pumpkin carving talent – he did, free-hand, the sinking of the Titanic (he is absolutely obsessed with the Titanic and has even watched that Godforsaken film approximately 1,000 times). It was indeed spectacular. Really. No sarcasm intended at all.

We arranged our finished projects on plant stands on Willie’s porch, stuck candles in them, and I pretended to be the Official Photographer. Problem was, as many times as I’ve been to Willie’s house, I never realized his lower porch steps don’t stretch the length of the actual porch. So when I stepped back/down to make sure I got all of our art work in the photo, my foot wound up on the edge of the lower step, rolled like a ball, and down I went.

Just something to keep in mind: if you want to really scare your friends, be the one with the PCE to wind up on your knees in an azalea bush.

Luckily, no pumpkins were harmed in my Act O’ Grace, and neither was I. A slightly twisted ankle (it seemed worse at the time, but has calmed down/disappeared over the course of the week) and a bruised knee. Hopefully, the fucking picture will turn out. I did have the wherewithal to get up and take 2 others (FROM THE BOTTOM STEP, thank you very much). If they do, I’ll beg Auftn to post them here, since I am a photo-posting bimbo.

So. Good things do happen. Smiles and laughter are grand for the soul. I’m so so so so so so so so so so glad I had the chance to remember that.

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Reason # 5, 992 why I'm anxiously awaiting 12:01a.m. 1/1/04 (and yeah, Auftn, I know you’ve read a modified version of this but….wtf )
10/31/03

My mom is dying. I'm not sure how long or any of those dramatics - I just found out the other night - but she has something called angio-dysplasia which, from what she can tell me and from what little I can learn on the web, is basic degeneration of the vascular system. She's been diagnosed now for about a month with a mysterious GI bleed and, after doing all of the regular, unpleasant tests, they finally did this kinda startreky sounding one where they had her ingest a capsule that contained a camera (for any of us old enough to remember - how VERY Fantastic Voyage-ish) to see waaaaaaaaaaaay into her gut. It appears she's currently bleeding in a part of the lower intestine called something that sounds like the jujube but I know that's not right. Anyway, bottom line is: the jujube apparently can't be fixed and, given her past history of arterial sclerosis (which I believe is narrowing of the arteries thanks to plaque, which is what's caused the 2 strokes she's had), the prognosis is not at all good. Her blood counts are waywayway down (9 & 23 as opposed to 11-14 & 34 or up as normal), which means she's quite anemic.

I know I've always referred to her as (s)mother but if I've learned anything in the past year, it's that, in her weird, kinda warped way (that's the way Shelley described it), she truly does love me. It's a fucking shame it's taken me 45 years and a heart explosion to reach that understanding, but I tell myself that I'm lucky - so many people don't get the chance to discover love and respect and develop a close(r) relationship with the parent they least get along with while said parent is still alive.

Like I said, I don't know much, but she told me this the other night - she'd just found out the results of the camera-in-her-belly test that afternoon. I have every intention of talking to her this weekend and insisting that I accompany her or get her permission to discuss her situation with her primary MD so I can get a better grasp on what the fuck is going on. But, yanno, she's a retired nurse and, I think, breaking Daddy and I in gently to the idea that her quality of life is dwindling as we speak and will continue to do so. As an example of what she's currently going thru – she may be 75 years old, but (until now) has been incredibly active, much more so than I (much to my chagrin): last Sunday, she and Daddy went for their regular 18 holes of golf and, at the 5th hole, she had to sit down and have Daddy go back to get a cart - not so they could finish their game, or even 9 holes, but so he could take her back to the car and they could go home.

Let's all keep our fingers crossed that she dies the way she has always wanted to die - out on the greens, whacking the bejesus outta that ball...and making it a damned fine shot...

I, of course, worry about Daddy. Despite his curmudgeon act, he is completely devoted to her. They’ve been married for 51 years and he adores her.

…I don’t know what else to say except…well, hell.

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How Do You Solve A Problem Like MeMaria?
October Something, 2003

Step out the front door like a ghost into the fog where no one notices the contrast of white on white. and in between the moon and you the angels get a better view of the crumbling difference between wrong and right. I walk in the air between the rain through myself and back again where? I don't know Maria says she's dying through the door I hear her crying why? I don't know round here we always stand up straight round here something radiates Maria came from Nashville with a suitcase in her hand she said she'd like to meet a boy who looks like Elvis she walks along the edge of where the ocean meets the land just like she's walking on a wire in the circus she parks her car outside of my house takes her clothes off says she's close to understanding Jesus she knows she's just a little misunderstood she has trouble acting normal when she's nervous round here we're carving out our names round here we all look the same round here we talk just like lions but we sacrifice like lambs round here she's slipping through my hands sleeping children better run like the wind out of the lightning dream mama's little baby better get herself in out of the lightning she says It's only in my head she says Shhh I know it's only in my head but the girl in car in the parking lot says "Man you should try to take a shot can't you see my walls are crumbling?" then she looks up at the building snd says she's thinking of jumping she says she's tired of life she must be tired of something round here she's always on my mind round here hey man got lots of time round here we're never sent to bed early and nobody makes us wait round here we stay up very, very, very, very late

Counting Crows Round Here

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2004 Can’t Get Here Fast Enough
October 17, 2003 (damn that ’03!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

1. March – I slipped on the ice and gave myself the Concussion from Hell that, to this day, causes blurred vision and dizziness.

2. April – I was officially dumped…or maybe it was more that I was officially labeled the Intermediary “Lover”

3. April – I went into congestive heart failure, had a heart attack, triple bypass surgery, my lung collapsed, and was forced to eat yellow jello every meal for 5 days straight.

4. May – my blood pressure never got higher than 82/60 (not a good thing, trust me), rendering me incapable of walking further than from the Lay-Z-Boy in the living room to the bathroom.

5. June – Money? What’s that?

6. July – Back to work, just when I was starting to feel well enough to actually enjoy my time home (lol).

7. August – my boss, with whom I had a pretty damned good relationship, quit, thus leaving us reporting to Mary, aka The Clueless Cunt.

8. August – I adopted the most adorable, sweetest dachshund ever

9. August/September – learned the most adorable, sweetest dachshund ever was also the most selfish lil shit on the face of the earth and refused to let my other dog (the most adorable, sweetest foxhound ever) play with any of her toys, eat her food, or chew on her bones.

10. August – my son had a car accident that was determined to be his fault.

11. September – the above-mentioned adorable, sweet dogs started to fight viciously and incessantly.

12. September – my son had a second car accident in which he hurt the other driver and again, it was determined to be his fault.

13. September – Money? Who has some? Will you share???

14. October – my son bounced over $500.00 worth of checks.

15. October – Money? Who has some? Really, you won’t share, huh???

16. October – The Clueless Cunt reorganized our department, thusly disbanding the Correspondence Unit (that I supervised) and reassigned me the Provider Unit (4 employees, 3 of whom are on written warnings, and the work is so simple my ancient cat could do it).

17. October – spending the barely existent money I did have to go to a “college reunion” to show off my weight loss and brag that I get to write for a living. Out of the whopping 30 alumni that bothered to come, two were from my class and live 20 minutes from me.

18. October – we had to give back the most adorable, sweetest dachshund ever to the adoption agency because of the fighting.

19. October – The Clueless Cunt placed me on a written warning because one of my employees missed a deadline by one day. The warning ended with the…well, warning that “any other error would result in immediate discipline, up to and including termination.”

20. October – The Clueless Cunt cancelled my business trip to California because (and yes, this is a true, direct quote), “We don’t spend $2,000.00 to send an incompetent supervisor on a business trip.”

21. October – During my written rebuttal to said written warning, I asked The Clueless Cunt 3 times if she thought I was a capable supervisor. Her first two replies were circular and non-specific; when finally pushed (“Really, it’s just meant as a yes or no question”), I was told, “No.”

22. October – Not really hating to go to work but being terrified that I’ll go to work and make the dreaded One Last Mistake.

23. October – Money? Really, does it exist?

24. October – Loneliness has taken on a whole new meaning: my son is too busy crashing cars and bouncing checks to be home, the adorable, sweetest dachshund ever is gone, past lovers speak to me only when reprimanded for their silence.

25. October – Hating to hear my own whining voice yet being completely incapable of escaping it.

Now, Mark, do you see why I don’t post much anymore?

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October 12, 2003

It’s hard to describe depression – or at least it is for me. Maybe if I was Sylvia Plath, this would be an Entry Extrodinaire (lol I’ve tried to read The Bell Jar several times and found it…well, too depressing). But since I’ve laid (lain? Lay?) oh hell - been awake since 4:30 am thinking about it, I’d thought I’d get description a shot.

First, to those who say: “Oh, just get out and do something…be happy you’re alive/look on the Bright Side of Life, etc etc etc, “ my response is “Gee, why didn’t I think of that?” Fact of the matter is, you’re clueless. Which, in this case, is not a bad thing. Their silence is, but I reckon it's hard to know what to say. There are no Magic Words, I suppose. But still, the silence hurts.

Depression is…like being mummified in a shroud of woven pain/sorrow/hopelessness/helplessness/ regret/guilt. Your soul has been ripped out and replaced with nothing, just a big black hole of nothing. Yet your heart continues to beat, your body continues to do what’s required to keep you alive.

Easily admitted, if it weren’t for Sam and my parents, I’d have gladly stopped my body from keeping me alive. I wish I could say that’s a good thing, but truth of the matter is, I semi-resent their presence. I’m tired. The shroud is suffocating and impossible to break free. The hole aches.

Wallowing in self-pity? You betcha. But trust me, if I knew how to stop, I would.

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...the blues are because you're getting fat or because it's been raining too long. You're just sad, that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. (Truman Capote – Breakfast at Tiffany’s)

October 11, 2003

My workweek ended yesterday with the announcement that this coming week will start off with me getting written up. Seems I miscalculated a date when assigning a regulatory letter and, as a result, made it go out a day late. Luckily, by the time the insurance investigator called The Head Cunt to rat me out, the letter had already been written and faxed (an hour earlier). I called the investigator to grovel and explain that the letter was indeed there; the woman was whispering at me. I mentioned that gee, she sounded terrible – she replied that she’d been out sick the last 2 days and had just returned to the office.

Today, I had to give my lil dachshund – Joey - back to the agency I adopted him from 2 months ago. He was a fabulous little guy but only a year old and really needs to be in a home where people actually are there for more than 4 waking hours a day. He’s also meant to be an only dog – he wouldn’t let my poor 8 year old woefully passive foxhound play with any of her toys or chew any of her bones – he’d take ‘em all. And yes, while the image of the 16 pound “wiener dog” taking on the 60 pound fox hound sounds amusing, the fact is, the fights got more and more brutal until I was very much afraid the foxhound would hurt him. So…back he went. I’ll miss him racing around the back yard “faster than a speeding bullet!” and wrigglingleapingsquirming when trying to put his leash on, thus giving him the nickname “electric jello.” I’ll miss his quiet times, when he’d sprawl across my lap and chew his toy until he passed out cold. I’ll miss his little head popping up from his mountain of blankets and looking hopefully at me every morning when I’d tiptoe out of my room to take a shower. I’ll miss the goofy way his ears would turn inside out when he’d run – lol, they’d stay like that until I’d flip them back over. I tell myself repeatedly I did the right thing today – he needs a nice home with no other animals and someone there more often, and the agency I adopted him from and returned him to (they make you contractually promise to do that in case you can’t keep the pet) doesn’t euthanize, so there’s hope. I just…aw, hell, it’s yet another crack in my heart.

I’d just like to find someone to smack. I want to physically hurt someone as much as I emotionally hurt. A good old-fashioned screaming match wouldn’t be so bad either.

But mostly, I’m just tired. What’s all this for, anyway? I came out of ye olde jaws o’ death because…? I don’t know. I just don’t know.

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Depression is just anger without the enthusiasm
10/8 or 9 I can’t keep it straight – it’s just Wednesday/2003

Because my life isn’t swell enough, yesterday at work my cunt of a director announced the “redesign” of our department. I was, until then, the Supervisor of Member Correspondence – i.e. I got to write and edit and mentor a wonderful bunch of folks on a daily basis. Now I will be the Supervisor of Provider Appeals. I’d rather eat bees. Big fat yellow jackets. 100’s of them. Do I know anything about Provider Appeals? Only that it’s boring as hell – a bunch of already over paid doctors writing in whining that we haven’t paid them enough. Our response letters are templates – my goddamned cat could do this job. The job requires, really, a strong claims background, of which I have none (well, ok, I worked in claims for a year, but that was reviewing ER reports, not processing). I will also be on call 24/7 every 3rd week for expedited appeals. Not that I have a life, but still….

I feel like I’m being set up to fail.

My boss doesn’t like me and, well, I called her a cunt earlier so you get the picture.

And oh – did I mention there’s a hiring freeze until at least the end of the year? So it’s not like I can even change jobs.

Like I told Dente…I get sick of hearing myself whine. So let’s call this entry “venting.”

And I have to get rid of my new dog (joey) – he and the old dog don’t get along at all. It breaks my heart – I adore him, but she (the old dog) comes first.

And Sam bounced $391.00 worth of checks.

And my college reunion last weekend was a bust. Only 30 people showed up – 3 of whom I know, and 2 of them live 10 minutes from me.

Sorry for the whining – thanks for letting me vent.

