Pre-Politics:CRIME STOPPERS EPISODE #8,939,247 or Life on the Other Side of the Drawbridge

TIMELY REPOST, and remembering how to conduct real political business among real common folk, who rarely hang the day in a coffee shop... and, as I take a breath to fight hypoxia, it is always good to remember Tante Louise.

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As it was a hazy, lazy day and we were in a hazy, lazy frame of mind, La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore organized a hay ride. Sometimes we have to blow this Joint, Manor that it is, and get out amongst the Common Folk.

So Fred gave up dredging the algae bloom that has beset The Moat. The bazillions of pigmented cells have decided to be red, of course, in honor of our politics. We can't, despite the well-worn furrow in our collective brow (Get it? What a rapier wit.), figure how we overnourished this vast body of water. It's not like we have fertilizer run off from "the fields" -- not us! No, we three believe in extending the fallowed nature of The Back Forty to the Entire Property. Honest to God! Hommage to Captain Haddock's Ancestral Holdings Upon Which We Squat! We've not been tossing the phosphorus around all willy-nilly. The Schmitzia hiscockiana, "small, red, and rare," must have an unusual generative source.

As I said, we pulled Fred from the waterworks, and I put aside the last-minute grading from Fall Semester 1992 (Discuss: Lucky and Pozzo, Gay or Gay?). The Feline Four got all doodied-up, which involved straw hats, berets, and breath mints. After much to-do, I was convinced to brush and puff Marmy's tail, curl Uncle Kitty Big Balls' whiskers on the left side of his face (inexplicably, they droop a good 2 inches below the whiskers on the right), trim Sammy's nails -- he suffers from terrible split ends -- and repeatedly reassure Dobby that he would not miss dinner or any substantive snacking.

You've seen nothing until you see The Castafiore decked out in her HayRide Outfit. Think, if you are able, of a sexed-up Little Orphan Annie, although I believe she might have been going for more of a decadent Shirley Temple. Think spandex, think Pepto-Bismol pink. Think ringlets, think peroxide blonde.

Resist the urge to gouge your eyes... it will pass.

We finally made it out to the beautiful, winding country roads in the environs.

We finished the afternoon in town because we needed to pick up a few items at the supermarché, those things that we get in bulk. Having a wagon handy is a rarity. Finally, we are stocked up on my 6.80388 kg containers of lowfat plain yogurt. I like to have at least four of those babies available for midnight-to-4 am snacks, as well as for yogurt emergencies.

Bianca got her bulk mineral make-up supplies:

Matte Mineral Foundation
Mineral Resurfacing Veil (Fred and I chipped in for a few extra vats)
Mineral Eye Shadows (mattes, satins, and pure pigments)
Mineral Blush and Bronzers
Glo Mineral Luminosity Face Powder (Fred and I snuck almost all of it *off* the wagon)
Natural Lip Gloss
Wholesale Kabuki Brushes (to promote that "natural" look she's famed for)

The 12 kegs of Matte Mineral Foundation, alone, tipped the wagon, so we made sure their weight was evenly distributed in a kind of Stone Henge arrangement.

We stopped for ice cream and "parked" in the shade of an elm on a nearby neighborhood road. We were, without doubt, an odd sight, a bit of chaotic rustica mucking up ordered suburbia.

Entertainment happened along within minutes. We would have killed for a video camera. A quick sketch artist, even.

A bedraggled man in his 50s, a fierce look of determination on his face, struggled by us, trying to push a HUGE widescreen television, attached to some kind of -- equally HUGE -- console, down the road. Once upon a time, it must have had tiny, tiny wheels on it.

He stopped in front of a large house, just down from the corner. It dawned on him -- you could see the lightbulb light up over his hatted head -- that he just could not push this thing all the way to wherever he was going. So he left it and went running down the street. He ducked in between two cottages and shortly thereafter he came back with a shopping cart.

Yes, he had the bright idea that he was going to put this HUGE TV/console inside this TINY shopping cart.

We were having hysterics but we also were dividing into camps -- Pro-Dood-Stealing-The-Big-Screen-TV-With-BigAss-Console versus the ever-predictable Anti-Theft Sermonizers. Sympathies shifted back and forth, with each HayRider adopting, however briefly, a fierce law-and-order stance at least once.

The Four Felines are notorious for preferring risky fun to straightlaced behavior. Go figure.

Anyway, it was like watching a cartoon character have a really bad idea -- the coyote ordering Acme products in the vain attempt to blow the roadrunner to smithereens. One cartoon balloon after another popped up over this Dear Dood's head.

By the way, it was over 95 degrees out there on the mean streets of suburban Tête de Hergé. This was one *dedicated* audio-visualphile, working without a net, working without a clue.

Finally, we regained our habitual sobriety and Fred whipped out his cellphone to call the Tête de Hergé version of 911. In Europe, the emergency phone number is often 112. Here, in our very unique area of Tête de Hergé, it often suffices to call up Tante Louise -- who is a story in and of herself.

We could see neighbors begin to peek out their windows , and a couple of people came out for an unobstructed view of the action, iced sweet-tea in hand, watching the man's progress.
This was what passed for free entertainment on that slow, hot day.

While Fred is chatting up Tante Louise, who on her end is directing all the CentDouze law enforcement, I gave a shriek. Our guy, former treasurer of his high school AV Club, manages to tip the mammoth TV over, after failing to get it safely lodged in the cart [surprise!].

He stands under his thought balloon, scratching his itchy head, while the cart slowly gathers steam and proceeds to roll down the hill. I could not calm myself and gave up trying -- hooting and hollering like the Hayride Hayseed that I am.

Apparently, by then, *everyone* in the neighborhood was watching and had called Tante Louise, who promptly put *everyone* on hold and poured herself a finger or two, so as to better survive the Crime Wave.

Back at the epicenter of the action, Our Guy sprints (about 400 meters, a straight shot out of the starting blocks) and recovers the recalcitrant cart. He drags it up the incline, back to its proper position next to the humongous television. {Il prend donc une petite pause} -- and we on the wagon break out the aftermeal mints and diaper wipes. Always bring a bin of diaper wipes on your hayrides. In these days of green, you might consider Seventh Generation's "only non-chlorine bleached cloth baby wipes."

