the view from the big round bed

Scoop, by Saba Italia

I love men. 

Big, burly men.  Decisive, friendly, efficient men.  Cheerful, joshing, smiling men.

So... even with our living quarters a complete, disassembled mess, this lovely group of tonsured monks -- our flooring installers -- have kindly advised me to plant my booty in the middle of our half-mile wide round bed and just relax.  It's the polite way of telling me to get out of the way. 

They are working around  me, literally.

Our menagerie is less than thrilled.  I don't think Dobby has blinked in several hours.  I actually had to poke him with my GimpGrabber to make sure he was alive.  Even then, he didn't blink -- he allowed one ear a quick twitch, that was it.  I offered him his most coveted treat -- a salmon Pill Pocket, of all things -- and it is still sitting there by his front paws. 

But we are not bereft of the "awwww" factor, because Marmy Fluffy Butt and her brother, Uncle Kitty Big Balls, who usually are not the friendliest of siblings, are so intertwined that it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. Still, Marmy's huge fluffy butt provides a big hint to the edges of their ontological division.  Uncle Kitty Big Balls' tail is more like a stiff bottle brush and though it is a perfectly fine tail, it doesn't hold a candle to her monumentally large and wispy rear end.

What do I think of the flooring?  Have you ever spent so much time choosing and pricing some home improvement material that by the time your project is finished you just don't care anymore?

Well, have you?

I like it.  I don't love it... yet.  It's very different from the plush, toe-grabbing carpet we're used to -- although  we never quite felt comfortable dropping crumbs on the museum-quality medieval silk tapestries that the Haddocks use as area rugs and bath mats.

Fred is saying all the right things:  "It makes our rooms look bigger!" being his favorite.  His next favorite thing to say is "Now we're gonna hafta paint!"   [When pigs fly will Fred willingly take up a brush... No, he is thinking in terms of gesso and murals.]

I didn't sleep much due to... oh, what was it?  Oh, I remember!  This soul-sucking pain!  So I caught up on world news, then read until my eyes failed to focus.

Events in the middle east are breathtaking.  As I watched USAmerican news coverage of the revolution in Egypt, what also proved interesting were the attitudes toward this nascent democratic struggle.  It makes people nervous.  Raucous applause for the Egyptians peaceably protesting in the streets and squares against the decades of repression under Hosni Mubarak alternate with worried whispers about the "direction" and "allegiances" the new Egyptian leadership may assume.

Then there is the "thug" factor.  Middle eastern "thuggery" shares many characteristics with the mysterious "outside agitators" so common to western protests.  Mubarak's paid plants add another element of confusion to the mix of the police and the military, the secular and the religious...

Anti-government protesters are heroic in the face of violence -- police vans plowing through crowds, snipers shooting from bridges, human rights activists detained, journalists harassed and arrested. STRATFOR reports, via Egyptian newspaper Al-Mesryoon, that 

Leaders from Egypt’s ruling party, members of the People’s Assembly and security commanders attended a secret meeting in Alexandria on Feb. 2 and made plans to mobilize hundreds of 'thugs' to attack demonstrators and disperse them by force... According to sources that attended the meeting, a number of People’s Assembly members offered 250,000 Egyptian pounds ($42,700) to finance the attack, while security officials offered hundreds of clubs and explosive devices for use against the demonstrators.

It will be interesting to watch the wrangling for position in the political vacuum left by Mubarak, particularly the role of the changing Muslim Brotherhood, a popular and populist group about which, I think, western attitudes will evolve -- in spite of the not-terribly-insightful journalism of CNN's Eliot Spitzer (certainly my choice for moral and political guidance) and Piers Morgan, Insta-Pundit.  I am not suggesting any pardon of violent acts such as Sadat's assassination -- just a willingness to assess them according to their present context. They are, for instance, supportive of Mohamed ElBaradei.  Unfortunately, the group's growing temperance and history of good works in the social arena can be obscured by a single mention of Al Qaeda and the Brotherhood in the same journalistic breath.

Last night, Spitzer elicited a pledge against violence from MB representative Mohamed Morsy, and even acknowledgement of Israel's right to exist.  Morsy said:

We are not against people. We are not against mankind. We are not against the Jews. We are against Zionism. We are against torturing the Palestinians.