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I’m B-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ckkkkkkkkkkkk (at least for the moment) October 2, 2003 It’s hard to believe that a year ago today the snipers started their killing spree. I’m a firm believer in that olde eye-for-an-eye thing and therefore hope they too are picked off by a bullet when they least expect it. I’m a wee bit cranky because I’ve been trying to do my taxes. While I do indeed usually put it off until the very last minute (God bless e-filing), this year my procrastination back-fired on me when my heart went kaflooey on 4/7 and I spent the 15th in ICU hooked up to more wires than the innards of a telephone line. Wendy called to get an extension, but they said since I always get money back (the only bonus to owning a home), there was no need. Well, NOW I need the $ so I decided at 9:00 last night to do them. It is now 3:45am and the effing Fed’s are taken care of but the State is a different story. Can’t get it to download, blahblahblah. So I quit. LOL. Wendy and I are going to our college (VA Wesleyan, down in VA Beach) (I’m too tired to try to figure out how to do that link-thing, so if you’re really interested, go to www.vwc.edu) (oh, look, I think I maybe made a link!) reunion this weekend. Neither of us have really been back since we graduated in 1979. I stopped by once a few years ago with Sam and my parents on our way home from North Carolina and it looked exactly the same, except they’d finally finished Village II (which looks exactly like Village I; I’m half-convinced they just put up mirrors). Wendy was reluctant at 1st, but like I told her, hey – if it sucks, at least we get a weekend in VA Beach. It will, admittedly, be weird going back there. I’ve always said I wouldn’t return until I’d lost 100 lbs and had written a novel. Well, I’ve lost 68 and write for a living, so I figure that’s close enough. Those were, undoubtedly, the best years of my life…or at least the most fun, lol. Especially my senior year, when I met my true friends, the ones I still cherish and love and keep in touch with and all that jazz today (i.e. Shelley, Wendy, Willie). Too bad the friggin laptop died; I’d love to take it to write my immediate feelings, rather than maybe getting around to doing a half-assed synopsis on Sunday. Oh well. The ABCs o’ me. I will, however, take my digital camera and make Auftn post some of the pictures for me since I’m clueless as to how to do that. And now, my fair readers (both of you), it’s time for me to trundle off to bed even though I’m not the slightest bit tired. Sleep sweet, my pretties. Nini Run For Your Lives – It’s More Of The Same August 27, 2003 Ah, I’m just a fucking mess. I called in to work for the rest of the week with the excuse, “I’m insane.” Luckily, for the near future at least, I have a boss who understands, or tries to. But her last day is the 5th. And I’ve learned today that our director, who will be taking over for the meantime, thinks I’m “awfully casual.” Well, that I am. I’ll admit it. I say what I think, believe it or not. At work, anyway LOL. Evidently, I’m not supposed to. I don’t think I’m tacky about it or rude – in fact, I try very hard to be tempered. I guess I’ll just keep my fucking mouth shut with this bitch and not dare say or suggest anything. All I said in the meeting that caused her to call me “awfully casual” was a suggestion that an employee, who’s been given a different job to do as an interim solution to a staffing problem, should be offered more money. No one else seemed to agree (I didn’t realize she already made more than most of the others anyway, but no one bothered to say that at first, just a lot of “I disagrees.”). I didn’t get too pushy, but my boss pointed out that I didn’t drop it – well, no, I didn’t, because no one offered me a reason why she shouldn’t be compensated. I’m just a loud mouth, I suppose. Never an easy thing to accept. And, let me be BRUTALLY honest, I was high when we were having this conversation. I digressed – see how fucking good I am at that? Scary. I meant to write all about that. I haven’t quit taking the fiorinal. In fact, my usage has increased. I decided yesterday, as I sat in 3.5 hours of traffic to get home thanks to storms/living in the worst place possible for traffic, that I don’t want to die, but Jesus God, I haven’t got a clue how to live. The living I’m doing now is not how I want to live, that’s for sure. But I believe I’m stuck – Sam, not so much, but to an extent yes, but definitely my parents. I’m an only child who has waited too long to try to break away. Their age is finally showing – Daddy especially, but Mother too, so I can’t move. I could change jobs here – I don’t want to make the Health Care field my career, though, and it’s hard to change careers mid-life. Plus, I haven’t a fucking clue what I want to do. Other than just drive away. But that’s hardly realistic (see above), never mind the financial mess I’m in which makes driving to the corner difficult. See what I mean by a fucking mess. I keep trying to fill the holes in my world, but with all the wrong things. Clothes and food just don’t work, they don’t, but it hasn’t stopped me (despite my 50lb weight loss since my UCE, I’m back to eating crap most of the time). So last weekend, I bought a new dog. Joey, a year old dachshund, who is not housetrained yet but indeed cute as a button (where did that saying come from? How many cute buttons, really, are there?). He’s a nice distraction, but more stress – the house training issue aside, my alpha dog, Chelsea, is having a difficult time adjusting. She’s used to being an only child and is older (7ish) and, well, unimpressed. And seems to be depressed (maybe this is one of those cases where the dog starts to look/act like its owner lol). I know it’ll take time but I don’t know how long to expect and I don’t want to hurt Chelsea in the long run while I play wait’n see and and and There I go, digressing again. I saw my doctor last Friday about the drug thing. He put me on valium, 5 mgs 4 times a day, for the 1st week, to be decreased every week after until we’re down to, well, none. I haven’t tried it yet. I just bought more Fiorinal. I got some on Saturday, it was gone yesterday morning, but I ordered more that was supposed to come yesterday. So I called in with “plumbing problems” (the house, not me, lol) to wait for the Fed ex man (when you buy drugs over the internet, you have to be present to sign for them). The order got fucked up and wound up not coming – and I went into a wild panic when I realized that. I went on into work, told my boss I needed the rest of the week off because I’m nuts and my doctor is trying me on a new medication (not quite a lie), and tried to get shit done but couldn’t concentrate. I tried the valium thing and it worked pretty good but made me whoadrowsy. So today the order came. I’d told myself I wouldn’t take any, I’d put them away for the rare migraine, and try the valium thing. As soon as they were in my hand, though, I took a fistful. Then I talked to my boss. Like I said, she’s being incredibly good about all of this. She called me about this stupid Email project that’s being forced on us that starts Monday. She’s having to do my work, writing the guide for the staff to use, and had a question about it. I asked her point-blank if my job was in danger and she said, “well, I wouldn’t put it that way but…” and it went on from there. There were other things besides the I’m Too Casual concern – like my tendency to wait until the last minute to do projects (I’ve always been like that lol) and some glib remark, in the same meeting with That Director Bitch, about my fear of doing the math shit that my boss has always done that we will probably have to do in the interim. I don’t even know if I agree with what she had to say, I just know that I probably wouldn’t have spoken up like that or procrastinated as much if I weren’t doing the fucking drugs. So yeah, my job is in danger, I think. So is my life, if I don’t freaking quit. I just don’t know how to live. And I’m scared. Damned scared There Are So Many ABC's O' Me That Maybe I Oughta Consider Moving On To The DEF's... July 29, 2003 Auftn Redux: i need to go to sleep soon LOL Dreamahlildream: lol me too Dreamahlildream: I'm drinking wine to help me get there Auftn Redux: haha Auftn Redux: at least you arent gettin up at 1 am LOL Dreamahlildream: ((((((((((merlot)))))))))))))) Dreamahlildream: yes I am LOL I just don't have to Auftn Redux: roflmao Auftn Redux: you need to journal Auftn Redux: or ELSE Dreamahlildream: I know I know Auftn Redux: lol Auftn Redux: i havent written in a cpl days Dreamahlildream: I'm just so cranky these days Dreamahlildream: yes, I know you haven't LOL Auftn Redux: :( im sorry, sweetie Auftn Redux: whatcha been cranky about? Dreamahlildream: life Auftn Redux: lol Dreamahlildream: lol Auftn Redux: (((((((((((merlot)))))))))) Dreamahlildream: work home the kid figuring out what I want to do sobriety...you name it Auftn Redux: well, on that pleasant note LOL Dreamahlildream: ROFL nite*************************** Auftn Redux: sweet dreams, beautiful****************************8 Yeah, I don't blame him - if I could bolt away from me, I would. AA says we addicts need to learn to live life on life's terms, sober. I say sobriety is highly over-rated. Yes, dammit, I’ve fallen off the proverbial wagon. And I feel those ol’ wheels spinnin’ right over top of me. I could fault work: my 2 readers know my feelings about returning so I won’t bore them with a rehash of them. I will, however, rivet them to their seats with my telling about my yearly evaluation. With, of course, a preamble: I have known my boss, Peggy, for about 10 years. We started off as peers, then I left the department for a year, during which time she was promoted to Manager. She wooed me back a little under 2 years ago. For the most part, I truly enjoyed my job. I got to write – none of it creative, mind you, but hell, I’m writing just the same, and editing, a job I love. I also supervise 10 people whom I adore. Really. They’re great fun, we care about each other, there are no prima dona’s (although I will at times put on my tiara and demand they bow), and they accept criticism well. I like the other 2 supervisor’s I work with, and really like, mostly, working for Peggy. She can get incredibly spastic sometimes, but I always felt we had the type of relationship that allowed us the freedom to say anything to each other (including “shut up”). I never hesitate to tell her how I feel and, I thought, vice-versa. Until yesterday, when she gave me my evaluation. She wrote it in April, when they are due, and I was in the midst of my UCE. So yesterday she hands it to me, tells me to read it, and we’ll meet at some point this week to discuss it. Imagine my surprise when I read the following comments: “Debi will talk to customers when necessary but is very reluctant to do so. She needs to step up to the plate and initate calls when necessary without being prompted.” and this gem: “Debi needs to stay current with changes so she can best help her staff, particularly in the areas of behavioral health, dental, and direct pay.” In other words, I am a Customer Services Supervisor who hates to talk to customers and is stupid when it comes to understanding basic benefits. What pisses me off more than the fact that I totally disagree with both statements is the fact that she completely blindsided me with them. I have no issue with criticism (hell, I mentally flog myself at least 10 times a day – why should I mind if someone else does?), so long as it’s not mean, and had she discussed these concerns with me before putting them in my eval, I wouldn’t mind nearly as much. I’d still mind, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think it’s appropriate that I find out a perceived short-coming this way. If she’d even mentioned them before, I wouldn’t have as much of an issue with her putting them in here, but to let me hear it for the first time here?? I don’t think so. I’ve applied for 2 internal positions, and the prospective managers have the right to review my HR file, which includes my evals. So, well, I suppose I could look at it as job security… (((((((((((((Merlot)))))))))))))) I’ve asked Sam both yesterday and, when he failed, again today to clean the house. It’s not such a big house, and all it needs is routine de-cluttering and vaccum/dust/shove the dishes in the dishwasher. Both days, nothing. NOTHING. NOTHING. A…midamble (as opposed to pre): He’s a good kid, really. He’s why I live. But he’s 19 and, from personal experience, this is the beginning of the I-Know-SO-Much-More-Than-Anyone-Else stage (ah, those obnoxious 20s). Anyway… Yesterday, he called and said he was meeting his old high school buddy, Tawnya, at the mall (I have since discovered he went to her house, which required driving on the interstate, which Mr I Just Got My License And Just Had My 1st Accident is not allowed to do) (but I found out about it in a sneaky kind of way, so I don’t know how to tell him that I know) (parenting blows sometimes). Today, I called him with a laundry list – do the livingroom and kitchen, make the burgers for dinner, throw my clothes in the dryer. I came home and he’d don’t nothing. AND he wasn’t here! I got furious. Still am. I’m supposed to drive him to Pennsylvania on Saturday so he can spend the week with friends. I’m going to hand him a list tonight of chores (from the shit I’ve already listed to now mowing the lawn and cleaning bathrooms) and tell him that he has to have them done – and done to my satisfaction – by the time I get home on Friday. If he doesn’t, he can find his own way – and pay for – his way up there and back (I can’t stop him from going, he’s 19, but none of his friends there drive, lol). “His” car is in my name, and if he takes it, I’ll report it stolen. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr I’m back in therapy (yeahyeahyeah, I know, I can hear y’all hollering “YAY” as I type this). I caved and called my own personal savior, Dr. L, the other week and was able to see her last Wednesday. She’s the only person I can tell anything to, and I did. Even the pesky drug issue. God bless her, she didn’t chase me out of her office, so I reckon I’m back. I know I need to get back to AA. I just….don’t want to. It’s easier to do drugs. I keep telling myself I can be a function druggie, like Shelley’s a functional alchie, and that really, I can just do them once a day, in the evening, after I get home….but really, I know that’s not true. It may start off like that, but it’ll escalate, it always does. Life on life’s terms. Sounds easy and logical, doesn’t it? Just deal with it. Trouble is, I don’t like it, any of it. I tolerate it. I really want to buy that winnebago and just go. Just go. Just go. If It’s True That What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger, Then I Must Be Friggin Hercules…or…The ABC’s O’ Me July 20, 2003 Thursday evening, I got a call from my ever-annoying ( but she’s still a good person mother-in-law, to tell me Sam’s great grandmother, GrandBetty, was not doing well. As everyone reminds me, she is 97 years old but, relatively speaking, amazing. She lives in her own home (ok, with an all-day-long-and-all-night-when-necessary housekeeper in the true southern sense of the word, but still, she’s 97, plays (and occasionally wins) tournament bridge several times a week (sans an old-age handicap), and just this week, sent Sam and me an article from her local paper about the garden she fund-raised for and coordinating the planting of at her church that won a couple of local awards (one regional prize too). She also has the dubious honor of being the only in-law that I actually like. She isthe only other Democrat in the family (oh shush, Auftn), is both a patient and kind bridge partner when they coerce me into playing (instructive too, and not in a snotty way), and, even at the age of 97, can be wicked funny and guillotine-sharp. Her son, Bobby (not my father-in-law, but the retired thorastic surgeon married to the retired child psychiatrist) (yeah, they’re not filthy rich or nuthin’), gives my in-laws intermittent Doom ‘N Gloom about “Mother Betty,” but either they are exaggerations or conveniently absent during her bi-yearly visits from her home in Natchez, MS). She is the last of the original southern belles: along with the “aforementioned housekeeper” (g’won, guess a race), she won’t eat anything that’s not cooked from scratch (yup, thank the “housekeeper”), believes that women in public should never wear “slacks”, declines (“refuse” is such an ugly word) coffee that’s neither chicory-based nor served in a china cup. She was, in her youth (i.e. mid-70s to early 80s), the president of the Natchez Ladies Society (trust me, this is huge - not just locally but evidently all over the damned south, president of the National Day Lilly’s Society (ditto, plus she has 5 species named for her) (3 of which grow in my backyard and one at Russell’s grave), the National Jonquil Society (not in the same caliber as the Day Lilly Society but still impressive), and has enough bars symbolizing her direct lineage into the Daughters of the American Revolution to make a belt that would fit me. She also accepted me – an insecure blob who can’t bid in bridge worth a damn who lived in literal fear of meeting her – with open arms and an open heart, nor did she bat a deeply southern eyelash when she learned her only grandson was dying from AIDS. Anyway (sorry – I forgot why I was writing about her), my mother-in-law, Doris (a whole other entry – promise - just wait till I have to spend a Sunday with her) called to tell me that Granbetty was in the hospital and “It looked, well, grim.” I will protect you from her lengthy description of the stomach/bowel problem that brought her to this stage in live; just trust me, it was neither good nor nice. I awoke on Friday to discover that my paycheck had not been deposited into my account and, as a result, I bounced a check. Payroll played nice and did get a hard check to me by late-morning, but still. Apparently, there was some she’s-not-sick-anymore form that needed completion that my boss knew nothing of, so…there ya have it. When I got back from my lunch hour spent in search of a branch of my bank, I had a message from Sam: “Mom, , I’ve had a… car accident.” So I called him and, well, he had an accident. In the parking lot of Potomac Mills. No one was hurt, but his car’s a mess, and fixing it due to age, parts availability, and insurance coverage, is questionable. When I finally escaped from work, Nan (my ride) and I trudged down to the garage to discover that her car wouldn’t start. We were able to hook a ride with Karen, but we had to wait an hour until she got off. When I finally got home, I discovered Mother and Daddy and Sam, congregating around Sam’s Poor Car. The front headlight (sheesh – as opposed to the rear headlight, Deb?) was completely bashed out, the frame dangling from a strip of plastic that somehow survived. Daddy explained that the entire front panel was one long piece and would therefore have to be replace “in toto” (I used to think that had something to do with Dorothy’s dog’s belly) and he wasn’t sure it was available. I changed insurance companies right before my UCE to the bare minimums and am not certain collision is covered. On either car. The other driver is, of course, blaming Sam and refusing to report it to his company, since it was Sam’s fault and we “will pay” (emphasis his). What was that the medical experts said about keeping my stress level to a minimum? I did help calm some of my tension by buying a knock-off Louis Vuitton (I tell people I own a “Lou”) purse that I’ve been coveting for a year (out of the trunk of Lorna’s sister’s car – how much more Back Alley can you get?). Retail therapy. It’s just so damned fine. Living 101 July 16, 2003 I returned to work on Monday. After a 3-month absence, going back wasn’t so easy. First, there’s that getting up before the sun thing – oye, I’d forgotten how painful that is. Even the dog rolls over and cracks open one eye, heaves a heavy sigh, and goes right back to sleep. I envision her, somewhere around 9am, bounding out of the bed and searching the house for me, since that’s been our recent routine – straggle on out of bed, drift outside to the backyard where I’d sit and read and she’d sniff every square inch at least twice, try to sneak under the shed, bark at those damned noisy birds, pee and poop (we all seem to be writing about poop, don’t we?), and finally come flop down at my feet and pant, signaling our time to go back to the air-conditioning. But now I’m up and dressed and out of the house by 5:30 to get to Nan’s house by 5:40 so her husband Woody (I know – why would a grown man let himself be called Woody?) can drive us at break-neck speed (we call him G-Force Woody) to his job, where we perform the slowest Chinese fire drill in history (I climb from the back seat to the front passenger’s seat, Nan shifts from the front passenger’s seat to the driver’s seat, and Woody waves at us as we pull away). Nan and I get to the office around 6:50. This is simply too damned early. Or I’m simply too damned old to get up and function at that time of day. It’s been kind of surreal, being back. I haven’t been out of work that long since 1979, when I graduated from college and quickly realized no one was impressed with my English degree. My staff was happy to see me, and I suppose I was happy to see them…I mean, I like them all and they’re a fairly easy group to supervise, but… I’d rather be home. Or in that Winnebego of my dreams, driving anywhere at all…except to work. Mary, the Director of our department, brought me an enormous gift bag yesterday – “A little something to welcome you back.” I reached in and pulled out a lovely gift basket…full of cookies and jam and cake and smoothie mixes. Either she missed the part where it was announced that my heart problem was caused by my diabetes or she wants to kill me in a sweet way. Surreal. I’m telling you. Tonight, I go to the gym for my first-ever work out with a personal trainer. She’s more than a bit nervous, taking on a fat 45 year old with a lousy ticker, but I produced my permission slip from my cardiologist and my check, so she had to take me. If it helps her, I’ll mention how nervous I am too – not that I’ll collapse or anything but just that I’ll, well, sweat. A lot. I hate to sweat. And I’ll get really short of breath, thanks to the ever-persistent bit of fluid crowding the lower lobe of my right lung – nothing to be scared of, I know, I’ve been short of breath all my frigging life, now we just know why – but I look like a…well, a fat, sweaty, out of shape mess. I’d rather stay home. Well, that’s not entirely true. I like the way I feel after I exercise. All pumped up and energized and proud that I did it. And I’ll sleep like a rock tonight. I just hate it while I’m doing it. How convoluted is that? Ah well. I picked life. Now I just have to muddle through. Sunday’s Not Just Any Ol’ Day Anymore July 13, 2003 I go back to work tomorrow for the first time since my UCE (April 7) (actually, April 3rd was my last day in the office – I was off on the 4th to deal with Bad DMV Shit). I have never been one of Those People who insist they’d be bored if they stayed home all day. I get bored at work. The first hour or so is good, and lunch is fun if the Lunch Bunch can pull together, but otherwise it’s one big snorefest. Well, actually, if I could turn at least part of the early afternoon into an official snorefest, I might like it better. So much like the first day of school, I’m all packed up and ready to go. I have my Necessary Work Shit (security badge – because so many interlopers want access to Kaiser’s business side, office keys – although I suspect everyone’s been using it for assorted purposes that really boil down to quests for privacy, and my pager sans battery – they can give me one of theirs); I also have my Unnecessary But Personally Important Work Shit (notebook for meetings – I’m fussy about all aspects of writing and like fun notebooks – this one’s medium sized with different colored margins, ink for my snazzy new fountain pen that I splurged on yesterday, the big orange wooden D – ala Mary Tyler Moore’s big black wooden M, a Prince cd – I don’t remember the title – and Annie Lennox’s latest cd – perhaps the most depressing group of songs I’ve ever heard but they’re pretty and hey, it’s her. My lunch is packed (although remembering to take it may prove difficult, second only to getting up on time), my distilled water and 2 liter bottle of Diet Rite (the only diet Cokeish soda with no caffeine AND no sodium) are parked in front of the door. Yup, I’m packed. But ready to go is questionable. As far as jobs go, this one’s not bad, a fact I try to remind myself when my brain starts to whine about it. I have a fairly good staff, I get to edit writing all day long, I don’t have to talk to those dreadful members, and I have my own office (I never knew a door could be so appreciated). My boss can be, well, a pill (she can redefine spastic, but I am comfortable enough with her that most of the time I can tell her to simmer down). I’m fairly well thought-of, for both my knowledge and, most importantly, my writing skills. But – here’s the whine – I write letters. To pissed off members/providers/insurance regulators. I told ya – snorefest. I’d love to call in tomorrow – not sick, but just to quit. Cash in my retirement, buy a Winnebego and go. Just be. Wouldn’t that be nice? Just be. But. If I were responsible only for other things, like bills, I could do this. Not, however, when I’m responsible for other people. So back to work I go. Best Of Luck To Those Who Enter July 9, 2003 Today, my hairdresser told me I should write my autobiography. He (Glynn, by the way) just frosted my hair to lighten up the somewhat too-dark red dye my new (2nd visit) “hair color artiest” (my phrase, not hers) (she being Mary, by the way) made it. I’d lied to Glynn and said Willie had colored it for me. While Glynn may not be a true member of the Circle of Friends (Shelley, Wendy, Willie and, to some, Edith and Andy), he is close enough to know about the Six Degrees of Willie: if there has been trouble or something has just not gone right, we can trace the fault back to Willie. The first time I’d gone over to the other side of hair artistry was 2 months or so ago. Mother, Sam and I had gone to Panera’s (mmmm bread) (well, ok, I have salad but I can still at least see and smell the bread) for lunch and had to walk right by a shop called Easy Color (Russell would have a field day with that name). I had not taken Glynn up on his kind offer to come to my house and fix my hair during my recuperative stage; I had no desire to see anyone I knew during the first half of my recovery. As a result, my hair color could best be described as taupe accented by a thin but noticeable stripe of gray down the center. (Allow me to scramble up on my soapbox: I hate taupe. Gray’s not so bad anywhere but on my head, however taupe is pointless and unattractive no matter what the settling.) So it was selfishness that propelled me into that shop as I blocked Glynn out my brain with visions of anything but taupe illuminating my head. There, I was pampered and attention was devoted to me. I didn’t have to hug, insist I was feeling better, and then nod and smile during the litany of You’re So Lucky/Do You Know How Lucky You are exclamations I’d received from everyone else. I was just some fat lady with taupe hair who wanted to live vicariously through my hair color. Mary showed me her stylebooks and we initially agreed – at my suggestion – on the soft shade that came naturally to me as a child, a strawberry blonde with emphasis on the blonde. But I kept flipping back to a photo of some non-descript woman whose only attribute was a chin-length cut with hair a mixed shade of I Love Lucy and Grace from Will and Grace red, complete with bamboo-like streaks of a lighter shade of red (not the perverse taupe). That was the color I settled on and (I’m very happy to say) looked great. I saw Glynn a couple of weeks later for a haircut. Silly me, I thought I was safe. Unfortunately, he expressed…well, something, but I’m not sure what – bitterness, annoyance, hurt, put-out, angry, sad, evident with comments like, “How much did this cost you? Oh my God. Now you know, I can’t do this for you. I’ll bet whoever colored it wanted to cut it too.” I knew his last two statements were correct: Mary used a paintbrush with which to apply the dye, as opposed to Glynn’s regular straight-out-of-a-kit squirt bottle, and yes, Mary had indeed asked if I wanted a cut, which I declined and made a point to loyally advise her that I already had a 17 year relationship with the Hair Wizard of Northern Virginia, and I’d have a hard enough time explaining the color job. I wound up that day with a helmet cut (essentially a bowl cut that’s been moussed and a blown dry). Neither of us was happy. And yes, I should have learned several lessons that day. I should have felt my foot tromp on Glynn’s toes when he saw my hair color. I’m more than a client of his, I know this, but I’m not quite a friend either, although we have played a few of times outside of the shop. We share a camaraderie – we make each other laugh (the first time we met, he sang a punk rock version of “Rocky Raccoon”) (go on – try it – it’s irresistible fun), he was one of the first to know about Russell’s illness (and did my hair for the funeral) (and made me laugh so hard I cried as he described the floral arrangement he really wanted to send: white carnations in the shape of a telephone with a banner that read, “Jesus called…and Russell answered) (I made him laugh by noting that, well, at least with Russell dead, we had room for the Christmas tree), I was one of the first to know that his lover, John, also has AIDS and also contracted it from unprotected sex outside of their relationship, I have sent several clients his way, he colors my hair for free. But recently, even before the UCE, his cuts were becoming less than adequate. There was no imagination whatsoever – this from the man who used to thrive on spikes and asymmetrical bobs. He was already teetering on the edge of helmet hair and I was nervous. He’d also been avoiding my calls as of late, with my requests for an appointment for a cut. And yeah, so I’m not a fast learner. Or I believe in the good in people. Or, most likely, I spend my days floating down the river of Denial. Because despite all of the above, I went back to Mary last week for a touch up. And if that wasn’t betrayal enough, I asked her to take a stab at cutting it. Not much, I told her, just a little, mostly to see how she’d do. I was almost relieved to notice I wound up with helmet hair with a wee bit of tailoring. And dontcha know, that afternoon, that very afternoon, he called. And I let him schedule an appointment for today to get an Ellen DeGenerese cut (his suggestion). I don’t know why I said yes. I suppose I just kept floating down Denial, telling myself he wouldn’t notice. I also like Ellen’s cut, with the little unintentional-looking flippy pieces, casual yet stylish. And no where near a helmet. To be honest, I’m not certain he realized someone else cut it. At least, he didn’t mention it. Like I said, I blamed Willie for the color (it was much darker than before, given the fact that I’d forgone the highlights for the haircut), and he seemed to buy it. There was one bad moment when he asked who cut my bangs, but while I was trying to think up an answer to stammer out, he saved me with an erroneous memory: “Oh, I cut them really short last time, that’s right.” Or maybe he knew, maybe he was waiting to see if I’d confess. Whatever the reason, I wound up not with a cute little Ellen cut. It’s more like…hmmmm….a shorter helmet look with one side that kind of flips and one side that lies hopelessly flat. Prick. But I digress. Or avoid. Or both. Because, as I mentioned when I first began this…whatever… ramble/babble/horrifically dull diatribe, he suggested that I write my autobiography. This was pre-cut, post-highlights, before, I think, he’d had a chance to really fuss with my hair and suspect foreign scissors had clipped it. We were sitting on the deck while he smoked (a ritual with us). I was bemoaning my return to work and my what-to-do-with-this-second-chance quandary. I mentioned I wanted to write but didn’t know what; he suggested my autobiography. My immediate response was, “Yeah, right.” He “Yeah, righted” me right back and reminded me of the path I’ve meandered down. He reminded me of my sense of humor, my relatively universal issues with my (s)mother, my massive insecurities that I’m starting to learn I share with more than a handful of folks. And I thought of the crap he doesn’t know, like my addiction issues. And hey – let’s not forget that pesky UCE. So the HelmetEllen cut was honestly not entirely in vain. I at least have ideas for other topics than What To Do About Bad Hair Cuts Created By Friends. G’won. Heave a sigh of relief. I don’t blame you. Excuses, Excuses July 8, 2003 Well, it seems July is the official Month of Slackers. I keep saying I’m going to write today…and the day slithers by in a haze of humidity and tasks and last minute pleasure reading. Last minute because I return to work on Monday (the 14th), my grand return since my UCE in April. In my pseudo-defense of silence, I got tired of writing about sobriety and AA. I’m still with it, but the constant yacking about it was, well, boring even me. I can’t help but think it just sucks that, now that I’m well enough to enjoy my time off, they’re making me go back. Ah, those pesky bills. Nevermind I’ve essentially depleted my long-term leave bank (I still have long-term disability to fall back on should anything ELSE happen but it only pays 60% of my salary), I’d love to stay home and play. I’m by no means one of these people who feel the need to work for mental stimulation. I am a self-proclaimed slug, although now that I write that, I realize I’m slowly emerging from my slug cocoon and morphing into a…I don’t know…a semi-motivated moth. Case in point: Yesterday, Sam and I spent the entire afternoon and a good chunk of the evening emptying out the dreaded playroom. In my slug days, I let it (and helped it) get crammed with Junk We No Longer Wanted and Pretended We’d Sell On Ebay. Well, Ebay requires both a commitment and time and we were unwilling to devote energy to either requirement, so there it sat, growing with every Rest of The House Cleaning Endeavors and gathering enough dust to craft a sweater. So, with my impending Return to the Real World combined with my steadily improved health and strength, I announced to Sam it was indeed time to purge. Time to forget our Ebay fantasies and let thrift store customers adopt our stuff. And so we purged. My car is now loaded (trunk and back seat) with sacks of books, toys (mostly, I must admit, mine) (don’t ask – I had a need, just leave it at that), videos, and more books. The sidewalk was lined with trashbags filled with stuff deemed unfair to dump on anyone, including a stereo with a non-functioning CD player, a Who Knows If It Works floor lamp, and ancient typewriter that weighed approximately 50 pounds (I’m not exaggerating), and what should have been a grand hunter-green leather arm chair except that it was covered in some sort of unremovable, invisible sticky film that made simply touching it an “ewwwwwwww” experience. (I’m glad to say all of the big trash items, save the sticky chair, were snatched up by new owners – hope they can fix that stereo…and if not, I hope they don’t bring it back). And now the room is free of junk but has a nasty, truly I Won’t Walk In Bare Feet On It nasty carpet that needs to be ripped up and replaced. Another paycheck, I’m afraid, although if I get energetic enough later this week, I may yank it up anyway. There’s a cement slab beneath it (I think) (the room used to be a car port) and I’m actually kind of interested to see what shape it’s in – I may pull a Trading Spaces trick and paint a faux border, so I only have to find a smaller, more affordable remnant. But…we’ll see. The cement, at any rate, will be better than that nasty rug. I’ve been on a plant-buying binge. I’ve never been interested in them (mostly because, the few times we’ve had them, the cats used them as litter boxes and, as if that wasn’t enough fun, tipped them over). But these are not the same cats and I’m just generally more optimistic and wanted an orchid (because they’re just flat out lovely) and rosemary (because rumor has it if you plant it by your front door, it’ll keep evil spirits out and hell, I sure as shit don’t need any more evil spirits!). So I bought them and some pots and dirt and fertilizer and had Wendy come over and repot them since I had no clue what to do (but now I do). So I’m now the proud owner of a lovely orchid and potentially helpful rosemary (at least it smells great, if nothing else). Tomorrow, Wendy and I will venture into DC. I haven’t been in almost exactly one year, when Auftn and I raced in to see the Egyptians and ran back home again (I was afraid about Friday p.m. traffic). Tomorrow, I plan to spend more than a brisk walk through the sculpture garden (where my Giant Thinking Bunny that greets both my readers lives) and see more than a corridor and the gift shop of the Nat’l Gallery of Art. I’d love to go to the Holocaust museum (they have an Anne Frank exhibit) but she won’t – it’s “too depressing.” Well, yes it is, but it’s an amazing museum and gives me a glimpse into my dad’s war experience. But it’ll still be enjoyable and we’re taking the train, rather than the subway, so traffic won’t be an issue. See – I have learned something in a year. P.S.: A message to one of my 2 readers (or to both, lol): please don’t hold back on your writing on my account. I had to go through the initial Dammit moment but truly, you are good for him and he needs/deserves good. So write away.

