If the last 14 months had been a musical, the unifying refrain might've been:
"Who is taking care of yew-ew-ew-eww-eww?
Whew-ew-ew-eww-eww is taking care of you?"
Asked by itinerants, by sages, by assumptives and unknown consumptives. Asked by experienced nurses, by naive patient care technicians, and women (only women) in elevators.
I won't rerun the highlights of the last 14 months -- or the last 13 years, to be realistic. What's at issue is now, and the fact that I cannot care for myself, nor foist that responsibility on Fred, nor fulfill the many stated, unstated, embedded, encoded, shouted, whispered and extra-sensorially transmitted job requirements of the good Captain Haddock and his family's ginormous corporate expectations.
It all seemed so simple when we shot through the intra-planetary wormhole into the hot waters of the moat surrounding Marlinspike Hall, breaching the overgrowth of red algae in our miniature pink submarine like some joyous humpback whale. We were squatters. We weren't even really here!
I started the conversation last year. Precisely when, I cannot say. Circumstantially, the timing remains forever fixed: The day I had to deal with something hygienically gross, alone, when I was not alone. Having done so, and feeling somewhat empowered, I exited the bathroom (where else?) to slip on fresh cat vomit.
But I break a promise only paragraphs old -- that of not rerunning highlights, even if they never left my brain for their cinematic marathons.
Fred and I are going to have to separate, probably by year's end. He can stay here, quite well, and very happily, I hope. He's integral to the running of the place. He never thought he'd have a home, much less a freaking Manor! I need nursing care, so that will mean whatever the intervening months work together to create.
Right now, mouths are moving, but eyes are blanking out, and white coats are exiting rooms quickly. Therefore, it is good that we are meeting new white coats.
Fred is not hearing, not believing. But he must, and will, soon. I will call in other voices, and he will be shocked, perhaps fall to the floor. I will keep as many of my promises to Sweet Fred as are reasonable, and more.
Before the end of the year, there are the steps of hiring help, learning to ask for help, compromising on some things, but not others, and considering those things that are the pudding's proof that -- in the end -- we are alone.
Also, this blog needs a hell of a lot of work.
© 2015 L. Ryan
Friday, February 6, 2015
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Saint Blaise, Somewhere on the Seventh Floor Observatory, With a Papier Mâché Chalice of Prior Approval Paperwork
Marlinspike Hall sleeps around me with such intensity, precision, and natural beauty that I mistook the funky quiet for that muffled, inimitable blanket of sound that falls with heavy snow.
Turns out, it's just cold, mid-morning, and a Tête-de-Hergé National Holiday, of which there are only two, so the Genetically Indentured Domestic Staff are sleeping in arduously, as well as the Cistercian brotherhood next door (their sleep carries, let me tell you!), amplified by the trained cadence of the overly red-wined snores of their Abbot Truffatore, whom my powers of echolocation place at the second Medieval half-renovated kitchenette nearest our wing of the Manor.
The Holiday? Now, keep in mind that it's nothing to do with religion, more with husbandry, mostly of the animal sort, and veterinary medicine, light years more advanced than t'other sorts. Most vulgarly stated, however, and to keep things simple, which is how we like it, it's to celebrate, by a grand sleep-in, celebratory, mostly, of the grandest adenoids in all the land, and of the Catholic Feast Day of Saint Blaise. It all makes our kind of sense.
We lit-crit types, especially we of the bad sort, ill-trained, and sleepy, could get a dissertation out of that, then kick back at our Defense, and start an almost natural fight among our Friends There To Judge Us that could easily last the requisite three-to-fifteen hours, no bathroom breaks required.
Bad habits die easily, thank God, and now that Fred is stumbling about and phones are ringing, the better habits promise to prevail and coffee cannot be far behind. Buddy just vacated the wheel chair, after sneezing, pointedly, and with prodigious productivity, upon my joy stick, finishing his work with the careful application of a single 6-inch strand of this Marlinspike Hall Maine Coon's Serengeti counterpart's tawny mane sun-drenched fur -- still warm and redolent of the male markings of which modern veterinary science has rendered Buddy incapable. If you followed that, free parking for 2015 ManorFest!
While everyone slept, I worked.
I confirmed that the snafus Fred and I assumed to be true, were in fact, true. Call this the polite, fact gathering portion of the endeavor. Included were the more important confirmation of fax numbers and phone numbers, contact persons, hours of operations, and the names of any interesting listen-while-you-wait music.
No growling, no brains on the ceiling.
[Damn. Fred made himself coffee. But none for the gimp. You want brains on the ceiling? Now there are gonna be brains on the ceiling.]
[Double Damn with cherries on top. Fred has another luncheon date. Followed by a mission of mercy for me, so I can hardly beg for coffee. I hate Catholics. Blaise was sure gonna get coffee while they starved him to death, I betcha. Whatcha wanna bet?]
[Triple Damn and be it on Fred's Flat Head this time. Said luncheon date, which, okay, truly is a kindness and a genuine act of fellowship on his good part, not to mention that it takes place outside of this godforsaken bed and bedroom, far away from the Feline Triumvirate and the intricacies of Manor Domestic NitPickiNess... However, it's a good hour-and-a-god-damned-half away, leaving a good god-damned languid enough period of time to cafe-presse a cup of decent coffee. "But I'm going to run 'cross the drawbridge, through the snoozing carnies, up the barn loft defenses, through the hay gate, shimmy across the ropes to the computer turret, have Sven send up my coffee, and have loads of emails to get through before I have to be in town for this luncheon gig..."]
[All Damns revoked. I hear the kettle singing. A line missed by both Angelou and Whitman. Throw in each to each and it could be Eliot. But I resent the guilt out.]
Yeah, and now my detailing of my work on this Saint Blaise Day is all soiled, piggy, and dead, sour meat.
I'm trying to get the pain medication that was prescribed on 23 January 2015 filled. It's available. It's not strange. It's in my new insurance formulary. Because I did not know whom my new pain management doctor was going to be, I surely did not know that we were going to change my long-acting pain med, something I longed for, but dared not hope for (not with PF Flyers on the concrete kind of wanting, if you, Dear Reader, get my drift). So when the marvelous and tremendously overworked Dr. Ramasubbu actually wrote the prescription, without ANY records or any bona fides beyond my writhing self and half-coherent history, corroborated by what I had been able to download and print -- okay, with Sweet Fred's assistance -- well, I was... in disbelief.
She also prescribed Topamax. She permitted me to continue with my breakthrough meds though my impression was one of less-than-happiness. She made a one-month appointment.
There were many innuendos and eyebrow sentences. Had we not passed most of the larger holiday seasons, I'd have been watching for fingers placed meaningfully, tropefully, alongside various-sized noses. I had broken many rules. Ignorance, good intentions, scientistic experimentation, frugality, desperation, take your pick. I also did what Fred abhors. "Abhor" does not begin to cover it. He SLAMS poor Ruby's tender steering wheel when I launch into my tale of "how did it go with the doctor?" When I get to the part which starts, "So I told her/him the truth..." -- BAM, BAM, BAM! Poor Ruby and I cringe and go quiet for a good ten miles or so, as I listen to "Why? Why do you tell them the truth? Etc."
Anyway, the truth went well. Dr. Ram made a passing reference to being required by law to destroy the pain meds I had brought in to show her. At the time, thinking that new meds were as available as a quick stop at a nearby pharmacy, I was almost okay with that. But then some sort of libertarian me surfaced [I know!] and bombarded my brain with thoughts of: Wait a minute, I paid for those, they're mine, and I've used them as directed, of even UNDER as directed! And wait a minute, I paid for those, they're mine!
None of those thoughts exited my brain, which was good, as I was dealing with law-abiding but stern folk with whom I had not yet signed any forms, and whose eyebrows had been wriggling like crazy.
Oh, the truth? I had cut down the dose of my Fentanyl patch, from 100 mcg to 75, on the off-the-cuff but, I thought, well-considered, advise of an excellent nurse practitioner chez my last pain management provider, with those thriving Kaisers. In order to do this, I'd dug into a lovely, large and fragrant woven bag meant for Indian Basmati rice, into which I had tossed the dregs of prescriptions over the last 5-6 years. Antibiotics that were changed after the first very expensive dose. Anticonvulsants that made me insane and did nothing for neuropathic pain. Inexplicable bottles of Methadone and Baclofen, in quantities for which I am now grateful. Mostly the work of overzealous, unthinking, unsavvy doctors, though looking at the doses of some of the methadone bottles, I am thinking that guy wanted me dead. Thinking back... he almost succeeded, with the blame placed squarely on me. But he, he no longer matters! However, I may take Dr. Ram one of those [empty] bottles to explain my reticence at being put back on methadone, that and the whole experience of getting off of methadone! [ HERE are just this blog's methadone entries labelled "jump-off," when I -- w/o medical supervision or approval, took myself off all opiates in roughly a month so as to best approximate a treatment protocol that was my best shot at a cure.]
The rest of the truth? That nothing was working. I'd reached the point thought unreachable, of 10/10. Blah, blah, and blah. I think that was about it. I warned her that I'd continue to tell her the truth, comfort for either of us be darned and dratted. She preferred it so. I finally relaxed. Someone told me, "Pack up my meds, sign here, here, and, uh, here, here are your prescriptions, get dressed, make your next appointment on the way out and you are good to go! Nice to meet ya!"
Each of those things was as a marathon. But I was so happy. I was free of the greasy-haired man everyone thought so great, who loved to fold my now unfoldable hands [shut up] into his long, i-should-have-been-an-oil-painter-in-amsterdam hands, and say, "There is no hope for you, no cure, nothing is going to get better."
I packed up my meds. I signed. I tucked my new prescriptions in my pocket (after screamingly getting dressed). I made my next appointment, face dripping in ladylike perspiration (channeling my sweet stepmom), and found what's-his-name, the object of admiring stares by two babies in strollers, watching him softly snuffle-sleep, book on the belly, ignoring the educational DVD cued for their learning pleasure.
"I'm not asleep!" yelled Fred, and the girls giggled. He giggled back. Kids love Fred!
On the way down to the parking dungeon in what was called "The Tower," I spotted a pharmacy. A bright girl, head full of Merlyn and birds and stones, I cried, "Halt! Let's stop here and get these Rx filled, Mr. I-Am-Not-Asleep, Fredster!"
Great place. Small but fully equipped, being essentially in a hospital and next to a cancer treatment wing.
"Topamax? Not a problem. Seven bucks! As for the other? Didn't you check with your insurance company? It requires Prior Approval."
By then, I'd been hit with hypoglycemia as well as the pain wall. The pharmacist started her sentences speaking to me and finished speaking to Fred, who was lost, having just not-woken-up.
