Propping My Head Up

I slept strangely the last two nights, waking up every hour or so, and having creepy dreams that would continue when I went back to sleep. I'm pretty wiped out today, and my family is once again stressing me out. I shall recap.

Had a wonderful lunch out on Saturday, which I've already mentioned, but at some point the topic of who's smoking and who's not smoking came up, and somebody mentioned that the Hubs had stopped smoking. I had not mentioned this to my sister for any number of reasons. For one, if she had casually remarked to him (like if he answered the phone or something) "Oh, I hear you stopped smoking" he might freak out because he doesn't like people talking about him. (Or he could have had a sane moment and had a normal conversation with her about it.) Next, I would have had to tell her about his endless coughing fits and the temper outbursts that sometimes follow, and although I'm not embarrassed by this, per se, it meant I would have had to tell her that this stressed me out and made me sick, a little, for a week or so, and as you may recall, that's what I'm trying to avoid. Letting her know when I'm not feeling well because it causes an extreme reaction in her. (For a mini-relapse that I know will pass; I'll tell her when I'm really sick.)

Anyway, now she knows something is up and wants to know why I'm keeping it from her. Oy vey. I don't want to tell her on the phone unless I'm home alone (lest he overhear and be bothered by it) and I'm rarely home alone. She wants to know why I didn't tell her when we had dinner last week or whenever it was. I'm trying to explain to her, sotto voce, that when things are calm I need to keep them calm to keep my stress levels down; I don't want to think about it when I don't have to.

In the meantime, after coughing for literally two and a half hours Friday night, the Hubs did some yard work Saturday and yesterday, and took a nice long walk yesterday. This indicates to me that he is not as interested in killing himself as he said he was a month ago -- he was interested in saying it, not doing it -- and he is making plans for the future (he has tomato and other seedlings growing in the living room window), and he is thinking about his health in a positive way by taking the walk. So the weekend was not bad where he was concerned; he even coughed much, much less Saturday and Sunday. On the other hand,

the kid is sick. She has, I think, an upper respiratory infection on top of allergies, and I know she feels terrible and looks terrible but I'm sorry, she and her father are just freaking babies when they are sick. (And the Hubs was never like this before, only with this not-smoking sickness.) When K is not hiding out up in her room (which she doesn't do enough, as far as I'm concerned) she's sitting or lying somewhere near me moaning "Mommy, I'm sick!" Yes, folks, 24 years old in two weeks.

So this morning I was expecting quiet in the house. The Hubs was taking a day off for god knows what reason; he takes off one day every few years, and K couldn't work because she's sick. So I figured, Ah, no one else up in the morning, I'll have the whole house to myself. I thought I could sleep later, but of course no, I woke up at 5:30, ten minutes before my alarm. And I was rolling along, relaxing a bit on my morning routine, when what should I hear but K's door open. Yes, folks, she was too sick to sleep, and thought it would be a great idea to engage me in conversation, which meant she began to moan "Mommy, I'm sick! I can't breathe!" and so on. Let me tell you what would happen if I tried to engage her in conversation on any given morning. You would see the resultant explosion over New Jersey from every part of the globe. (I shall not yet again post a "Katie Kaboom!" video clip, but you could find it on Youtube and get the general idea.)

Anyway, I had time and she needed medicine, so I took her to the CVS and then dropped her off at home and went on to school, where I was like a zombie all day, but actually got lots and lots of stuff done. And all day I'm thinking "Oy, I'm so glad I'm here and not at home."

So that's the day. Unless there's been some kind of miracle cure, she's not going to class tonight. And it's been pouring all day, so I know he hasn't done any yardwork, although I suspect he stayed home to get some work-work done without the distractions of being in his office.

I think I shall sleep through this afternoon's mandatory faculty meeting.

P.S. Later, at home. I haven't seen the kid yet, but she went to the doctor this morning and got an antibiotic, and is now sleeping. (Of course, if she doesn't get up at a reasonable time, I shall have to go upstairs and make sure she's breathing. Yes, 24 in two weeks; she's not the only freak in the family.) And the Hubs, to show you how erratic he is, when I got home his car was gone but there was a message on the machine to call his cell phone. Seems he went somewhere and locked his keys in the car. I drove over and gave him a spare set, but he was laughing at himself and amused by the whole thing, something that could make anyone angry.

Come to think of it, I wouldn't mind a cigarette myself. Oh, just kidding.


WATCHING THE GOLDEN GIRLS :: ENTRY #1714

Saturday

I had such a nice afternoon. My sister and Wonderful Niece came over, and K and I brought them to see R's apartment, where they had never been, and then we all went out to lunch near there. She lives in a very charming small city. Lunch was excellent. We went to a Thai place but it was closed, so we went to a Mediterranean place just up the street, and it was all delicious.

But it was very cold and windy walking around on the street, which was not so pleasant. Afterwards, though, we took a ride around and looked at some of the big houses -- this city has a very old upscale neighborhood, with gigantic Victorians -- and then dropped R off at home. After we got back to my house and the Sibs and Niece took off, both K and I dropped off into deep naps.

K is sick with what sounds like an upper respiratory infection, just blooming, as it were, today. She is coughing and coughing, and feels just awful. She was pretty medicated this morning, but now it's making her miserable.