Soapboxes Past June May

If It’s True That What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger, Then I Must Be Friggin Hercules…or…The ABC’s O’ Me

July 20, 2003

Thursday evening, I got a call from my ever-annoying ( but she’s still a good person mother-in-law, to tell me Sam’s great grandmother, GrandBetty, was not doing well. As everyone reminds me, she is 97 years old but, relatively speaking, amazing. She lives in her own home (ok, with an all-day-long-and-all-night-when-necessary housekeeper in the true southern sense of the word, but still, she’s 97, plays (and occasionally wins) tournament bridge several times a week (sans an old-age handicap), and just this week, sent Sam and me an article from her local paper about the garden she fund-raised for and coordinating the planting of at her church that won a couple of local awards (one regional prize too). She also has the dubious honor of being the only in-law that I actually like. She isthe only other Democrat in the family (oh shush, Auftn), is both a patient and kind bridge partner when they coerce me into playing (instructive too, and not in a snotty way), and, even at the age of 97, can be wicked funny and guillotine-sharp. Her son, Bobby (not my father-in-law, but the retired thorastic surgeon married to the retired child psychiatrist) (yeah, they’re not filthy rich or nuthin’), gives my in-laws intermittent Doom ‘N Gloom about “Mother Betty,” but either they are exaggerations or conveniently absent during her bi-yearly visits from her home in Natchez, MS). She is the last of the original southern belles: along with the “aforementioned housekeeper” (g’won, guess a race), she won’t eat anything that’s not cooked from scratch (yup, thank the “housekeeper”), believes that women in public should never wear “slacks”, declines (“refuse” is such an ugly word) coffee that’s neither chicory-based nor served in a china cup. She was, in her youth (i.e. mid-70s to early 80s), the president of the Natchez Ladies Society (trust me, this is huge - not just locally but evidently all over the damned south, president of the National Day Lilly’s Society (ditto, plus she has 5 species named for her) (3 of which grow in my backyard and one at Russell’s grave), the National Jonquil Society (not in the same caliber as the Day Lilly Society but still impressive), and has enough bars symbolizing her direct lineage into the Daughters of the American Revolution to make a belt that would fit me. She also accepted me – an insecure blob who can’t bid in bridge worth a damn who lived in literal fear of meeting her – with open arms and an open heart, nor did she bat a deeply southern eyelash when she learned her only grandson was dying from AIDS.

Anyway (sorry – I forgot why I was writing about her), my mother-in-law, Doris (a whole other entry – promise - just wait till I have to spend a Sunday with her) called to tell me that Granbetty was in the hospital and “It looked, well, grim.” I will protect you from her lengthy description of the stomach/bowel problem that brought her to this stage in live; just trust me, it was neither good nor nice.

I awoke on Friday to discover that my paycheck had not been deposited into my account and, as a result, I bounced a check. Payroll played nice and did get a hard check to me by late-morning, but still. Apparently, there was some she’s-not-sick-anymore form that needed completion that my boss knew nothing of, so…there ya have it.

When I got back from my lunch hour spent in search of a branch of my bank, I had a message from Sam: “Mom, , I’ve had a… car accident.”

So I called him and, well, he had an accident. In the parking lot of Potomac Mills. No one was hurt, but his car’s a mess, and fixing it due to age, parts availability, and insurance coverage, is questionable.

When I finally escaped from work, Nan (my ride) and I trudged down to the garage to discover that her car wouldn’t start. We were able to hook a ride with Karen, but we had to wait an hour until she got off.

When I finally got home, I discovered Mother and Daddy and Sam, congregating around Sam’s Poor Car. The front headlight (sheesh – as opposed to the rear headlight, Deb?) was completely bashed out, the frame dangling from a strip of plastic that somehow survived. Daddy explained that the entire front panel was one long piece and would therefore have to be replace “in toto” (I used to think that had something to do with Dorothy’s dog’s belly) and he wasn’t sure it was available. I changed insurance companies right before my UCE to the bare minimums and am not certain collision is covered. On either car. The other driver is, of course, blaming Sam and refusing to report it to his company, since it was Sam’s fault and we “will pay” (emphasis his).

What was that the medical experts said about keeping my stress level to a minimum?

I did help calm some of my tension by buying a knock-off Louis Vuitton (I tell people I own a “Lou”) purse that I’ve been coveting for a year (out of the trunk of Lorna’s sister’s car – how much more Back Alley can you get?). Retail therapy. It’s just so damned fine.

Living 101

July 16, 2003

I returned to work on Monday. After a 3-month absence, going back wasn’t so easy. First, there’s that getting up before the sun thing – oye, I’d forgotten how painful that is. Even the dog rolls over and cracks open one eye, heaves a heavy sigh, and goes right back to sleep. I envision her, somewhere around 9am, bounding out of the bed and searching the house for me, since that’s been our recent routine – straggle on out of bed, drift outside to the backyard where I’d sit and read and she’d sniff every square inch at least twice, try to sneak under the shed, bark at those damned noisy birds, pee and poop (we all seem to be writing about poop, don’t we?), and finally come flop down at my feet and pant, signaling our time to go back to the air-conditioning.

But now I’m up and dressed and out of the house by 5:30 to get to Nan’s house by 5:40 so her husband Woody (I know – why would a grown man let himself be called Woody?) can drive us at break-neck speed (we call him G-Force Woody) to his job, where we perform the slowest Chinese fire drill in history (I climb from the back seat to the front passenger’s seat, Nan shifts from the front passenger’s seat to the driver’s seat, and Woody waves at us as we pull away). Nan and I get to the office around 6:50.

This is simply too damned early. Or I’m simply too damned old to get up and function at that time of day.

It’s been kind of surreal, being back. I haven’t been out of work that long since 1979, when I graduated from college and quickly realized no one was impressed with my English degree. My staff was happy to see me, and I suppose I was happy to see them…I mean, I like them all and they’re a fairly easy group to supervise, but…

I’d rather be home.

Or in that Winnebego of my dreams, driving anywhere at all…except to work.

Mary, the Director of our department, brought me an enormous gift bag yesterday – “A little something to welcome you back.” I reached in and pulled out a lovely gift basket…full of cookies and jam and cake and smoothie mixes. Either she missed the part where it was announced that my heart problem was caused by my diabetes or she wants to kill me in a sweet way.

Surreal. I’m telling you.

Tonight, I go to the gym for my first-ever work out with a personal trainer. She’s more than a bit nervous, taking on a fat 45 year old with a lousy ticker, but I produced my permission slip from my cardiologist and my check, so she had to take me. If it helps her, I’ll mention how nervous I am too – not that I’ll collapse or anything but just that I’ll, well, sweat. A lot. I hate to sweat. And I’ll get really short of breath, thanks to the ever-persistent bit of fluid crowding the lower lobe of my right lung – nothing to be scared of, I know, I’ve been short of breath all my frigging life, now we just know why – but I look like a…well, a fat, sweaty, out of shape mess.

I’d rather stay home.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I like the way I feel after I exercise. All pumped up and energized and proud that I did it. And I’ll sleep like a rock tonight. I just hate it while I’m doing it. How convoluted is that?

Ah well. I picked life. Now I just have to muddle through.

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Sunday’s Not Just Any Ol’ Day Anymore

July 13, 2003

I go back to work tomorrow for the first time since my UCE (April 7) (actually, April 3rd was my last day in the office – I was off on the 4th to deal with Bad DMV Shit). I have never been one of Those People who insist they’d be bored if they stayed home all day. I get bored at work. The first hour or so is good, and lunch is fun if the Lunch Bunch can pull together, but otherwise it’s one big snorefest. Well, actually, if I could turn at least part of the early afternoon into an official snorefest, I might like it better.

So much like the first day of school, I’m all packed up and ready to go. I have my Necessary Work Shit (security badge – because so many interlopers want access to Kaiser’s business side, office keys – although I suspect everyone’s been using it for assorted purposes that really boil down to quests for privacy, and my pager sans battery – they can give me one of theirs); I also have my Unnecessary But Personally Important Work Shit (notebook for meetings – I’m fussy about all aspects of writing and like fun notebooks – this one’s medium sized with different colored margins, ink for my snazzy new fountain pen that I splurged on yesterday, the big orange wooden D – ala Mary Tyler Moore’s big black wooden M, a Prince cd – I don’t remember the title – and Annie Lennox’s latest cd – perhaps the most depressing group of songs I’ve ever heard but they’re pretty and hey, it’s her. My lunch is packed (although remembering to take it may prove difficult, second only to getting up on time), my distilled water and 2 liter bottle of Diet Rite (the only diet Cokeish soda with no caffeine AND no sodium) are parked in front of the door.

Yup, I’m packed. But ready to go is questionable.

As far as jobs go, this one’s not bad, a fact I try to remind myself when my brain starts to whine about it. I have a fairly good staff, I get to edit writing all day long, I don’t have to talk to those dreadful members, and I have my own office (I never knew a door could be so appreciated). My boss can be, well, a pill (she can redefine spastic, but I am comfortable enough with her that most of the time I can tell her to simmer down). I’m fairly well thought-of, for both my knowledge and, most importantly, my writing skills.

But – here’s the whine – I write letters. To pissed off members/providers/insurance regulators.

I told ya – snorefest.

I’d love to call in tomorrow – not sick, but just to quit. Cash in my retirement, buy a Winnebego and go. Just be. Wouldn’t that be nice? Just be.

But.

If I were responsible only for other things, like bills, I could do this. Not, however, when I’m responsible for other people.

So back to work I go.

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Best Of Luck To Those Who Enter

July 9, 2003

Today, my hairdresser told me I should write my autobiography.

He (Glynn, by the way) just frosted my hair to lighten up the somewhat too-dark red dye my new (2nd visit) “hair color artiest” (my phrase, not hers) (she being Mary, by the way) made it. I’d lied to Glynn and said Willie had colored it for me. While Glynn may not be a true member of the Circle of Friends (Shelley, Wendy, Willie and, to some, Edith and Andy), he is close enough to know about the Six Degrees of Willie: if there has been trouble or something has just not gone right, we can trace the fault back to Willie.

The first time I’d gone over to the other side of hair artistry was 2 months or so ago. Mother, Sam and I had gone to Panera’s (mmmm bread) (well, ok, I have salad but I can still at least see and smell the bread) for lunch and had to walk right by a shop called Easy Color (Russell would have a field day with that name). I had not taken Glynn up on his kind offer to come to my house and fix my hair during my recuperative stage; I had no desire to see anyone I knew during the first half of my recovery. As a result, my hair color could best be described as taupe accented by a thin but noticeable stripe of gray down the center.

(Allow me to scramble up on my soapbox: I hate taupe. Gray’s not so bad anywhere but on my head, however taupe is pointless and unattractive no matter what the settling.)

So it was selfishness that propelled me into that shop as I blocked Glynn out my brain with visions of anything but taupe illuminating my head.

There, I was pampered and attention was devoted to me. I didn’t have to hug, insist I was feeling better, and then nod and smile during the litany of You’re So Lucky/Do You Know How Lucky You are exclamations I’d received from everyone else. I was just some fat lady with taupe hair who wanted to live vicariously through my hair color.

Mary showed me her stylebooks and we initially agreed – at my suggestion – on the soft shade that came naturally to me as a child, a strawberry blonde with emphasis on the blonde.

But I kept flipping back to a photo of some non-descript woman whose only attribute was a chin-length cut with hair a mixed shade of I Love Lucy and Grace from Will and Grace red, complete with bamboo-like streaks of a lighter shade of red (not the perverse taupe).

That was the color I settled on and (I’m very happy to say) looked great.

I saw Glynn a couple of weeks later for a haircut. Silly me, I thought I was safe. Unfortunately, he expressed…well, something, but I’m not sure what – bitterness, annoyance, hurt, put-out, angry, sad, evident with comments like, “How much did this cost you? Oh my God. Now you know, I can’t do this for you. I’ll bet whoever colored it wanted to cut it too.” I knew his last two statements were correct: Mary used a paintbrush with which to apply the dye, as opposed to Glynn’s regular straight-out-of-a-kit squirt bottle, and yes, Mary had indeed asked if I wanted a cut, which I declined and made a point to loyally advise her that I already had a 17 year relationship with the Hair Wizard of Northern Virginia, and I’d have a hard enough time explaining the color job.

I wound up that day with a helmet cut (essentially a bowl cut that’s been moussed and a blown dry).

Neither of us was happy.

And yes, I should have learned several lessons that day. I should have felt my foot tromp on Glynn’s toes when he saw my hair color. I’m more than a client of his, I know this, but I’m not quite a friend either, although we have played a few of times outside of the shop. We share a camaraderie – we make each other laugh (the first time we met, he sang a punk rock version of “Rocky Raccoon”) (go on – try it – it’s irresistible fun), he was one of the first to know about Russell’s illness (and did my hair for the funeral) (and made me laugh so hard I cried as he described the floral arrangement he really wanted to send: white carnations in the shape of a telephone with a banner that read, “Jesus called…and Russell answered) (I made him laugh by noting that, well, at least with Russell dead, we had room for the Christmas tree), I was one of the first to know that his lover, John, also has AIDS and also contracted it from unprotected sex outside of their relationship, I have sent several clients his way, he colors my hair for free.

But recently, even before the UCE, his cuts were becoming less than adequate. There was no imagination whatsoever – this from the man who used to thrive on spikes and asymmetrical bobs. He was already teetering on the edge of helmet hair and I was nervous. He’d also been avoiding my calls as of late, with my requests for an appointment for a cut.

And yeah, so I’m not a fast learner. Or I believe in the good in people. Or, most likely, I spend my days floating down the river of Denial.

Because despite all of the above, I went back to Mary last week for a touch up. And if that wasn’t betrayal enough, I asked her to take a stab at cutting it. Not much, I told her, just a little, mostly to see how she’d do.

I was almost relieved to notice I wound up with helmet hair with a wee bit of tailoring.

And dontcha know, that afternoon, that very afternoon, he called. And I let him schedule an appointment for today to get an Ellen DeGenerese cut (his suggestion). I don’t know why I said yes. I suppose I just kept floating down Denial, telling myself he wouldn’t notice. I also like Ellen’s cut, with the little unintentional-looking flippy pieces, casual yet stylish. And no where near a helmet.