So I told him to run upstairs and ask them what to do. And ate pretzels. He came back, said the pharmacy should hang on to the prescription, and that Dr. Ramasubbu would fax the PA paperwork to start the approval process with the insurance. It might take as long as 7-10 days. Sounded like a plan. New plan, new docs, kinks, and so on.
Forth.
Except that yesterday, ten days later, I got up the nerve to call the pharmacy, who said they'd heard nothing.
Checked with the insurance company, who'd managed to mail order 90-day supplies of all other meds within the week, and they had no record of the prescription at all. I asked them to fax the necessary paperwork to Dr. Ram and received a crisp, "That will be done in 6 to 8 minutes, and when we receive her response, it will take us 24 to 72 hours to make our decision." I saluted from the bed.
I yam what I yam.
Marlinspike Hall slept around me with such intensity, precision, and natural beauty that I mistook the funky quiet for that muffled, inimitable blanket of sound that falls with heavy snow.
It seemed prudent to check with the hospital pain center to see if the fax was successfully received and whether anyone had had a chance to look at it. Twenty-five minutes on hold -- but fascinating music.
Bottom line. Nothing from yesterday, but a bunch of stuff from "the 18th" [of January? A Sunday?] "Could that be it?"
There's more and it was all equally time-consuming, stupid, and led nowhere. Like, Fred was to pick up CDs of imaging studies, either at building 2001 or 2045, but the "good news" was -- get this -- that at either building, it would be on the 7th floor! One tech guy was responsible for putting this video game together, but where it ended up depended on how his mind worked: did he favor the hip orthos (2001 building) or the ShoulderMan (2045 building).
No mercy, however, for the woman who thought there was comic relief in the fact that, whichever building it might be, it would definitely be on a seventh floor.
I'm gonna take a nap.
© 2015 L. Ryan
Turns out, it's just cold, mid-morning, and a Tête-de-Hergé National Holiday, of which there are only two, so the Genetically Indentured Domestic Staff are sleeping in arduously, as well as the Cistercian brotherhood next door (their sleep carries, let me tell you!), amplified by the trained cadence of the overly red-wined snores of their Abbot Truffatore, whom my powers of echolocation place at the second Medieval half-renovated kitchenette nearest our wing of the Manor.
The Holiday? Now, keep in mind that it's nothing to do with religion, more with husbandry, mostly of the animal sort, and veterinary medicine, light years more advanced than t'other sorts. Most vulgarly stated, however, and to keep things simple, which is how we like it, it's to celebrate, by a grand sleep-in, celebratory, mostly, of the grandest adenoids in all the land, and of the Catholic Feast Day of Saint Blaise. It all makes our kind of sense.
Many Catholics might remember Saint Blaise's feast day because of the Blessing of the Throats that took place on this day. Two candles are blessed, held slightly open, and pressed against the throat as the blessing is said. Saint Blaise's protection of those with throat troubles apparently comes from a legend that a boy was brought to him who had a fishbone stuck in his throat. The boy was about to die when Saint Blaise healed him.
Very few facts are known about Saint Blaise. We believe he was a bishop of Sebastea in Armenia who was martyred under the reign of Licinius in the early fourth century.
The legend of his life that sprang up in the eighth century tell us that he was born in to a rich and noble family who raised him as a Christian. After becoming a bishop, a new persecution of Christians began. He received a message from God to go into the hills to escape persecution. Men hunting in the mountains discovered a cave surrounded by wild animals who were sick. Among them Blaise walked unafraid, curing them of their illnesses. Recognizing Blaise as a bishop, they captured him to take him back for trial. On the way back, he talked a wolf into releasing a pig that belonged to a poor woman. When Blaise was sentenced to be starved to death, the woman, in gratitude, sneaked into the prison with food and candles. Finally Blaise was killed by the governor.
Blaise is the patron saint of wild animals because of his care for them and of those with throat maladies.
We lit-crit types, especially we of the bad sort, ill-trained, and sleepy, could get a dissertation out of that, then kick back at our Defense, and start an almost natural fight among our Friends There To Judge Us that could easily last the requisite three-to-fifteen hours, no bathroom breaks required.
Bad habits die easily, thank God, and now that Fred is stumbling about and phones are ringing, the better habits promise to prevail and coffee cannot be far behind. Buddy just vacated the wheel chair, after sneezing, pointedly, and with prodigious productivity, upon my joy stick, finishing his work with the careful application of a single 6-inch strand of this Marlinspike Hall Maine Coon's Serengeti counterpart's tawny mane sun-drenched fur -- still warm and redolent of the male markings of which modern veterinary science has rendered Buddy incapable. If you followed that, free parking for 2015 ManorFest!
While everyone slept, I worked.
I confirmed that the snafus Fred and I assumed to be true, were in fact, true. Call this the polite, fact gathering portion of the endeavor. Included were the more important confirmation of fax numbers and phone numbers, contact persons, hours of operations, and the names of any interesting listen-while-you-wait music.
No growling, no brains on the ceiling.
[Damn. Fred made himself coffee. But none for the gimp. You want brains on the ceiling? Now there are gonna be brains on the ceiling.]
[Double Damn with cherries on top. Fred has another luncheon date. Followed by a mission of mercy for me, so I can hardly beg for coffee. I hate Catholics. Blaise was sure gonna get coffee while they starved him to death, I betcha. Whatcha wanna bet?]
[Triple Damn and be it on Fred's Flat Head this time. Said luncheon date, which, okay, truly is a kindness and a genuine act of fellowship on his good part, not to mention that it takes place outside of this godforsaken bed and bedroom, far away from the Feline Triumvirate and the intricacies of Manor Domestic NitPickiNess... However, it's a good hour-and-a-god-damned-half away, leaving a good god-damned languid enough period of time to cafe-presse a cup of decent coffee. "But I'm going to run 'cross the drawbridge, through the snoozing carnies, up the barn loft defenses, through the hay gate, shimmy across the ropes to the computer turret, have Sven send up my coffee, and have loads of emails to get through before I have to be in town for this luncheon gig..."]
[All Damns revoked. I hear the kettle singing. A line missed by both Angelou and Whitman. Throw in each to each and it could be Eliot. But I resent the guilt out.]
Yeah, and now my detailing of my work on this Saint Blaise Day is all soiled, piggy, and dead, sour meat.
I'm trying to get the pain medication that was prescribed on 23 January 2015 filled. It's available. It's not strange. It's in my new insurance formulary. Because I did not know whom my new pain management doctor was going to be, I surely did not know that we were going to change my long-acting pain med, something I longed for, but dared not hope for (not with PF Flyers on the concrete kind of wanting, if you, Dear Reader, get my drift). So when the marvelous and tremendously overworked Dr. Ramasubbu actually wrote the prescription, without ANY records or any bona fides beyond my writhing self and half-coherent history, corroborated by what I had been able to download and print -- okay, with Sweet Fred's assistance -- well, I was... in disbelief.
She also prescribed Topamax. She permitted me to continue with my breakthrough meds though my impression was one of less-than-happiness. She made a one-month appointment.
There were many innuendos and eyebrow sentences. Had we not passed most of the larger holiday seasons, I'd have been watching for fingers placed meaningfully, tropefully, alongside various-sized noses. I had broken many rules. Ignorance, good intentions, scientistic experimentation, frugality, desperation, take your pick. I also did what Fred abhors. "Abhor" does not begin to cover it. He SLAMS poor Ruby's tender steering wheel when I launch into my tale of "how did it go with the doctor?" When I get to the part which starts, "So I told her/him the truth..." -- BAM, BAM, BAM! Poor Ruby and I cringe and go quiet for a good ten miles or so, as I listen to "Why? Why do you tell them the truth? Etc."
Anyway, the truth went well. Dr. Ram made a passing reference to being required by law to destroy the pain meds I had brought in to show her. At the time, thinking that new meds were as available as a quick stop at a nearby pharmacy, I was almost okay with that. But then some sort of libertarian me surfaced [I know!] and bombarded my brain with thoughts of: Wait a minute, I paid for those, they're mine, and I've used them as directed, of even UNDER as directed! And wait a minute, I paid for those, they're mine!
None of those thoughts exited my brain, which was good, as I was dealing with law-abiding but stern folk with whom I had not yet signed any forms, and whose eyebrows had been wriggling like crazy.
Oh, the truth? I had cut down the dose of my Fentanyl patch, from 100 mcg to 75, on the off-the-cuff but, I thought, well-considered, advise of an excellent nurse practitioner chez my last pain management provider, with those thriving Kaisers. In order to do this, I'd dug into a lovely, large and fragrant woven bag meant for Indian Basmati rice, into which I had tossed the dregs of prescriptions over the last 5-6 years. Antibiotics that were changed after the first very expensive dose. Anticonvulsants that made me insane and did nothing for neuropathic pain. Inexplicable bottles of Methadone and Baclofen, in quantities for which I am now grateful. Mostly the work of overzealous, unthinking, unsavvy doctors, though looking at the doses of some of the methadone bottles, I am thinking that guy wanted me dead. Thinking back... he almost succeeded, with the blame placed squarely on me. But he, he no longer matters! However, I may take Dr. Ram one of those [empty] bottles to explain my reticence at being put back on methadone, that and the whole experience of getting off of methadone! [ HERE are just this blog's methadone entries labelled "jump-off," when I -- w/o medical supervision or approval, took myself off all opiates in roughly a month so as to best approximate a treatment protocol that was my best shot at a cure.]
The rest of the truth? That nothing was working. I'd reached the point thought unreachable, of 10/10. Blah, blah, and blah. I think that was about it. I warned her that I'd continue to tell her the truth, comfort for either of us be darned and dratted. She preferred it so. I finally relaxed. Someone told me, "Pack up my meds, sign here, here, and, uh, here, here are your prescriptions, get dressed, make your next appointment on the way out and you are good to go! Nice to meet ya!"
Each of those things was as a marathon. But I was so happy. I was free of the greasy-haired man everyone thought so great, who loved to fold my now unfoldable hands [shut up] into his long, i-should-have-been-an-oil-painter-in-amsterdam hands, and say, "There is no hope for you, no cure, nothing is going to get better."
I packed up my meds. I signed. I tucked my new prescriptions in my pocket (after screamingly getting dressed). I made my next appointment, face dripping in ladylike perspiration (channeling my sweet stepmom), and found what's-his-name, the object of admiring stares by two babies in strollers, watching him softly snuffle-sleep, book on the belly, ignoring the educational DVD cued for their learning pleasure.
"I'm not asleep!" yelled Fred, and the girls giggled. He giggled back. Kids love Fred!
On the way down to the parking dungeon in what was called "The Tower," I spotted a pharmacy. A bright girl, head full of Merlyn and birds and stones, I cried, "Halt! Let's stop here and get these Rx filled, Mr. I-Am-Not-Asleep, Fredster!"