After the short break in the action, during which Bedraggled Dood perched birdlike on the curb, a timely, helpful soul came slowly driving by (just the first of the rubberneckers) and decided to stop and assist AV-Man in the orderly theft of this TV and console. Together, they managed to *balance* the thing across the cart. The Good Samaritan got back in his truck -- in a confused sort of rush -- and drove away, shaking his head, making odd gestures in the air, talking to himself, apparently realizing -- too late -- that Our Guy was not all there and that he, a Good Samaritan, was now complicit as one-half of a crime wave.

He must have noticed the ronronnement of multiple conversations with Tante Louise, the cell phones everywhere, and concluded that exiting the scene before the cops' arrival was the better part of valor.

As previously noted, the street had a pretty serious incline going on.

We watched SumDood as he first began a fast-paced walk, then broke into an uneven trot, and finally was flat out running like a man chasing Usain Bolt. He managed to keep at least a pinky on the shopping cart, which, honoring the laws of momentum, gathered up its mass and velocity and sped downhill.

We were really sad when he finally flew out of sight.

The cops came pretty quickly and the last we heard, they were trying to match up the HUGE now-wrecked TV set with its heartbroken owners.

We turned the wagon around and began the trek back to Marlinspike Hall, not at all anxious to face the worries that doubtless were waiting for us: the red swarm of algae and the many holes left to chink in the medieval wing (and in some outbuildings -- the more ancient of the gazebos, for example).

Audio-Visual Man, wherever you are tonight, God bless.

© 2015 L. Ryan

On Rectitude

I pity you, Dear Reader.  The richness of life's tapestry around me calls up this pity, this sadness for you and what must be, by comparison, a bland and monochromatic existence.

You poor thing.

When you look out your bedroom window, you aren't gifted with the best-crack-dealer-on-the-block's cheery wave.  You don't know that the color of the day is green.

Just yesterday, it was red.  Our dealer sported red trainers, baggy jean britches -- with the fabric crotch a mere two inches superior to his knobby knees -- patched with scarlet pockets, and topped off the ensemble with one very backward baseball cap, cardinal brimmed.  His t-shirt was high tech, some sort of wicking material, and sternly black, the better to make the red shine.

The kelly green for the day does not quite work.  It's neither editorial nor a suitable fashion irony.  Let us hope his dope makes up for his design deficit.  He was working the phone, as usual, when he looked up to give me the highest five.

Back to your pitiful state, Reader Darling.  You were not greeted at your waking by the Feline Triumvirate, working together as a tight, tight trio.  Buddy the Outrageously Large Maine Coon was in charge of attacking the door and all major vocalization.  It sounded like a freaking tornado spinning out in that gaudy gilt and velvet hall. Marmy of the Fluffy Butt paced behind the other two, whipping that marvelous tail with each about-face.  It was kind of nice to hear that staccato undercurrent of her gutteral *ack*::*ack*.  That leaves the rest of the feline phenomenon in Dobby the Runt's domain. He was toe-tapping, rat-a-tat-tatting, bringing some soul to the beat they had going on.

I had shut them, and Fred, too, out.

The Spaz chose Easter Sunday to begin an all out blitz of my ragged nerve endings and my CRPS-afflicted attachments were flailing about with all the abandon of their resurrected joy.  It was hell.  It was the purist of agonies.  I kept yelling "He is Risen" out the Computer Turret windows -- more lead than glass pane.

I've declared war on my tendency to curse.  Hence, screaming "He is Risen" and, for some reason, "Ichabod Crane." For a week or two, it was "Christ in a hand basket," until Fred informed moi that that was, sniff, common.

So, anyway.

Umm.

Right!  The Easter Spaz Attack and the Eviction of All Living Beings From the Bedroom.

Fred left of his own Free Will -- to continue tossing in Christian textual pearls.  I had hobbled to the bathroom, the best bathroom in our West Wing suite, the one with the Lotus Pool.
Umm.
Right!

I wanted a space in which I could scream at will -- nothing to do with "Free Will," this screaming. It was a holler that demanded its own Appalachian valley.

When I came out, a very crooked smile pasted on my blotchy face, Fred was gone.  Along with his triple-decker sandwich and his grape soda.  La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore is on tour with her troupe's most successful staging of Faust in decades, so I didn't have her or her entourage to throw out.

There was no one but Dobby.  Ever faithful, that little one.  He may be paid under the table, though, I don't really know.  I'd like to think he loves me enough that when everyone else flees, he runs toward me, the burning building, the swaying tower about to crash into waves of toxic cinder.

That may be overstating things a bit but it's my blog, not yours.

Much of yesterday's behavior was dictated by a visit to Dr. Go-To-Guy and Super Nurse Justine.  I did not even bother complaining of rabies, of CRPS sadism, and they attributed every bit of aberrant jerking to my aberrant personality, and the usual fever and chills.

Shake, rattle, and roll, My Babies, shake, rattle, and roll.

There is a sad tendency being played out in doctors' offices throughout the world, and when we all feel better, we need to stand up and change the damn channel.  I am referring, of course, to the prevalence of CNN on waiting room televisions.  Yesterday, I fought back by bringing my copy of Mother Jones to mix in with the Smithsonians and the well-fingered, tantalizing People magazines.

I underscored my CNN protest and my central nervous system maladies by an endless commentary on the purported "news." Things the receptionist may have heard:

"Yeah?  Well, I think you're oxymoronic."

"Yeah?  Well, why aren't you reporting on the dying baby Puffins on the Maine seacoast? The tragedy of baby bird fish food that is too large for their tiny beaklettes!" 

Most of my verbiage followed the "Yeah? Well..." formula.

So, Fred, Dobby, Marmy, Buddy, and I cruised around the Metro Tête de Hergé freeway pretzel while I hummed off key at high volume.  It about killed me to be in such pain, to be spasming to beat my cacophonous band, and not to be able to talk about it, admit it, show it.  Unless that off-key humming at high volume clued in my trapped audience somehow.  The dimwits.  

The sweet dimwits.