To be honest, I’m not certain he realized someone else cut it. At least, he didn’t mention it. Like I said, I blamed Willie for the color (it was much darker than before, given the fact that I’d forgone the highlights for the haircut), and he seemed to buy it. There was one bad moment when he asked who cut my bangs, but while I was trying to think up an answer to stammer out, he saved me with an erroneous memory: “Oh, I cut them really short last time, that’s right.” Or maybe he knew, maybe he was waiting to see if I’d confess.

Whatever the reason, I wound up not with a cute little Ellen cut. It’s more like…hmmmm….a shorter helmet look with one side that kind of flips and one side that lies hopelessly flat.

Prick.

But I digress. Or avoid. Or both. Because, as I mentioned when I first began this…whatever… ramble/babble/horrifically dull diatribe, he suggested that I write my autobiography.

This was pre-cut, post-highlights, before, I think, he’d had a chance to really fuss with my hair and suspect foreign scissors had clipped it. We were sitting on the deck while he smoked (a ritual with us). I was bemoaning my return to work and my what-to-do-with-this-second-chance quandary. I mentioned I wanted to write but didn’t know what; he suggested my autobiography.

My immediate response was, “Yeah, right.”

He “Yeah, righted” me right back and reminded me of the path I’ve meandered down. He reminded me of my sense of humor, my relatively universal issues with my (s)mother, my massive insecurities that I’m starting to learn I share with more than a handful of folks. And I thought of the crap he doesn’t know, like my addiction issues. And hey – let’s not forget that pesky UCE.

So the HelmetEllen cut was honestly not entirely in vain. I at least have ideas for other topics than What To Do About Bad Hair Cuts Created By Friends.

G’won. Heave a sigh of relief. I don’t blame you.

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Excuses, Excuses

July 8, 2003

Well, it seems July is the official Month of Slackers. I keep saying I’m going to write today…and the day slithers by in a haze of humidity and tasks and last minute pleasure reading. Last minute because I return to work on Monday (the 14th), my grand return since my UCE in April. In my pseudo-defense of silence, I got tired of writing about sobriety and AA. I’m still with it, but the constant yacking about it was, well, boring even me.

I can’t help but think it just sucks that, now that I’m well enough to enjoy my time off, they’re making me go back. Ah, those pesky bills. Nevermind I’ve essentially depleted my long-term leave bank (I still have long-term disability to fall back on should anything ELSE happen but it only pays 60% of my salary), I’d love to stay home and play. I’m by no means one of these people who feel the need to work for mental stimulation. I am a self-proclaimed slug, although now that I write that, I realize I’m slowly emerging from my slug cocoon and morphing into a…I don’t know…a semi-motivated moth.

Case in point: Yesterday, Sam and I spent the entire afternoon and a good chunk of the evening emptying out the dreaded playroom. In my slug days, I let it (and helped it) get crammed with Junk We No Longer Wanted and Pretended We’d Sell On Ebay. Well, Ebay requires both a commitment and time and we were unwilling to devote energy to either requirement, so there it sat, growing with every Rest of The House Cleaning Endeavors and gathering enough dust to craft a sweater.

So, with my impending Return to the Real World combined with my steadily improved health and strength, I announced to Sam it was indeed time to purge. Time to forget our Ebay fantasies and let thrift store customers adopt our stuff.

And so we purged. My car is now loaded (trunk and back seat) with sacks of books, toys (mostly, I must admit, mine) (don’t ask – I had a need, just leave it at that), videos, and more books. The sidewalk was lined with trashbags filled with stuff deemed unfair to dump on anyone, including a stereo with a non-functioning CD player, a Who Knows If It Works floor lamp, and ancient typewriter that weighed approximately 50 pounds (I’m not exaggerating), and what should have been a grand hunter-green leather arm chair except that it was covered in some sort of unremovable, invisible sticky film that made simply touching it an “ewwwwwwww” experience. (I’m glad to say all of the big trash items, save the sticky chair, were snatched up by new owners – hope they can fix that stereo…and if not, I hope they don’t bring it back).

And now the room is free of junk but has a nasty, truly I Won’t Walk In Bare Feet On It nasty carpet that needs to be ripped up and replaced. Another paycheck, I’m afraid, although if I get energetic enough later this week, I may yank it up anyway. There’s a cement slab beneath it (I think) (the room used to be a car port) and I’m actually kind of interested to see what shape it’s in – I may pull a Trading Spaces trick and paint a faux border, so I only have to find a smaller, more affordable remnant. But…we’ll see. The cement, at any rate, will be better than that nasty rug.

I’ve been on a plant-buying binge. I’ve never been interested in them (mostly because, the few times we’ve had them, the cats used them as litter boxes and, as if that wasn’t enough fun, tipped them over). But these are not the same cats and I’m just generally more optimistic and wanted an orchid (because they’re just flat out lovely) and rosemary (because rumor has it if you plant it by your front door, it’ll keep evil spirits out and hell, I sure as shit don’t need any more evil spirits!). So I bought them and some pots and dirt and fertilizer and had Wendy come over and repot them since I had no clue what to do (but now I do). So I’m now the proud owner of a lovely orchid and potentially helpful rosemary (at least it smells great, if nothing else).

Tomorrow, Wendy and I will venture into DC. I haven’t been in almost exactly one year, when Auftn and I raced in to see the Egyptians and ran back home again (I was afraid about Friday p.m. traffic). Tomorrow, I plan to spend more than a brisk walk through the sculpture garden (where my Giant Thinking Bunny that greets both my readers lives) and see more than a corridor and the gift shop of the Nat’l Gallery of Art. I’d love to go to the Holocaust museum (they have an Anne Frank exhibit) but she won’t – it’s “too depressing.” Well, yes it is, but it’s an amazing museum and gives me a glimpse into my dad’s war experience. But it’ll still be enjoyable and we’re taking the train, rather than the subway, so traffic won’t be an issue. See – I have learned something in a year.

P.S.: A message to one of my 2 readers (or to both, lol): please don’t hold back on your writing on my account. I had to go through the initial Dammit moment but truly, you are good for him and he needs/deserves good. So write away.

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The Camel, The Prescription and Me

June 25, 2003

Well, I’ve officially been Camelized. That’s a silly sounding made-up word for those of us who have successfully graduated from Detox. And believe me, for those of us who have graduated from Detox, the word sounds more sweet than silly.

My 2nd day there, the Old Timers (i.e. fellow loons who’d been there longer than 2 days) started chattering about “all of the Camels we have to do today.” Mary and I looked at each other and mouthed, “Camels?” I thought, as I am known to do, I’d misheard but couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the real word for Camel might be because none of the sound-alikes – caramel? Crandall? Clamber? – made sense either. But one of the 1st things I learned in group therapy was just follow the lead of the others and I’d figure it out.

Seems the Camel is indeed a Camel…of sorts. It’s a silver coin – one side has a picture of a camel standing in the desert, a rather cool Egyptian-styled (well, actually it looks more Asian than Egyptian, but addicts can’t be picky) sun burning above his head, and the words “One Day at a Time” (which, of course, immediately plants the theme song to that 70s sitcom with the same title in my head) (once a sitcom theme song savant, always a sitcom theme song savant). The other side has a fairly corny poem engraved on it:

The camel each day
Goes twice to his knees
He picks up his load
With the greatest of ease
He walks through the day
With his head held high
And stays for that day
Completely dry.

I told ya it was corny. But corny or not, it brought more than one of us old cynics to tears.

You can read about the camel ceremony in my last post if you need – I’m too lazy to recreate it here. :smile:

So yesterday was finally my turn to get my Camel.

They all gave me the same advice - ”Get a sponsor!” - but they all also talked about what I meant to them. Beth said she learned the importance of remembering everyone’s name and greeting them every time she saw them because I always made her feel good when she saw me (ah, that good ol’ corporate training finally paid off – who knew it’d be in Detox?). Pam remembered the day we bonded over Messing Up On Our Son’s Graduation (I spent the day fretting about my next refill, because I was almost out of pills, rather than mingling with my guests and helping Sam out; Pam was so drunk that she missed her son’s graduation); Larry thought I was “some straight laced broad” until we talked tattoos and meditation one day; Cleo went home and told his wife that he’d finally met someone who understood what it was like to be diabetic – all of the frustrations and annoyances and anger – and how nice it was to talk to me about it (and the laughs we’d shared about sex, but he didn’t share that tidbit with her); Wendy said she waited everyday to hear my laugh; Joe said he knew I could quit because the only thing that would make me go back to using would be because I wanted to, and I could convince myself otherwise.

You’ll be proud to know I didn’t cry (okay, there, I didn’t cry there). I thanked them all and told them, at the risk of sounding like a Hallmark card, that I cherished my time spent with that buncha loons. I told them about the day I had to write my answers to the First Step (admitting I was powerless over my disease) and how I made myself be brutally honest, only to learn I’d have to later read it outloud to the group and thought: well, I’ll give them a toned-down version, but when that day finally arrived, I read it word for word because, buncha loons or not, we were an honest and open and accepting bunch. I told them the reason I kept coming back was because of them and their honesty, openness and certainly their acceptance, and if there was something I didn’t quite know how to verbalize, inevitably someone else in the bunch would say it. I’ve learned more about myself in the past week than I’ve learned in decades.

When Joe and I said goodbye (he came back for a week of day treatment after having been discharged Monday from his inpatient stint, humbled and scared and in the midst of Post Acute Withdrawal) (he said Monday night was the first time in his life he’d ever prayed – not easy for Joe to admit), I told him that I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz saying goodbye to the Scarecrow: “I’m going to miss you most of all.” He stepped back and asked me if I’d heard what he’d told Orlando last Friday when Orlando got his camel (of course Joe, unable to remember just about anyone’s name, always called him Alphonzo, which became a big joke between the two of them). I reminded him that I had to leave early for my cardiology appointment last Friday and therefore missed the camels (they’re always done at the end of the day). Damn if Joe didn’t tell Orlando/Alphonzo the same thing. How many people would ever use a Wizard of Oz reference in telling someone goodbye??? I told him to get outta my head and he roared. I don’t think Joe has people who will tease him and play with him. He comes across as being so stuffy but really, he’s not. He’s wicked funny and hell, knows the Wizard of Oz almost as well as I (he tried to one-up me by asking if I knew Dorothy’s last name; “Easy,” I calmly replied, “it’s Gale.” I then stuck my tongue out and neener-neernerd-neeeeeeenered him).

So…that was it. My Adventures In Detox.

On the way home, feeling a bit like I did when I graduated from college – kinda lost and confused/terrified about my future – I taunted myself by calling the refill line to see if the refill for Tylenol #3 had been phoned in. And GODDAMMIT, it was. I’ve been teasing myself by calling the line for the last week, waiting for the recording to say it’d been denied because the Kaiser substance abuse counselor, to whom I’d confessed about the refill request, said he’d call and tell them not to refill it. All week long, the recording kept saying to check back. I assumed the delay was a glitch with the pharmacy updating the recording. But nope, there it was – telling me it was refilled and ready to be picked up.

A thousand thoughts flew through my brain:

IshouldgopickitupNOIshouldcallthemandtellthemIdon’twantitIwonderifIdon’tcallthemanddon’tgopickitupifthey’llevenuallyjusttossitIshouldcallthatsubstanceabuseguyandfussathimbutwaitnothenI’llhavetoadmitI’vebeencallingtocheckitsstatusIcouldjustpickitupandkeepitonhandincaseIeverhaveanypainagainohshutupdon’tbestupidthat’llneverworkIknowIcan’tkeeppillsinthehouseandbyThursdayI’llberightbackwhereIwaswellsowhatifthathappensohGodSHUTUPandjustdrivehome

I managed to take my last bit of advice and just drove home. Traffic sucked, but I made phone calls (it’s not dangerous if you’re just sitting, dammit) and listened to good ol’ Don and Mike. I got back home too early to go straight to the 5:30 AA meeting so I went to my old gym and rejoined (they had a special for the month of June – old member’s can rejoin without having to pay that damned initiation fee and keep their same monthly rates as before).

Of course then I was too damned late for the meeting, so I went home and putzed. I thought off and on about the prescription but just kept Doing Stuff (idle hands, devil’s workshop, etc. etc.).

Around 8:20, I decided I’d go to an 8:30 meeting at a near-by church. Two simultaneous tape loops ran through the back of my mind: “Pick up the prescription after the meeting," and “Go get a sponsor!!”

So off I went.

This meeting was a Step Meeting – i.e. they take one of the steps, read it outloud, and then have a group discussion about what it means to us. They did Step 9, which is the step I dread the most – the one that requires you make amends to the people you hurt as a result of your disease. Who the hell wants to admit that shit? But yeahyeahyeah, confession is good for the soul, and that’s kind of what everyone said. It was a good meeting – I saw some of the people I’d seem from other meetings – and afterwards, when I was carrying my chair over to the closet, a woman stopped me and shook my hand. She introduced herself as “Susan,” and I grabbed onto her.

“I’mDebiandI’msevendayssoberandIneedasponsorbutIreallydon’tknowhowtogetonecanyouhelpme?”

And she did.

She gave me her phone number and the phone number of another woman who I could call if she wasn’t available. She didn’t offer to become my sponsor (mostly, I think, because she’s an alcoholic and I’m a druggie), but told me to call her anytime. She sat with me and we went over the When and Where (Meeting locations and times) book so she could suggest some meetings to me. She was very very nice and very encouraging.

When I left, I got in my car and cheered. It’s so hard for me to talk to people I don’t know. It’s even harder for me to ask for help, especially from a stranger. But I did it and I was pretty successful. And I didn’t go get the prescription.

Yay me.

Ev’rybody sing: One day at a time.

---

Odysseus Had Nuthin On Me

June 23, 2003

My buddy from Group left today (Joe, the professor). We wound up bonding (ahh, all of these buzz words) to the point where I stayed yesterday for a couple of hours and played Trivial Pursuit with him (he whooped my ass but it was fun).

He’s a fellow English Lit geek, although waaaaaaaay more learned than I (I initially typed “smarter,” but he’s not, just more learned). He has his PhD in Lit from (ladeedah) Georgetown University, which is, in fact, where he teaches.

The first day of this….experience/experiment, we sat across each other at the lunch table. He’d already semi-scared me off and turned me off from his announcement in Group that he’d tried to detox (from Percodan and Serax) (I’m not certain of the true spelling of Serax, but it’s what they give alcoholics for detox from alcohol) on his own by researching the meds and learning what they were made of, with the idea that if he knew the chemical compounds and alla that stuff, then he’d know how to make himself quit craving them. I assumed he had a brain the size of Wyoming and was a science professor. I’ve learned since then that he’s just incredibly brilliant, too much so for his own good.

Anyway, that first day, he told me he was reading The Oddessy at night (and, I was later to learn, during our study hour). I did my riff on how I thought Oddyseus was an idiot because it took him 20+ years to get from Point A to Point B, mostly because he let himself continually get sidetracked along the way. Joe didn’t say much, he let me banter, and I finished kind of unenthusiastically, thinking: this guy has the sense of humor of a paintchip.

Well, over the course of the week, I learned that was completely untrue. He’s actually very funny, but very observant and absolutely hellbent on over-analyzing everydamnthing. (One of his big lessons was learning to try to keep things simple.) But he is wicked funny and we could laugh ourselves stupid over almost anything.

At some point, I learned that his idiot doctor has been prescribing Serax for him for 22 years. This is a drug you’re supposed to take for maybe a week after you’ve quit drinking. He tried to stop it many times but would always get violently ill, so he’d start up again. He didn’t have any of the manipulation skills that the rest of us junkies have – he had his very own candyman at his beck and call who’d prescribe Serax and Percodan’s for him whenever.

Anyway, like I said, today was his last day at Group. On my way in, I was fretting over what to say at his Camel ceremony. Everyone leaving Group gets a “camel” – a silver coin with a camel on one side and some fairly corny poem on the other side that talks about staying dry for one more day (I’ll quote it word for word tomorrow, after I’ve gotten mine). The day’s Group leader reads the corny poem, then passes the camel around the room – each person takes it and speaks directly to the lucky guy/gal who’s leaving, words of wisdom, cautionary notes, anything, really, we want to say. Mostly it’s a lot of “Good luck, I know you’ll do fine, go to meetings, blahblahblah” with occasional moments of brilliance or humor. But this was Joe, kind of my lifeline during all of this, the one person I could count on to make me laugh or listen to me or both. My fellow English Lit geek.

It bothered me all morning, until it was time to give him his camel. Happily, the rest of the group went first (it was the luck of the draw; Mike, the leader for today, was seated right next to me, but he said his spiel and turned to Cleo, who was sitting on the other side of him), so I had about 20 minutes to think about Joe. I was ready to fall back on the “good luck, go to meetings” babble, when I remembered that first day and my attempt at stand up comedy with him. Of course I remembered how miserably it failed – hey, it was my memory – so I had to focus on one of his shortcomings, and thought of the number of years he’d been taking Serax. This highly educated, okay, brilliant man, taking this massively powerful drug for 22 years.

And then, of course, I thought of my own addiction problems (because it is all about me) and how many years I’ve been taking my own massively powerful drug.

Point A to Point B.

Oddyseus wasn’t all that dumb after all.

When I finally had the camel in hand, I shared this theory with him. His eyes welled up and he thanked me for passing on to him a new way to teach Homer – with a lot of humor and a dash of insight thrown in.

I’m gonna miss Joe. Not many people get Homer comparisons.

To shift gears a bit: I’ve attended 3 AA meetings thus far. Two (one Saturday, one this evening) have been here in Woodbridge at the Rebos Club. I have no clue what Rebos stands for, but oye, are the meetings interesting.

On Saturday, the group leader (“N”, to ensure anonymity) and some kid got into…well, verbal fisticuffs. I felt bad for the kid, to be honest. Apparently, there are a number of these “clubs” in each county, and although they say they are not part of AA, the courts send people to them all the time. And they are AA meetings, trust me (it confused the bejesus out of me initially; still does, but all I really care about right now is that they’re true AA meetings, because that’s what I need).

The Saturday evening meeting was billed as a Beginner’s Meeting, which is one of the reasons why I chose to go to it. There was a handful of people there – maybe 8 or 9 – and at least half of them were AA veterans, planted, I suspect, to share their stories (which they did) to help get the rest of us newbies started.

So the kid spoke up and said he didn’t really know why he was there, this judge made him come, but he didn’t have an alcohol or drug problem. He seemed nice and decent, just lost (ahem – welcome, frankly, to AA). Some of the other vets welcomed him and encouraged him to keep coming back (one of the trillion or so AA catch phrases – it’s even in their group closing thingie when we all gather ‘round and hold hands). A couple of them added that he may not know now why the judge sent him to the meetings, but maybe, if he kept coming and kept his mind open and listened to others, he might come to understand why.

Well, then ol’ N spoke up. He went on a rant about how sick he is of the damned courts sending him these damned kids who weren’t interested in being there – they just wasted his time and by God, he was sick of it. It went on much longer than that, but that’s pretty much what it boiled down to.

I couldn’t believe it.

No one spoke for a couple of minutes after N finished (“Thanks for letting me share,” is that catch phrase). Then the kid cleared his throat, sat forward a bit, and said (just like he’s supposed to), “My name is A, and I’m not really an alcoholic or an addict, but…” and he argued with N.

N waited until the kid thanked us for letting him share, and said the requisite, “I’m N, I’m an alcoholic,” and followed it with, “And you’re full of shit, A.”

Oye.

Happily, the meeting ended shortly thereafter and I bolted.

Needless to say, I went back tonight with one eyebrow raised (and pepper spray in my purse). Neither N nor the kid were there, but the majority of the attendees tonight were bikers. And I mean your stereotypical beer-bellied, snaggle-toothed, sloganed-teeshirts, holy (not in the blessed way either)-jeans bikers. There speeches are liberally peppered with “fuck” and “shit” and “maaaaan” but they are as sweet as today’s unexpected and long overdue sunshine. So I’ll go back, even if ol’ N is there (hey, I didn’t say I was leaving the pepper spray at home!)

