Please stay tuned

I feel a marathon blog post coming on once Time and Inclination collide. I have notes of thoughts, inspiration...


I can't tell you all how nice it was to get so many pithy comments on that last one. It is a great quote, isn't it?


Oh, and Jo?  ...I'm awful glad you finished your thought. I read your first response and got to the end and thought: Does she mean, she thinks she congratulates us? ...but isn't sure? 

10,957 days

I read a lot of what some people might consider crap books. I don't look for the latest publication dates, I don't check the NYT [or any other] book reviews. In my forays into the library or the used book store or wherever, I happen across books that grab me by their titles or by the cover designs and fonts, I read the blurb inside the front cover, I check to see if there are lots of quotation marks (lots of conversation) in the text. Narrative only holds me for so long before I drift off into my own thoughts, which defeats my purpose.  People who read nonfiction . . . some of them . . . (coughH*sb*ndcough) . . . seem to feel that fiction is of a lower order, less worthwhile.  I like fiction: it is why I read.  I find a lot of memorable wisdom in fiction.

For example:

"...marriage is like an old tree.  It starts out a sapling . . . no, it starts out an acorn, a passionate little acorn, and slowly, slowly, it grows and sends out its branches and leaves, and every year new buds. All the things you did together, every trial you lived through, they're scored into that old trunk. The tree is the thing, not the acorn or the sapling or even the strong young tree.  After all is said and done, you want the old tree, no matter how misshapen it's gotten from ice storms and lightning strikes or bugs and what have you."  

~mad dash by Patricia Gaffney

Last Monday was our thirtieth wedding anniversary. 

We celebrated by doing the same things we do every day. There was no special fancy dinner, no diamond anniversary ring in a little blue box, no dewy-eyed and passionate expression of tenderness and gratitude, and that was fine with me. It's the day-in/day-out stuff, I think, that makes a marriage. Neither of us had had real good models for good married life; we sort of had to make up our own rules as we went along.  When it comes right down to it maybe everybody does that. 

Early on, we made a pact that we would always kiss hello and goodbye and goodnight. 

I remember that pact with every kiss.

The public library

I revel in my membership in the public library system.  

I have a vivid memory of one perfect Library Day when I was seven years old. One of our regular family Saturday stops was the local library. It was a rainy gray day in the spring or the fall, cool enough to need a jacket but not too cool for comfort.  I had gathered all the books I was allowed to check out, and hurried back to the car. As soon as I settled in the seat, I dove in and went away. That day it was a book about dinosaurs.  I was mesmerized by the idea of dinosaurs (a common fascination for children, I think).  I probably made my parents crazy with questions: How long is eighty feet? How wide is forty feet? And then I'd look around at whatever they used to show me those measurements and marvel at the idea of an animal that huge.  In those days, previous readers' names and due dates were hand-written (by Miss Feeney, the prototypical 1950s librarian) on the cards in the sleeves inside the back covers. Those cards were interesting too. Who else, I wondered, touched these pages and read these words, and what did they think? Did they marvel too?

For a few years I had stopped visiting the library and I can't remember why. The need for immersion in book air was satisfied by plundering used bookstores (piles of books for $10!) but I began to accumulate far too many books and ended up donating two lawn-and-leaf bags of books to the Literacy Volunteers for their book sale so I could regain some shelf space at home.

Every time I walk into the old place that is my current local library, I stop for a minute and look around with quiet glee. All the hours and hours of pleasure, in one building, for free! My local library is the perfect library building (although any building is good if it has books in it). I prefer old house conversions over modern perfectly-styled-for-library-use buildings. 

The house was built in 1866 by Jacob Miers, who ran a Dry Goods store on Main Street...  It has two fireplaces made of Italian marble inlaid with gold.  The front newel post is not original to the building; it came from an unknown structure on the grounds of the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893.  The property was inherited by Jacob's only child, Hattie Miers and passed through several more owners before being acquired by the Library.

I have always loved creaky-floored libraries all redolent of book-scent; I like some history and character around me as I pore over the titles, all wrapped in their crackly mylar coverings.  I love that I need the battered old stepstool to reach the uppermost shelves near the ten-foot ceiling.  I love that there's an old round oak claw-foot table with mismatched chairs where I can sit to review my choices, and a needlepoint-seated rocker near the fireplace. Oh, comfort! Oh, atmosphere!