Immediately, CNN posted the subscript "Muslim Brotherhood against Zionism"!

Ah... the smoke alarms are going off.  That can't be good.  It looks like I must budge from this comfy bed and go see what progress has been made and whether there actually is threat of a fire (no, there is no fire, only some smokin' saws!).

The Monks are about half done and are calling it a day.  We have only another 24 hours or so of disorganisation and chaos. 

Peace out.  Later, if I've the energy, I'd like to share my enjoyment of my current read, The Liar's Club: A Memoir.  Talk about revolutionizing the genre!

What a mess...

It's a crazy time.  Given the extent of the wackiness around here, and the opportunity for more, I'll not be blogging for a few days.

Today I see the orthopedic surgeon, my old friend.  (I slept last night with my mp3 player set to repeat and repeat a Michelle Shocked album... "my old friend" is running around my brain to the tune of Anchorage... anchored down in Anchorage....

I took the time to write to my old friend

I walked across the burning bridge

I mailed my letter off to Dallas, but

Her reply came from Anchorage, Alaska

She said Hey girl it's about time you wrote

It's been over two years now my old friend

Take me back to the days of the foreign telegrams

And the all night rock 'n rollin' hey Chel

We was wild then

Yeah, well. So I'll be humming and buzzing along with the x-rays today.

Then we are rushing about Tête de Hergé like freaking maniacs, getting groceries (I am on a goodly dose of antibiotic and we are out of plain, lowfat yogurt.  Also vanilla extract, bread, and milk.  Not to mention caffeine-laced diet colas...) and a few other items of a more esoteric nature.

Then we are flying home to finish disassembling our wing of The Manor, Marlinspike Hall.

Why?  Are we being thrown out onto the streets?  If so, wouldn't The Brotherhood down the road take us in?  Yeah, couldn't we just crash at The Monastery?

No, we're not imminently homeless, we are just having some 16th century reclaimed beams and timbers -- heart of pine planks, specifically -- put in as "new" flooring here in our tiny section of the world. 

And don't knock The Cistercians, even in jest, because they're doing the installation...

What I really wanna know is:  Who bought all these damn books?

I have so much to do and such little space and time to do it in.  Also, I tend to injure myself.  Immediately.  Within five minutes of packing and piling and sorting and moving...  Yesterday, I spent the afternoon with tears rolling down my red, red face,  while putting my arcane collection of Objectivist Poetry into flimsy bags and boxes. 

When I was done, I heard this from My Darling Cohort:  Sweetie Pie?  Are you okay?  Do you need any help?

Wrong!  Well, only partially wrong.  Wrong in the sense that I implied that My Darling Cohort was not assisting.  Because he did.  A lot.  As in, a whole lot. 

Okay, I lied.  His offer to help preceded my headstrong and tearful attempts at packing up my tiny office. 

He's a good boy, is Fred!

The Felines are freaked and part of today's plan entails finding three carriers that we can safely stash them in, as the monks, who love them to pieces, tend to try and sneak them over the orchard wall, tucked in their voluminous robes.  When we retrieve them they reek of incense and garlic.

I have beaucoup medical stuff on tap for Monday and Wednesday of next week, too.  ["Too"?]  The thoughts and worries about the subanesthetic ketamine treatment never really leave my mind.  I am pinning a shitload of hope on this procedure.

So. Be good out there.  Stay warm, stay well, be happy.

The next time I talk at you, I will be able to zip around the place without the wheelchair meeting so much impedence in the form of medieval tapestries and persian rugs.  I'm gonna redefine the speed of light.

***  *************************************************************************  ***

Okay, so... here I am blogging again, less than a day after swearing off the activity.  I've said it before, and look!  I am saying it again -- I need one of those pensieve thingies, like Albus Dumbledore had stashed in his office.  The basin with swirling, shimmering vapors.  Thoughts as strings to be pulled out of the head, twirled on the end of one's wand.  Though I suppose a chopstick will do, in a pinch.

The Pensieve has multiple functions.