---

I’m Not Crazy, I’m Just A Little Unwell

June 20, 2003

I tossed and turned all night, with my immediate waking thought of: “I don’t want to go back to That Place.” I woke up so damned many times during the night that it became kind of a mantra, and by 6:30 this morning, when I was supposed to wake up, I pulled the blanket over my head and said it outloud.

“I don’t want to go back to That Place.”

“I don’t want to go back to That Place.”

”I.Don’t.Want.To.Go.Back.To.That.Place.”

I lay there and made a mental laundry list of reasons why I shouldn’t return.

- They don’t seem to like me.
- It’s hot in there.
- It’s supposed to storm today – the dog will be home alone and a neurotic, vibrating mess.
- What if the roof leaks?
- I haven’t gone to N.A. yet and found a sponsor – the counselor is gonna bitch.
- If I have to sit through one more video…
- What the fuck makes me think this is going to work?
- Today’s payday – I can afford more Fiorinal, but it’s Friday, so if I order it on line, which I’ll have to do since that damned substance abuse guy told my doc not to prescribe anything fun for me ever again, I’ll have to order it by noon to ensure I’ll get it tomorrow.  

I repeated this list so many times that it became my song, with the “I don’t want to go back to That Place” riff pulsating, ever present in the background.

When I finally pulled myself out of bed, it was with the very intent of going to the dining room, getting online, and placing my order. After which, I’d crawl back into my bed. Fuck those people.

But once I sat up, I paused to search for my slippers.

Instead, I heard my heart beat.

thudum thudum thudum

And I remembered this whole Second Chance dilemma thing I have going on.

thudum thudum thudum

Not many people get a Second Chance.

Well, I still don’t know what I want to do with mine.

That may be true, but I’ll bet it’s not going to be much of a Second Chance if I waste it by focusing all of my energy on white pills: when can I take them next, oh shit I’m almost out, how am I going to get them this time…

thudum thudum thudum

So just go today and see how it is.

And I did.

It wasn’t great, but, as with every day, I discovered something new about me and how to fix me. We are the most diverse bunch of people you’d ever want to meet – black, white, inner city, suburbs (even all the way out to West Virginia), yuppies, the professor, the English major, the golfers, the music major, the Bhuddist, the redneck, the Air Force wife, the fisherman, the jeweler – yet we all have one huge bug in our systems that brings us to a common ground: we are all addicts. We laugh about it a lot when we are at lunch or in the break room or outside smoking or just loitering between groups. We describe our Ground Zero’s and laugh like we were recounting the plot to the latest blockbuster comedy. Because we know. We know what it’s like to feel isolated and alone and anxious and madder than hell and terrified and sad so damned sad that makes us hide behind our drug of choice. We know what it’s like to desperately try to bury our truth under mounds of lies and excuses. We know what it’s like to look away from the truth found in mirrors or the eyes of our loved ones. We know what it’s like to think this is our life, this is what we’ve done and we are too weak to change it and besides, we don’t deserve to. We know the soul-crushing punch of humiliation and despair and guilt and hopelessness and worthlessness and shame.

But here, finally, is a place where we are surrounded by people who know and who are just like us, where no matter what your personal Horrid Rock Bottom moment was, someone else has one that’s even lower. We laugh not so much out of humor but from the sweet release of relief.

So I went and I felt good about it. And when I spent money today, it was on new books and taking my son out to dinner.

I’ll bet I’ll still wake up at various points during the night tonight and think: I don’t want to go back to That Place. But I’ll bet oh God, I hope I go back tomorrow.

---

Well Hell

June 19, 2003

I just don’t want to go back.

It was hard to this morning. But if I had to go right now, I don’t know that I would.

I can’t breathe. I feel like the more people that come into that group therapy room, where we spend the majority of our day – except lunch time when we go to the cafeteria en masse, which is really kind of funny and makes me want to walk like Marty Feldman as Igor from Young Frankenstein - the closer they circle around me to the point where it feels like they are all honest to god pressed around me in a tight ball, blocking the air, all talkingtalkingtalking about their substance of choice.

I’m lousy at being open and honest. Just ask anyone who knows me. What makes me think I can start now?

And honey, you’d best believe that I’d damned near smack my mama for a pill. Any kind of pill so long as it’s stronger than aspirin.

And that’s what I have to keep reminding myself about why I HAVE to go back tomorrow. I still want pills. I can’t quit on my own.

But in a room full of 26 (as of this morning) abusers – about half alcohol, the other half drugs, any kind, ranging from my fiorinal to Beth and Tina’s Percocet to Rodney’s cocaine to Orlando and Andy’s heroin – it’s hard to speak up. For me anyway.

Part of the problem too is the clear division between the inpatient group and us day treatment folks. We’re kind of like the commuter students at college – we go home every day after last class, while they get to stay and bond. Who’d’a thought there’d be cliques in detox?

The people are interesting. It’s a shame I didn’t go into this as an undercover journalist or just plain nosy body instead of another patient, because they are interesting to watch and listen to. Most seem very nice and eager to help. Some are pissed at being there, some play strictly by the book, while some try to avoid looking like deer in the headlights. We all openly discuss what brought us there, we tell our war stories as if we did indeed fight in the Big One or ‘Nam. There are a frightening number of people there who has relapsed – 2 stayed sober for more than 10 years.

Sigh.

The roll call is:

Ed – the 1st person I met there. Another day timer like me. He too is a pill head – percodan’s his favorite toy. 15 years ago, he quit drinking. 6 years ago, he started taking pills.

Kim – when our counselor is nowhere to be found, Kim runs the group because she wants to make sure it’s done right. Another day timer, she arrives every day dressed like she’s going to work – dress, jacket, makeup, hose, heels – while the rest of us schlep around in jeans and tee-shirts. She’s one of the more cliquish and has yet to speak more than 5 words to me (“Do you want to sit here?”) (ok, 6 words). She liked her alcohol and drugs, but I’ve yet to hear her story.

Brian – a middle-aged man, obviously a golfer just given his wardrobe of polo shirts and cotton shorts. He loved beer (“Hell, beer wasn’t liquer so I wasn’t an alki.”) and pot (“Ditto pot”). He “presented” his second step yesterday (of the infamous 12 steps) (I am just too tired to go find out what the 2nd actually is) and brought me to tears. He told of embarrassing, mortifying himself due to alcohol but always sliding past it the next day with some lame excuse.

Orlando – a tall, slim, very dark black man who is very very friendly – he gave me a tour of the unit yesterday, sat with me at lunch, and then we sat in the lounge together later and swapped stories. He’s shot up, snorted, smoked heroin off and on for 30 years and has done rehab before. He’ll be discharged tomorrow and I’ll miss him. He’s quite the smooth talker, very funny, but honest as well: “I can charm y’all, I can win y’all over,” he told the group this morning, “but you better remember at the bottom of it all, I’m just a drug addict. I’m slick, and I didn’t stay on heroin for 30 years without redefining slick.”

Joe – A little older than I. He presented his 1st Step to us yesterday and was shown immediately to be waaaaaaay to smart for his own good. He is one step away from pocket protector fashion, I’m afraid. He lived on percocet, taking 20-30 a day for several years now. He is the product of 2 alcoholic parents (his childhood memory that he recounted for us was of he and his sister hiding under the dining room table pouring Pepsi into one of Daddy’s shot glasses, slamming them back and saying “Ahhhhhhh,” because that’s what Mommy and Daddy say when they drink from those little glasses. His father killed himself with a vial of pills when Joe was 16; his dad called Joe into his bedroom one day and told him that he’d be in charge of the family and needed to know that all of the important papers were in the 3rd drawer of the desk. As he was reaching for the key, he had a seizure and died. His mom died many years later; she fell when drunk and hit her head on the floor and was found 5 days later. His sister died of cirrhosis a year ago. Her death, says Joe, is the one that haunts him, the one that has brought him here to get sober. Joe can talk your ear off but he is at heart a sweet man. He is very intelligent (ergo the pocket protector) and was a professor before drugs got in his way and he left teaching and now writes text books from home. He said he tried to quit in the past by learning all he could about the drugs he was taking – what they’re made of, how they work, what they do – because, he thought, if he could understand that, then he could understand how to stop taking them. When that theory didn’t pan out, he admitted himself here. He planned his admission for over a month.

Mary – she’s even quieter than I. She sits in the back with me and whispers, “No drinks allowed in here,” with an apologetic smile on my first day. Today we talked outside during a break (she smokes, I just wanted air). She’s afraid of getting sober because she’s pretty sure she’ll then figure out her husband’s, well, not It for her, and then what will she do?

There are many more, but I’m tired and they’ll just have to wait, lol.

I even have to attend on Saturday and Sunday. On both days, from 10 to 12, they’ll be having family groups for family members who want to attend. I told my nurse today that none of my family will be attending (since they think I’m attending a workshop for depression – that’s bad enough in (S)mother’s eyes; substance abuse would destroy the relationship we do have, I’m afraid) but was told that’s ok, I’ll still be there. Well won’t THAT be fun? The only member sans family.

I truly hate this shit.

But I did it to me and in order to get it to stop, I have to suffer through some discomfort. Sober.

---

Rehab is for Quitters

June 18, 2003

So…

…

…

I started outpatient detox and rehab today.

What can I say – I’ve always been a pill kinda girl. Gimme downs and I’m a happy, albeit drifty camper. I’ve always enjoyed an altered state of reality – never enough to make me incoherent or pass out, just enough to make my world comfortably numb.

For a long time, it was just recreational. If I had the good fortune to have a doctor or a dentist offer a script for a pleasant down, I’d coyly hesitate, then accept it, while my inner druggie was jumping up and down, hollering, “YAAAAAAA-HHOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Then two incidents happened simultaneously that caused me to fall out of the playground and move into the House Of Dope (which is, I think, much like the Hotel California, only without the cool song): I began getting blinding, knock-you-to-your-knees migraines. Back then, in the late 80s, the treating drug of choice for migraine relief was Fiorinal, a lovely combination of caffeine and a muscle relaxant, with a bit of aspirin thrown in for good measure. It created almost the perfect buzz – nice and floaty but with enough caffeine that you’d stay awake and enjoy it.

Shortly after this discovery, Russell told me that he had AIDS.

Let’s just say I got lots of headaches after that. Some real, some…well, I ached, I certainly ached, just maybe not so much in my head as in my heart, but the location of the ache didn’t really matter because the lovely little pills helped.

I dabbled with them off and on for a few years, then he up and died, and my usage up and grew. Finally, after about a year of spending most of my time in urgent care, where I could doctor shop without many repeats and therefore obtain frequent refills, the pharmacist ratted me out to my doctor. He confronted me, I wept a little and we agreed to try Prozac.

Don’t you know, two days later I got slammed with one of the worst headaches I’ve ever had. For anyone who has ever had a migraine, you know they are not “just a headache.” I have literally been knocked to my knees with the pain from them. I often can’t open my eyes, simply because the sheer act is painful. And oye, I’ll just skip over the vomiting…but yanno, there’s nothing like puking your guts up when there’s a hot poker shoved through your skull.

I live in fear of them. I really do.

So I went outside of my health plan and paid out of pocket for a doctor to give me Fiorinal. I told myself I would only use it when headache-necessary, not heartache-necessary.

For a long time, I did.

But then something happened – I don’t even think it was one episode, more like just trying to live with The Guilt of Russell and the OhMyGod, I’m A Single Parent factor – and I started to dabble again. I’d play for a bit, then quit for a few weeks, or a month, maybe 2, then play some more. Sometimes I’d limit myself to Just Weekends. But I always made sure I had some on hand because I never ever wanted to experience a migraine without them.

About 6 months ago, I discovered I could order them online. No prescription necessary – just fill out some online medical questionnaire, cough up a Visa card number so they can charge the $145.00 (including shipping and handling) for 100 pills.

This was perfect, I thought. I wouldn’t have to doctor hop anymore, and while I could get 30 pills for $5.00 through my insurance, I convinced myself that this was an investment of sorts, that I could have more for a longer period of time.

Rationalization. I’m scary-good at it.

Well, I didn’t manage thatplan very well, because within a few weeks, I was using 8 to 10 pills a day. Sometimes 12. I’d run through my investment bottle of 100 in 10 days or so.

That’s a lotta money, folks.

But – what the hell. I needed them.

Then, in April, I had that pesky cardiac experience (which I’m sure was in part caused by my playing). I thought about that 2nd chance stuff and took it as my opportunity to quit.

And I did.

I even went shy on the pain meds they really prescribed for me, and once I was discharged, I preferred to try motrin. From April 10 until May 28, I did beautifully.

But on May 28, I woke up and thought: this should/would have been our 20th wedding anniversary.

And I was off and running.

This past Monday, I’d just had enough. I had 4 pills left and not enough money in my account to buy more online until payday (Friday). I started plotting my prescription manipulation method…and stopped.

I was sick of it.

Just sick of it.

I’m tired of living my life around a handful of pills, because they are on my mind always: when should I take them next? How many do I have? How will I get more?

So I called and got an appointment for the next day with a substance abuse counselor (hint: if you want any urgent medical care, just mention you have a cardiac condition – they don’t mess around then). I saw him yesterday and we agreed to an aggressive 7 day “Day Treatment” program. I go to Fairfax Hospital every day for the next 7 days (well, 6, today was my first day) from 8:30 to 4 and attend group sessions and one on one sessions and the like.

I know this is the Reader’s Digest version here. It’s very hard to write about, to admit to. I had every intention of coming straight home and writing about my day, but then found reasons to put it off until almost 9:30, when suddenly I just couldn’t sit with it anymore. It’s been my dirty little secret for so long but I can’t live like this any longer.

So there.

yikes

---

If It’s Not One Thing, It’s My (S)Mother

June 16, 2003

Grrrrrr

We take one step forward, about 19 back.

Our relationship has gotten better, I keep reminding myself (it’s been my mantra, off and on, for a few weeks now, since she started getting back on my nerves).

Last night, she started in on her specialty: nagging (which even Daddy, who worships her, says is what she does best, next to putting): first, she was convinced I looked “bloated again” and made me lift my shirt to prove that I most certainly was not (that’s where we heart failure patients really show signs of trouble –fluid retention around our gut – lovely, hmmm?). Then she started in on my diet – insinuating (which frankly, I think is her subspecialty as opposed to putting) that I wasn’t following the low-fucking-everything diet I’m on. This, dammit, is not at all true, but she keeps at it and keeps at it, refusing to believe me, and I grow more and more defensive. She kept saying, “I kept quiet before, I won’t now.”

Needless to say, we came home pretty much right after the dinner dishes were done.

So today I, in my attempt at maintaining an open relationship with her so she can’t accuse me of being secretive (plus, she told me last week how glad she was that we could say anything to each other now – I’m not so sure about my definition of “anything,” but I am working on offering her more of my world than before), I tell her I’ve made an appointment in Mental Health. Her response? “You should just wake up every morning and tell yourself how glad you are to be alive.” Well, jeepers! Wish I’d thought of that!!!!!!!!!

I reminded her that virtually every damned medical professional from nurses to doctors have warned me about post-surgical depression,. Plus, she is aware, to some extent, that I’ve gone the therapy route in the past. So really, I thought she’d be okay with the news.

LOL

Her next statement was, “Just don’t let them put you on any damned medication.” I laughed and reminded her (and yes, she knew this) that I’ve been on medication for a year now. She didn’t remember this tidbit and “tchtched” and told me, “Those medications make you retain fluid.” I reminded her that a) I’m on lasix (this damned powerful diruetic) already and b) the motrin I take, per the cardiologist’s orders in hopes it helps reduce that goddamned sack of fluid around my lung, makes me retain fluid too. I don’t know why I threw b) in – I reckon just a knee-jerk response to her way of saying “Those medications.”

Truth of the fact is, she thinks all therapists are whacked. This conclusion is based on things she observed during her psych rotation in nursing school in the early 50s. I have tried to remind her once or twice that things have changed but she’s not convinced. God love her, she used to have to do electric shock treatments on patients (which I never knew until she had a near-meltdown when we went to see A Beautiful Mind. She also had a truly terrible personal experience: during her rotation, a patient attacked and beat her up, breaking her nose. The treating physician asked, “Why are you crying? Do you get beaten at home?” This was the guy who saw her moments following the attack. So she has issues with the mental health field.

I want to remind her it’s her damned side of the family that I’ve inherited my depression from – just look at her father, never mind several of my cousins. Hell, those of us with Lawhorne genes are generally moping folks…except her.

So.

It just makes me sad, very sad, to feel our recent closeness slip away, even if it is just a little. But nowI just feel all over again like I have to censor myself and my life around her in order to be ensured of her approval. It makes me mad too.

Yes, I know I could take the To Hell With Her route and continue to just tell her stuff, force her to know me. But I don’t think I can/want to stomach the constant criticism. Some is ok – a lot of times she is (dammit) right, but constant is….tiring and raw. And I’m tired and raw enough as it is.

On a brighter note, Sam got his driver’s license today. At least, I think that’s a brighter note, lol. No, no, no, I know it is. Hell, the kid’s 19 – he held himself back initially, then I jumped on the bandwagon. He’s all I have; car’s are weapons; blahblahblah. But he needs/deserves his independence. My dad taught him because I couldn’t – the kid never learned to ride a bike, for Christ’s sake, I had issues with the State – excuse me, Commonwealth – of Virginia saying he could drive.

But….he’s gotta grow up.

My bebebear has now officially become a full-grown grizzly (LOL, what a cuddly image).

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Thinking Up a Title is Such Pressure!

June 15, 2003

I just rode my bike for the 1st time since returning from The Trip. The Good News: It’s still like flying, and I didn’t fall off. The Bad News: I still get Bike Butt. I have got to invest in a comfy seat if I expect to ever ride any further than my own street. I rode for about 15 minutes and quit only because I got a lil chest pang that I couldn’t decide was truly heart related or incisional (I kinda suspect the 1st option but don’t know if I should expect that or fear it but I figured I should at least stop, lol). So now I’m kinda slimy with sweat, sunscreen and bugspray (and I wonder why I’m single) but I feel pretty good. I’ll go again this evening if the weather permits and see how I do.

God, I’m bored.

I took to the bed yesterday after writing that uplifting entry and slept for pretty much 15 hours, save a brief foray into TV land to watch Robin Williams live on Broadway. I kept thinking I’d go lay down and read and would hit the mattress and think: oh who’m I kidding? I pulled myself outta bed this morning and made myself stay up – one day wallowing in depression is enough, thank you.

Today, Shelley and I should be just now arriving in NYC.

Pesky best-laid plans.

It’s Father’s Day and I always wonder how that makes Sam feel. I know for the other people I know sans fathers, it’s not easy, but they’re adults and were adults when their father’s died. Sam was just 5 and I have this bad feeling that the most vivid memories he has of Russell were when he was real sick, although he won’t talk about it. We of course always see my dad on Father’s Day and, when the in-laws lived here, we saw them too (oh, lucky us) (with the in-laws) (that was sarcastic) (LMAO) but I wonder, as the years go by, if it gets weirder for Sam or less weird. Maybe someday we’ll be able to talk about it.

My dad is my hero, he truly is. He’s the best man I know. Gentle, soft-spoken, kinda shy unless he knows you really well or has had a coupla beers, loves to laugh, loves to tease/pick, loves cowboy movies and 007 and golf. And mom and me. He calls me “baby.” He has the remnants of his North Carolina drawl when he says words like “dawg” and “dinnuh” (dinner), and on Sunday’s, and only on Sunday’s the main meal is called “suppuh.”

He doesn’t show his emotions much – he’s a man for Christ’s sake, but I’ve seen him cry more than I’ve seen any other man cry (when his mother died, when Mom had her strokes, when his cats died, when Russell died, and when he learned I had to have this surgery), which makes me feel good, because that means he feels comfortable with me. He’s the one parent I can say anything to without it being misinterpreted (although Mom is getting better) and he likes my jokes.