I was there just yesterday. I stopped on my way home from work to retrieve a couple of books that I'd ordered online from other locations in the library system. The best library trips are the ones that send me home with an armload, and yesterday was one of those; more of my online orders had arrived since the email notification had reached me. A wonderful thing, this online browsing of every book in the whole regional system. Click a check-box and know that a book is on its way to me from thirty miles away. For free. Other modern improvements . . .  the free internet access and the DVDs for lending are good, but for me, it's all about the books.

As I checked out, I said to the clerk, "Oh boy. And it's Friday!"

No Miss Feeney, this pierced young lady, but a bibliophile all the same, she responded with that particular pleasure, "Yeah! The whole weekend for books!"

Ho hum. Life goes on.

I fold my hands, and wait patiently, and it all comes out right.
Sooner or later.


I bought liverwurst: Max's pilling goes well. Liverwurst is the only edible that he will swallow without suspicious lingual examination for foreign objects.


MiMau has lost all her sharp and bony angles and has become soft and rounded once again. Whatever it was that, nearly overnight, turned her all limp and bony, has passed. She's been quite a little comfort kitty for these two weeks of my recovery. One morning I woke to find her sleeping furry forehead and nose pressed against my forehead and nose . . . giving me a mind-meld of healing.


Angus had something like a seizure one night a week ago. Since early puppyhood, he's had a little Parkinsons-like wobble that comes and goes. The vet said then: He's five weeks old; it's probably an immature nervous system. The wobble seemed very slightly more frequent after his mauling by the fisher, and it accounts, I think, for his occasional stuckness on the stairs. During Last Time Out last week, both boyz ran all over the yard sniffing and barking maniacally. Something terrifically exciting . . . I hoped nothing more unusual than a rabbit . . . or maybe the local feral cat, but who knows? . . . had recently visited. Max was out at the edge of the light cast by the roof-edge floodlight, bouncing back and forth and yelling his curly pink-blond head off. I turned my head to check on Angus' position, and saw that he was on the front walk,  wriggling on the ground as he would in a particularly lovely fresh pile of woodchuck poop. Almost that way . . . but a little less wriggling, a little more stiffness. I went closer to get a good look at him. His eyes rolled toward me; he was in there. He grew quiet. I patted him, told him he was all right, stood next to him wishing Max would shut up, settle down, and come over closer to the door. After a few minutes . . . less than five . . . Angus rolled from his side to his chest, and got up on his feet. Max returned and we came inside. Angus didn't seem distressed, and he hadn't lost control of any sphincters; whatever it was came and went and hasn't recurred. I'm not especially worried. The way life has been going around here, it seemed like just another bump in our road. I'll mention it to the vet next time we go, or if it happens again we'll make a special trip.


With three pets, trios of bad luck are predictable. It could have been worse. I might have had to give him a de-woodchuck-pooping bath at eleven at night.


Two weeks ago tonight I was wandering around the hospital looking for some way to pass the time, finding a dogeared magazine aimed at an audience between the ages of, I'd say, fifteen and twenty-five, and being astonished at the clothing styles. Can it be that the current fashion is to gather several articles of clothing that bear no relation or resemblance to each other, throw them together and call it good?


I had a wonderful last day of sick time today. Moderate temperature, low humidity, a pedicure on the patio, an absorbing book to read, a nap in the afternoon. Tomorrow I'll return to work. I'm just about ready, physically and psychologically. 
I have the coffeepot and my clothing prepared for the early morning launch.
Tomorrow at 8:30 as I go out the door to start my commute I will be sad, the same way I was always sad when a new school year started. But it will be good to be back among people, doing the tap dance by which I earn my bread. And at the end of the day I'll get to come home again. Blessed home!


So now I'm a breast cancer survivor. 
Frankly, I consider myself to be a survivor just having managed to keep breathing through the first utterance of the diagnosis. Now I'm at the other end of it, and I have all but the last, formal pronouncement of "all clear," which will come, in due time, from the Yale laboratory.


The routine resumes.

Buh-bye!

I am home.
And I am well.
I still have, at least, all the lymph nodes I was born with...none of them, not a ONE, had to be removed!

So IT, 


The Disease, 


The Scourge,


is All Gone!

Today's the day!