At times, when one's head is so full of thoughts that one cannot hear oneself think, it is useful to be able to take some of those thoughts and literally set them aside. The practiced Wizard can extract a thought from his head and store it in a phial or in the Pensieve for another time. If it is in the Pensieve, it is possible to stir the thoughts stored there together and look for patterns. It appears that the wizard has the choice of extracting an entire memory, leaving no trace of it in his head, as Professor Snape does in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, or extracting a copy of a memory, retaining the original, as Professor Slughorn does in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It is also apparently possible to edit these extracted memories, though it is a difficult task and one which is often not done well.


If one places one's head within the Pensieve, one becomes immersed in a memory that is stored in the Pensieve, and is able to relive it as if one was living that time over again. Harry experienced Professor Dumbledore's memories of the Wizengamot trials of several Death Eaters this way in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and Professor Snape's memories of Harry's father in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.


A thought or memory stored in the Pensieve can, with proper stimulus, appear to nearby viewers as if standing on the surface of the basin. Professor Dumbledore used this technique to show Harry the prophecy that had been made about him, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and it is used in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince when full immersion in memory was not needed.


It is also possible to take another person's memories, place them in the Pensieve, and then enter them to relive them as if one were the person whose memories you have just added to the Pensieve. Harry and Professor Dumbledore do this a number of times in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in order to determine the salient points of the early history of Tom Riddle, or as he later styled himself, Lord Voldemort.

This blog is my pensieve.

So... although we spoke of it briefly the last time I saw him, it sort of blew my mind -- and all its twirling little vapors -- when the surgeon offered up an inverted total shoulder arthroplasty as my sole option for my left shoulder.  He is fabulously talented, so to hear him call something "difficult" was scary.  It looks like this... and this looks WEIRD!

I guess I sorta didn't believe him in October when he first pitched this.  Or I developed amnesia.  The Good Doc says I've not much left to work with -- remember (someone has to), I have rampant avascular necrosis going on as well as osteomyelitis.  Oh, and I am now missing one rotator cuff.

No problem!

He's been such a savior to me, this guy, that I simply don't believe there is a technique or an obstacle that he cannot conquer or overcome.  I mean, he's done... let's see... 8 of my 9 shoulder surgeries. 

We were doing a pre-exam chat -- I was bemoaning the mess at the manor, the monks and the flooring... then the ketamine infusion therapy popped in my head, and consequently, out of my mouth.  But instead of giving him some background, or even notifying him that we were leaving the discursive region of home improvement and religious adherents for the vague regions of dissociative drug therapy, I just blurted:

"Guess what!  I'm gonna do ketamine!"

And his eyes bugged out.
And he opened, then closed his mouth.  Several times.
I could see the confusion and what may have been a burgeoning certainty of my extreme moral turpitude spread across his usually composed visage...

So I explained.

Which made it worse.

He thinks I am nuts for doing this.  Well, ptooey on you, Fabulous Orthopedic Surgeon!  Ptooey, I say, on you!  Then he went on and on about this upside-down, spikey prosthesis -- only an option, of course, if the joint space and long bones are free of infection.

Why am I always so confused?  (No, I am serious.  Why?)  Is there a cumulative but late arriving deficit that hits a person after so many surgeries, after so many foreign bodies are implanted, after nine years of insufficient sleep?  After all the pain, fevers, sweats?  How is it that I can block out such important information?  Denial?  I don't think I am in denial about anything, but then who does?  Do you know that last week, I managed to forget entirely that I have an "aortic root dilation" of growing dimensions -- now sitting right at 5 cm..  I got there because of a run of something or other, that ended in about an hour of trigeminy, and this thought:  "It would be so nice to have a heart rate under 112..." We are so wrapped up in stopping this infection that we haven't even scheduled an echo.  The last one was in ICU back in... July 2009.  Whoa.

Just what I need to indulge in:  more catastrophic thinking!  (Thar she blows!)

See?  I DO need a pensieve -- just to get rid of boring, scary, fruitless thoughts about stuff I cannot do crap about. 

Okay... I feel better.  The reverse shoulder option will only come to be when/if we rid my body of sneaky pathogens and the pain reaches the I-CAN'T-STAND-IT-ANYMORE stage.  With careful coaxing, I can stand a whole hell of a lot!

The title of this post stands unchallenged:  What a mess...