My favorite memories of him are:

- pushing me in my stroller up to the water tower to feed the squirrels when we lived in Shirlington (this memory pisses Mother off to no end because she insists she used to take me there every day, while Daddy just took me there on occasions – I wisely know sometimes it’s best to keep my mouth shut and didn’t explain to her that the specialness (channeling Alexandria Haig again!) of going with him rather than the routine of going with her is probably what made it memorable).
- Carrying me piggybacked up the stairs to bed 
- Curling my hair in rag curlers (not because we were broke but because Mother felt they made prettier curls) before bed
- Reading me my bedtime stories (the last 3 choices here were when Mom worked evenings and he worked days)
- Linda Reed and I having free run of the gas station he owned in Arlington – we used to make his employees nuts by jumping on those hose thingies that made a ding-dong sound but they couldn’t do anything about it because I was Art’s Kid (ahhhhhhhhh the joy of powert).
- Getting to ride up in a car on one of those hydraulic lift thingies mechanics use to work on an undercarriage
- “helping” him build the shed (I think that meant painting a little)
- riding the raft with him in Nags Head
- him teaching me to swim and dive at the pool at Penicillin Park (yup, there really is such a place, on the Ft Belvoir post)
- his unprovoked, out-of-the-blue telling of his war experience, particularly his capture by the Germans and subsequent escape to Russia (on foot at night) (someday I’ll put the story in here, but not today).  It was a piece of his life I knew nothing about until I was 15 and Mother told me; Daddy refused to talk about it until I was 40 and we’d gone to see Saving Pvt Ryan.  During the movie, he’d lean over and whisper things to me, about D Day (he was part of the clean up committee) and what it was like to be in the midst of a battle (“you don’t know who the hell you’re shooting at, you just pray if you hit anyone, it’s the right one, and they miss you”).  A week later, while helping him dry dishes after Saturday Night Pizza at their house, he just started telling me His Details.
- Any and all road trips with him – he sings outloud (lol) and doesn’t hesitate to stop suddenly for a hotdog or ice cream cone
- Making him laugh
- Him making me laugh
- His hugs and kisses

Hell, now I’m all teary. And I’d best go find what I did with his Father’s Day Card (I inherited his organization skills rather than Mother’s).

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Oh, Give It Up, Kermit – Being Green is WAY Better Than Blue Any Day

June 14, 2003

I had to be seen in urgent care last night because I got fucking short of breath again, this time when walking from the video store to the car. And no, we didn’t park in Outer Sloblovia, either – we were right there in front. It certainly wasn’t bad like the time that started this whole lovely chain of events, but ohso present and unignorable (I love making up words; just call me Alexandria Haig).

So I come home and call Medical Advice and am told yup, I need to be seen. Except, rather than getting seen at the center 15 minutes from home, I am expected to go to the center 45 miles from home because it’s the weekend, yanno, and there’s a cardiologist on site at that center. I reminded her that it was rush hour andraining and had to drive myself – she encouraged me to GET A CAB.

Get a cab.

At that point, the shortness of breath was due to agitation: get a cab.

I laughed at her and said I wanted it documented that I thought all of this was just plain stupid and I should be allowed to go to the center that’s damned near in my backyard and if the doctor there wanted me to see a cardiologist, we’d worry about travel arrangements then.

She advised me to go to the faraway center.

I hung up on her.

Sam, god love him, called his boyfriend, Ryan, who said he’d drive me. And he did. And yes, for Christ’s sake, I’m fine in that relative-fine-for-a-cardiac-patient sense of the word. They didn’t even do an EKG, just a chest xray to see about that stupid sack of fluidygunk that’s still squeezing my right lung. For this I needed a cardiologist???

So I sat in the exam room (because that’s what they do with ya, shove you into an empty room with some vague promise that the “doctor will be in to see you” and leave you there forever. I swear, it’s an endurance test, and I failed it last night, because that little nurse shut the door and I burst into tears. Well, not really burst into them, I just gave into them, which for me is like bursting.

Yesterday was the day Shelley, my very best friend ever, was supposed to come here from her home on the other side of the world (well, okay, Seattle, but it might as well be friggin China). Today was the day we were supposed to leave for our trip. We’d initially thought we’d take the train (because we’re both fatgirls and planes are not fatgirl friendly but Amtrak evidently thinks we’re worthy of decent sized seats) to Boston, then rent a car and just drive around New England. I’ve never been further north than NYC and Shelley has this goal to go to every one of the 50 states and this would be a good way to knock out some of those places she can’t cover in flight lay-overs. But then her time off got cut short by a few days so we decided to modify and take the fatgirl friendly train to NYC and play there for 3 days.

And then I went through all of that shit with my blood pressure and breathing shit and got scared about being out of town for that long and away from the doctors that know me.

So I canceled on her.

She was fine with it, but still. I just just just just just just just I just hate being sick I hate living with the thought that I have to constantly look over my shoulder in anticipation of Death getting ready to tap me on my shoulder. I get tired too of thinking that maybe I should just let him, that all of this, all of this sucks and really is my pissant existence worth this much angst? And then I look at Sam and realize I can’t can’t can’t can’t can’t make him an orphan, I have to try, dammit.

And so I look over my shoulder. And get my son’s boyfriend to drive me a zillion miles out of the way in the rain in Friday night rush hour.

And so it goes.

I’m reading Alan Ginsburg:

I feel as if I am a at a dead
end and so I am finished.
All spiritual facts I realize
are true but I never escape
the feeling of being closed in 
and the sordidness of self,
the futility of all that and I
have seen and done and said.
Maybe if I continued things
would please me more but now
I have no hope and I am tired.

lol – whadda happy guy, that ol’ Al. Maybe I should resubscribe to Mad or something.

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Second Place Is Just A Nice Phrase For Not Good Enough

June 13, 2003

Actually, that title about sums it up.

It was the part about the nipples. I was doing almost okay with it until I got to the part about the nipples. Then I felt like dust.

It’s not even so much that he loves her. Honestly. I accepted it pretty damned good when he officially dumped me, and I meant it when I said the only part about it that really upset me was the 2 weeks of silence before the official dump date.

It’s the coming in second yet again. Wait, no, it’s the letting myself come in second again. Sarah had the guts to tell him fuck no, she wouldn’t ride in the backseat for That Cunt, but boy, I’d’ve ridden in the trunk if it meant I could have even a piece of him. And sure, of course I loveD him, I did, like I loved Russell and Matthew and Ron. I just gave up on anyone loving Only Me so long ago that I hate it, I just hate it.

I don’t feel worthy, I know. Combined with not believing it’s possible. I mean, c’mon, I’m 45 and the only people who have loved me for me have been either psychos (Linda and Ann), crashing bores (Doug), and the Non-Hygienic Wonder (Dave) (dude, use a toothbrush!!!).

I’m just sick and tired of being lonely. And scared. I feel like I’ve been given this second chance at life, yet I wonder why? What for? The only answer I come up with is indeed a biggie (Sam) but still…God, I love him, I live for him, don’t get me wrong, but he’s just not enough.

So here I sit.

And sit.

And sit.

This is not a lie: When the cardiologist told me there was a part of my heart that was dead, my immediate thought was: well, yes, but how do you know?

I hate second place. I hate silver.

And let’s not even get into how I feel (right now) about being Such A Good Friend. Yes indeedy, I’m about the best goddamned friend you’ll ever find (can you feel me punching your bicep?). I’ll drop anything to help you, I’m always there when needed, and hey, if nothing else, I’m great for a laugh. But the love of anybody’s life? Evidently not.

This is fucking pathetic.

I know I’m blessed. I love them all with all of my undead heart. But call me selfish; I just want more.

Oh well. The ABC’s o’ me.

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576 Miles Traveled and Nary a Drop of Blood Spilled

June 12, 2003

I didn’t write yesterday because I was unbelievably cranky. We should’ve stayed in Rehobeth and left Atlantic Shitty to the…well, to either the other poor, unsuspecting souls like us or the multitude of assholes we seemed to encounter.

But I’m rushing ahead. Like digression, it’s something I tend to do. The ABC’s o’ me.

We took the ferry across…hmmm….some big body of water that I couldn’t identify if my life depended on it, but suffice it to say, it was big enough to warrant a ferry (although why there’s no bridge I couldn’t tell ya either) (ignorance may not be bliss but it ain’t so bad). It was pretty, until it started to kinda roll back and forth. Mom and I quickly moved inside and planted ourselves at a table, where we proceeded to play 2 games of Spite and Malice (I won both – heehee). We’d no sooner finished the 2nd hand then – “Look! We’re moving past sand!” – we landed and got off the rolypoly thing.

We got to AC relatively unscathed but that all kinda came apart as soon as we arrived.

My mother has always enjoyed driving. Most family trips, she’s behind the wheel. But since her stroke/whatever it was that almost killed her and Daddy and Sam last summer, she’s become a bit skittish – but only when she’s on unfamiliar territory. And ok, skittish is kind – she pretty much panics. So we get, oh ½ a block into AC and she starts asking me where she should go. Um…like I know? I kept telling her to just follow the signs for the boardwalk, and she kept saying, “This way? Should I go this way or turn left/right?” It was the closest I’d come to twitching since we left home. I finally suggested we just go to the Claridge (which she kept calling “the Claridon” – I finally gave up on reminding her that’s the name of her allergy pill, not the hotel), which is where my 2 aunts’ bus was coming in. Plus, it was literally right in front of us.

We agreed to just stay there for the night – she was so trippywiggy at that point that I just couldn’t imagine making her search for another place (even though the hotels are on top of each other there). She’d never done valet parking before, so we had another lesson in learning that leaving the car with the nice man named Keith (“he’s wearing a nametag and a uniform – he’s not going to steal your car!”) before I was able to coax her inside to the front desk to check in.

The hotel was indeed confusing, mostly because it has evidently just merged with Bally’s andthe FuckingSands, and we had to walk forever because you have to check in at Bally’s (we didn’t even know we were suddenly in Bally’s until the reservationist kept saying “Bally’s” and we kept correcting her with “Claridge” or “Claridon,” depending on who was doing the corrections). So, we check in at Bally’s, get our keys for our room at the Claridge/Claridon (get it?) and walk back to the Claridge/Claridon to get our luggage out of the car (and to prove to Mother than Keith had indeed not absconded with her car). Good ol’ Keith was still there, waiting for us as he’d promised, and helped us unload the car and dump everything (“because, Deborah, someone might steal it if we leave it in the car”) onto one of those big rolling hotel luggage cart thingies. We follow Keith into the lobby…where we promptly learn there are no bellcaps at the Claridge/Claridon who can take our luggage to the room – we are supposed to walk back to Bally’s to find someone who will bring our luggage back to the Claridge/Claridon.

At this point, Mother started to have a mini-meltdown. Keith said – no problem, he’ll take our luggage and find someone to bring it to us; we can just go on to our room. Well, let’s face it – the woman who had to be coerced into leaving her car with him wasn’t about to set him free with our luggage (God forbid he would’ve wanted our dirty clothes!). I looked Keith square in the eyes and say, “Can’t I just take it up to our room?” He thought for a minute, then shrugged, cautioning me “they” might get mad if we’re seen. I assured him that I’d just Play Dumb and not rat him out.

Our room, naturally, is on the 12th floor. Any guesses how many times an elevator will stop and open when you’re maneuvering a fairly large, luggage-laden rack thingie? Any guesses how many idiots don’t care about the cart thingie and smoosh their way onto the elevator anyway?

We finally got the damned thing in our room and unloaded. I flopped down on one of the beds (the room was lovely, by the way) and asked where we were supposed to meet Aunt Izzy and Jane.

“We’re supposed to call them on Izzy’s cell phone.”

Please note: my mother and her sisters are clueless, absolutely clueless when it comes to understanding their cell phones. They can make calls on it and answer them – they cannot, however, access voice mail (or really even understand what voice mail is), program a number, or grasp the concept that it might not be able to pick up a signal inside someplace like…oh, say, a huge, crowded, loud casino. I don’t know if this is genetic or just some old-lady issue, but all three of them act like monkeys when handed a new gizmo.

But call we tried. Izzy’s phone rangandrangandrang, then picked up…but all I could hear were people having semi-muffled conversations. I figured it was Jane and Izzy because I could hear them mentioning their children. I hollered “IZZY” several times and even shouted, “IZZY, ANSWER YOUR PURSE” but to no avail.

So we spent the next 20 minutes trying to call Izzy. Mother would try, get the same thing, and ask me why. I’d try to convince her that I didn’t know but she didn’t want to accept that and kept asking.

(My teeth are clenched now, 24 hours later, simply thinkingabout this.)

So off we went in search of them. Ever tried to find two little old white haired ladies in AC? Does the cliché “Needle in a haystack” mean anything to you?

We looked in the Claridge/Claridon casino. We looked in the bus lobby where their bus would’ve come in. We looked in the main lobby. We tried to call again (and this time just got static) (at which point I enountered yet another facet of the Old Ladies With Cell Phones problem – just because they can’t do a goddamned thing with it and I can make it work somehow means I understand every aspect of it and get annoyed with me when I reply, “I don’t know why it won’t work.”)

We went outside and turned a corner and Mother said, “There’s Jane.” I looked but only saw a little old white haired lady standing with her hand on her hip with her back facing us.

“How do you know?”

“Jane always stands like that.”

I was ready to poo-poo that theory (I mean, c’mon, lots of people stand with their hands on their hips!) when the woman turned around and – sure enough, it was Aunt Jane. She smiled as she greeted us (I am the only female in our family who hugs people – the rest will do so in response to a hug, but relutantly, as if the huger was dirty or yucky or something equally unappealing) and told us Izzy was inside in the bathroom. She said Izzy’s phone had indeed rung several times but each time she tried to answer, “something said something on that little screen thing and she couldn’t get it to work. What does that mean?”

I sort of convinced then I didn’t know and we traipsed inside to find Izzy.

God love her, there’s nothing like being greeted by three grinning maniacs as you come out of a crowded ladies room in AC. But Izzy laughed and told us all hello and, the most exuberant of the 3 sisters, told me, “You look wonderful!” We went through another question/answer period about her phone, this time learning that the message on the “little screen thing” told her there was no service. Once I semi-convinced them I didn't know what that meant, we agreed it was probably time for lunch.

They all looked at me expectantly.

I reminded them all that I had indeed never before been to the Claridge/Claridon/Ballys casino but pointed out a sign on the wall advising us that the Palm Restaurant was on the 3rd floor. Feeling a bit like Lewis without Clark, I managed to lead us to it.

To keep up the practice of Making Me Feel Ancient, our topic of conversation over lunch was our health. Mom’s had her strokes, Jane had a zillion bypasses (5) plus a buncha valves replaced, and Izzy had a stroke and breast cancer. Of course, the fact that we were all able to sit around a table and talk about our health is pretty fucking good, given all of that (look for that pesky silver lining, Deb). When Aunt Jane asked, “How are your bowels?” I burst our laughing…until Mother and Izzy seriously answered her.

Jane told us that the best casino is the Sands, so we agreed to go there (it was on the other side of us), but first she and Izzy had to cash in their vouchers for $17.00, compliments of the Claridge/Claridon for taking the bus to their casino. Jane got her money first and drifted off to a machine (“One with cherries on it” – I don’t know why that was important but evidently it was) and started to win. She always wins. Lottery, gambling, you name it, Jane will come home with money.

40 minutes later, she was still winning and we were…well, not. As a result, we were anxious to get to the Sands and she was…well, not.

Mother finally bullied her into going while Aunt Izzy openly bitched about Jane (“She always does this”) but wouldn’t confront her.

Indeed, the Sands was kind to us, at least initially. The 3 sisters headed straight for their favorite game – Wheel Of Fortune. Aunt Jane, naturally, sat down at one machine and stayed – to the tune of $300.00 in winnings (on her initial $20.00). Mother did okay, but poor Izzy didn’t win squat. Since there were only 4 WOF machines (and some other old lady was at the last one), I drifted and plunked money into various machine, all of which lost money, naturally, until I found Elvis.

The slot machine, not ElvisElvis.

It’s your everyday slot machine, until the Pick A Record option lands on the line. Then you hit a button and this huge display of Elvis’ gold records (that I thought was just part of the décor) lights up and a flashing light dances from one to another, finally stopping on one. Whichever record it lands on has a monetary value attached to it (up to 1,000), but the most I hit was 50 (quarters, not dollars). Of course, all of this happens to the sound of Elvis blaring out, “You Ain’t Nuthin But A Hound Dog.”

I kept nickel and diming it to death – 10 here, 20 there, my big 50…then, across the line, lands a bar, and 2 Double Elvis symbols, which somehow added up to 300 quarters – I don’t know how or why, I just know it did. So I cashed in ($70+) and went to find the old ladies. Well, my old ladies.

There they were, still at the WOF machines.

Jane was rolling in the dough. When the other 2 saw that I’d quit, they did too, but not Aunt Jane. Finally, Aunt Izzy took Jane’s money and cashed it in, while Jane hit for another 100. She played at bit of it but Mother kept telling her that we should go to the boardwalk, and finally modified that to, “We’re going to the boardwalk; you can stay here if you like,” so Jane hit the Gimme My Coins button…

And it gave her all except 42 half-dollars. Then pooped out.

She broke the bank; the machine ran out of money.

We flagged down one of the attendants, showed her what happened. She opened the machine, wrote something down on a pad of paper that was kept inside the machine, then left.

20 minutes passed…then 30… Mother went to find someone to find out what was wrong, only to return with the following disturbing news: “Their computers have gone down, they have to count out all of the money by hand, and they only have 2 people who can bring the money out.”

And so we waited.

We watched them fill machines all around us. Finally, after 45 minutes, I stopped someone else and was told the slip had been lost but she’d write it up again, not to worry, they’d be right here.

Right around the one hour mark, one of the two men evidently trusted enough to carry bags of change came to us. You’d’ve thought Jesus made his 2nd Coming with as much rejoicing as we did. Until we realized the moron had brought a bag of quarters to refill a 50c machine. “I’ll be right back.”

10 minutes…15 minutes…

Other old ladies tried to come over to play – I’d chase them off by telling them our saga. When I got tired of that, I got Mom and the 2 aunts to sit down so we were hogging up all the WOF machines and encouraged them to ignore people as they approached and hovered – if the fuckingSands won’t give Aunt Jane her $21.00, we won’t give other customers access to their machines. Anarchy rocks, especially when joined by 3 70+ year olds.

She got her damned money after waiting an hour and 35 minutes, leaving them 15 minutes to catch their bus.

We trooped down to the bus lobby (lordy, there was some people watching to be done there, let me tell you – old ladies wear some really special hats), said our goodbye’s (still no hugs) and watched them leave.

I’ll admit, I let the fuckingSands push me over the attitude fence. Mom and I never fought (miracle of miracles) but I was in a foul mood the rest of the evening. I came there to have fun with my aunts, not be held hostage for $21.00. We tried to walk the boardwalk but it was crowded and loud; we ate dinner at a place that was the same (crowded and loud) and finally, at 8:00, limped back to our room. We watched a wee bit of tv and Mom went to bed.

I took 2 Tylenol PMs…and tossed and turned all night. When I did sleep, I dreamt of Russell and LisawhomIhate.

I was glad to wake up and find yesterday gone.

So we’re home now, just fine, the only bad moment occurred somewhere in South Jersey where Mom flipped out because we couldn’t find the turnpike – I tried to convince her we just hadn’t gone far enough, but she didn’t believe me and stopped at 4 (I kid you not) assorted places (a Wawa, 2 gas stations and, I swear, a car wash), all to be told “You haven’t gone far enough.”

Yesterday, well, yesterday just happened and I shouldn’t’ve gotten so vexed to the point where my aunts were exchanging No Wonder She Had A Heart Attack looks. Now that I revisit it, hey – I held a little sit-in in protest, which is the most impassioned I’ve gotten over a cause in decades.

You might wanna look out.