Max and I are managing with the Tramadol, and we're on the lookout for empty gelatin capsules to hide it in and thereby ease the pain of the twice-daily horror.  He eyes me whenever I come near him, but he still loves me, God help him.
MiMau has Clavamox twice a day, and has been (for the second time in as many months) wormed . . . a huntress of her skill does have to suffer the consequence. She dove into her food last night for the first time in nine or ten days, and it did me good to see it.
Husband is planning a field trip around town after
(a) seeing me into the inner sanctum, or
(b) handing me over to the caring medical team, or
(c) abandoning me to my fate.
Check-in time is 9AM and I'm so looking forward to it! Almost like being at a spa, the way the nurse shepherds me into the changing room and takes away my uncomfortable restrictive clothing and supplies me with that crisp blue paper gown with the nice airy rear and the tissue paper shower cap. That getup always makes me feel so attractive and girly. 


Angus is prancing around feeling quite superior to all of us, and wondering how Dad will do with all these medications while Mom is down for the count.

Things I have learned this week

There is no disguising Tramadol's taste in order to get it down Max's gullet. The best method is a spur of the moment sneak attack and a quick shove of an unadorned teensy little quarter tablet down his throat. Done. Over. No spitting foam and softened diguise material, as he violently rejects the whole mess and flings it two feet from himself where the medication is half-dissolved and useless and I have to wipe up the slop and start over, muttering, "I'm so glad I paid actual money for this medication."

There is something called cat flu, and I think that's what MiMau has.  Husband took her to the vet's office last Monday and saw the vet in the practice in whom I have the least confidence. The vet took a blood sample, said it would be back Wednesday or Thursday and would call. We haven't received a call. A call to the clinic resulted in, "Dr. B. is out until Monday and will call you then." In the meantime, MiMau's perking up in tiny increments, and has begun to be interested in food, although only a kibble at a time, carefully mouthed until she finds a spot in her mouth where she feels like chewing it. I currently have some kibble soaking in the drained juice from canned tuna. We'll try that. Her personality is much in evidence now though, unlike last weekend, and she's drinking water, so I think we've turned the corner. Apparently this cat flu is self-limiting, and there's nothing to be done for it anyway, so we just have to ride it out. 

I'm glad I don't have the daughter for whose birth I longed for years.  I probably would have birthed and raised a daughter with a personality like my own.  I'm guessing that she would have had the same introspective, mulling personality, and she would have gotten herself caught in a morass of emotional turbulence of her own making, and none of my hard-won wisdom would have made the slightest bit of difference. I only got smart after I'd been to Hell and back, and some people just have to do it that way. 

The less I worry about stuff, the better it all goes. It was an absolutely stellar week in Jane's office, with nary an error except other people's, which I, feeling magnanimous and heroic, found and fixed.  It started with Payroll Monday when I got to work late after a doctor visit (pre-op physical physician said, "Get that blood pressure down before surgery!" so off to regular doctor for yet another BP reading and prescription). I bustled into work, pulled together the materials I needed and just did payroll. It was flawless. And angst-free. Imagine that.  Whenever I do something without paying too much attention to it (vinaigrette salad dressing comes to mind) it always works out better.

The prospect of my (next Wednesday) transformation into a Uniboob doesn't bother me as much as other people expect it to. I seem to have friends hovering around, waiting for me to turn into a quivering wreck, and I've been waiting to see if I'm in denial and will, in fact, come to a crashing realization of . . . something.  I think I've truly come to terms with it. Overall, since last . . . what, March? . . . I've had maybe a total of seventy-two hours of "Oh my God!" and now I'm looking forward to getting it over with and moving on. The options presented to me were two:

1. Traditional simple (total) mastectomy, or
2. A second lumpectomy followed by five weeks of five days per week radiation treatment.

The third option was, of course, to do nothing and wait to see when (not if) the remaining slightly odd cells would turn invasive. That made both #1 and #2 look quite a bit more attractive.  I chose the first option because I don't feel like making a career out of having breast cancer. It'll be gone, done, over. Much like pilling Max. We'll worry later about whether or not I feel the need for two lumps instead of one.  I'm thinking . . . if, down the road sometime . . . the other one has to go, I'll opt then for two gigantic Dolly Partons. At this stage of my life, the one remaining Natural One on the right and Smooth And Flat on the left will probably appear more similar than one Natural One and one Firm And Perky.  The deciding moment was when the surgeon told me that, even lying down, a new one would be up there, while the other reclined in my armpit. That would be just silly. And exceedingly painful in the achievement. For what?  Or, you know, when I feel the need for more time off from work, I can decide I need reconstruction. I gather recovery from that is far longer than the two weeks I'll need to get over a simple boobectomy (which term, incidentally, Lord Wellbourne tells me he always thought of as a euphemism for divorce). 