Diamond Jill Saves the Day

I'm back to screening phone calls.

I came *this* close to overcoming my dislike of the telephone but then I spent a good portion of the day yesterday on hold and waiting for promised return calls -- a well known (and laughable) pledge that went unfullfilled. 

I don't want to blame any particular entity for my dislike of the apparatus. 

I certainly would not want Linda, head of the Flooring Department at... oh, let's say... The Lone Alp Home Depot Store... to feel that she failed in any way, whatsoever.  Would I divulge that she placed a large order, charged to one of my many high-ceilinged credit cards, without informing me of the quote for the job?  Would I let on that Linda ordered the wrong product?  Would I let slip that she then claimed she didn't know how to order things "over that there internet"?  Did I mention that she was in charge of an entire department?

I now recognize the moment in our conversations when Linda grabbed onto her safety net.  In the middle of her confusing the square footage of our wing in the Manor with the price of tea in China, she paused and blurted out:  "D'ya want me to call Corporate?"

Apparently, "calling Corporate" is what Linda does best, and may well constitute 99% of what Linda actually accomplishes in the course of her workday.  It sloughes pesky responsibility off of her broad shoulders (I imagine them as broad.  Very broad.).  And she cannot be bothered to call you back unless and until she has received her own return call... from Corporate.

I made eight calls to The Lone Alp Home Depot.  Three resulted in an actual conversation;  None resulted in the resolution of anyone's problem, except perhaps in Linda's case, as she almost purrs when dialing Corporate.  I made an additional five calls to MeasureComp, three of which were spent interminably holding, finally ending in frustrated hangups.  These are not good customer service stats.

So this morning, I resolved to let all calls go unanswered, as usual.

Still, when I heard ringing a few moments ago, I didn't let a full minute elapse before checking voice mail.

And I am so glad!

Sure, it wasn't for me.  Or Fred.  Nor was it for one of the 144 Haddock Manor Domestic Staff (139 of those positions are familial inheritances -- a situation I aim to explain one of these days, color-coded ancestry charts in hand).

It wasn't even a purposefully misguided caller for La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore, who will jot down Fred and my private numbers on a proffered pub matchbook when she is trying to avoid a liaison that looks to have little chance.   It doesn't happen very much anymore.

Less and less, in fact.

And that's not due to a lack of matchbooks, as they are a craze in Tête de Hergé.  It's not that anyone smokes -- the last smoker died in 1989 -- no, it's due to the artisan candle collecting craze.  What is amazing is that we haven't suffered a rash of manor, castle, or monastery fires, thanks mostly to our medieval stone foundations, slate roofing tile, and exceedingly well-maintained wattle and daub.  Sure, we generally have oak framing, but here is the secret:  It is *English* oak!

So... errr, yeah.  We collect matchbooks here. 

Moving right along to the voice mail!   
It was a wrong number.
But what a glorious wrong number!

It was the grande dame of local drag, Diamond Jill.  She is a transplant from the USAmerican South, and proves it with every languid syllable. 

I could almost see her flaming red locks as I listened to her breathy message:

"Dah-lin'!  It's Diamond Jill!" Her delight in announcing herself was infectious.  Why, I was delighted she'd called!

She speaks a dying language of Old-Fashioned Southern, with a vocabulary that waxes and wanes between the obscure and the grandiose, but that totally escapes the trap of outrageous whimsy.

She went on to express her interest in, of all things, a used car for sale.  I feel like rushing out and buying one so that I can call the lovely lady back and offer it at half price.

I know her story well, as do most Tête de Hergéens.  The boy was an accomplished dresser at age 5, thanks to a stylish older sister and a liberal-minded, slightly absent mother.  An early stint in the Marines only heightened the acuity of her couture, and probably authored the precision and work ethic that drives her singing career today.  It may also have something to do with her dedication to all things peaceloving...

Anyway, after all the time spent yesterday being barraged by Linda's halting misquotes and ineptitudes, it was a pleasure to hear Diamond Jill's verbal talents, so smooth that she's currently booked in every straight music club west of the Lone Alp.  I wonder if we could get her for next summer's Manor Fest?  The Cistercians would go wild...

"Ah'll be home all mohnin', dah-lin'.  Give us a call!"