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We Ain’t Nuthin But Two Cheap Dates

June 10, 2003

Well, I’m approximately 1.4 sheets to the wind (the measure of drunkenness on a featherweight drinking 2 glasses of a lovely merlot named Luna di Luna something while at dinner). Mother had 2 glasses of some kinda white wine, proving for once and for all I get my inability to manage much alcohol from her. We were totally 100% tipsy – not drunk, mind you, but giggly, staggering just a wee bit and only on occasion, which equals tipsy. Luckily we’d walked to the restaurant (because, outside of maybe Rhode Island, we are at the smallest beach ever), then thought it prudent (and please know that word always makes me hear Dana Carvey as George Bush Sr saying it, so it always makes me giggle) to walk a bit more before coming back to the motel. A stroll down the boardwalk sounded like just the thing to do, so off we went.

We made it across the street and two doors down before coming face-to-face with the Flag and Kite Shop. Normally, such a place wouldn’t warrant more than a passing glance from either of us, but they happened to have a sidewalk display of those little twirly pinwheel things. Well, Sam, when he was a littlelittle kid (2ish) was fascinated with fans. I mean, to the point where he could tell you what stores had what kind of fans (ceiling vs standing). We had to cut fan ads out of the Sunday paper; he’d put them carefully in a ziplock bag and carry them wherever he went and would proudly show them to anyone who dared ask what was in the bag. (We learned to put some aside for winter, because in Northern VA, at least, fans aren’t a big sale item come November.) To feed into this obsession, Mom had bought all kinds of those pinwheel thingies and put them in her backyard (we had photos of him playing with them – if I ever get my scanner working, I’ll post some of them) (because oh, God, he was cute with his blonde ringlets, crouched in front of one of them, studiously examining it). So of course, tonight, shehad to buy him one. When the clerk asked if she wanted a bag for it, Mother very carefully pronounced, “No thank you, I’ll just carry it.”

And carry it she did. All the way up 2 blocks in downtown Rehobeth Beach and onto the boardwalk. It may be a teeny beach but it certainly has its share of people out early in the evening. She took great delight in watching the thing spin and spin in the breeze; I took even greater delight watching her. She was – two words I never thought I’d ever use to describe my mother – delightful and fun.

Semi-drunkenness aside, it was a very nice day. We woke up at 6 (!) (for crying out loud, we were in bed and asleep last night by 10) and putzed around for a bit, then decided we’d drive down to Dewey Beach and walk the boardwalk there (since we’d done the Rehobeth boardwalk yesterday). Well, that was a lovely idea, until we discovered Dewey is boardwalkless. Not a problem – we drifted on down to Bethany. I made her drive by Lanis and Cherie’s house both to show it to her (it is spectacular – all wood and glass and right on a lake) and to see if they might be there (they weren’t). On our way back to the beach, we literally stumbled upon Mom’s old boss’ (Mrs. Dollymore) house – she lives in the development right across the road from Lanis and Cherie. (Everyone, hum along with me: it’s a small world after all…it’s a small world after all…) She didn’t want to drop in – she thought that’d be rude but she also thought “well, once you let them know you’re here, you have to spend time with them…”

Such a social butterfly, my mother. I come by that honest too.

So off we went to the boardwalk. It was a lovely day – perfect beach weather, a true gift in the midst of the rainiest spring since Noah’s days – sunny, a great breeze. Not too hot, not too cold. We walked the length of the boardwalk (total time: approximately 15 minutes). I wanted to go to a store I’d been to the last time I was here (with Lisa, whom I now hate, see yesterday’s – or maybe the day before’s – entry) called Japanesque, where all things are, well, Japanese (duh). She went to feed the meter (it may be a teeny beach but their parking patrol is notorious for passing out tickets) and said she’d catch up. We then had one of those classic movie cell phone moments when, while perusing earrings in the store, mine rang, and it was her, asking where I was. I tried to tell her, she tried to tell me, neither of us were getting very far so I went out on the sidewalk and looked to the left, where she would have been coming from, all the while describing exactly where I was, when she said, “Deborah, here I am, yoohoo!” Yup – she was about 5 feet away on my right.

After she indulged my trip to Asia, we started back to the car and, out of the blue, she asks, “Where is one of those old time photo places?” I’d spent a bit of time yesterday begging her to get our picture taken at one but she refused (“I’m enough of an old time photo all on my own”). I threw in the “But it’d be a great way to remember our vacation together,” but didn’t budge her. Then.

I didn’t even express surprise. I just said, “There’s on at the end of the block where we parked.” She knew this, I am sure – we walked past it on our way to the boardwalk and then to Japanesque – but I wisely let that go.

“Let me go look at it and see if it’s something I want to do. I’m not saying yes,” she cautioned, “but I’m not saying no either.”

I knew I had her.

Luckily, the woman working there was fun and filled with ideas. We decided to dress as flappers (since that was the costume Mom seemed most tickled by). We were dressed in fringed dresses (mine blue, her’s, thankfully, purple – Mom is all about the purple), feathered head gear, fishnet stockings, gloves, feathered boas, high heels, and even given props – mine was a fan, Mom’s was a revolver. To top it all off, we got garters with money tucked under them. The picture’s not fabulously photogenic of either of us, but nonetheless grand. How lovely to discover, even if it is late in her life, Mom’s fun. We got 2 copies – one for me and one to give to Daddy for Father’s Day.

We headed back to Rehobeth and found a deli for lunch (Mother’s favorite food – deli sandwiches). We hit the local music store on the way back to the hotel so I could get Annie Lennox’s just-released-today cd, then back to the room to put on our bathing suits and go bake by the pool. Mmmmmmmmmmmm sunshine is a glorious thing. We sat and watched kids play in the water (they were the only ones who could handle the arctic temperature of the water), Mom read while I listened to the new cd (poor Annie must have split with her husband because this is a cd completely filled with you-hurt-me-and-I-hate-you songs).

Post-baking, we redressed and drove to Lewes to find out about the ferry we’ll take tomorrow to Jersey. That was a thrill (read: yawn), but on our way back, we stopped and played putt-putt golf at one of those ticky-tacky beach putt-putt golf places. She, the Ultimate Lady Golfer, got excited everytime she “made a birdie!” and was most congratulatory every time I made par (which wasn’t that often).

Back here, phone calls home and to her sister, Izzy, to find out where we’ll meet in AC tomorrow, then to dinner and those pesky 2 glasses of wine.

Jesus God, she was fun.

While at dinner, after the first glass was gone and the second was waning, she told me about meeting Daddy. I knew most of the story – Daddy was a confirmed bachelor, Mother was getting ready to join the Army when her sister’s daughter became ill, so Mom went to Panama, where her brother-in-law was stationed, and Aunt Jane and Uncle Bob introduced them, they got married after 3 months and have been together now edging on 51 years (as of 7/19/03). I knew he’d been dating two other women (Elsie and Marge – about 5 years ago, out of the blue, Elsie sent Daddy a card with a piece of wax paper with her WhoreRed lipstick lip imprint on it; Mother made damned sure ol’ Elsie got a Christmas card from both of them that year) when they met, but Mom made it clear that it was her only or not her at all, so he dumped poor Elsie and Marge. While neither of them has ever confessed this, I theorize that Mother went on to tell Daddy that, if he wanted anymore than a good night kiss from her, there’d be a wedding involved. I think it’s marvelously romantic and can’t get enough of it. I asked if she knew immediately that she loved him and she said, “Oh, no. I wondered what was wrong with Jane and Bob. But he kept coming around.” She told me tonight that Daddy “had that certain…spark.” (Yes, and he still does).

I asked tonight how he proposed. She smiled and said it was on the beach, under the moonlight, and she immediately said yes. She said she was glad she did because later, he told her that if she’d said anything else, he’d’ve never asked her again.

And it dawns on me, while I write all of this, that this trip has been part of my recovery on at least 2 levels – certainly from the UCE, but also from my previous anger towards her. I’m not mad at her anymore, I’m really not. I reckon I could go so far as to say I’ve forgiven her (it makes me nervous to say that – I feel an almost uncontrollable need to look over my shoulder). While we were talking about her and Daddy and Daddy’s “spark” and how she just knew he was different than all the other boys she’d dated, she asked, “Didn’t you feel that way when you met Russell?” And sure, my immediate thought was: mother – still clueless after all these years. But it was matter-of-fact, not…I don’t know, ridiculous or annoying. Just…well, God love her.

And I did tell her tonight – “God no.”

“Then why did you marry him?”

“Well, there are years of therapy wrapped around that answer, but ok…I was 25 and single and…”

That was enough for her, evidently – she cut me off with more stuff about Daddy, which again was fine. For once, she asked questions she never tried before, and I answered truthfully. Our story didn’t come spewing forth in its sordid, stupid entirety, but that’s okay too. At least I was able to answer when asked by her.

So now I’m sober (mostly, although I’m damned glad I don’t have to drive anywhere). It’s all of 9:47 and Mother’s already asleep and I ain’t long for hitting the bed either.

I believe I’ll sleep tonight with a smile.

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V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N

June 9, 2003

Ah, Day One of My Trip With Not-The-(S)mother and so far, so good, despite the day having gotten off to a rather dubious start. It began actually right around midnight when I bid Mark g’night and wandered off to bed. I wassleepy, I was even yawning, for cryin’ out loud. I hunkered down under the blankies and picked up the book that had been fairly boring to lull me off to sleep.

After 15 or so minutes, Chelsea, my 60 lb utterly sweet but highly neurotic American Foxhound, scratched at my bedroom door. Generally, she only does the Door Scratch when she needs to go outside, and generally starts at the front door, only resorting to our doors when it’s obvious we’re not running to her with leash in hand. But I was awake, and while my book was sorta picking up, I wasn’t that absorbed that I wouldn’t’ve heard her. Besides, Sam had just taken her out no more than 30 minutes earlier.

So I opted to ignore her for the moment. See, sometimes she pulls this shit just to snuggle, and she hasn’t been allowed in my room since I upgraded comforters and pillow shams back in March. Plus, yanno, the book was getting interesting…

She scratched again, and I heard the little metal step ladder that’s been leaning against the wall outside of my bedroom for neigh on decades fall over. Oh well, I thought with a sigh, I’ll deal with that in the morning, because certainly that scared Little Miss Jumpy Nerves enough to run her back to the living room.

Then the ladder started to rattle against my door. At the same time, a clap of thunder taunted us from afar.

Well hell.

While there’s a good bit of things that scare Chelsea, thunder is the absolute worst. As Beth pointed out the first time she witnessed her reaction to a storm, the poor thing doesn’t just shake, she vibrates. And lemme tell you what a racket a vibrating 60 lb American Foxhound sounds like when huddled against a metal step ladder.

So I abandoned her ban from my room and let her in.

She glued herself against the bathroom door and vibrated and panted (always a lovely combination) (at least there was no ladder involved this time). I made a few attempts to get her to come up in the bed with me (I’d shoved the treasured comforter and pillow-shammed pillows to the space between my bed and the wall) but she was happy (relatively speaking) where she was, so I let her be.

The storm eventually wandered past, but it took almost an hour to do so. I knew better than to try to sleep with ol’ shake, rattle and pant in the room, besides, the book was definitely improving, so we both stayed put. She eventually fell asleep and I put the book down and turned out the light…

And fell immediately into Toss ‘n Turn mode.

What would this trip be like? Would we get along? Sheesh, it’s cold in here. Dammit, Chelsea’s gone from vibrating to snoring. I hope Sam’s okay while I’m gone. Wonder what happens next in this book? I can read it in the car tomorrow – probably finish it up – even though I don’t read so well in the car anymore and Mother tends to chose the moments when I pick up a book to ask a litany of questions she’s just remembered. I wonder what time it is. I really should reset the clock so it’ll quit that fucking flashing it’s been doing since the last storm. Even if setting it means it’s sure to go out again within the following 24 hours, at least I’ll know what time it is now. Do I remember how to set it? I wish she’d quit snoring. I hope I can find that cool Japanese store that Lisa and I went to the last time I was at Bethany. Too bad I hate Lisa now. I do, don’t I? Yes. She hates me, so I have to hate her in return. Bitch didn’t even call or send me a get well card after my UCE, all because I forgot her stupid birthday last year. Let’s weigh this out – forgotten birthday…ignored near-death of childhood friend…Don’t think about it. Damn that dog, I wish she’d shut up. I wonder if I should call Lanis and Cherie while I’m there? I haven’t talked to them in eons. But it’d be kinda fun to have Mother meet a very out lesbian couple. Especially since Cherie’s such a girlie-girl. I hope I win money in Atlantic City, even though I never ever do. Mannnnn my hip hurts. Ah, from bike riding, that’s right. I should probably take a Motrin, but they’re in the living room which would require turning on the light and getting out of bed, and once I do that, then sleep is just flat out over with…But boy, does it ache. Shit. I bet it’s already way past 1:00. If I don’t take a Motrin, I’ll never ever fall asleep…

So up I got, and snuck past the snoring dog into the living room where I dug through my already-packed bag to find the Motrin. I popped one, then settled back to watch Nick at Night until I got sleepy again, but wouldn’t you know they were showing frigging Three’s Company? Good Lord. I didn’t even know they showed anything other than damned Cosby reruns, but here I am, trapped in the circle of Insomnia Hell, and I have to watch goddamned Three’s Company?

So I took a shower. I rationalized that by convincing myself the warm, moist heat would help my achin’ hip plus help relax me. Which may well have worked had I not felt compelled to then blow dry my hair (so I wouldn’t wake up, once I finally did fall asleep, with wacky hair that Mother would be absolutely the first to point out).

Back to bed circa 3am, reading once again in search of relaxation. Or the end of the book, which ever came first.

Then the electricity went off. Ok, I thought, I’ll fall asleep.

Then it came back on again. Ok, back to reading.

Off again.

On again.

For a good 30 minutes, I lay prisoner to a light show.

As soon as it ended, the dog awoke. She stood, did her biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig stretch routine, then stared longingly at the bed.

Somewhere around 4:30am, we both fell asleep, curled against each other, under my old, banged up comfort quilt.

So when I woke up at 8, I thought I was good to go – I had successfully put Hell behind me and managed to sleep uninterrupted for almost 4 hours. Hell, I’d already had my shower, all I needed to do was get dressed and wait for Mother.

We didn’t leave at 9am as threatened but at a leisurely 10:05, thus granting me enough time to go to the bank and eat my morning dish of raspberry yogurt (mmmmm). I took the dog for a brief walk (she pooped in a neighbor’s front yard and I, of course, had come out sans bag, so I had to run us both back to the house to get one and get back out there to clean it up before Harold the Butthead who lives 2 doors down and inexplicably hates me, ratted me out), searched for and found my sunglasses, read more of the teetering-on-fine book, and was completely ready when Mother arrived.

She loved on the dog, who by then was totally onto me and starting to pre-vibrate. We grabbed the luggage, I shoved the key in the door and told the dog goodbye…and watched her take off like a rocket, zoom past me and out the door, down the hill, across the street, occasionally looking back with a neener neener neeeeeeeeener look.

I chased after her as best as I can post-UCE, getting close to her, only to have her dart away again. Mother stood on my front porch until I hollered, “Would you please help me???” She went in the house, grabbed a leash, and (I swear) moseyed across the street, calling, “Chel-seaaaaa” in that high-pitched quiver that she saves for special occasions.

And whaddya know, the bitch went to her. We have quite possibly found the sound that will attract dogs from near and far.

We finally left, with me a wee bit teary (what if she pulls this shit on Daddy while we’re gone? He can’t make that noise…hell, truly, only sea creatures can come close to that sound Mother puts in her voice at times of semi-crisis) and certainly leery of what in the hell we were getting ourselves into.

But – I’m pleased to report – so far, so good. Traffic wasn’t bad, the weather was beautiful, we found a nice hotel in Rehobeth (so she may not be meeting the lesbian couple but she is staying at the official gay beach), had a fabulous dinner (loads of broiled seafood) (and I discovered I kinda like flounder) (which, by the way, was the 1st fish I ever caught, down at Oregon Inlet in North Carolina, while fishing with Daddy – I cried because “someone stepped on my fish”), and only came close to sniping at each other once (when she was bored with the QVC outlet and made me leave behind unseen Birkenstocks).

Keep those fingers crossed for tomorrow, boys and girls (or Mark, since I think he’s my only reader). Let there be sunshine, good shopping, pleasant moods, and more good seafood. But most of all, right now, let there be sleep.

Night, y’all. Sweet dreams.

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I Can’t Think Of A Title, So Just Read, Dammit

June 8, 2003

Well, I’m glad to say I didn’t limp about in extreme pain yesterday after my bike riding escapades, but I will admit to a mild but noticeable case of Bike Butt. Bigger seat be damned, I still felt like I had a wedgie made out of concrete. Okay, that’s a bit severe, but it was close. Today at Target, I looked at these seat covers made out of that funny feeling gel stuff they make wrist pads out of now for use long-term computer addicts, but wasn’t sure if it was the right size for said bigger seat. Since I seemingly now live in fear, healthy or otherwise remains to be seen, of a Truly Bad Bicycle Seat Experience, I left the cover at the store. I’ll go to the real bike store and ask someone who allegedly knows something about bikes. I also really want a satchel or something like that to attach to the bike to carry my stuff in – keys, cell phone (I know, I know, but if I fall and really hurt myself, I wanna be able to reach someone who loves me who’ll take care of me. I am all about the accessories, yanno. When I bowled, I had my own ball – hot pink with “Debi” engraved in it, and the holes were drilled extra deep to accommodate my girlie nails. Please note that the highest score I ever made was 102, but I looked damned good at it. Willie and I even stole shoes from one of the alleys, because the shoes they sell legally look like friggin sneakers. You can’t bowl in sneakers! You have to wear the 2 toned shoes with the size on the backs! The only thing I was missing was an official bowling shirt but none of the thrifty stores I visited during my bowling phase sold one in a Super Large size.

But I digress. How unusual for me.

I am proud to say that I have ridden said bike more than just the 1st day of ownership – I rode it today, up and down our street for a good 20 minutes (hey – remember the UCE – 20 minutes without chest pain and/or keeling over is pretty damned good). The only reason I didn’t ride it yesterday was because it fucking RAINED again. Global warming or El Nino/Nina has thrust us into the midst of a friggin monsoon season, it seems. Either that, or this sudden end to the drought we were all whining about a mere 6 months ago is the direct result of me gloating that I’d picked a nice time of year to be out of work for an extended period of time. Pesky karma. Anyway, if fantasy-riding counted, I’d’ve ridden for miles, since I ride a lot in my head, now that I’ve bought the bike. I rode for about an hour this morning while still in bed. Not a bad way to start the day.

Sam and his boyfriend, Ryan, almost broke up on Friday. Oye, the drama. Things have been kinda bouncy – not quite rough but not smooth either – for a few weeks now. They just had their 1 year anniversary on the 4th of June, so I reckon the honeymoon period is definitely over. Anyway, Sam was alllllllll kinds of bent out of shape on Friday and fussed at Ryan during their nightly phone call (Sam is much more out going than Ryan and it’s starting to wear on him – Ryan’s a total homebody, and Sam’s the polar opposite – Saturday was Gay Pride Day in DC but Ryan didn’t want to go because he was afraid he’d get shot and was going to paint his room instead). Ryan evidently said fuck it – let’s split up. I live in the smallest house on earth, so privacy is hard to come by, but I didn’t even try not to overhear. I sat in the livingroom and listened to Sam’s end of the call from his room, waiting to see if I would be needed to do Damage Control. They made up, but he was completely wigged out about it, so we sat up and talked and I promised I’d get him out of the house on Saturday.

We wound up at the video store, given the continuation of our monsoon season (“At least Pride Day’s getting rained on too,” was his one consolation), where we rented 4 movies and bought popcorn. We came home, made chicken fajitas (God bless the George Forman grill!), pigged out and watched flicks. Our favorite was In & Out with Kevin Klein and (you just gotta love her) Joan Cusack. I’d seen it when it first came out (no pun intended) and remembered that it was funny and, well, the kid just needed funny. It was waaaaaaay idealistic at the end (suuuuuuuure the whole Midwest town’ll back up the gay schoolteacher), but all in all funny. Anyway, it was a nice day, mostly because I was able to make him feel better. I get teary when I think of our relationship and wish I’d been this comfortable with my parents when I was growing up. If I’ve done anything in this otherwise scattered existence, I raised a nice kid.