Sven Feingold was waiting by the moat when Ruby the Honda CR-V screeched to a halt just short of its pristine waters.  The sweet dimwits fairly peeled out of the car to interrogate him on his reasons for standing guard and to escape the putrid gaseous quality of Ruby's atmosphere.  Turns out Sven was just taking a break from some Maze work -- topiary saps his strength.  He knocked off for the day and joined us all for a fish dinner I had promised to cook.  We invited the best-crack-dealer-on-the-block but he was too busy organizing lookouts and runners, much in the way we used to get up a good softball game late in the breezy afternoons of my lost youth.

Well, that didn't happen. The dinner, I mean. People lined up to beg me NOT to cook, and to "go rest." I gave most of that crowd the "Yeah? Well..." treatment.  And I went to our suite to go rest.

My legs were dancing like a hopped-up whirligig.  There were four packages from Amazon dot com awaiting my penknife's slash.  I had ordered:  4 bottles of Valerian Root that were on a kickass sale and four canvas container thingies, designed for me to "organize" my CDs and sundries, an effort to make my office even cooler a place than it already was.  

Someone at Amazon dot com has gone batshit crazy about shipping.  I always request the option that offers the fewest shipments as possible, trying to curb my large carbon footprint.  I did not request "free 2-day Prime."  So why, barely 24 hours after placing the order, did I have four large boxes to unpack.  One box held one of the stackable canvas container thingies.  One box held another of the stackable canvas container thingies and three bottles of Valerian Root.  One box held two stackable canvas container thingies, stacked.  And the last box, unbelievably, contained one bottle of Valerian Root and what looked like an entire box of green puff pastries, those Earth-friendly biodegradable supersized bubble wraps, tied together like salamis.

So, anyway.

Umm.

Right!

I hope you begin to pity yourself, as you gauge your empty days against my full and abundantly purposed time.

Having made it to this morning, it was something of a hoot to be invaded by the domestic animal family and to appreciate its loving idiosyncrasies.  Little Dobby gave me a "don't try that again" warning look and then demanded a double grooming.  That means making the perfect jug of coffee and then letting it grow cold because his tiny white belly needs brushing and bubbles blown.  The coffee ends up seeming fine and Dobby stays on his back a good while, emitting pheromones of love and peace, and mixing biscuits upside down with precious tiny paws.

"Yeah, well, His is Risen, and you can just kiss my Ichabod Crane."

Don't forget, Dear Reader, I can hear every thought you can squelch out.

Buddy watched the Dobby Double Grooming Routine, hooting softly at the appearance of the second jug of coffee being set aside to cool.  Then Buddy got That Look. He's part engineer, part artist.  He's very Leonardo. I regret naming him "Buddy." The folks at the no-kill shelter had named him "Munster," as they had given the whole Maine Coon kitten clan discovered at a local horse farm (the tiny kittens sheltered under a Budweiser Clydesdale runaway, attuned to the plight of abandoned young...) the name of a cheese.  As we witnessed the destruction of which the young Maine Coon proved capable, "Munster" began to seem more appropriate than the mundane "Buddy," even though his heartening habit of sticking right with you, no matter what (except for CRPS spasms), engendered that name. He was "our buddy," and soon responded to the word, so we let it be.  

Now I think "Bubba" might be suitable.  He has that wild look, and an indecipherable eye twinkle.

So Buddy got That Look.  He's been perturbed by the hospital bed since its arrival in January.  Never mind the problems of three cats staking out three territories on a bed this small, because when you add me to the problem, my body becomes land to which a feline must lay claim, and my body bears the bruises and scars.  The comfort provided by the bed is often offset by the aches of the cat fights over its ownership.

Buddy is the most delusional of all.  He thinks it's all his, including the pale, jerking human form that takes up most of the actual mattress area.  He understands the controls and is the only one not to flee when the bed suddenly begins to move, or the trapeze slaps gently against a metal pole.  But he cannot conquer the affliction of the bed rails. He's grown since his arrival, as you've likely gleaned, my smarty-panted Reader! There are four entries to the bed that are essentially trails around the rails. Simply avoid the suckers.  Simple enough, you'd think.  It's good enough for Dobby, though he also likes to arrive via the wheelchair parked alongside the bed.  He enjoys leaping over the rails with the verticle assistance of the power chair.  If I am behaving within parameters, he will jump and land between my feet.  If I am misbehaving, violating some Dobby protocol (failing to groom being the most likely), he plants his pointy, pokey paws right on my legs and I scream at him while he trims his toenails.  But Buddy... 

Buddy wants to make his entrances to the hospital bed by coming between the rails.  It is a small space.  Granted, he's a cat, and cats can fit into the oddest places.  This feat, however, is not about fitting into anything -- usually a box -- but about passing through something without becoming stuck in it -- usually, again, a box.  You are likely familiar with the famous Maru.  Buddy is no Maru.

This morning, the gods of engineering and Buddy's personal artistic muse smiled upon him and he found the necessary alignments and twisty turns necessary to leap between the rails without need of rescue or first aid.

It was beautiful.  

And it's now something he wants to do again and again.

He's solved his problem;  I've acquired a new issue.  For the moment it is solved by a stopgap blockage of the passage with a quilt.

Marmy, for her part, is demanding that standards be upheld.  She has fussed at me in the manner of mothers the world over, a funny thing for such a heartless queen, she who left kittens scattered willy nilly about the floor as she stalked off, the bubble over her head proclaiming, "You want milk?  Suck this!"  I reminded her of how she quit in mid-delivery when Dobby was trying to be born.  I got a "Yeah, well, *your* mama..." as retort.

She did her job.

I remember protocol.

I know what I am supposed to do, and what I'm not.

I'm trying.

For Sven, I've sketched out a few topiary fixes.  He's putting in a whole English Boxwood section memorializing Alice's Trip Down the Rabbit Hole and the Mad Hatter is driving him crazy.

For Fred, I'm preparing the aforementioned fish dinner, with fresh vegetables and a careful hand with the herbs.  I'm also taking a boat load of Baclofen, so that the filet knife and I shall be an interesting pair.

I won't bore you with the complete list of my tasks, my jobs, the things that people deserve without the pressures of all that asking and answering nonsense.  