I'm so glad I still have the husband I started out with. There have been times when I've wished he were more romantic in the candlelight-and-rose-petals way, and times when I've wished for him to be more this way or that way...  I'm so glad we rode out all that stuff. Now we know each other and while it isn't exciting and heart-fluttering, it's such a comfort to have somebody to see every day who is completely familiar and who says, "You won't be disfigured. You'll have a scar. So what?"  That might be one of those "y'hadda be there" moments, but I was, and it was a pretty significant moment.

Thanks to Hilary for choosing this as one of her Posts of the Week

The animals are breaking down

One day long ago, we noticed that Max was paying rather too much attention to his private parts. When we investigated as to why that should be, we noticed(!) that almost anybody would pay a lot of attention to his private parts, since a particular part was out waving in the air in a way that, in a neutered dog, it was never meant to do. In addition, Max's mood was Very Bad.
Off to the vet, who put it back inside all nice and cozy. Max seemed happier. A couple of weeks passed, and it was out again, in all its glory. And Max was, once again, unhappy. Unbearable, in fact. Back to the vet who said, "I've never done this before, and neither has Dr. M., but this is what we can try." So the doctor, using local anesthetic and tranquilizers, tucked up the misplaced part and put in a little stitch or two, and sent Max home with a cone on his head to keep him from disturbing the surgical site. Within four days, Max had learned to maneuver his spine so that he could, once again, pay attention. It was OUT again.  I made an appointment, three days hence, with the veterinarian, and took off the cone: "Enjoy yourself, boy."
The day before Max's appointment he was ill. So ill that he hardly knew if he was walking or riding a horse. Husband and I thought that we would wake up to find him dead. We did not.
And off we went to the vet.
"The penis is not the problem," I said to the doctor. It had retracted. Mostly.
The doctor and I agreed that we needed to see if there was something internal that was causing the extrusion.
X-rays followed, and showed all internal organs where they should be, and all of the proper size. Patellas, however, luxating badly. The doctor could pop both hind legs' patellas around quite easily. Tramadol was prescribed, and Max has been living happily ever since. I don't care if he's high; he isn't growling, his parts are all mostly where they're supposed to be, and he isn't falling down the stairs because he doesn't want to flex his hind legs. The only problem remaining is that Tramadol apparently tastes very very bad. My powers of invention are twice daily tested: how to hide a bitter pill in something that Max loves enough to gobble instead of chew. So far I'm batting about .500.


MiMau has been living high on the hog, enjoying her country life. For a week, we daily found a murdered rodent on the front walk. She's been a little off her food, but it's been hot, and there are all those rodents out there. We supposed she was dining al fresco. Yesterday I said to Husband, "Have you seen the cat?" 
"No," he said. 
"I haven't seen her since yesterday afternoon, when she was sitting on the patio."
He went in search and found her sleeping in his workshop, carried her inside, where she moved cautiously and seemingly painfully, drank a little water, and reclined for most of the day.  We concluded that she had gotten drenched in the heavy rain, had gotten chilled and was a little sore. Perhaps, we thought, she had encountered another animal and had been on tense high alert all night. No wounds, no specific sore spots.
Tomorrow I shall make an appointment with the vet for MiMau.  I feel a certain obligation to get all these animals in order before I myself am temporarily incapacitated.


Angus, who was almost killed by a fisher, is beginning to look like Superman next to his siblings.

No place like home. Or is there?

Betsy's "Grassy Cove, Tennessee" pictures took my breath away this morning. It's a beautiful place, yes...but it looks like my neck of the woods.  

Check out Joyful Reflections and see if you don't agree that these two places, 
more than a thousand miles apart, don't look like the very same place! 

(Sounds similar, too, what with the same names throughout the county!)

Rural eastern US . . . y'gotta love it.

I am here: X

I am still, daily, humming and singing "What's Your Name." I can almost get all the verses (what are there, two?) in order now.
I have been sweating and reading simultaneously for lo these many days. 
Still working on walking and chewing gum simultaneously.


I have had no long thoughts worth enlargement and recording.
My thoughts have all been of the next drink of water. 
I have taken to filling two sixteen-ounce glasses with ice and water and moving my paraphernalia (in my basket) to shady airy spots, one after another as the sun moves.
Where I sit, waiting for a breeze. Refilling my beverage glasses with alarming frequency.

Going to work has taken on a new gloss because the place is...

This week is another staycation week, however.

Boo hoo. 

Not.