Great place. Small but fully equipped, being essentially in a hospital and next to a cancer treatment wing.
"Topamax? Not a problem. Seven bucks! As for the other? Didn't you check with your insurance company? It requires Prior Approval."
By then, I'd been hit with hypoglycemia as well as the pain wall. The pharmacist started her sentences speaking to me and finished speaking to Fred, who was lost, having just not-woken-up.
So I told him to run upstairs and ask them what to do. And ate pretzels. He came back, said the pharmacy should hang on to the prescription, and that Dr. Ramasubbu would fax the PA paperwork to start the approval process with the insurance. It might take as long as 7-10 days. Sounded like a plan. New plan, new docs, kinks, and so on.
Forth.
Except that yesterday, ten days later, I got up the nerve to call the pharmacy, who said they'd heard nothing.
Checked with the insurance company, who'd managed to mail order 90-day supplies of all other meds within the week, and they had no record of the prescription at all. I asked them to fax the necessary paperwork to Dr. Ram and received a crisp, "That will be done in 6 to 8 minutes, and when we receive her response, it will take us 24 to 72 hours to make our decision." I saluted from the bed.
I yam what I yam.
Marlinspike Hall slept around me with such intensity, precision, and natural beauty that I mistook the funky quiet for that muffled, inimitable blanket of sound that falls with heavy snow.
It seemed prudent to check with the hospital pain center to see if the fax was successfully received and whether anyone had had a chance to look at it. Twenty-five minutes on hold -- but fascinating music.
Bottom line. Nothing from yesterday, but a bunch of stuff from "the 18th" [of January? A Sunday?] "Could that be it?"
There's more and it was all equally time-consuming, stupid, and led nowhere. Like, Fred was to pick up CDs of imaging studies, either at building 2001 or 2045, but the "good news" was -- get this -- that at either building, it would be on the 7th floor! One tech guy was responsible for putting this video game together, but where it ended up depended on how his mind worked: did he favor the hip orthos (2001 building) or the ShoulderMan (2045 building).
No mercy, however, for the woman who thought there was comic relief in the fact that, whichever building it might be, it would definitely be on a seventh floor.
I'm gonna take a nap.
© 2015 L. Ryan
Monday, February 2, 2015
bob marley staves off the nursing home
a new appreciation for bob marley.
and for the power of the third resetting of the mp3 player, 90-minute mode.
time to leave an email for fred, wherever he may find me. the text, always determined:
loudon wainwright the third, this time. "got a ukulele." and that ain't nuthin' if not fred incarnate!
Got a ukulele now I'm not a fraidy
Cat in case I get a bout of blues
In the event I get 'em
There's no way that I'll let 'em
Bring me down no way I'll just refuse (believe me)
'Cause a ukulele's like a little baby
You cradle it in your arms and you sing
A lullaby or ditty
When you're feeling sh*tty
It will cheer you up
It's just the thing
Life should be bright and breezy
Winds could be light and easy
There's nothing hard or heavy 'bout a uke
I don't play bull fiddle
No mystery no riddle
Schleppin' that thing you look like a kook
4 strings made of nylon
Always put a smile on
Anybody's face who's feelin' blue
When your mind starts slummin'
Start a little strummin' on your uke
And you're gonna feel brand new (you gotta believe me)
Even though it's rainin'
Quit all your complainin'
Your roof's not leakin' nothin's gettin' in
This axe is a hatchet there's magic you can catch it
On your uke you can't lose you just win
Life should be bright and breezy
Winds could be light and easy
There's nothin' hard or heavy 'bout a uke
I don't play the tuba tuba's do it to ya
Just the thought of tubas makes me puke
Kind sirs and gentle ladies grab your ukuleles
I suspect by now you know my song
And the next time that I do it
Get down and get into it
I trust you all will sing and strum along (you gotta believe me)
© 2015 L. Ryan
and for the power of the third resetting of the mp3 player, 90-minute mode.
Get up, stand up! (Jah, Jah!)
Stand up for your rights! (Oh-hoo!)
Get up, stand up! (Get up, stand up!)
Don't give up the fight! (Life is your right!)
Get up, stand up! (So we can't give up the fight!)
Stand up for your rights! (Lord, Lord!)
Get up, stand up! (Keep on struggling on!)
Don't give up the fight! (Yeah!)
first, i thought, snuggling into my favorite off the shoulderless-shoulder, pea-green, perfectly worn, perfectly over-sized sweat shirt, "ah, an encouraging ode to all who are suffering, how nice. thank you, bob marley and friends. please leave the weed and accoutrements within easy reach as i flop over and rediscover this thang called sleep."
the mere thought of movement brought it home. the upper reaches of my bladder were banging against the flabby flab of the empty trough of my stomach pouch. we shall not mention the crunch:crunch:scream:scream from ankles:knees:hips:shoulders and overall joy of awakening.
so we took on the song as mantle, girded the loins, wherever they might be, interpolated a few verses of our own, scattering cats like no body's bidness, used the cane while still wearing our fuzzy blue hand splints (complete with nubs-between-the-knuckles-resembling-nuttin'-better-than-blue-fuzzy-TITS).
ever grip a slick cane handle with a hand predominantly filled with fuzzy blue hand splints and titty knuckles?
singing "get up, stand up, leave the mary-ju-wanna on the bedside table, woodja, bobby marley?" à très haute voix, losing the battle to keep your pants up along the way? ah, it was a woodcut in the making.
oh, listen! the rascal is back! "buffalo soldier"!
Dreadie, woy yoy yoy, woy yoy-yoy yoy,
Woy yoy yoy yoy, yoy yoy-yoy yoy!
Woy yoy yoy, woy yoy-yoy yoy,
Woy yoy yoy yoy, yoy yoy-yoy yoy!
Buffalo Soldier troddin' through the land, wo-ho-ooh!
Said he wanna ran, then you wanna hand,
Troddin' through the land, yea-hea, yea-ea.
anyway, i did not fall down, not on the way, not on the way back. technically, i am not back yet, having stopped to see what bob marley et al left me on the bedside table. not one blessèd leaf, not one blessèd seed. i haven't had any blessèd pot since 1992.
i landed with the left hanche perched daintily mid-mattress, the right (of the magically disappearing femur) propped by -- get this, GET THIS! -- a large blob of a right foot covered by a SOCK, by a SOCKsockSOCKsock planted on what appears to be a natural seagrass rug next to an inordinately large, loving, very worried, inordinately large, very sweet maine coone cat. remind me to do something sweet for that animal.
but bless the marley for waking me, stirringly, with a universal song. otherwise, i might have decided today was the day to cave, to say, "YES, put me in the nursing home, but not before i piss in the bed, not before i color mine hair blue, and hit the local spy store for ingenious kitsch into which nanny-cams may be inserted, the first objets d'art to be stolen by my new 'caretakers,' juicy fruit poppers all. their goodness, the new 'caretakers'? i bet they know where to score a joint, in exchange for my blessèd great aunt booboo's brooch from liberated northeastern indonesia."
time to leave an email for fred, wherever he may find me. the text, always determined:
another night, gone, hallelujah!i know you've a Haddock Corporation luncheon today of great height proportions.
however, before you leave, and no matter how you assess my consciousness, please prepare one cafe-presse café, generous with the café, steeped to the 7-minute mark (or 9, your call), served with a hearty-textured -- but not soured -- milk.
make sure i am awake, tell me you love me, make sure i tell you the same, have a wonderfully productive lunch. if the captain shows up, drag his ass home and i'll do something with that organic pumpkin goodness.
i do love you so. you saved my life last night, telling me and dobby stories in the dark, talking tanzania, barney rubble, the galiban, and why, despite your (and my) absolute capacity to do it, some poems simply defied the form of the villanelle. you also did laundry, and stretches.
remember: no matter whether i appear to be asleep or not, i am not, and need you, and that coffee, and need you, and need you, and need you. and the captain, or dr. jean, or even kitty, achoo, eschew, bring her home. i can do a post-working lunch.
i can. i can do anything. just ask bob marley.
just for you, my friends, as i enjoyed a brief pass out, and another hearty wake-up by my colleague-in-music, the mp3 player, with twinkle-eyed marmy and dobby, each aside me, buddy now asleep on the wheelchair, ears swiveling suspiciously.drive carefully, for i do love you so.
loudon wainwright the third, this time. "got a ukulele." and that ain't nuthin' if not fred incarnate!
Got a ukulele now I'm not a fraidy
Cat in case I get a bout of blues
In the event I get 'em
There's no way that I'll let 'em
Bring me down no way I'll just refuse (believe me)
'Cause a ukulele's like a little baby
You cradle it in your arms and you sing
A lullaby or ditty
When you're feeling sh*tty
It will cheer you up
It's just the thing
Life should be bright and breezy
Winds could be light and easy
There's nothing hard or heavy 'bout a uke
I don't play bull fiddle
No mystery no riddle
Schleppin' that thing you look like a kook
4 strings made of nylon
Always put a smile on
Anybody's face who's feelin' blue
When your mind starts slummin'
Start a little strummin' on your uke
And you're gonna feel brand new (you gotta believe me)
Even though it's rainin'
Quit all your complainin'
Your roof's not leakin' nothin's gettin' in
This axe is a hatchet there's magic you can catch it
On your uke you can't lose you just win
Life should be bright and breezy
Winds could be light and easy
There's nothin' hard or heavy 'bout a uke
I don't play the tuba tuba's do it to ya
Just the thought of tubas makes me puke
Kind sirs and gentle ladies grab your ukuleles
I suspect by now you know my song
And the next time that I do it
Get down and get into it
I trust you all will sing and strum along (you gotta believe me)
© 2015 L. Ryan
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Follow the Reader!
Tuesday, April 22, 2014, I gave you, "On Rectitude." This past month, you've searched it out, not for its scintillating images, or original fonts, but for its something-else-èd-ness. To the point where "On Rectitude" climbed to first among non-CRPS Serious Schtuff. I'm having problems typing or being in any way handy, so it's a pleasure to discover the odd things others like. Or are laughing at. Laughter is good, too. So we're following you, wincing as need be. Good exercise.
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.
© 2015 L. Ryan
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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!
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.
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.
© 2015 L. Ryan
Friday, January 30, 2015
Retired Educator, Mocked Poetess
REPOST: Because. First published 11 April 2013.
I promised poetry but did not deliver. You don't understand the trepidation of letting this tender, soft-hearted part of myself be open to ridicule, taunting, and satire! How the Genetically Indentured Manor Staff thrills at responding to my meekest requests with muttered, "Yeah? Why don't you go write a poem about it?"
Even Fred can get nasty. I showed him one of my best works and he said, "This is why you couldn't help weed the miniature Wimbledon courts? This is what kept you from leading group therapy for the Crackhead Carnies holed up in the barn? THIS is why you couldn't be bothered to cook for my Wednesday night dinner with the Militant Existentialist Lesbian Feminists? And it doesn't even make sense!"