Speaking of myparents, my mother and I are risking a road trip together. We leave tomorrow (“The bus is leaving at 9am sharp!”) (that’s her, by the way, not me) and will wander up to the Delaware beaches, then to the Jersey shore, winding up in Atlantic City by Wednesday, where we’ll hook up with her 2 sisters. We’ll be back Thursday because “Traffic on Friday’s is just too awful” (her again).

Granted, Mother and I get along better now than we ever have, but our relationship is…well, difficult at times. She’s mellowed a great deal in her old age (heehee) (well, hell, she is 75), but manohman was she the perfectionist to beat all perfectionists when I was growing up. Sadly, most of my memories revolve around her criticisms of me – mostly my weight and choice of clothing – even though I know she had her good moments as well (i.e. convincing me not to drop out of college just because I’d failed Statistics: “Change your major to English – you love to read and write – and give it a semester. If you still want to drop out after that, then at least you’ll know you tried.”)…but, as will most Bad Memories, those are the ones that stick out. It took massive amounts of therapy for me to realize she is “a complicated woman” full of contradictions. She’d rant and rave at Daddy and me for not cleaning good enough (Daddy took to calling her “Sterile Charlotte”) but would wait until my Grandfather (her dad) went to bed every night before she’d pull the dishes he’d washed earlier from the cabinets and wash them herself, since he didn’t see so well after his strokes but desperately needed to feel like he was pulling his share around the house.

Always in the past, she’s turned our illnesses or injuries into inconveniences in her world. Not such a good thing for a mother whose occupation was a frigging nurse. When I broke my foot the same day Daddy had surgery for lung cancer, it was “too much for [her] to handle.” When Daddy’s prostate got annoyed after his triple bypass, she harped and whined about his catheter and the amount of time it took to care for it – and oye, the time it dared to leak!

When we told her that Russell was sick, it became a rant about what I’d done to her. I’d hurt her, I’d put her through soooooo much. She never acknowledged the idea that I might have a bad time watching my husband rot to death from AIDS. Nope, I’d caused her possible embarrassment.

She was real good at making it All About Her.

And the criticism…let me not glide over that. She always speaks her mind, even when it’s mean (“That dress makes you look 6 months pregnant”), always with the excuse that she’s “just being honest.” So, after 40+ years of all of this, I started to avoid her. Which was pretty obvious, since we live 10 minutes from each other. I only saw her when I had to, and only spoke to her when I felt like it (lemme tell you, sliced bread had a good, long run at it, but then along came Caller ID).

Over the past year or so, I’d noticed a change. Not huge, but there nonetheless and certainly noticeable. She tempered her “honesty,” would state, sans prompts, that I’d “been through a lot with Russell’s death,” and even (grudgingly at first but that was just to break the ice, evidently, because she says it now without hesitation) admitted that I was a good mother.

But when I got sick, I expected a backslide at best. Face it, she had a shoddy record. When I saw her come down the hall in the emergency room, I thought: well, here we go, the ultimate let-down.

And wouldn’t ya know, she was wonderful. She didn’t nag, bitch, whine, or moan, and let it be All About Me. When I called her at 6am from the ICU in tears because “They brought me yellow jello again and I just can’t eat it again, she went to the grocery store and brought me sugar free red and green jello. When they tried to serve me green chicken for lunch one day (I’m not kidding), she picked up the phone and called the kitchen and raised hell (and got me a normal-colored turkey sandwich). She held me when I cried and even said “I love you,” in public.

In short, she’s becoming Mom. Quite a change from when I used to call her (S)mother.

She suggested this trip a week ago when I was whining about boredom and having to cancel my New York City trip with Shelley. My immediate reaction was: oye. I still wince a little when I think about it – the potential for misery and disappointment is certainly there. But I remind myself of the recent turn of events, and the fact that my 2 favorite aunts will be hooking up with us on Wednesday (ok, really, Aunt Izzy is my favorite, and Aunt Jane’s…well, not really a favorite but certainly tolerable) and think: ok, it should be ok.

Besides, if she misbehaves, she can ride home in the trunk.

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Second Childhood? What Second Childhood??
June 6, 2003

So I bought a bike today. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, even before I got sick, but it just seemed…well, silly, I reckon. I haven’t ridden one in 30+ years, save one ridiculous attempt around 12 years ago, in my parent’s backyard when they dragged out our old bikes. We were making fun of Mother riding hers into the fence, so she challenged me to give it a shot. I took off down the hill like a rocket, fumbling with those pesky handbrakes the whole time, and finally wiped out on the lawn, much to their amusement. Since I handle the possibility of failure so well, I have conjured up this memory every time I let the gee-I’d-like-to-ride-a-bike thought flit through my brain.

But since I’ve been sick, it’s been more and more on my mind. It’s certainly a great form of exercise, yadayadyayada, but really, all I mostly think about now is how much I loved to ride when I was a kid. My first bike was a Huffy, complete with a banana seat and those absurd handlebars shaped like a loopy capital V. Funny, I don’t remember the color, blue maybe, or white. I also had a basket strapped to the center of the V to carry junk in (usually books or a stuffed animal). Mom took me to get it – we bought it at the Toys R Us on Route 7 in Fairfax (the same store where I, on separate occasions, bought my beloved set of Laura Ingalls Wilder books and left my cherished Teeny Tiny Tears doll on a shelf – my dad had to go back in and scour the store while I wailed away in the car) (my dad, being the Uber-Hero, found her laying on a lower shelf where I’d evidently put her down to examine some potential new toy) (the store, by the way, is still there). I remember the salesclerk telling us the banana-seat-V-handlebars style was “the new thing” and right on the cutting edge, sure to be popular. I don’t honestly recall any of the neighborhood kids racing out to buy one like it, but I do recall being the 1st on the block to own one.

I quickly realized how much I loved to ride. It was something I could do with friends or alone, and there were perks to both: riding with friends was fun - Ann Roudabush, Linda Reed, Scotty, sometimes Gary Watson (when he wasn’t being too big of a snob to lower himself to play with us), and later, Lisa, when she moved home from Italy – all cruising along Forest Glen, a pack of pre-teens in our glory, because riding a bike in a pack was was more fun than walking. Bike riding wasn’t meant for conversations, but instead we’d sing pop songs (“ooooooo I’m a believer, I couldn’t leave her if I tried”) (“oh my darling, knock 3 times on the ceiling if you w-a-ant me, twice on the pipe if the answer is no-o-o”) while we’d glide side-by-side down the middle of the street (because, well, there just was no traffic back then), trying to Look Cool and convincing ourselves we did. We generally stuck to the strip of the block that ran from Leo Lewis’ house, about halfway up the 1st hill, down to the Roudabush’s, where the second hill began.

But riding alone was my favorite, I think, although I may just be romanticizing the memory now. But I remember the freedom, the wind in my face, and the silence, the blessed silence that was different than the silence that was found in my room or the backyard. Bike riding silence meant no parents or grandfather to yap at me, to tell me I should be Doing Something Other Than Reading/Watching TV, How About Homework? It meant freedom from everything, just me and whatever I wanted to think about. And given my imagination, I never thought about school or boring shit like that – no sirree, I had pop stars galore wanting me, everyone from Davy Jones to Bobby Sherman to David Cassidy (and, for a confusing bit of time, Susan Dey). I was a character on many of my favorite shows (Here Come the Brides and The Partridge Family. I could be anyone doing anything I wanted.

When I rode alone, I used to run the entire street. Please understand what that entailed: I’d start at the very top of the first hill, cruise down to the flat section, between the Bochart’s house and the Roudabush’s, then sail down the rest of the hill, then swoop to the right at the bottom and follow that street all the way down to the creek.. Coming back was something of a bitch but I could make it most of the way up the lower hill before having to bail and walk.

It was the freedom, the unabashed, unadulterated freedom that I remember. It was like flying without wings.

Yesterday was probably the crankiest I’ve been since my pesky Unfortunate Cardiac Experience (UCE) (it started with attending a class called Living With Heart Failure where I was the youngest person in attendance and they all kept staring at me) (and no, that’s not my paranoia creeping into play, even my mother noticed it) and just fell to shit from there. I had my First Good Cry since all of this crap happened, only to discover I can’t even enjoy that because it makes me short of breath, so when I finished panting (which so sucks when it’s not in a good way), I lay there and thought of Things To Do To Make Me Happy. Surprisingly enough, I am tired of shopping (but I give that a week), and walking’s nice enough but pretty fucking boring after a while, especially when wallowing in a funk.

And then I remembered flying sans wings.

I also remembered crashing in my parent’s backyard but thought crash, schmash, who cares - the idea of doing something unabashedly and unadulteratedly (I don’t think that’s a word but I don’t care) free was simply too tempting. By the time I woke up this morning, I had convinced myself that it was time to buy a bike.

I went on line and researched what type of bike I should be looking for (so I wouldn’t go in clueless and come out $500.00 poorer and the confused owner of a top of the line mountain bike). I learned I wanted the appropriately named Comfort bike – built for those of us who like to fly down streets and sidewalks and only venture onto grassy areas when necessary to get from one bit of pavement to another (or to avoid hitting said pavement in an inevitable crash). I looked at the Sports Authority site because they were the only ones I knew around here that sold bikes, and found 3 models that sparked my interest: 2 by my old pal Huffy and one by some company named Mongoose (a word that always makes me smile just because it sounds so daggoned silly). I then twitched in anticipation until close to 10am, enlisted my friend Wendy to go with me (she has a bike, the same one she bought in high school, for Pete’s sake), and off we went.

They had nary a mongoose but the 2 Huffy’s were in stock. The nice, eager but not overly-so clerk dragged them both out to the center of the store so I could give them a try.

Lemme tell you: bikes are much taller than they used to be.

After a few tries, I was able to haul my leg over the frame and perch the edge of my ass up on the seat. One of the nicer features about the Comfort Bike is its larger sized seat (which my larger sized ass is certainly in need of). The seat, however, is still quite a ways away from those pedals. I quickly realized that the center of the Sports Authority was not going to be the place to practice balance, so I kept one foot safely on the floor while I bounced on the seat and examined gears and hand brakes and whatnot. The Luna won (even though the other was a prettier color) – it was the most comfortable, had more geegaws, like seat suspension and an easier gear shift thingie – and, God love it, was on sale. I also bought a helmet (that’s just damned prudent, yanno?), a lock, a water bottle, and tire pump. I did gaze longingly at the baskets but moved on. Oh – and a rack for the car, since without that, one of us would’ve had to ride the bike home (you about needed a degree in Engineering to get the f*cking thing on the car – it took Wendy and 2 employees to figure it out; I played the role of the Lovely Assistant and held Wendy’s diet Coke).

We went back to Wendy’s and, after using lunch as a brief procrastination, she got her bike, I unleashed mine from the back of the car, put it on the pavement, and pushed visions of my parent’s backyard out of my mind while I swung my leg higher than most trees to clear the thing. It took me a couple of tries, but I eventually managed to perch my ass on the nice big seat and get both feet on the pedals and made it move. Within a few minutes, I was maneuvering my way around their parking lot with only a minimal amount of wobble and nary a spill. We rode for at least 30 minutes, swooping around corners and slipping past speed bumps. For a while, we rode side by side, singing the Wicked Witch of the West’s theme song (“Da da de da de da daaaaaaaa”). The rest of the time, we just flew.

I took it out again this evening, when my parents came over to see that it really did exist. I did fine until I got to the end of our street and had to turn around – I overshot my turn and scraped the curb and – yup – fell. But I fell on the grass along the curb and didn’t get hurt at all, but did get the 1st grass stain I’ve had in probably 30+ years on the edge of my shorts.

I like flying. I’m glad I was able to remember that.

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Oh, Those Pesky Insights
June 3, 2003

I went to see Margaret Cho on stage on Sunday night. For any of you who don't know who she is (and the website I found for her don't do her justice), she's a bisexual Korean stand-up comic with a history of eating disorders. And God love her, she's chosen to channel her life via comedy rather than some weepy Movie of the Week.

She's very in-your-face and talked about how she deals with injustices and prejudice. She said one bit that I too have riffed about (but not nearly as comically as she): she said whenever she is faced with something just...well, blatantly stupid and bigoted, she is taken back to Act Up's "Silence = Death" slogan. She said she takes it a step further and believes in "Silence = Non Existence," because, by staying silent, you are essentially agreeing with whatever's being said and/or done. Her response to "Don't go there" is, "Honey, I live there; I just bought a house there!"

I sat there in the audience and thought: I wish I could be like that. I wish I could stand up my convictions and not allow wrongs to go ignored. I'm not so bad about it with people I know, or at least those I feel comfortable with (of course, as I write this, it dawns on me that my bravado with them is 99% due to the fact that, duh, we're friends, we have mostly the same opinions, and they for sure aren't bigots). And yeah, I attended the Human Rights march on Washington a million or so years ago and signed petitions and gave a few bucks to worthy organizations, but that's about as deep as it goes.

I just get so goddamned angry at injustice. I used to subscribe to The Advocate magazine, but when I realized I couldn't make it though an issue without crying, I cancelled. I can't watch movies like Boys Don't Cry or read anything more about Matthew Shepherd because it makes me want to engage in a vigilante type of justice which is really just so not me and, well, fairly hypocritical. After 9/11, I wanted to holler at anyone who would listen to me, "DO YOU SEE WHAT HATE DOES?!" because that was the mother of all hate crimes, at least on our soil.

But I don't. I'll say it to friends and even family but I feel like that's not enough. I feel like I ought to be bitching at Congress or someone with some semblance of power, yet here I sit. Angry and ineffective.

I think part of my silence is caused by a fear of anger. It feels lousy to be so mad you just want to throw a shoe at someone. But I think the true culprit, what keeps my mouth and heart zipped shut, is my fear of bringing potentially negative attention to myself. I have this insane, inane, pathological need to have everyone like me. I could examine the possible root(s) of that personality flaw until those proverbial cows come home (where the hell did that saying come from, anyway?), but I think maybe it's time to focus on change.

I could have a powerful voice, if I wanted to. I am a decent writer (when I'm not rambling onandon), and have a wicked sense of humor (really) (I promise) (when I'm not so fucking pissed off, I'll show it to you), and, as I have pondered over the past 2 days, humor can help temper fury while still Making A Point (and hopefully a difference). It's just finding the courage and the strength to speak up.

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Proof that long-term exposure to anesthesia causes run-on sentences and mad ramblings
May 31, 2003

Okay, I know they mean well, but really, if one more person feels the need to remind me about how lucky I am to have been given a second chance, well, I'll do something unpleasant, like holler or spit. And no, it's not that I disagree, not even slightly. It's just that...hmmmm...what...(evidently I haven't thought this gripe all the way through)...

Hmmmmm

Okay,so maybe I won't holler or spit so much as I'll squirm with embarrassment.

Yup, there's the ticket. I'll squirm and try to frown away my blush with a smile 'n nod as they, those poor Good Intentioned folks, state the glaringly obvious. If I had the ability to be rude, I could squirm, smile 'n nod and say: Yessiree, you betcha, not many 45 year olds have a bout with congestive heart failure, followed by a "slight" heart attack, followed by triple bypass surgery. All in the span of four days. Yet here I sit, six weeks on the other side of My Unfortunate Cardiac Experience, alive and, well, cranky.

I'm not cranky because I'm alive. Trust me on this. If My Unfortunate Cardiac Experience taught me anything, it was the overwhelming knowledge that, despite my previous beliefs of the contrary, dammit, I want to live. I'm cranky because...well, maybe that is it: I want to live. I don't want to muddle through life, mostly convinced that I'm not worthy to be here. I don't want to keep cowering behind Fear's Wall. I want to live. I want to Do Something with Me, something meaningful and important, that will make me finally happy to be alive.

It's just...well, I'm cranky because I don't know what to do with this life I've been so generously allowed to keep. The list of things I Have To Do still exis; they didn't go anywhere. I still have to (and these are in no particular order; to do so would take way too much time and thought and needless frustration):

- work for a living
- be in love
- be here, emotionally and physically, for my rapidly aging parents
- quit doing Bad Things To My Body

(And trust me when I tell you each requirement warrants its own journal entry. Not tonight, though.)

It's not that I hate my job, not by a long shot. My boss, however, is, well, a handful (again, another day's entry). Suffice it to say, for the time being, that I am usually the one who puts up with her and tries very hard to work with her while still saying my piece. We don't fight; I just don't go down without saying my piece. Now, having been away from that arena for 6 weeks and not due back for an additional 6, I am no longer willing to mess with her nonsense. At all. I don't believe saying my piece will be enough anymore but, more importantly, I don't want to have to say my piece. She's not a rational human being, lol, she really isn't. And I just don't want to suffer through her madness any longer. So I need to start looking for another job (or playing the lottery with vigor). I'd like to find a job editing, I'm good at it and it's pretty much what I do now, but there're salary concerns and benefits (I have over 6 months of banked sick leave now which allows me to glide through my Unfortunate Cardiac Experience at full pay). Plus, well, there's something about dealing with the devil you know.

I'd like to be in love. Really in love, a shared love, lol, not a one-sided ordeal. I'd like, for once, to not only have someone love me for me, but have me simultaneously love them for them. Someone I'm not settling for. I am, wait, okay, I was the Queen of Settle. I have settled with everyone I've ever had a relationship with (that wasn't a friend; I learned a long time ago not to settle with friends, I just haven't carried it over to my love life). All I need to do is lose 100 pounds (which I need to do to maintain this second chance anyway) and quit being grateful when someone says they're in love with me. It can't be one sided.

My parents are 83 (dad) and 74 (mom). Granted, they are an incredibly young 84/73 but showing signs of wear and tear. And yes, I'm an only child. For all of those who sneer at us only children and whine about how spoiled we are...well, yes, that's true, but please, feel free to comfort yourself with the knowledge that we have no one to share parental duties with. I have no siblings with whom to hold What Should We Do About Mother/Father discussions. It's just me, and lemme tell you, that's enough to weaken anyone's heart. My dad and I have a lovely relationship...I'm 45 and still Daddy's Little Girl and damned proud of it. My mother and I have a more complicated relationship. Please know that I called her "(S)mother" (behind her back, of course) for many, many years. And, while I won't inherit riches by a long shot, I will be the sole owner of Their Stuff. And oye, do they have a lot of Stuff. My dad's shed is enough to make anyone break out in hives (along with his Army memorabilia, he has crutches last used by me when I was in the 6th grade, 7 lawn mowers that don't work but are used for parts, and no fewer than 12 coffee cans filled with assorted (used, mind you) nails, screws and wingnuts). My mother has clothes and shoes she last wore when I was a tot (did you notice my current age??), all of my baby teeth (I ask her on occasion if she plans to make a necklace out of them), and stuff I don't even know about neatly filling all 7 closets in the house. We won't even think about the attic.

So I reckon that, while I'm here helping them, I can still work towards what I want to do with the rest of my life, however long I have left.

And ah, yes, the Bad Things: diabetes, high blood pressure, a cholesterol count that made more than one doctor ask,"Was your cholesterol really [fill in the blank]?" I believe I already mentioned the pesky 100 or so pounds I need to lose. Yeah, diet, exercise, diet, exercise. I'm doing it. Mostly. I'm better with the diet than the exercise. And then there are things that I can't yet mention. I just can't. No one's sorrier than I about that, but I've said at least this much, and that's waaaaaay more than I've admitted till until now.

So this second chance thing is an ever-present nuisance. I image it to be an unidentifiable thing: a blob but not an unattractive one, that definitely pulsates, hovering in front of me, waiting for me to grab it. It's not that it's even out of reach or behind some Star Trekish force field; it's right there, ripe for the plucking.

But to touch it is to own it and I just don't know what to do with it. So for the time being, there it will hover, right there, waiting for me.

And yes, dammit, I know there's a shelf life to hovering. Another 45 years of keeping life at arm's length for sure won't work this time. Besides, who the hell wants to be 90 and still wondering what to do with a second chance?

Email: dl123barnes@aol.com