Somehow my staycation weeks seem to fill up inordinately with appointments: today a pre-op physical, the very idea of which makes me shudder (not because of the "op," but because of the checking over of all the awful things I have done and not done to and with my body and the revelation thereof); tomorrow Max to the vet for a post-op check. More on Max's Issue in another post.

And tonight I shall be at the office anyway because no one can take notes like I and there's a meeting which requires note-taking.

Doo wop

I woke up with Don & Juan's What's Your Name rolling through my brain. 
I love the harmony of doo wop, I love that the artists dressed formally, moved through choreographed poses as they sang. (They didn't make videos of performances in 1962, but I probably saw them on American Bandstand.)
Life was one big prom night.

 

I wonder why that particular song was at the tip of my consciousness upon awaking. 

Heavy sigh

It took slightly more than two hours for all the ahh-ness of my staycation to wear off.


There is a nouveau scandale afoot, another wastebasket fire (although this one might turn out to be more of a dumpster fire). Special meeting called at 10:00am; attendees expecting a rebuttal. The meeting lasted two minutes, during which the accused distributed copies of the accusations and denied all. 


In the midst of all that brouhaha, the end of the pay period, the end of the month! the end of the quarter! ...with all that that entails, and with the accused popping in at random moments, trying to make friends and align allies. 
No dice. No takers. No time.

And in yesterday's local newspaper, a full page representation of the complaint that started it all, printed two pages after the front page story in which the accused said, "Never would I...!"  
Later, the accuser emailed an audio to all, including the news outlets. 
Gasped "OMG! The offense was recorded!"s throughout the building.

In the afternoon, paperwork coming in from several quarters for a presentation in mid-July, none of it organized or collated. 
Organize, send out legal notices hither, thither and yon, answer the phone that never stops ringing. 
Put a smile in the voice.

Accused comes into the office again, whistling a happy tune, letting a smile be his umbrella.

Thus has my return to work transpired.

This is why, years and years ago, I stopped watching television soap operas, with the endless repetition of the petty details of the daily dramas.

Now I'm living it.

Ten thoughts upon returning to work after staycation

...in no particular order.


I don't want to go.
It's a perfect day to mow the lawn.
I miss my nap.
Next vacation day is x number of days away.
All these books are due back to the library on Saturday and I haven't read half of them!
From end of next vacation to surgery/recovery is x number of days.
I hate clocks.
I love being home so much: Is this agoraphobia?
How soon would I get tired of eating milk and crackers if I retired?
Who will be here to appreciate all this if I'm at work?

June's Rules of the Road

I have never been involved in a road rage incident. Not even close.
Over the last several months, however, my drive to work has been increasingly frustrating. 
Now, you say, how can that be, since you live out there in the country* where, if you see fifty cars in a sixteen-mile one-way commute, it's a busy day?
I'll tell you how, after acknowledging that my gritted teeth probably have more to do with the fact that I don't want to go there than with the situations herein described, but be that as it may...


When I was a drunk, I sometimes drove my vehicle while under the influence (she admitted, shamefaced). I knew enough to scrupulously obey every traffic law and good-sense rule of which I was aware. I stopped at stop signs for four seconds ("1, 2, 3, 4"), looked back and forth several times before proceeding. I always signaled my turns well in advance.  I stayed far behind the car preceding me down the road, knowing my reaction time was, perhaps(!), faulty. I never drove over the speed limit. I became religious in my use of the car's cruise control. If the sign said "30MPH" I set the control at 30. On the interstate, where the speed limit is 65, I always always (well, mostly always) drove at 65MPH. By these methods I  managed never to be stopped for any traffic infraction and never got busted for driving while impaired.  
Those habits hang on. In particular the speed limit one. I know, within about twenty feet, give or take, the location on each of my regular routes where the speed limits change from 50 to 55, to 65, to 45, to 30, and finally back to 45, before I arrive at the office. I believe that it is efficient, as well as law-abiding, to travel at the posted speed limit.
The people who dawdle along on a two-lane, no-passing road at 45, where they could travel at 50 . . . bother me. (I'm not talking about farmers on tractors; I like to roll along behind them at a leisurely pace. That means Country to me . . . unless they're just coming back from spreading manure . . . I don't enjoy that quite so much.)
And the people who see me, three hundred feet away, rolling toward them at the prescribed 55MPH . . . why, O why, must they turn left into my lane so that I have the choice of rear-ending them or braking? It breaks my rhythm. Where that happens most often is at the mini-mart near the entrance to the interstate; there isn't enough space for me to "resume speed" on the cruise control before I make my left turn there.  Very inefficient.