For Mother Earth, I've but admiration and intention.  See the beauty, big and small, usual and not so usual. See the ugly, and its needs, its wonders, too.  Pick up the yellow plastic newspaper wrapper stuck on the drainage pipe. Get mad about our radiated oceans.  Save a Puffin.

I pity you, Dear Reader.  The richness of life's tapestry around me calls up this pity, this sadness for you and what must be, by comparison, a bland and monochromatic existence.

You poor thing.

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CRPS Update

I should let you, Dear Readers, know upfront that this is an update on the personal level -- although I've been doing a fair amount of reading "in the field," the reading is mostly above my head or personal interest stories.  Why share that with you when I can bitch and moan on my own?

Remember the fundamental principle here at Marlinspike Hall:  Whose blog is it, anyway?

Since life switched from our Renaissance King-sized bed to my single hospital contraption, decorated with an understated trapeze attachment in matte black, I've been in a steady decline.  Well, it's not much of a leap to needing to ask for a hospital bed to that assumption, eh?

Not that my Purple Prose Gratitude Journal is getting fat with loopy handwritten entries, but I will admit that when my body goes into spastic mode, the understated trapeze attachment softly jingles and jangles, calling up memories of one of my favorite Southern Tête de Hergé's front porches and its many gentle wind chimes. Those same spaz attacks bring waves of desire for the blueberry moonshine that also rise up in memory of that ivy-covered porch.  Ahem.

Many is the time I've sworn that it is the spasms that will one day make me paper my body with Fentanyl patches and mix up a chocolate pudding laced with lethal doses of a dozen sweet drugs.  If I did not think that a peaty single malt would make me lose the pudding, it'd replace blueberry shine as my favorite strong drink.

Ah, ha ha, just joshing.

In any event, I've now become the Manor Resident who grabs sleep where she can, and that usually is long after dawn.  This is something I intend to change, and soon, perhaps as soon as tomorrow.  Tomorrow may also see me pitching in to help the Genetically Indentured Manor Staff, as so many have taken vacation time to warmer climes.  A little vacuuming, mopping, laundry, poofing and fluffing never hurt anyone.

Fevers are up about a degree and I blame those mo'fos for my general decline.  A febrile state makes for great melodrama (Oy! I am burning up, as if in the very flames of Hell, and so on, and so forth) and laziness (Is that cat hair clinging to my electrostatic hospital bed rails?  Ew, gross.  SOMEONE should do a bit of dusting around here, damn it!).

But, fevers also are truly... tiring.  Mostly the parts where they're going up, and the parts where they're going back down.  The steady heat is not bad.  Kind of energizing, even.

CRPS is not causing the heat waves, of course, it's the untreatable osteomyelitis, perhaps a touch of lupus. And yet, CRPS so hates to be excluded, and so tends to get nasty during a persistent fever.  So it's spazspazspaz and burning neuropathic pain married to the deep ache of the bones.

I've mentioned before, or hope I have, that I employ more than a bucket load of drugs to handle these things. Heck, I got me a graduate degree at Berkeley, so you know I turn a quick eye to all that is alternative, complementary, or adjunctive therapy.  What works best is ice... until those medical sadists, the Physical Therapist Gangs, beat it into my head that cold is bad, bad, bad, wrong, wrong, wrong.  So I moved on, but how many times can you watch repeats of Downton Abbey?  So I began an incisive, lighthearted study and practice of mindfulness.

The initial forays into mindfulness for CRPS led to anaphylactic shock until my mentors made an adjustment and removed any references to the "happy place."  Once that was taken care of, it turned out to be pretty simple.

You don't run away from the pain.  Like a cat, and some dogs, you circle three times, wiggle your butt a little, and curl up smack dab in the middle of that pain.  There you stay until you're through it.  You don't speak much about it, beyond what may be necessary.  But you snuggle into it, stare at it, see it, observe it. Thank G_d, you don't analyze it (until pressured by such asshats as physicians).

For long term and unending severe pain, like mine, you mix in the occasional distraction, and that would be best defined as whatever works at the moment.  Mahjong, when played in a zen state, can be very effective. The vogue of marathon reruns of classic television might fit like a glove one day, and repulse the next. Law and Order SVU, for example, has no usefulness any longer in mindlessness/mindfulness sessions, whereas the Criminal Intent version, or the early original shows -- the variety pack -- are entertaining.

When mindless mindfulness is flat out denied by a pouting, infantile CRPS patient, that's when such an ingrate should opt for a comedy genre (literary or televised/streamed) or the infallible humor of felines.  Being fussed at by Marmy Fluffy Butt because you dared shift her tiny frame a few centimeters gets a belly laugh every time.  Dobby in a box is hysterical.  Buddy the Maine Coon cracks a person up just by facial expression. And all three have extensive nursing backgrounds.  A kitty massage is a better soporific than anything Big Pharma can dream up.

Music requires a careful touch.  The mp3 player yields mysterious tunes in shuffle mode, sometimes so eerily reflective of one's severe pain that it's simply not a decent option.  Unless, of course, you need to cry and have not been able to produce tears, either due to the constant dehydration from the constant fever, or due to the aridity of my heart.

Most of the time, though, music is a great aid to treating pain, especially in those 20-35 minute periods before the breakthrough meds kick in.  Also, when the dark is terrifying -- you know, when the threat of dawn edges into the window pane and you think: "No, not again, not another night of no sleep."  Then you must make yourself circle thrice, settle in, and call up Nina Simone and Eric Clapton, certain bits of Neil Young, ending with the Brett Dennen of around 2004.  That's this week's menu.  Last week saw more of the Decemberists, my beloved John Hartford, and the Wainwright family, Loudon, Martha, and Rufus.  I am finding great focus for my pain in Johnny Cash's American Recordings and the very sweet beginnings of Bonnie Raitt, from a very sweet album recorded in her parents' garage, with their supremely sweet jazz musician friends.  She sounds so wavery and young, so un-twangy, that knowing every bit of her later sounds is enough to make me weep.

I'm undergoing a good many variations in the CRPS experience, feeling stuff that I thought would never return, rapid cycling from red to deep purple, cold to hot, electric strikes that produce yips of howls. The everpresent, though, is what makes "suicidal ideation" something to ridicule.  The deep, deep pain, the burning bones that are somehow also ice. The "movement disorder" -- but we've covered that.