The Castafiore has been my only support. "Ze poésie, cara mia, it is an art and for ze art, we give our all, we give tout! We give ze everything! Are you going to wear ze rouge pencil skirt and ze frilly white blouse of laces cut down to ze navel of you to ze très extraordinaire mass ce soir? But then, it is ze soir when ze muse appears, no, so I, la Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore, can wear ze clothings before ze good Abbot Truffatore, n'est-ce pas? We will pray for ze poésie, for ze breast titty of ze muse to land in your head..."
Abbot Truffatore and Bianca have been meeting for private prayer and, judging from his sweaty red face and mismatched buttons when he leaves, heavy monk boots in hand, some athletic catechism review. Tonight, he is leading a special mass for the Saint Day of Gemma Galgani, on whom he's had a crush for the last thirty years, and Bianca has become a green-eyed and now red pencil skirted demon with a deep v-neck lacy frill top. She may not break out in stigmata every Thursday, but everything else about my girl is so totally venerable and serene.
© 2015 L. Ryan
I promised poetry but did not deliver. You don't understand the trepidation of letting this tender, soft-hearted part of myself be open to ridicule, taunting, and satire! How the Genetically Indentured Manor Staff thrills at responding to my meekest requests with muttered, "Yeah? Why don't you go write a poem about it?"
Even Fred can get nasty. I showed him one of my best works and he said, "This is why you couldn't help weed the miniature Wimbledon courts? This is what kept you from leading group therapy for the Crackhead Carnies holed up in the barn? THIS is why you couldn't be bothered to cook for my Wednesday night dinner with the Militant Existentialist Lesbian Feminists? And it doesn't even make sense!"
The Castafiore has been my only support. "Ze poésie, cara mia, it is an art and for ze art, we give our all, we give tout! We give ze everything! Are you going to wear ze rouge pencil skirt and ze frilly white blouse of laces cut down to ze navel of you to ze très extraordinaire mass ce soir? But then, it is ze soir when ze muse appears, no, so I, la Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore, can wear ze clothings before ze good Abbot Truffatore, n'est-ce pas? We will pray for ze poésie, for ze breast titty of ze muse to land in your head..."
Abbot Truffatore and Bianca have been meeting for private prayer and, judging from his sweaty red face and mismatched buttons when he leaves, heavy monk boots in hand, some athletic catechism review. Tonight, he is leading a special mass for the Saint Day of Gemma Galgani, on whom he's had a crush for the last thirty years, and Bianca has become a green-eyed and now red pencil skirted demon with a deep v-neck lacy frill top. She may not break out in stigmata every Thursday, but everything else about my girl is so totally venerable and serene.
 |
| St. Gemma Galgani |
I shall take a page from good Gemma Galgani's book and suffer the jealousies and pettiness thrown at me over my blessed poetry and suffer these "heartaches in reparation, remembering that Our Lord Himself had been misunderstood and ridiculed."
Ahem. Cough. My first selection is a cute little ditty, meant to liven up the day and inspire all with my usual inimitable hope and optimism. Do not be alarmed if you are so moved as to be unable to speak after the first dozen readings or so. This is a perfectly natural response to poetry of this caliber. Like good Saint Gemma Galgani, you may experience ecstacies and raptures, but be calm. It passes.
Final Cut
there is sand between my eye and lid
from crying over nothing, one more dead kid,
pain here, pain there, poor me, while she
becomes green algae.
my legs that just ought to go,
says the do-it-yourself amputation pro,
prod, poke, ponder: it provokes familiar argument,
the age old problem, that old saw.
both legs are off, okay and fine,
and then one arm, a kinder line,
but there's no one for the coup de grâce,
no one to take the last arm off.
-- by Retired Educator, Mocked Poetess
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Raif Badawi: Fitness for Flogging
 |
| photo credit |
BMJ 2015; 350 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h492 (Published 27 January 2015)
Doctors should refuse to assess Saudi blogger’s fitness for flogging, human rights group says
by Sophie Arie
Doctors are playing a key part in the punishment by flogging of a blogger who has angered authorities in Saudi Arabia, and they should refuse to be involved, says the US based group Physicians for Human Rights.
The blogger Raif Badawi, whose Liberal Saudi Network promoted online debate about religion and politics, was convicted last year to 10 years in prison and 1000 lashes for “insulting Islam.” He was to be caned in sessions of 50 lashes each, with at least a week between each sessions. He was flogged, in public, on 9 January, …
Sophie Arie is a journalist based in London. She has worked as a correspondent for The Guardian, The Observer and the Daily Telegraph in Latin America and Europe and as a commissioning editor for Monocle magazine and The Daily Telegraph in London. She regularly covers international health stories for the British Medical Journal.
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Five ways you can help Raif Badawi -- from LiveWire, Amnesty International's global human rights blog
© 2015 L. Ryan
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Mise en Place: Cream of Tomato Soup, Earlobes, Jesus
REPOST: Because this has been unexpectedly at the top of the "most requested" for the past week. Because some of us are waking to intemperate conditions these days. Because living does come down to a "mise en place," sometimes. Because nothing beats a hot tomato soup in winter (or a perfectly spiced, lovingly fresh gazpacho in summer). Because I imagine, but no longer witness, people without homes continuing to drop ears into perfectly good soups, chilis, stews, and consommés. Because I do this in remembrance of Joe.
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Some people hate these frigid mornings. Some open their eyes and calculate the range of possibilities for their next heating bill. Some wake under blankets heavy and sodden-frozen in odd, crunchy forms, because of sheeting rain chased by freezing temps instead of downy-dry, insulating layers of pillowed snow.
There are homes equipped with Designated Heater-Uppers. This is an ancient, time-honored, familial system, in which one soul, long-johned and night-capped, flees the warmth of quilt piles and warm beloved bodies and their blessed curvatures, to ignite a furnace, put flame to waiting kindling, twigs, and smallish logs, or maybe just to flick a switch on a thermostat.
The Designated Heater-Upper, depending on fortitude and genetics, may enjoy these quiet shivers of time and proceed to brew coffee for the less courageous, and whatever modern form of quick but hearty sustenance serves as the algebraic variable for gruel. Other Designates may race back to the bed and reclaim their spot of warmth, mingling icy toes with toasty ones, nuggling to beat the band. But usually, giggles and whispers set in, and there's no denying the day's begun.
Those many years ago when Fred and I helped out at a rare neighborhood-nestled shelter for homeless men (who were either actively ill or disabled, or both), me as an ardent volunteer, he as a paid worker who did miracles with very little money and exuberant donations to produce hot and [usually] healthy meals for 30-35 hungry men, twice a day -- we learned some survival tips we pray never to need. Oddly enough, I realized years later, in the swirling cyclonic mess of a medical crisis, that all of these "staying alive" guidelines depend on some version of a mise en place. Whether it's an encounter with a rousting cop, the intricacies of getting dressed, or a traditional coq au vin (if you have enough rooster, blood, and time), a well-ordered preparation is key.
We did not help much, in any lasting sense, at the shelter, since we always knew... well, I cannot bring myself to say it, or even describe it. Jesus said it. I don't know that he was the first, but he said it, and pretty well, too. Fred kept bodies and souls alive with calories, fed the jonesing junkies the sugary cereals, supplied those men with AIDS plenty of Sustacal, and turned water into wine with one hand tied behind his back, ready for any surprise. Like the volunteers from Outta Town Church, who promised to bring dinner -- and did, in the form of several huge chunks of fresh venison left on the steps, kinda wrapped in plastic and stuffed in a paper bag.
"Jesus said it." You know what Jesus said, and if you don't, you say some version of it yourself from time to time, when glancing about, summing things up, giving the state of things a good ponder. It hits you, suddenly, that some things never change. And that the "why" of it doesn't matter.
Anyway -- that brilliant segue -- those most experienced in surviving the rigors of cold weather advise that, for the best odds of waking up at all after sleeping exposed to the elements, layers are the way to go, especially layers of mostly unread newspapers, mixed according to some complex algorithm with softer, well-crinkled, seriously perused pages of the Journal or the Constitution or the Times. We knew a guy who collected styrofoam coffee cups throughout the day, then undid them, discarding the bottoms, for use as superb insulation, combined with newsprint, and his three, four, or five piece suits, and whatever blanket he could beg or borrow. Joe did not much like sleeping inside, especially with rows of other men, their snores, snuffles, and sniffles, their various stinks, stories, and woes.
Of course, Joe may not be the best example. I watched one of his ear lobes fall off, from frostbite, as we ate the first course of one of Fred's dinners on a cold evening -- a cream of tomato soup.
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ADDENDUM, 25 JANUARY 2015 * This is a picture of Joe, taken by the talented C. Hinkle. Joe's story is a tragic one, that any editor with a decent heart and a bit of will might have altered, but that might have ruined the tale's attractive, romantic (and monetized) edge. He was, I believe, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia while in college. He grew up in the neighborhood where the shelter I refer to is located, and after the death of his parents/diaspora of his family, became something of the suburban, white, intelligent, talented, mentally ill, moderately-annoying, homeless man poster child for progressive church outreach programs in the area. As Ed Loring said at Joe's Memorial Service, where many a chuckle-cum-tear was produced after many a Joe Story, "We ought to be ashamed of ourselves..."
A less fun Joe, likely overweight due to side effects of medications, probably choosier of acquaintances and of neighborhoods, perhaps employed, perhaps not, perhaps in a group home, perhaps in an apartment, perhaps in a nice home, with a wife, a partner, children. Perhaps a riotous Joe, set free? Joe on Joe's terms, not on the terms of newsletter/small grant-writing organizations plugging holes and doing legitimate good work based on Jesus' solid statistics. All it would have taken is one or several brave interventionists to commit Joe, keep him on meds, force him into the mental health system. It could have happened. In this best of all possible worlds.
© 2015 L. Ryan
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Cats Trump Writer's Block
NOTE: A just discovered gem buried in the Drafts folder, dated 8 August 2012, 10:27 AM, Tête de Hergé Super Standard Time. The "gem" is not the writing, but the cat photography. I think this blog has been entirely too grim of late, so a CAT POST is just the thing. And since I don't feel much like posting today, or perhaps ever again, finding something that claims to have broken through "Writer's Block" is terrifically helpful to the me of today, 21 January 2015. And it's a darned shame that Tante Louise's video cameo appearance didn't make it to the page -- but she is surely getting all things aligned in Heaven (which is, as Townes Van Zandt reminds us, "where you find it."). And I do also miss the original Crack Whore Organic Pig Farmer Lady, taken down by the Fugitive Squad/Aunt Louise. An unfortunate, but historic, Community Event. Memories are slippery things!