Once I was following a woman through the village.  I was pleased that we both were toddling along at 30MPH, nicely spaced, nicely arranged. My right turn appeared; I turned on my directional signal. Her right directional signal went on too. She braked, slowed. And slowed. And slowed. And slowed! I was at a dead stop behind her. We were turning right!  My head dropped forward on my neck, my jaw slackened, my eyes widened, and I said to her from safe within my car, "When making a right turn, first: Come to a Compleeeete Stop." Snidely, I said that. But she couldn't hear me so she wasn't insulted. As I rolled my eyes, I caught the gaze of a man waiting to turn out of the street into which the woman and I were both turning. He had seen me, and since I was enunciating very clearly, he had read my lips and knew my frustration. He shook his head and grinned in sympathy. I burst into giggles. 


The drivers who really make me crazy are the ones who meander along varying their speed at random, now 40, now 45, now 35. I want them to choose a speed and stick to it, so I can set my cruise and stop trying to anticipate their next adjustment. They don't appear to be sightseeing, and they know I'm back there. What's wrong with them?


The state department of transportation is working on a bridge very near the entrance ramp I use. The workers have put up a YIELD sign and concrete barriers and traffic cones by the hundreds to direct everyone to merge into one lane where there used to be two, and where the ramp joins the road at a twenty-degree angle, as illustrated in "d - Tapered acceleration lane -Option 2" below. Is that even twenty degrees? It's tight, anyway.

What is irksome is that on random days, the YIELD sign is replaced by a STOP sign. Now look: it's tough enough to YIELD to somebody when we are all moving. To STOP and then start again requires me not only to use my mirrors, but to spin my head around like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. My head doesn't turn that far; I have to close my right eye and peer left-eyed over my left shoulder. Usually there's nobody coming (see * above), which makes the resulting neck sprain even more annoying.


Most bewildering of all are the big trucks. Those five-ton dump trucks that have signs on the back telling me "DO NOT FOLLOW. CONSTRUCTION VEHICLE."
If I turn onto a road behind them, how am I to get to work?

-Ectomy, Conservation, Reconstruction, O My!

I truly don't want this blog to turn into a personal saga of trial and tribulation and/or a sucking up of sympathy. 
Howsomever, there is this great big thing going on in my head and about to go on in my life and I'm in need of a vent to the great cyberspace.  


The End of the Lump was not the end, it seems.
It's all about margins and, like real estate, location, location, location.
Benign is not, it turns out in the surgeon's parlance, the same as benign in my world.
There is More to Come.


I have choices. Two. In order to prevent a change of the mildly odd cells to something far more worrisome.
"A little bit more off and radiation," or "all off and no radiation."
The choice seemed very simple to me at first. And then I began to gather information. Being uninformed about this stuff is not to be desired, but ignorance surely is more blissful.


When it comes right down to it, what do I need the thing for?
I keep thinking of analogies...if I had a "questionable" fingernail with a chance of eventual invasion to my whole arm and body, I would have my finger removed without blinking an eye. And I can get along without this particular mound of flesh far more easily than I could without any of my fingers. 
D Day (the D standing for either further Discussion or Decision) is on June 24.

One of those chance conversations

I gave my signed "do-whatever-you-will-to-me-and-I-will-hold-you-harmless" paper and the string of address label-size stickers to the receptionist and followed her direction to have a seat in the waiting room. Everyone had spaced themselves from each other so that my choices were limited to less personal space than I otherwise might have taken. 
"I love that shirt!" the lady to my left exclaimed. "And I have one just like it. I got mine in Florida!"
She looked like Mrs. Santa Claus and spoke with an endearing slight lisp and a wisp of a southern accent.
"We love color," I said. 
Giving a quick look down at her bright pink print t-shirt, she said, "Oh yes, we do."
"My nephew's getting married in August and you should see the dress I'm going to wear. It's good it'll be outdoors . . . if it were indoors, I'd make everybody blind! The brighter the colors, the better I feel!"
We chuckled together, flamboyant kindred souls.
"You know, three years ago my granddaughter got married on top of a mountain in the Rockies. I wore a biiiig round (arms reaching toward her feet and sweeping from front to sides) turquoise skirt and a brown shirt."
"With silver jewelry."
She thought a minute, looking back into her memory. "Yes." 
The groom's grandmother had worn turquoise and brown as well, she said, and "Wasn't that a coincidence? I think my granddaughter told them, so we'd match, but she said she didn't. ("didn't" in a high tone, with a slow side-to-side headshake) We hiked a mile and a half up this trail to get to where they got married. A Jeep could go only so far. And they had snacks up there at the top for us. Afterward we went to this . . . they'd rented a hacienda! and oh! it was wonderful! The food! I think his parents have money," she confided. "They owned a ski lodge."
"Well, that would be the place to own a ski lodge," I said.
"Oh, they had sold it by then, but they have quite a lot of money, you know. But they're the nicest people . .  . you would never know. They're just as friendly and down to earth!"