On the up-side, I have lost most of my decrepit fingernails and the regrowth seems healthier.

Where did I put that Purple Prose Gratitude Journal?

As for how it's going, breaking in my new Obamacare doctors -- last Thursday, I met the doctor who will be my Primary Care.  She put together a hasty Problem List.  I decided CRPS should top it, and so mentioned it first.

Blank look.

Okay, so I reverted to "RSD" and before I could unpack it, she said, hand waving in the air, "Oh, I know. Something Sympathetic Something."

I shot her a bright smile. "Right!"

And when they gave me their efficient printout record of our brief initial alliance, I saw that my primary problem was "CLPS." Fred giggled.

Sorry, loves, but I have to go.  I feel a need for Townes Van Zandt.  twitchtwitchtwitch.  I think I hear his clunky cowboy boots out on the Front Porch... and the gentle call of windchimes.

© 2013 L. Ryan

Enter the Cheesehead, Goo goo g' joob

This is... well, he has no name yet, except for Muenster, which we don't anticipate choosing as a permanent moniker.  Part of a litter discovered abandoned at a nearby horse farm, the rescuers gifted each kitten with the name of a cheese.

I dunno.  He's more of a Camembert, don't you think?

He is full of bad habits -- he bites (to the point of drawing blood and leaving little vampiresque punctures that hurt like the dickens);  he chews (more like a puppy than any kitten of my acquaintance);  he hisses and growls (given Marmy Fluffy Butt's aggression, understandable); and, in an apparent homage to Dobby, he climbs, and climbs, and climbs -- insisting on the highest ground.

The guess is that he is a Christmas 2010 baby, now approaching 12 weeks.  Exactly like a stubborn toddler, he plays to the point of exhaustion and then stubbornly fights sleep.  We have had a tendency to nod off while attempting to convince him of the benefits of slumber.  It's embarrassing.

The Feline Remnant is slowly coming around, although the outcome of his relationship with Our Favorite (and Only) Girl, Marmy Fluffy Butt, has yet to move beyond her active efforts to kill him.

Dobby is fascinated, pupils wide, pink nose sniffing, even taking gulps of mouth-whiffs.  It was a relief to not hear him pacing and calling all night long.

The efforts to save Uncle Kitty Big Balls, Fred's Little Boy, amounted, in dollars, to $2200.  Ouch.  But again, we made the decision, we would make the same decision today, so it is just time to pay up and thank the professionals for their hard work on his behalf.  I knew that I'd have to sell some shares of stock in order to cover the recent flooring adventure, so now I just have to dip a little deeper.  I am thinking of becoming a vegetarian again, and of giving up colas.  Cutting back on coffee.  Putting a moratorium on all non-essential purchases.  Selling my soul.

Fred is exhausted.  I just checked on him, and he's passed out, The Gnawing Cheesehead passed out with him, held close in the crook of an elbow.

He has been my stalwart companion this week, has Fred.  I don't express anywhere near often enough how much I love him -- in a daily, regular, unexciting way.  Add to that steady fondness, when he loves me through a hard time, I seem to lose all capacity to thank him, to show him how much he means, how thoroughly blessed I am.

1871 illustration by John Tenniel
Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

Wednesday afternoon, when I was doing pre-op stuff at the hospital, I kind of got swept into a back area before he got to the waiting room after parking Ruby, the Honda CRV.  It was one of a handful of times that I considered screaming his name, calling for help, for a salvation-oriented Knight of Marlinspike!

The first stumbling block was my fever.  Explaining to them that it's kinda status quo for me, that part of the point of the portacath was to make future endeavors like i.v. antibiotics that much easier... did not help the nurse's list of rules, according to which you just don't allow febrile women with high white counts to have surgery on some sort of ridiculous whim!

Then, just as I calmed that storm, she decided that I needed to be interviewed by anesthesia, even though I was just going to be sent into a twilight sleep for the very short and easy procedure. 

I am not sure that you can be a regular reader of this scintillating blog without having read at least one good rant about the events of May-June 2002, when I "acquired" CRPS during a hospitalization that was essentially a recreation of the Book of Job.  If you need a refresher, you'll find some of the details HERE.
Part of the rotten doings discovered by the State during their investigation were some problems in how the Anesthesia Department conducted itself.  I know the extent of the subsequent anger directed toward me because my pain management doctor at the time chaired that department... and chose to attack me during my next visit to him.  What he said to me was ludicrous;  The way he chose to strut his omniscient stuff, demean, misrepresent, and attempt to terrify me?  That was more criminal than ludicrous.

That is one way I know, with certainty, that St. Jo's and its doctors and nurses never really took responsibility for harnessing me with unending pain and terrible, worsening disability, for ending my career, for wiping me out financially, physically, emotionally, for probably being at the root of my current infection problems with osteomyelitis.  I know from hearing him yell and whine about how a 2-day investigation caused him and his underlings some temporary and fixable upset.

How dare I? was the essential tenor.

Shit.  Here I am, weeping again, furious, tired, so very damned defeated.

So... the rep from Anesthesia was apparently sent in to make a point.  I planned to reply honestly but as shortly as possible to any questions coming from them.  But who would start such an interview by saying this:

"So, in 2002, you came to the hospital to have your ankle repaired..."

What?  My mouth was flapping, but no noise came out.

Finally:  "Errr, no.  I came to have a shoulder replacement.  But there was a failure to supply me with stress-dosed steroids and..."

Ever so quickly, and with evident pleasure, she interrupted:  "We did supply you with appropriate steroids.  I have the order right here, and the notation that it was given..."

Still floored that we were even having this conversation, I told her I wasn't surprised, that I was sure that chart had seen numerous changes over the years...

It went on like that.  She either did not know or was coached to believe that the repair of my ankle was not a separate and elective hospitalization.  She told me "That's not so..." when I tried to explain that the ankle fractures occurred in the hospital, that I had arrived at good old St. Jo's with two good ankles, in fact.  I told her about the shoulder replacement, the code, ICU, the fall, the embolectomy, the g.i. bleed, the concussion, and finally, yes, the ankle repair -- all part and parcel of the same hospitalization.

"That's not so..."