Enjoy this serendipitous break from an Excessively Somber Period of Blogging!
So, when I made the masterpiece of a video about flushing PICC lines, the astute observer will have noticed that I dropped the recording device into a sink full of nice, hot soapy water. Cleanliness, godliness!
I don't have much money. I'm poor, in fact. Not entitlement poor, more like, receiving 60% of my 2000 salary with no adjustment for cost-of-living or any inflationary trickeroos poor -- and using that money to support a household, pay a caretaker, fork out over $15,000 on health care (with insurance, even the blessed PCIP), and all the usual -- maintaining the sexiness of Ruby the Honda CRV, and keeping her legal, paying the mortgage, and having every animal in our care up to date in shots and vet exams. Hell, the year of Little Boy (Uncle Kitty Big Balls), because of Fred's deep love for him, we payed close to $5,000 trying to save the dear soul's life. I have to say, though, that had the vet involved been a better vet. a more honest vet, we might have stopped torturing him several thousand dollars earlier.
Lest you scoff at my "I'm poor" by pointing your pointy finger at my list of financial accomplishments, I should add that I never eat out, haven't been to a movie theatre, much less La Scala, in over a decade, and some claim that "generic" is my middle name.
Also, I make my money grow by playing the market.
That's right. The socialist owns GOOG [but the rest of her portfolio is so deep in risk that she ain't revealing anything more, lest your mere scoffery turn to disgust].
Anyway, this is my way of explaining that I bought a new video camera. It was a deal, a steal, and a good choice according to Fred's Bible, Consumer Reports, Tête de Hergé edition. There was much ado about how easy it is to use, though I admit there was not a specific warranty of ease of use when the photog has one good hand, and a fumbling one, at that.
So far it is defeating me. I don't get the zillions of icons offered on the LED screen. Just tap! It's easy! Without proof that one of those symbols won't launch an ICBM, I cannot willy-nilly start choosing picto-signifiers. I have a conscience.
But this morning, which came too early, I thought I would at least try to take some still photos. And then show them, describe them, say things, any things, to help destroy the iron bars behind which I pretend this writer is penned, blocked.
So... like many of my kind, after I inject myself with a few drugs, take 7 pills, go pee,and climb into the wheelchair, my first act of the day is to make coffee. As you ought to know, we harbor three cats in our wing of Marlinspike Hall -- Captain Haddock issued orders that they no longer are free-ranging throughout the Manor, what with the claw-sharpening activity in the Tapestry Alcoves and all: Marmy Fluffy Butt, Dobby (her son, the runt), and Buddy the Freakishly Large Kitten (no one told us he was a Maine Coon).
These three insert themselves boldly, and sometimes rudely, into the coffee-making plan by performing intricate death-defying patterns around the wheels of this power chair. "Feed us, feed us, feed us," they chant.
At which point the absurdity begins. I manage to get three bowls filled with fresh and tasty kibble and on the floor, in the required layout. Marmy will only eat out of the red plastic bowl; Dobby and Buddy prefer the metal bowls, but then purposefully set out to eat from each receptacle. The two water bowls must frame the three food bowls like parentheses. Change that and one of them will make the subtle point of their dissatisfaction by, for example, eating with one paw in one water bowl, and filling the other water bowl with half-chewed bits of kibble.
But, finally, coffee.
Oh, here is a picture of my new kettle. I broke my café press a few weeks ago. Might have been the same day I killed the video camera. So I dug out one of our many Melitta drip cones and went back to that most honest form of coffee-making. In the process, I noticed that my Paul Revere kettle was leaking. As in, the solder was breaking down, the seams were separating. So I went online to my new favorite pastime -- FAB -- the rule in force being "no purchases allowed, because you are poor, no matter how well GOOG is doing."
But they had this kettle, and it was cute, and it was on sale, and it is now on my stove (in our private kitchenette, as it is hardly appropriate for the more demanding heat requirements of, say, the Medieval Kitchens).
If confession is truly good for the soul: I also bought some stationary. I have a weakness for good stationary, and may be the last person on Earth to continue to send handwritten letters and cards, delivered to brick-and-mortar, or daub-and-wattle, or hand-chinked stone domiciles.
Okay, so... it's heavy, the kettle. I have already poured boiling water onto my lap, neatly missing the Melitta cone, because I couldn't hold the lovely shiny red thing up high enough to pour the water in over something not made of my flesh, like the counter. But I will figure it out. This morning, I put my coffee-making stuff in the sink, reducing the height requirement of the kettle heft. [You will either understand that last sentence or you won't. I can't help you.]
The video camera, when plugged into the limping-along computer, has lovely edit functions for my visual artistry. Unfortunately, the red of the kettle was lost in the necessity to tone down the severely dominating whiteness of the stove top's enamel, even the whitey glare of the pitcher and old cookie jar that hold my cooking utensils.
The red, the red, it is not right.
Okay, so the cats are fed. The coffee is made and, if necessary, burn balm applied to my upper thighs.
I turn the wheelchair in the direction of early morning television news, the computer, and a bed into which I can dive when pain spikes.
Dobby always disappears about five minutes before I make my slow journey to the bedroom -- slow because I'll be damned if any more coffee is leaving the mug, unless headed for my caffeine-starved self.
The photo at the top of this post? That's what I find waiting for me on the bed -- without fail, and thankfully so, for it makes me smile like no body's business. Dobby, laid out, and ready for his requisite ten minutes of loving.
He wants, first, a fierce belly rub, then a sensual ear massage, easy on the right one. He then finds the comb and brush dedicated to his use, and his use alone, and knocks them on the floor. Why we have to go through this particular part of the ritual, I dunno, but I don't change things because he's cute when he tries to get tough.
The grooming begins in earnest, and lasts as long as my right arm can wield the brush and comb.
After ten minutes, usually, of attention, Dobby is faced with three options:
Note Marmy sneaking in behind him, and actually eating out of a metal bowl and not her beloved red plastic thang. Buddy has become her pal, for which we're very thankful, as he's the only living organism in Marlinspike Hall who can successfully defend against the swift application of her claws, or achieve the speed of light. The two of them love to vocalize, and they streak by in blurs that even make Dobby look perplexed.
© 2015 L. Ryan
Enjoy this serendipitous break from an Excessively Somber Period of Blogging!
***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****
 |
| Dobby |
I don't have much money. I'm poor, in fact. Not entitlement poor, more like, receiving 60% of my 2000 salary with no adjustment for cost-of-living or any inflationary trickeroos poor -- and using that money to support a household, pay a caretaker, fork out over $15,000 on health care (with insurance, even the blessed PCIP), and all the usual -- maintaining the sexiness of Ruby the Honda CRV, and keeping her legal, paying the mortgage, and having every animal in our care up to date in shots and vet exams. Hell, the year of Little Boy (Uncle Kitty Big Balls), because of Fred's deep love for him, we payed close to $5,000 trying to save the dear soul's life. I have to say, though, that had the vet involved been a better vet. a more honest vet, we might have stopped torturing him several thousand dollars earlier.
Lest you scoff at my "I'm poor" by pointing your pointy finger at my list of financial accomplishments, I should add that I never eat out, haven't been to a movie theatre, much less La Scala, in over a decade, and some claim that "generic" is my middle name.
Also, I make my money grow by playing the market.
That's right. The socialist owns GOOG [but the rest of her portfolio is so deep in risk that she ain't revealing anything more, lest your mere scoffery turn to disgust].
Anyway, this is my way of explaining that I bought a new video camera. It was a deal, a steal, and a good choice according to Fred's Bible, Consumer Reports, Tête de Hergé edition. There was much ado about how easy it is to use, though I admit there was not a specific warranty of ease of use when the photog has one good hand, and a fumbling one, at that.
So far it is defeating me. I don't get the zillions of icons offered on the LED screen. Just tap! It's easy! Without proof that one of those symbols won't launch an ICBM, I cannot willy-nilly start choosing picto-signifiers. I have a conscience.
But this morning, which came too early, I thought I would at least try to take some still photos. And then show them, describe them, say things, any things, to help destroy the iron bars behind which I pretend this writer is penned, blocked.
So... like many of my kind, after I inject myself with a few drugs, take 7 pills, go pee,and climb into the wheelchair, my first act of the day is to make coffee. As you ought to know, we harbor three cats in our wing of Marlinspike Hall -- Captain Haddock issued orders that they no longer are free-ranging throughout the Manor, what with the claw-sharpening activity in the Tapestry Alcoves and all: Marmy Fluffy Butt, Dobby (her son, the runt), and Buddy the Freakishly Large Kitten (no one told us he was a Maine Coon).
These three insert themselves boldly, and sometimes rudely, into the coffee-making plan by performing intricate death-defying patterns around the wheels of this power chair. "Feed us, feed us, feed us," they chant.
At which point the absurdity begins. I manage to get three bowls filled with fresh and tasty kibble and on the floor, in the required layout. Marmy will only eat out of the red plastic bowl; Dobby and Buddy prefer the metal bowls, but then purposefully set out to eat from each receptacle. The two water bowls must frame the three food bowls like parentheses. Change that and one of them will make the subtle point of their dissatisfaction by, for example, eating with one paw in one water bowl, and filling the other water bowl with half-chewed bits of kibble.
But, finally, coffee.
Oh, here is a picture of my new kettle. I broke my café press a few weeks ago. Might have been the same day I killed the video camera. So I dug out one of our many Melitta drip cones and went back to that most honest form of coffee-making. In the process, I noticed that my Paul Revere kettle was leaking. As in, the solder was breaking down, the seams were separating. So I went online to my new favorite pastime -- FAB -- the rule in force being "no purchases allowed, because you are poor, no matter how well GOOG is doing."
But they had this kettle, and it was cute, and it was on sale, and it is now on my stove (in our private kitchenette, as it is hardly appropriate for the more demanding heat requirements of, say, the Medieval Kitchens).
 |
| New red kettle from FAB |
Okay, so... it's heavy, the kettle. I have already poured boiling water onto my lap, neatly missing the Melitta cone, because I couldn't hold the lovely shiny red thing up high enough to pour the water in over something not made of my flesh, like the counter. But I will figure it out. This morning, I put my coffee-making stuff in the sink, reducing the height requirement of the kettle heft. [You will either understand that last sentence or you won't. I can't help you.]
The video camera, when plugged into the limping-along computer, has lovely edit functions for my visual artistry. Unfortunately, the red of the kettle was lost in the necessity to tone down the severely dominating whiteness of the stove top's enamel, even the whitey glare of the pitcher and old cookie jar that hold my cooking utensils.
The red, the red, it is not right.
Okay, so the cats are fed. The coffee is made and, if necessary, burn balm applied to my upper thighs.