The nurse came and called her in to see the doctor.
"And here I am, flappin' my mouth, just like always." She got up and started to leave, and stopped. "It's been nice talking with you."


What a pleasant prelude to a doctor visit.

Ah, the sweet air of Freedom

I am feeling Not Inspired.
Not wordy.
But I have these thoughts today.

After having spent some years in suburbia, where:

• if I went out to lie down on my grass at dusk my neighbor watched me as she cleaned her kitchen sink, wondering why a person would do that;
• all the women felt bound to leave the house only when the hair and makeup and accessories were perfectly placed;
• nobody danced down the aisles of the grocery store on a Saturday morning, even if it was good ol' 1970s dancing tunes;
• a person would be hard-pressed to find hair on any head over the age of thirty that was the color that nature, time and God gave them;
• one walked in one's yard only on pathways that were perfectly edged and bordered by impatiens or hosta;
• the old tires alongside somebody's garage were a constant visible source of worry to the neighbors;
• outdoor gatherings required tents and powder-coated lawn furniture instead of canvas seating that guests unfolded from their cars...

I am, every moment of every day, glad I live where:

• people drive, unashamed, trucks that have the rubber stripping hanging loose from the wheelwells, flapping in the breeze as they roll down the road;
• vehicles wear the dirt they pick up on the country roads until a heavy rain washes them clean;
• women go to the store, to work, to wherever they want to without makeup, unaccessorized, without, if they choose, some articles of uncomfortable underclothing;
• I can swing up on the Kubota early on a Saturday morning and mow the lawn before I shower and get dressed;
• dogs and cats can go out the door and move around their environment at will;
• I can look at the horizon at almost any point during my daily life and see trees and sky and no buildings;
• I don't hear traffic noise or jake brakes or car alarms or boomboxes or neighbors' children or anything but the sounds of me and mine;
• people have real conversations with strangers as they pass in the supermarket or sit in waiting rooms;
• I can wear to work the same sneakers I wore (with my nightgown) to mow the lawn;
• people like what they like and allow others to like what they like and don't worry about how the other guy keeps his house or his vehicle or his yard.

To the Happy Suburbanites out there, it must sound like Hell.

For me, this is Heaven on Earth.

in memoriam

It's only recently that I've begun to hear Memorial Day once again referred to as Decoration Day, a reminder that the old tradition was to decorate soldiers' gravesites with flags and flowers. My grandmother used to make cemetery visits; I've never been a cemetery visitor. Certainly I have lots of people there to remember, some of them who had been soldiers, although none of "mine" died in battle. It's just something I never did, never grew up doing, going to cemeteries and tending graves. I grew up feeling like the departed weren't there. Wherever they are, they aren't there in the ground. 

I see lots of blogs today with moving posts about our (and others') wars' dead. 
On Sunday we memorialized our fallen soldiers with barbecued ribs and chicken, pasta and potato salads.


My father came home from World War II with shrapnel in his body; his brother was always ashamed that he had suffered a pre-war injury that prevented him from serving in the armed forces. All the rest of my uncles were somewhere over there during WWII. I only had two male cousins and neither of them went to war. I had no good friends who died on foreign shores. The noble deaths of soldiers is an abstract to me. If I really think about it, I can hardly bear it. I doubt that at the time of a soldier's death, he or she is thinking of the ideals for which his or her life is leaving.


My mother told me a story about an Independence Day celebration she and Dad attended shortly after his discharge from the Army Air Force. 
"Somebody set off a cherry bomb and he hit the deck. I turned around and he wasn't behind me; he was flat on the ground."
"What did you do?" I asked.
"I laughed.  That was . . . the wrong thing to do."


When I didn't want to finish supper, Dad would fire up with, "I saw kids eating out of garbage pails!" Quotes like that became jokes among us babyboomers. But there was something in his eyes . . . those visions were right there for him.


Even those who don't die in wars . . . parts of them die.