I had a fever, of course, and was functioning on little sleep and a bit of sadness.  This was what I had feared -- being attacked while alone.  I vividly remembered that deaf nurse on that May day hissing at me... "Get up, get up.  Your leg is not broken.  Get up!" I vividly remembered my ankle hanging twisted in an unnatural way, rapidly swelling and turning purple.  I had just hit my head and my arm, was lying on the floor, alone with this strange nurse who spent most of her time without the hearing aid upon which she was dependent.  I was in ICU, had not been out of bed, much less on my feet, in over 5 days.

I vividly remembered trying to get up, trying to do what she said, trying not to make her more angry (she was quickly closing the door to my "room" as she hissed her directive to get up, get up, get up).  I remember the pain of trying to stand on that mangled foot, the terror of trying to please someone who may well have been crazy and who had control over me.

"That's not so..."

The surgeon who put in the port is a great guy and I am really glad to have had access to him.  Whether he knew "who I was" or not, I don't know.  All I cared about was getting that intravenous access to fulfill the demands of the doctor doing the ketamine infusions.  I just wanted to slip into the hospital and slip out again before triggering their memories or mine.

The surgeon was satisfied with the blood work we had done last Thursday at my Go-To-Guy's office.  We even called to make sure there was nothing else he needed, as far as pretesting, and was told that I just needed to sign some papers the day before the procedure.

I knew better.  I knew they wouldn't let my being on their campus go unchallenged.

Suddenly, I needed an EKG.  I needed more bloodwork, I needed this, I needed that.  Attempting to get out of it, I told them of our conversations with the attending surgeon.  Averting their eyes, the nurses mumbled that the orders were coming from... Anesthesia. 

I found some emotional reserve and said just one more thing before shutting down:  "All I ask is that tomorrow, when I come for surgery, you keep Dr. Steven S. away from me.  Keep him the hell away from me."

When I was finally back with Fred, who was getting worried about why this short appointment was taking so very long, it seemed the perfect thing to do... to go to the shelter to find a cat to save.

And so it was that in the midst of my ridiculousness, we adopted Muenster, The Cheesehead.

Yesterday, the day of surgery, everyone was polite, helpful, professional.  And, amazingly, most seemed not to know anything of the events of 2002.  What was also touching?  When they left my side, brow furrowed at how my history just did not seem to add up (How did all of this happen to you?  I fell down.) -- they went to read my chart.  The next time I saw them, I heard things like -- "I am so sorry you've had to go through all this..." 

It's nine years late and totally insufficient, and I was so grateful to hear it.

Uncle Kitty Big Balls (Little Boy) Did Not Survive Ketoacidosis

Little Boy, known on the street as Uncle Kitty Big Balls, passed away this afternoon.  He was 4 years old.

UKBB was a very good cat and an especially close friend to Fred. 

We are comforted by the knowledge that he was afforded, at least, his "thirty minutes of wonderful" in the course of his stay here at Marlinspike Hall.

Brother to Marmy Fluffy Butt and Uncle to Dobby the Runt, we are going to miss his devotion to family and his laid back approach to life, love, food, sleep, and play. 

I'm really glad now to have made those very amateurish videos... and wish I hadn't deleted any.

We are concerned for Dobby's wellbeing, as he spent much of the night prowling in a search for UKBB, calling and calling.  He (and we) are not really over losing Sammy yet;  This added insult is gonna be rough on The Feline Remnant of Marlinspike Hall -- even odd Marmy Fluffy Butt's universe will tilt askew for a bit.

We feel very much like we let the little guy down, and hindsight clearly shows that we should have had him at the vet last week.  Please, if your cat shows signs of illness, be proactive and get him checked out as soon as possible.  We were still piecing our various observations together when he succombed to ketoacidosis.  It happened very quickly.

Also... in honor of UKBB, be kind to the cats you may meet on the street and under your houses and cars.  He had obviously had encounters with humans who were relentlessly sadistic.  Even with Fred, he sometimes reacted from a memory of fearful, painful experience.  At some point, he was beaten about the head and face;  That he still gave us a chance to be his friends was in itself remarkable.

Living All the Ages of Man (btwn 3:48 AM and 5:26 PM)

It's 3:48 in the wee morning.

I am tired of getting up every 40 minutes, so let's pretend rested vigor and proceed with the day. Imagine an exclamation mark, if it helps.

Has anyone ever suggested that you fake it until you make it? Should that helpful advice figure among the chesnuts your friends serve up, I share your pain. It's not like someone telling you that a pinch of sugar will make your marinara sauce *pop* or even that those oversized scrub pants make your butt look... not huge, exactly... more like -- misshapen. No, it is clearly a critique of your very essence, and understand this, if nothing else: you have been found ANNOYING.

It has been a long while since I've been permitted to voice complaints around The Manor. A year and a half or so ago, Fred begged for me to suffer in silence. We were spending most of our time in hospitals and doctors' offices, infusion centers and labs. I was out of my mind with pain and infection.

Nothing has changed, except that, now uninsured, my doctors are struggling to keep me going until the advent of the Great Interim High Risk Pool, which will then enable them to toss me back into the operating room to relieve me of my shoulders and any other infected bones/hardware.

I cannot recall whether I was brave enough to set that down in this blog. Did I? I cannot remember. Anyway, that is apparently the final judgment -- since we cannot even identify, much less eradicate, this bleeping infection, the orthopedic surgeon and my internist, both, are lobbying for making me even more of a Depressed Freak.

My internist also won't let up on his contention that my right leg needs to be chopped off.

Ouch.

Ouch, I say!

These thoughts make me cry and sear my brain cells. I smell burning brain. Okay, maybe it is just the fever.

I honor Fred, and understand his need not to have to face what I must face. He will deal with things as if they are surprises sprung upon him by a maverick world. The man has more capacity for denial than anyone I've ever met. It still puzzles him to find me hunched over this laptop, sweat dripping from my matted hair (*ew*!), eyes glazed, so rosy-rosy cheeked. At his incredulous glance, I whisper: "I'm okay. It's just the fever." At my whisper, he reflexively asks: "Why do you have a fever?"

And I imagine tossing him to the Imaginary Monsters in the Real Moat.