I turn the wheelchair in the direction of early morning television news, the computer, and a bed into which I can dive when pain spikes.
Dobby always disappears about five minutes before I make my slow journey to the bedroom -- slow because I'll be damned if any more coffee is leaving the mug, unless headed for my caffeine-starved self.
The photo at the top of this post? That's what I find waiting for me on the bed -- without fail, and thankfully so, for it makes me smile like no body's business. Dobby, laid out, and ready for his requisite ten minutes of loving.
He wants, first, a fierce belly rub, then a sensual ear massage, easy on the right one. He then finds the comb and brush dedicated to his use, and his use alone, and knocks them on the floor. Why we have to go through this particular part of the ritual, I dunno, but I don't change things because he's cute when he tries to get tough.
The grooming begins in earnest, and lasts as long as my right arm can wield the brush and comb.
After ten minutes, usually, of attention, Dobby is faced with three options:
- He can play with Buddy, who has taken his place at the foot of the bed, and is vocalizing like a loon.
- He can curl up and take his first nap of the day.
- He can grab the comb, freshly cleaned of his fine gray hairs, growl, shake it, and run off with it looking like a 19th century train robber who scored gold.
My crime? She has a recurrent eye condition -- herpes, actually -- which requires "gooping" with medication. She managed to go several years without a problem but a few months back, poor thing, it returned with a vengeance in her left eye. Now... Fred is a loving pet caretaker but he lacks finesse when it comes to administering pet medications. As in, he scares the crap out of them because he believes they must be captured for the process to have meaning. My philosophy is more one of waiting for them to come to me, then faking them out, but following my evil up with a good nuggle, a nice treat, something to confuse their nascent desire to hate me.
Marmy, though, has that incredible ability to read a human's mind. Before you make a move to pick up the eye ointment, before you even allow yourself to entertain the thought of eye ointment, she's on to you, and she is GONE.
So we had to go with the Fred Method. For some reason (a phrase I'd love to be able to eliminate from my life, or at least reduce its aptitude), he'd trap her, then carry her to me, and I would get to apply the goop to her eye.
Now, I don't know, but it is my strong suspicion, having gooped other cats with this same medication, that Marmy is a bit, you know, Castafiore-esque. She yelps, she cries, she squirms, she gives you the Look Of Death. Every one else shakes their tiny feline heads, maybe gives a brief glare, and then they're over it.
Marmy Fluffy Butt has yet to forgive me.
This is how I get to see her first thing in the morning. Peering at me, half-hidden behind the doorway, wondering if I am gonna drop the cherry bomb of a new kettle in order to swoop over, grab her by her Fluffy Tail, and stick some acid-like substance in her eyeball. It's been months now. I've decided to ignore her, and that is beginning to work, as, again like The Castafiore, she cannot bear the lack of attention.
 |
| Marmy Fluffy Butt, giving me the Evil Eye, and badly in need of grooming |
It's unfair not to remind you that Marmy has her reasons -- we took her in when she was heavy with kittens, to the point where her belly almost dragged the floor. She's tiny -- barely 8 pounds, and she had five little ones inside her. She was only 8 months old at the time, or so figured the vet. We figure that she started as someone's pet, and then was abandoned, and had been on the streets for a good bit.
It's unfair not to note that we "took her in" by following one of Fred's Grab Scenarios, using a yummy bowl of kibble as bait. Marmy will not eat wet food, something we wish someone would explain to us. She refuses real chicken, etc. Anyway, we kidnapped the poor, freezing pregnant soul and so began life with Marmy. She was essentially feral for almost two years.
In the first few months of her stay, Fred had to CARRY my sweet Sam-I-Am (now deceased) past her to the litter box or she would beat him up. Sammy weighed about 14 pounds. It was ridiculous.
We don't know, beyond rape, what she endured out on the street, but it wasn't good. When she decided we were okay, it was wonderful. She made up for lost love time. She domesticated as no cat has domesticated before her.
So when she reverts to her fearful state, it hurts my heart. She and Fred were never nuggle partners, and he doesn't groom unless brushes are actually thrown at him with loud verbal encouragements, so their relationship is still stable.
I hope my next photo of my girl is a pose of her purring and stretched out on my belly, all sleek and smooth, with fun, and not fear, in her eyes. And God forbid that her eyes ever need treatment again.
O Lordy, Lordy! Good grief. Moving right along. Those of you who have followed Buddy's growth, here's how big he is now, and still growing. The vet says he will continue to grow for another two years, one of those weird bits of Maine Coon trivia.
 |
| Buddy the Freakishly Large Kitten |
Well, after I conquer the "photo" mode on this bleeping camera, I will give the video mode another try.
Fred was sorely disappointed in me a couple of days ago, when the Crack Whore Organic Pig Farmer Lady who lives across our country lane was raided by the Tête de Hergé Lone Alp West Fugitive Squad -- you would have bust a gut at the sight of Tante Louise in SWAT gear. She had managed to move about a yard by the time her team had rushed the Pig Farm Cottage, captured the ne'er-do-well, thrown her into the back seat of the Fugitive Catcher Car, an orange Vega, dodged a few angry free-ranging hogs, wrapped a few muddy acres in yellow cop crime scene tape, and jumped back into the Fugitive Squad station wagon.
I had the camera out but it was just the second time I'd ever had it strapped to my quivering, spazzing right hand. So we ended up with a lovely montage of light glinting off the moat, close-ups of hog jowls, and lots of footage of Tante Louise stuck in the mire.
It would have gone viral on YouTube.
© 2015 L. Ryan
Writer's Block and Its Detritus
NOTE TO THE READERSHIP: After finding the dusty draft, just published, on conquering writer's block, I searched to see if I'd ever written myself out of that box before. Lo and Behold! Back on 10 January 2010, a more somber moi tried to scribble her way free of that writing snare. Just as self-centered and focused on pity as most of my posts, I don't get the feeling of resounding success that came from the "Cats Trump Writer's Block" posting. There's a lesson there. You should be getting a vibrating-cum-annoying-ring text message on your smarty-panted phone about now... and with every Pity Party Post published herein. Yes, there was an app for that! If you adjust your "Settings," you might be able to avoid future text alerts for depressing REPOSTS!
Oh, my dahlink readers, I am so sick.
At least, this is a common, plebeian, ordinary sort of sick, as opposed to my usual krapola of unheard of neurological disorders and infectious disease firsts, auto-immune oddities and literally rotting bones.
You know that steroids weaken the immune system, right? That cheers me whenever I get some infectious process -- because when acutely ill, the first thing I am supposed to do is DOUBLE MY STEROIDS. Gee, let's take MORE immune-suppressing drug, especially now that the germs are attacking!
Okay, so here is the deal.
I have writer's block, I think. Plenty to say, that's not the issue. Hyper-awareness of my own worth is more the cause. When you know just exactly how little you matter, there's no point to yapping on and on.
Still, writing is invigorating and good for me. And, to be brought low by gunked-up stinky yellow mucus AND silence would be just too much to bear. Especially that "silence" part.
So I am going to continue this here post, this ode to bodaceous blogging, as a Live Blogging Event. Anything goes. The ridiculous shall be honored. No spell checks allowed.
No erasures, no deletions. Above all? NO CAVEATS. No breathy declarations of what-i-really-meant-to-say.
Here we go. Keep your fingers crossed in hope that, by the end of this process, I will have regained some sense of writerly purpose.
More and more, I am keeping the Boob Tube on, even when I am not watching it. This is typical, I believe, of people who feel lonely. Still, when I turn it off, I relish the silence and fuss at myself about the ridiculous waste of energy, and the pollution of noise and idiocy.
One of my Brother-Units was overly generous at Christmas time, and I used his excessive generosity to purchase a Wii system, with the Fit program and balance board, plus extra remotes and whatcha-ma-callits. I used it with great fun until New Year's Eve when the virus first made its concerted attack.
Shortly before Xmas, we turned the dining room into a library. Don't argue or fret, just accept it. Dining room? Now a library. Okay?
So we have a tiny old t.v. stashed in the new reading room, that no one likes to watch. In the bedroom, we have the main viewing machine, but Fred, especially, wants to replace it with a fancy-schmancy new one. The one in the bedroom is to be moved into the library (the tiny one already in there? I dunno its fate.).
The thinking behind these genius moves is that "We can Wii" better in there, since the center of the room is free. "Wii"ing in the bedroom, in addition to sounding like an odd excretory process, is a cramped endeavor.
I believe that fixing this situation will be my goal for today. This will entail sending The Fred to make the television purchase, slightly reworking the library layout, dealing with wires and connections and Semi-Technical Schtuff.
By the end of the day, The Library will have been humbled to the status of Room-With-A-Few-Books.
And maybe I can play a little Wii Tennis tonight. I confess that just playing tennis as a video game brings back most excellent memories.
My legs are on fire. The right foot is completely messed up, burning and twisting, bringing me down, pissing me off. In a nostalgic move, the shooting electrical charge that I associate with my first year or so with CRPS, is back, and the end point of the surge? You guessed it: all the way down the leg into the foot, culminating in fireworks within the spacious confines of my BIG TOE.
That first year (or so!), Fred was often treated to my loud hacking yells -- in the middle of watching a movie, eating dinner, deep sleep. Even though I knew that the sudden electrocutions of my feet were coming, anticipation did nothing to keep me from screaming with pain. I tried and tried to maintain silence, to not give a hint of distress, fear, or frustration. Most of the time, I failed. The instances of success were marked by an inability to breathe and palms gouged-- from digging nails, a failed fist. And here I am, nine years later, back at it -- a regular screech owl, talons sharp and at the ready.
I wake myself up, screaming.
Of course, I also occasionally wake up laughing my ass off.
In addition, I am often shaken back to consciousness by the weight of Dobby, Our Little Idiot, perched on my chest, a worried look on his face. It happens whenever I am so audacious as to put my arms under the quilt -- something I have been prone to do during this incredible cold snap. This triggers some large anxiety in him -- does he think I am being eaten by the quilt? Death by textile? [Dobby has a "thing" for threads, materials, weavings, tapestry and affects his evaluations so seriously that I can imagine him as a bent tailor, absentmindedly rubbing some fine cloth in between his index finger and thumb.]
It is unfortunate, though, this need to rescue me from my quilt.
I have just the one quilt that I am able to tolerate over my body. I sleep on top of another [lesser] quilt, and cover everything but my legs with this worn, beloved, rubbed-soft cotton handmade wonder... It is full of holes, stained [despite being washed twice a week] by coffee and, thanks to the seven major shoulder surgeries between August 2008
and April 2009, considerable blotches of betadine and -- sorry -- blood. It's as sanitary as can be... but is looking fairly sad.