When I see pictures of the soldiers who are recently dead in wars . . . they're all little kids. Such young kids. Abstractly, I think many of them probably signed up for the training offered, the possibility of a career. Almost nobody, I think, contemplates their own glorious death, for real, when they sign the contract to serve in the military. 
The ones who come home . . . maybe they'd like to celebrate being alive and able to enjoy ribs and chicken and salads.

Still baskets collect cats

This is my basket that I use to cart things around from one of my nests to another.  
It's just the right size. For many items...
...including MiMau.


When I came inside yesterday, I piled my book and my camera on top of her and transported the whole lot indoors. 

If rolling stones gather no moss, and still waters run deep, 

stationary baskets gather collect cats.
(Editing because "collect cats" sounds better to my mental ear)

The End Of The Lump

For those who are interested in The End Of The Lump Story:

The surgery went well, I felt fine soon after, had a nice five- or six-day (depending on whether or not you count the day of surgery) vacation during which Husband allowed me to do No Thing because I was "recovering." I love him. I sat in the sun, courting skin cancer and reading. And slept at will. The semi-circular incision was held together with steri-strips.  No big deal there.  They're still there, to my surprise. Any other place on a body there would have been flexing and they would have worn off by now. 

The Thing (soft, and the size of a golf ball, more or less) has gone back to Yale's laboratory and I'm still waiting for the final word on whether or not there were bad cells in there somewhere. I'm guessing not.

I'm feeling fine, and I still have all my parts, and they all look pretty much the way they did pre-surgery.

So that's that.

I had a good wakeup call to enjoy my life a lot more than I have been doing, and I didn't even need to suffer for it.

Imagine that.


Oh. And never again will I skip the annual mammogram.

Early to rise

Waking up earlier than necessary is so much more rewarding 

on spring and summer mornings.

Part of the wraparound sunrise.

Angus and Max checking out the overnight news

while I sat on the front porch with my coffee.

Religion and politics. In one post.

I've been reading about Draw Mohammed Day. Apparently there's been a big flurry of activity on Facebook with people up in arms over a television cartoon show having been censored to remove what some other people saw as an offensive depiction of the Prophet Mohammed, or rather, other people were offended because Mohammed was depicted at all.  
So.
In response to this censorship some people concluded that the right to free speech in the United States was at risk, and in turn, decided to participate in the May 20 Draw Mohammed Day.
To show those lousy Muslims that we can say any damn thing we want in this country.


I know a guy who trucks cars for car dealers from auctions to the dealers' lots. A particular car dealer owed this guy's boss some money, wasn't paying . . . and the guy (who's American, born and raised) suggested to his boss that they put some stuff in one of the dealer's car's gas tanks. Something that would destroy the motor. Later.
The boss told him, "No. What he's doing to me isn't right, but that wouldn't be right either. And if you do it, I'll fire you."
The boss is named Ali and he's a Muslim.


Years ago I waited tables with a younger woman who was dating a Muslim, and eventually married him.  She had told me once that when she married her beloved, she would need to make peace with her family over issues that had existed since she was very young. I said, at the time, "Well, if you can, that's good..." And she said, urgently, "I have to." One day she and I had some words . . . I questioned her dedication to the job at hand, she told me the only thing to which she was committed was her art. (She was a cellist with the city's symphony orchestra, very artsy, kinda ditsy, but her heart was in the right place.) A couple of years after I last saw her I received a letter from her bringing me up to date on events in her life. The letter included no overt indication that she was making amends, but I wrote back and never heard from her again. I think she might have been converting to Islam at that time and was cleaning up the wreckage of burned bridges. 


I know a Yemeni named Abdul. He is one of the most charming and gracious people I have ever known. Simultaneously, he can be one of the most infuriating people I have ever known. His temper can go from zero to sixty in nothing flat, over things that seem, from my vantage point, to be insignificant. I yell back at him, tell him to Stop it! You're makin' me picture a bunch of guys on a beach in Yemen. Jumpin' up and down with daggers in their teeth. In Hammer pants !  ...and he laughs.  
It's a cultural thing: Yelling and laughing are what he does. 


Back to DMD.
I think that just because a person may lawfully do a thing is no justification for taking, and returning, offense. I think the people who want to "draw Mohammed" just because they have the right to do that are wrong. 
Not because I have sympathy for jihadis.
Not because I'm a Leftist; I don't think I am . . . at least not hardcore.
Not because I lack respect for my own country, or people in military uniform.
Here's why: Because people are people and people have a right not to be poked at with sticks over their religion or their ethnicity or any other thing. 
It's just bad manners.