[Apologies to Marianne Moore.*** If you love her poem (one version of which is at this post's end), her imaginary gardens with real toads, you should familiarize yourself with the publication history of it -- it's fascinating. And wonderfully instructive.]

So I confess that it is not others who shame me into faking it until I make it, but rather that it is a form of self-flagellation. Why else would I have spent an hour and a half rubbing lemon oil onto a variety of wooden tables while the rest of my country homesteaders snored in peaceful oblivion?

Four end tables, a console table, a coffee table, and a... plain old table. Our Little Idiot, Dobby the Runt, kept me company. He is the SmellMeister and insists on sniffing whatever I am involved in. I fill my HillaryClintonForPresident water bottle and he must sniff the liquid, then taste it from my finger. I do believe that one day he will save me from poison, this furry and personable little tastetesting pink nose of a cat. He smells the clothes both going into the washer and emerging from the dryer. Always well-behaved, he sniffs most everything we cook or bake, and to see him caught in a spasm of rapid eye-blinking is a fair warning that someone ought to have left out that last tablespoon of cayenne pepper.

Even whole suites of rooms away from her, Dobby goes into nose and eye spasm whenever La Bonne et Belle Bianca pops the top of a Diet Coke. There must be microscopic bubbles that travel directly to His Pinkness, as his reaction to the carbonization process borders on the pathological. Whenever flu strikes, we have to shield him from the nefarious effects of Alka-Seltzer Plus.

Anyway, if you've not been advised to stiffen your upper lip and make like tragedy is not your constant companion: Lucky you!

My penance-based life, au contraire, is founded on the mortification of this pesky flesh. I'm paid up through Early Eternity just by the simple virtues of CRPS! Actually, misguided ascetic notions of self-worth are commonly exemplified by flagellantism. I'm not kidding -- keep the thought in mind and go out among The Brethren and The Sistren. You'll see. (The World has become not much more than a Gathering of Frustrated Self-Anointed Life Coaches who, upon realizing that others are not lined up, breath bated, to hear their wisdom, opt to march in the streets, whipping themselves. Remember Perugia -- not for Amanda Knox and murder, but for its cutting-edge medieval flagellants!)

To the right is a bronze, circa 1480,
from the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, Perugia.

Another way of foisting pop behaviorism on folks is to sing out, with a smile in your voice: BEHAVE your way to success! It's a favorite among the dOCTOr Phil crowd, but probably not his most quoted, as it sometimes has only a fist-in-the-eye as a reply. My Self-Annointed and Appointed Life Coaches, all of whom have excessive time on their hands, and none of whom are sitting next to me at 4:14* in the wee of the morning, live to employ this dictum (from a distance, though).

[*There has been a brief blogging interruption as I kissed His Fredness off to bed, murmurmurmurmurmuring him into the gentle arms of his fatigue.]

Fred, my friends, is pooped. He spent much of the day pretending to be a farmer, picking vegetables and busting up clods of unrepentant clay with the steel-reinforced kevlar toe-guard and toe-cap of his cemented-construction Doctor Martens 7A43TEAK Industrial TrailBlaz safety boots.

Except for those darned boots, he passed the Look-At-Me-I'm-A-Farmer test. Hogwashers and all.

You'd probably be shocked to learn that, in addition to hanging out with the Local Fringe Element -- in our case, a bevy of Existential Feminist Lesbians (I don't care what the ladies screech, you cannot infer one term from the mere presence of another) -- Fred is a Founding Member of the Red and Anarchist Skinheads [RASH]. Another proud New York Native "fighting to win back the subculture from neo-Nazi groups."

It's the quiet druid you have to watch out for. Smile.

Fred said he did some well-timed spitting out at The Farm, and would have gladly climbed a rope suspended from the gymnasium rafters if there had been one. The urge for exertion of masculinity was nearly overwhelming but he stopped short of a chew and a spit.

Thank God. {rolling of the eyes}

So my Macho Darling and the Existential Feminist Lesbians hauled home to The Manor three kinds of beans and some lovely English cucumbers. Turn by unsuspecting turn, three EFLs and Fred sheepishly whispered in my ear that, despite an entire day exposed to manure and burlap, they were unable to identify the bean varieties. He alone, though, thinks the English cucumbers are zucchini.

What?

Oh. Nothing exotic. Yellow wax, French green, and snap pea.

I knew, somehow, when I typed "chew and spit," that it would end up biting me on the ass. A person shouldn't have to look up every dang thing just to avoid some sick unpleasantry.

Chew and spit, in my agrarian world, refers to the gross practice of chewing tobacco and the ensuing spitting out of its nasty juices in a well-controlled stream. Sometimes called chaw rosin, I became familiar with the stuff during a stint at the Gothic Wonderland, a place that owes its existence almost entirely to Mother Tobacco. Don't listen to the revisionist histories which have the Duke Endowment funded by the family's textile and energy ventures... It's all about tobacco.

[My favorite phrase in the Duke.edu bio of James Buchanan Duke describes the Dukes as "[a]rdent Republicans and sympathetic to the downtrodden"!]

I loved the colors and smells of the nasty leaf -- I even visited the fierce and weird auctions that used to be common in local curing barns, trying to decipher the alien poetry spewing from deep within the auctioneer's throat, interspersed with dashes of Christian scripture, and, some say, visitations by the Holy Ghost, as speaking in tongues was not all that uncommon.



Needless to say, I actually do have some understanding and compassion for those raised in the tobacco culture, those who did the actual culturing of the stuff. The reference to chaw rosin, to chew and spit, was a fond and innocent one. [For the record, I stopped smoking around 1994, in fits and starts. Fred? He decided to show me up by quitting... overnight. Smoking is now prohibited in The Manor, though some inviting peppered floral scents waft around on the odd summer evening.]

So would someone please tell me when, exactly, spit and chew became the buzz words for an eating disorder? Like bulimia and anorexia, it is a singular disorder, usually an obsessive compulsion. And lest you be so innocent as to think that C & S might still be a reference to some wholesale grocers or a green engineering design firm, think again. It's much more likely to refer to buccal violence against chocolate-dipped macadamia nuts with a side of whipped cream.

I am further informed that this technique is attributed to Elton John, that its unexpected down side [s:h:o:c:k] includes tooth decay, lots of time demands, and the tendency to shoplift, as it is an expensive eating disorder to maintain.