I have tried other things and it is either a problem with weight or softness -- too much weight on this CRPS-afflicted body, and the pain levels and burning get out of control -- too little softness and the irritation to the skin also increases the burning sensations that are the hallmark of CRPS-type pain.
I miss getting between the sheets, though! Just like I miss shoes -- oh, God how i miss shoes!
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, it looks like the television scenario will extend into the weekend, as Fred is getting a slow start, and I don't feel like irking him with request upon request.
Over on Twitter (another universe, Twitter!), I am shocked by the frequency with which I see folks writing these exact words in response to the current humanitarian crisis in Haiti: "What about the people who need help in our own country?" It's my least favorite form of argumentation, if it even qualifies as such. The only thing I know to say -- though I would never take up the argument on Twitter -- is "well, we are not talking about those people right now..." There's not a reasoned response to be made to people who are looking for a fight or who wish to use others purely as something to stand on. And I mean that almost literally and with near good intentions.
Into my head just popped: chowder. Specifically, fish chowder. I watched a recent episode of Chef Bobby Flay's Throwdown show -- about Manhattan Fish Chowder, meaning simply that is has a tomato base. What can I say? I feel catholic on Friday. It sounds like dinner to me.
Cooking has become something I very much enjoy, even as the mechanics of getting it done have become complicated. We foresee a day when I won't be able to do it any longer -- mostly because of my hands and their unpredictability, as well as the situation with my shoulders. Ah... but until then? I am becoming quite the cook. I've always loved it, but as I have needed to concentrate and think my way through the process more and more -- imagine! I got better at it! Go figure.
I've decided to perform penance (get this catholic shit out of my head! out! out!) for my sinful thoughts about Fred's persistent participation in Wednesday night suppers over at the Existentialist Congregation -- yes, the place being run by Militant Lesbians. This penance has taken the form of making the dish he takes to these weekly potlucks. This week, they got to feast on my carrots. It's my own "recipe," though I don't write anything down -- I think this is actually a common presentation for carrots, though The Fredster ooohs-and-ahhhs like it is something special. Cooking for 10 people, I used 15 whole carrots, cut into 1/4 inch rounds. A bias cut would be fine, too. Just cut the suckers up however you want. The more surface area, the more of the sauce you will taste... Then steam them until just soft. I make my own curry "powders," as I am very picky about spices... Sometimes, they are the only thing over which I have quality control. Why? Oh... I would have to go into the intricacies of getting out of the house, going shopping, etcetera. hmmm. You know what? I *started* a post a few weeks back, like the very day I was getting sick. It remains a draft. I will tack it onto the end of this post -- this post that is rapidly spiralling out of control.
Back to the hot topic of carrots. Where was I? Ah, curry. Cumin, cardamom, mustard, cayenne, coriander, and turmeric -- best if all are in "whole" form, then toasted and ground, in proportions of your choice, as needed. I add other spices according to my mood, mostly. Chipotle. Cinnamon. Fennel.
I suspect that I use spices as a form of sexual sublimation. Exotic, passionate, rich, intense. And so forth. Ahem. Cough. Titter.
Peppers. Nutmeg. Various peppers. Fenugreek. Cloves. Saffron.
Find what you like. For these easy carrots, you want to complement their sweetness and the citrus that you will also be adding. In other words, it won't be the star of the show, so keep it out of the "smoky" range and more in the Arena of Simple.
So... to the carrots directly, or in a separate pot if you are kinda timid, start adding your curry, then some butter. Then salt (sea salt, kosher). Finally, add the zest of one large navel orange, as well as about a quarter cup of its juice. Serve immediately or in the time it takes to fly across town to your pseudo-religious Wednesday night Christian-bashing session. Cough. Ahem. Titter... Cloves. Garlic. Chiles...
The stock market, in its infinite wisdom, has taken back all the goodness it gave just last week. Pow! Boff! Bam!
Incredibly, I need to rest now. And I am soaked again from the fever breaking -- for which I am grateful. I am just tired of washing up and changing my clothes several times a day! Before I lay down under my previously mentioned quilt, I will start a load of laundry. Added incentive is the fact that Marmy Fluffy Butt decided to mark my softest hoodie, the little beyatch.
So has slapping all these words down managed to break through the walls of my writing block? I don't know. It doesn't feel particularly liberating, but then that could be due to a mounting sense of frenzy and fatigue -- a simultaneous combination that is soul-wearying.
As promised, and without prejudging whether it really "goes" or not with what I wanted to say about "control" of cooking ingredients.... here is the kernel of a post that never made it. I haven't altered a word of it, which may come back to haunt moi, eh? I also have no idea why that particular YouTube vid was tacked onto the end, although I remember thinking that I loved this child, and wanted her energy and happiness:
okie-dokie, so we are sick as dogs... although, where the meaning of that comes from, i dunno. dogs are not, by nature, "sick."
right?
this virus is cruel. i woke feeling pretty doggone (who let the dogs out?) good. no coughing. temp 98.4 (no shit!) just an aching head, with pesky swollen glands. for me? a big nada. no problem. gonna coast through the day, get some work done, mebbe write a little, do my wii, face cleaning the bathroom (procastination issue).
i was looking forward to showing off for fred. "how do you feeeeeellll, ffffred, dahlink?"
"moi? moi? i feel fuh-fuh-fine, ffffred!"
while waiting for fred to wake up, i did morning chores, and began to lag. yes, the energy did flag, and i, i began to fade. i was, in short, diminished.
sorry. i was briefly channeling t. s. eliot.
or yeats.
it's so hard to tell, anymore. i grow old.
eating the peach is not gonna be my issue. no, i think that monster slinking toward jerusalem is gonna get moi.
hey, i bought a new toothbrush the other day! wait, i didn't tell you i went out, did i? well, i did. grocery shopping. and i had an emotional meltdown right in the middle of the damned store. see... i hadn't left the house in 29 days. that's right. TWENTY-NINE FREAKING DAYS. that's how high my pain level has been, how miserable my legs, how very, very bad it has been. oh, poor moi {peeking to see if you pity moi, yet...}!
anyway, i had been begging to go to the store for days, but fred didn't put together my eagerness with the notion of going-to-the-store as a FUN activity. so when we entered said establishment and he announced, "let's split up, we'll get done faster"?
i started to boohoo. can you believe it? how retarded am i, and increasingly so, with increasing frequency?
poor man. in his mind, i go out whenever he does (pretty much daily, and at least twice a week for social engagements. he had not counted the passing of TWENTY-NINE FREAKING DAYS, nor did he really register the number of DIY amputations of my legs that i had undergone in fits of desperation at the increasingly increasing pain. he *cannot*, of course, and i don't want him to follow the bouncing ball of my suffering, anyway, poor soul. i've ruined his life enough, don't you think?
oh, hell, where was i? did i tell you i am spiking a way high, a mile high fever?
the toothbrush. oh, yeah. so we were in the market, en train de faire le marché, when i remembered i needed a new one. i pop a few wheelies and race down the toothpaste, toothbrush, shampoo, deodorant, and sundries aisle. fred is tearing after me, the shopping cart careening this way and that... he sees me stop in front of the pitiable selection of plaque-scrapers, and calls out: "wait! we have a supply of new toothbrushes at home!"
now... i don't know exactly why that sent me over the edge, but it did. i had not been out of the house for... well, you know. do you get how hard it is to run a household by sending a guy with adhd to do the necessary errands? have you tried making a detailed grocery list when you are only able to go to the store yourself but a couple o'times a year? i am a very visual person. back in the day (i.e., before crps, before avn, before ai, and so on)? i just took a mental stroll down the aisles, pictured what was there, made my lists in almost perfect synchronicity with the actual order of the products. i made a killer list, detailed but simple, a list on which even the most shopping-challenged could rely.
no more. oh no. now i am liable to hand my sweet man something along the order of:
apples, if they are under $1.39 a pound. and fresh. also, please don't buy them if the skin is even slightly loosened from the inner fruit. you know what i mean. like they'd been stored in a cold bin for too long. we're looking for très fresh.
keep an eye out for endive. gots to have my endive.
toilet paper
pasta
lowfat plain yogurt (7)
drain cleaner
get yourself something for snacking
bananas
ham bone
celery seed for me, ground celery seed for you
italian roast whole coffee beans for me; columbian blend for you; when will we go to farmer's market to get ethiopian beans, hmmm?
white onions, yellow onions, please don't buy pre-bagged
READERSHIP! How fitting that this video "does not exist"! It's Karma for all the narcissism displayed above. I shall reincarnate as a worm.
© 2015 L. Ryan
***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****
Oh, my dahlink readers, I am so sick.
At least, this is a common, plebeian, ordinary sort of sick, as opposed to my usual krapola of unheard of neurological disorders and infectious disease firsts, auto-immune oddities and literally rotting bones.
You know that steroids weaken the immune system, right? That cheers me whenever I get some infectious process -- because when acutely ill, the first thing I am supposed to do is DOUBLE MY STEROIDS. Gee, let's take MORE immune-suppressing drug, especially now that the germs are attacking!
Okay, so here is the deal.
I have writer's block, I think. Plenty to say, that's not the issue. Hyper-awareness of my own worth is more the cause. When you know just exactly how little you matter, there's no point to yapping on and on.
Still, writing is invigorating and good for me. And, to be brought low by gunked-up stinky yellow mucus AND silence would be just too much to bear. Especially that "silence" part.
So I am going to continue this here post, this ode to bodaceous blogging, as a Live Blogging Event. Anything goes. The ridiculous shall be honored. No spell checks allowed.
No erasures, no deletions. Above all? NO CAVEATS. No breathy declarations of what-i-really-meant-to-say.
Here we go. Keep your fingers crossed in hope that, by the end of this process, I will have regained some sense of writerly purpose.
More and more, I am keeping the Boob Tube on, even when I am not watching it. This is typical, I believe, of people who feel lonely. Still, when I turn it off, I relish the silence and fuss at myself about the ridiculous waste of energy, and the pollution of noise and idiocy.
One of my Brother-Units was overly generous at Christmas time, and I used his excessive generosity to purchase a Wii system, with the Fit program and balance board, plus extra remotes and whatcha-ma-callits. I used it with great fun until New Year's Eve when the virus first made its concerted attack.
Shortly before Xmas, we turned the dining room into a library. Don't argue or fret, just accept it. Dining room? Now a library. Okay?
So we have a tiny old t.v. stashed in the new reading room, that no one likes to watch. In the bedroom, we have the main viewing machine, but Fred, especially, wants to replace it with a fancy-schmancy new one. The one in the bedroom is to be moved into the library (the tiny one already in there? I dunno its fate.).
The thinking behind these genius moves is that "We can Wii" better in there, since the center of the room is free. "Wii"ing in the bedroom, in addition to sounding like an odd excretory process, is a cramped endeavor.