I dunno. This fake it 'til you make it, behave your way to success movement may be the key to our mutual survival. I will deny the existence of pain, sleeplessness, and disability, and others can deny the existence of calories or God.

What totally sucks? The denial game usually works.

Give it a try -- C'mon! Unless your Gender Rules prohibit, plaster a rigor-inspired grin on your face, smear some raspberry-flavored gloss on those dry lips! Carefully layer concealer under the eye and apply a bit of eyeliner to the lash line. Don't forget mascara, wear something bright to match the vibrant scleral petichiae, and punctuate all utterances with a delighted giggle. (Or, if you are writing, with LOL.)

This is all getting really old -- this emotional gumbo, this lack of sleep, the failure of my environment to pity me. Complaints about my inefficacy are pouring in, despite the make-up, the perky colors, oiled tables, and promises of three bean salads, galore.

Body dysmorphics have taken over my language, and feminist lesbians have stolen away Fred's libido.

Dobby is sniffing my fear with suspicious beady eyes.

I putz away the day, come back to this very blog post, begun after 40 minutes of sleep, 13 hours and 38 minutes ago, in hopes of returning, finally, to bed. A storm rages outside, and three of the four felines are in my clothes closet. Fred slept a proper night's sleep and is now considering a nap. (Farming is hard work.)

The Manor's various Denizens (and Mavens... Never forget the Mavens) are resolute in their message of disdain for my psychic pain. Uncle Kitty Big Balls, the sole cat to brave the storm outside the comfort of my organic cottons and angora leg warmers, announces, in no uncertain terms: *Ack*:*Ack*. I think this means, in MarmySpeak, "Take your pain medication, with a side of muscle relaxant, grab a bowl of lowfat plain yogurt, carefully doctored with aspartame and vanilla extract, put your ass on the mattress, your feet on some pillows, and reread The Once and Future King."

The three frightened cats' tails are all twitching in unison, as they mewl at moi in between syncopated ronronnement.

Yes, something makes me look up mewl. I can't be happy with what I already know, cannot even behave my way to success in the World of Words.

You probably were already familiar with MEWL and PUKE.

My online dictionary cheerfully chatters about it being a well-known "phrase," modified from mewling and puking -- which did finally start the ringing of all sorts of bells inside my poor head.

I know, you are way ahead of me, but cut me some slack, would you? I just got up, sort of, haven't had coffee yet, and eveyone here is mad at me. Mewl! Puke!

Yes, Shakespeare rang those bells, and when Shakespeare sets a bell to clanging, there's no unringing it.

It's the cheery Jaques from As You Like It who intones the well known monologue on the Ages of Man:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

— Jaques (Act II, Scene VII, lines 139-166)

Shakespeare, I see, has brought me to my untimely [melancolic] end...

Unless I choose to check out what promises to be a new toe-tapping favorite, "Sal, let me chaw your rosin some." It's the child of Gid Tanner's Skillet Lickers, and dates from roughly 1930. Tanner's country songs were called "rural drama stories," and I can't think of a more fitting genre to investigate as I go about putting my internal house in order. There's one in particular I want to find -- something about a "corn licker still."

[Spoken: Ah Riley, Lets go down to see old Sal.
See if she wants to give us a cud of
that rosin to chew on this morning.
(Riley:) All right, let's go down to that sweet gum tree and find out.
All right. We'll go down and play her a little tune called
Sal Let Me Chaw Your Rosin Some. Let's go boys.]

(Fiddle)

Jump up Jinny, jump up Joe,
You never get to heaven till you jump Jim Crow.

(Fiddle)

Cabbage in the garden, Peas in the gum,
Sal let me chaw your rosin some.

(Fiddle)

Hogs in the garden sifting sand,
Sal is in love with the hog-eyed man.

(Fiddle)

Along comes Jinny and along comes Joe,
Along comes Jinny with her apron on.

(Fiddle)

Cabbage in the garden, peas in the gum,
Sal let me chaw your rosin some.
(Fiddle)

Hogs in the garden sifting sand,
Sal is in love with the hog-eyed man.

(Fiddle)

Jump up Jinny and jump up Joe,
You never get to heaven (un)less you jump Jim Crow.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****
Well, it's been fun, but I've reached my end and will at least go assume the recommended positions for sleep. I've heard good things about them! Enjoy Marianne Moore's poem, and -- if you don't already know -- try to figure what parts she ended up resigning to footnote status, and which she kept as the primary poem. She was a card, was Marianne.

***Poetry

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all
this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf
under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that
feels a
flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician--
nor is it valid
to discriminate against 'business documents and

school-books'; all these phenomena are important. One must
make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
'literalists of
the imagination'--above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, 'imaginary gardens with real toads in them', shall
we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry.

--Marianne Moore

Thanksgiving

Lordy. I almost forgot Thanksgiving.

And *that* should wake me up, the part of me that needs to be taking the forefront -- the grateful me.

For I am grateful, deeply so.

I have been plentifully blessed --

by the gentle, loving Fred;

by the crazy and carousing Belle et Bonne Bianca Castafiore;

by the Feline Contingent;

by Brother Bob, Fearless Educator and Grader Boob;

by Brother TW, Lost and Now Found, Long Missed (indeed, TW was the figural centerpiece for my last Thanksgiving -- it now seems like forever since I did *not* know him --

currently my favorite personal illusion!);

by Lale and Adrean, Hilmi and Tina, et al;

by Mother and her struggles this year, pulling through;

by the Carolina folks in absentia, always on my mind and heart;

by Ginny, by Ramak, and yes, by memories of beloved people,

even those who might prefer to spit as I pass by,

(maybe especially those!);

by the talented and caring medicos who keep me going;

by a renewed political energy in the country and

by the hope that Barack Obama will lead us out of the morass;

and I have been blessed by an attentive, loving, and responsive God.

What I never thought would hardly matter?

Academia -- Religion -- and my Reputation

inside of each construct.

Thank you, God, for everything, for I am, in all ways, blessed.

*Oh, and I really appreciate my new pink purse -- but especially the lovely women in my life who encourage me to use it, no matter the occasion!