I believe that fixing this situation will be my goal for today. This will entail sending The Fred to make the television purchase, slightly reworking the library layout, dealing with wires and connections and Semi-Technical Schtuff.
By the end of the day, The Library will have been humbled to the status of Room-With-A-Few-Books.
And maybe I can play a little Wii Tennis tonight. I confess that just playing tennis as a video game brings back most excellent memories.
My legs are on fire. The right foot is completely messed up, burning and twisting, bringing me down, pissing me off. In a nostalgic move, the shooting electrical charge that I associate with my first year or so with CRPS, is back, and the end point of the surge? You guessed it: all the way down the leg into the foot, culminating in fireworks within the spacious confines of my BIG TOE.
That first year (or so!), Fred was often treated to my loud hacking yells -- in the middle of watching a movie, eating dinner, deep sleep. Even though I knew that the sudden electrocutions of my feet were coming, anticipation did nothing to keep me from screaming with pain. I tried and tried to maintain silence, to not give a hint of distress, fear, or frustration. Most of the time, I failed. The instances of success were marked by an inability to breathe and palms gouged-- from digging nails, a failed fist. And here I am, nine years later, back at it -- a regular screech owl, talons sharp and at the ready.
I wake myself up, screaming.
Of course, I also occasionally wake up laughing my ass off.
In addition, I am often shaken back to consciousness by the weight of Dobby, Our Little Idiot, perched on my chest, a worried look on his face. It happens whenever I am so audacious as to put my arms under the quilt -- something I have been prone to do during this incredible cold snap. This triggers some large anxiety in him -- does he think I am being eaten by the quilt? Death by textile? [Dobby has a "thing" for threads, materials, weavings, tapestry and affects his evaluations so seriously that I can imagine him as a bent tailor, absentmindedly rubbing some fine cloth in between his index finger and thumb.]
It is unfortunate, though, this need to rescue me from my quilt.
I have just the one quilt that I am able to tolerate over my body. I sleep on top of another [lesser] quilt, and cover everything but my legs with this worn, beloved, rubbed-soft cotton handmade wonder... It is full of holes, stained [despite being washed twice a week] by coffee and, thanks to the seven major shoulder surgeries between August 2008
and April 2009, considerable blotches of betadine and -- sorry -- blood. It's as sanitary as can be... but is looking fairly sad.
I have tried other things and it is either a problem with weight or softness -- too much weight on this CRPS-afflicted body, and the pain levels and burning get out of control -- too little softness and the irritation to the skin also increases the burning sensations that are the hallmark of CRPS-type pain.
I miss getting between the sheets, though! Just like I miss shoes -- oh, God how i miss shoes!
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, it looks like the television scenario will extend into the weekend, as Fred is getting a slow start, and I don't feel like irking him with request upon request.
Over on Twitter (another universe, Twitter!), I am shocked by the frequency with which I see folks writing these exact words in response to the current humanitarian crisis in Haiti: "What about the people who need help in our own country?" It's my least favorite form of argumentation, if it even qualifies as such. The only thing I know to say -- though I would never take up the argument on Twitter -- is "well, we are not talking about those people right now..." There's not a reasoned response to be made to people who are looking for a fight or who wish to use others purely as something to stand on. And I mean that almost literally and with near good intentions.
Into my head just popped: chowder. Specifically, fish chowder. I watched a recent episode of Chef Bobby Flay's Throwdown show -- about Manhattan Fish Chowder, meaning simply that is has a tomato base. What can I say? I feel catholic on Friday. It sounds like dinner to me.
Cooking has become something I very much enjoy, even as the mechanics of getting it done have become complicated. We foresee a day when I won't be able to do it any longer -- mostly because of my hands and their unpredictability, as well as the situation with my shoulders. Ah... but until then? I am becoming quite the cook. I've always loved it, but as I have needed to concentrate and think my way through the process more and more -- imagine! I got better at it! Go figure.
I've decided to perform penance (get this catholic shit out of my head! out! out!) for my sinful thoughts about Fred's persistent participation in Wednesday night suppers over at the Existentialist Congregation -- yes, the place being run by Militant Lesbians. This penance has taken the form of making the dish he takes to these weekly potlucks. This week, they got to feast on my carrots. It's my own "recipe," though I don't write anything down -- I think this is actually a common presentation for carrots, though The Fredster ooohs-and-ahhhs like it is something special. Cooking for 10 people, I used 15 whole carrots, cut into 1/4 inch rounds. A bias cut would be fine, too. Just cut the suckers up however you want. The more surface area, the more of the sauce you will taste... Then steam them until just soft. I make my own curry "powders," as I am very picky about spices... Sometimes, they are the only thing over which I have quality control. Why? Oh... I would have to go into the intricacies of getting out of the house, going shopping, etcetera. hmmm. You know what? I *started* a post a few weeks back, like the very day I was getting sick. It remains a draft. I will tack it onto the end of this post -- this post that is rapidly spiralling out of control.
Back to the hot topic of carrots. Where was I? Ah, curry. Cumin, cardamom, mustard, cayenne, coriander, and turmeric -- best if all are in "whole" form, then toasted and ground, in proportions of your choice, as needed. I add other spices according to my mood, mostly. Chipotle. Cinnamon. Fennel.
I suspect that I use spices as a form of sexual sublimation. Exotic, passionate, rich, intense. And so forth. Ahem. Cough. Titter.
Peppers. Nutmeg. Various peppers. Fenugreek. Cloves. Saffron.
Find what you like. For these easy carrots, you want to complement their sweetness and the citrus that you will also be adding. In other words, it won't be the star of the show, so keep it out of the "smoky" range and more in the Arena of Simple.
So... to the carrots directly, or in a separate pot if you are kinda timid, start adding your curry, then some butter. Then salt (sea salt, kosher). Finally, add the zest of one large navel orange, as well as about a quarter cup of its juice. Serve immediately or in the time it takes to fly across town to your pseudo-religious Wednesday night Christian-bashing session. Cough. Ahem. Titter... Cloves. Garlic. Chiles...
The stock market, in its infinite wisdom, has taken back all the goodness it gave just last week. Pow! Boff! Bam!
Incredibly, I need to rest now. And I am soaked again from the fever breaking -- for which I am grateful. I am just tired of washing up and changing my clothes several times a day! Before I lay down under my previously mentioned quilt, I will start a load of laundry. Added incentive is the fact that Marmy Fluffy Butt decided to mark my softest hoodie, the little beyatch.
So has slapping all these words down managed to break through the walls of my writing block? I don't know. It doesn't feel particularly liberating, but then that could be due to a mounting sense of frenzy and fatigue -- a simultaneous combination that is soul-wearying.
As promised, and without prejudging whether it really "goes" or not with what I wanted to say about "control" of cooking ingredients.... here is the kernel of a post that never made it. I haven't altered a word of it, which may come back to haunt moi, eh? I also have no idea why that particular YouTube vid was tacked onto the end, although I remember thinking that I loved this child, and wanted her energy and happiness:
okie-dokie, so we are sick as dogs... although, where the meaning of that comes from, i dunno. dogs are not, by nature, "sick."
right?
this virus is cruel. i woke feeling pretty doggone (who let the dogs out?) good. no coughing. temp 98.4 (no shit!) just an aching head, with pesky swollen glands. for me? a big nada. no problem. gonna coast through the day, get some work done, mebbe write a little, do my wii, face cleaning the bathroom (procastination issue).
i was looking forward to showing off for fred. "how do you feeeeeellll, ffffred, dahlink?"
"moi? moi? i feel fuh-fuh-fine, ffffred!"
while waiting for fred to wake up, i did morning chores, and began to lag. yes, the energy did flag, and i, i began to fade. i was, in short, diminished.
sorry. i was briefly channeling t. s. eliot.
or yeats.
it's so hard to tell, anymore. i grow old.
eating the peach is not gonna be my issue. no, i think that monster slinking toward jerusalem is gonna get moi.
hey, i bought a new toothbrush the other day! wait, i didn't tell you i went out, did i? well, i did. grocery shopping. and i had an emotional meltdown right in the middle of the damned store. see... i hadn't left the house in 29 days. that's right. TWENTY-NINE FREAKING DAYS. that's how high my pain level has been, how miserable my legs, how very, very bad it has been. oh, poor moi {peeking to see if you pity moi, yet...}!
anyway, i had been begging to go to the store for days, but fred didn't put together my eagerness with the notion of going-to-the-store as a FUN activity. so when we entered said establishment and he announced, "let's split up, we'll get done faster"?
i started to boohoo. can you believe it? how retarded am i, and increasingly so, with increasing frequency?
poor man. in his mind, i go out whenever he does (pretty much daily, and at least twice a week for social engagements. he had not counted the passing of TWENTY-NINE FREAKING DAYS, nor did he really register the number of DIY amputations of my legs that i had undergone in fits of desperation at the increasingly increasing pain. he *cannot*, of course, and i don't want him to follow the bouncing ball of my suffering, anyway, poor soul. i've ruined his life enough, don't you think?
oh, hell, where was i? did i tell you i am spiking a way high, a mile high fever?
the toothbrush. oh, yeah. so we were in the market, en train de faire le marché, when i remembered i needed a new one. i pop a few wheelies and race down the toothpaste, toothbrush, shampoo, deodorant, and sundries aisle. fred is tearing after me, the shopping cart careening this way and that... he sees me stop in front of the pitiable selection of plaque-scrapers, and calls out: "wait! we have a supply of new toothbrushes at home!"
now... i don't know exactly why that sent me over the edge, but it did. i had not been out of the house for... well, you know. do you get how hard it is to run a household by sending a guy with adhd to do the necessary errands? have you tried making a detailed grocery list when you are only able to go to the store yourself but a couple o'times a year? i am a very visual person. back in the day (i.e., before crps, before avn, before ai, and so on)? i just took a mental stroll down the aisles, pictured what was there, made my lists in almost perfect synchronicity with the actual order of the products. i made a killer list, detailed but simple, a list on which even the most shopping-challenged could rely.
no more. oh no. now i am liable to hand my sweet man something along the order of:
apples, if they are under $1.39 a pound. and fresh. also, please don't buy them if the skin is even slightly loosened from the inner fruit. you know what i mean. like they'd been stored in a cold bin for too long. we're looking for très fresh.
keep an eye out for endive. gots to have my endive.
toilet paper
pasta
lowfat plain yogurt (7)
drain cleaner
get yourself something for snacking
bananas
ham bone
celery seed for me, ground celery seed for you
italian roast whole coffee beans for me; columbian blend for you; when will we go to farmer's market to get ethiopian beans, hmmm?
white onions, yellow onions, please don't buy pre-bagged
READERSHIP! How fitting that this video "does not exist"! It's Karma for all the narcissism displayed above. I shall reincarnate as a worm.
© 2015 L. Ryan
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