Speaking of coughing, the Hubs coughed and hacked for a good two hours or more last night. It's hard to believe that this is just from stopping smoking; it sounds as if he's got something else or he's giving himself something else. All that coughing can't be good for his throat. I didn't even remember this until last night while I was listening to him go on, that his grandfather had throat cancer. It's not what he died of, though (that was an embolism after routine surgery, like gall bladder or something), but I asked the Hubs once many years ago if his grandfather spoke with an accent, and he said he didn't really know. I thought this was odd, since he was close to his grandfather, who died when the Hubs was fourteen, but he explained that his grandfather had had throat cancer when he, the Hubs, was a baby, and so he never really spoke after that. He had that hole in his throat, and I guess he could make himself understood, but he didn't actually speak. And here's his devoted grandson, not at all concerned with what's going on in there in his own body.

And this, folks, is what therapy is for. For me, I mean. I haven't called yet because things have been relatively quiet, but last night was stressful, and I've got to make that call this week. Stress is not good for me. I'll be curious to see if I have a little mini-relapse this week, as I did a few weeks ago after another stressful weekend. Although he seems fine now. He was working out in the yard when we came home, and that relaxes him.

Okay. Finished Truman, finally, and also Persepolis, very good. My sister gave me two books today; I'm contemplating Open House, by Elizabeth Berg. It's so nice to be back into reading again.

WATCHING THE SIMPSONS :: ENTRY #1713

The Things I Carry

First, yet another word about Twitter. Today, two people whose diaries I read for a long time and lost track of somehow found me and we are "following" each other. Twitter is cool. (And addictive. And easy to do from work, since it takes a minute.) Enough of Twitter.

Bluesleepy challenged us today to show what's in our purses, and wrote about about the sanctity (or not) of one's purse. I'm not carrying a purse these days, since I usually prefer to stuff my jeans pockets (although I do love the Vera Bradley bags.) Here's what I had in my pockets today:



Lest you think that I wear some kind of magic jeans, let me explain that the IceBreakers were in my jacket pocket, the left, and my keyring (which I forgot to put in the picture) lives in my right jacket pocket. The other items are:

-- my phone, which resides in my left front pocket
-- Burt's Bees lip balm and eye drops, in my right front pocket. I also forgot to put in the picture my little four-compartment pill box, which holds my Crohn's pills, and goes into my right front pocket after lunch. (It was in my lunch bag until then.)
-- the silver rectangular thing is the Palm case, with the Palm inside. Because the case is smooth, I put a rubber band around it lengthwise before I put it in my left rear pocket, to keep it from sliding out.
-- my wallet, which always goes in my right rear pocket. This looks like a Vera Bradley-type wallet, but there are actually hidden Mickeys in the design; I got the wallet in DisneyWorld. I would never buy a pink wallet -- or almost anything in pink -- except the hidden Mickey wallet was so cute, and didn't come in any other color.

That's it. A tour of the inside of my wallet would take twice as long, but maybe I'll share that with you another time.

As to the sanctity of one's purse, well. If there was any rule in the house I grew up in, a rule that was never violated by anyone, it was No one touches Shirl's purse but Shirl. No one was ever given permission to do so, either; she would ask us to bring her the purse, but never allowed anyone else to open it or get anything from it. And it would feel just as strange to me to tell one of my kids Open my bag (if I were using one that day) and get me ... And I would never go in theirs. (Although I admit I have dropped things into their open bags, like mail R kept forgetting to take home, or sometimes money.) I don't know why Shirl was so crazed on the subject, but to me it's a respect thing, never open someone else's purse. (Or their mail. I was also raised never to open anything, even junk mail, with someone else's name on it.)

WATCHING THE SIMPSONS :: ENTRY #1712

So Here's What It Is

I've been saying all along that Hillary Clinton was not my candidate of choice, and now I'm going to tell you why. It's the truth/secrets thing. She sees nothing wrong with either keeping secrets or distorting the truth about things, and does so with an air of certain confidence that she will never be found out. This is not different, in essence, from the way most politicians operate, and it is certainly how Bill Clinton operates, although I liked him as president, and all thing being equal, would vote for him again. But all things are not equal, and it's time for us to expect better from our president, and she is not showing us better, she is showing us the same old politics-as-usual. (So is McCain, who, did you know, has widespread melanoma? It's not a secret-secret, it's out there, but you don't hear a lot about it.) Anyway, Obama does seem to be different, and I think he's the different we need at the moment. We need to have our faith restored in our government. Hillary is not up to that task, however up to the other tasks of being president she might be.

So there.

Last week at school, I decided to pick up my videotape cataloging project from last year, and I could see that there was enough work there to keep me busy for some time, maybe til June. I finished it this morning. :( Oh, I still have some tinkering and tweaking to do with it which I couldn't do today because Media Girl is out sick and I need her input, but pretty much, done. We have got some really strange items in our videotape collection, that's all I have to say.

I decided last week that I deserved a present. Here it is:



I have had a great many Mickey Mouse watches in my day because I have always believed that if you're wearing a watch, it might as well have a Mouse on it. My very first watch was not a Mickey but a Cinderella; I remember one night sitting on my father's lap as he taught me to tell time and then taking me out and buying me the watch. (It probably cost $7.99.) I've had many Mickeys since then and a few not-Mickeys, but the Mickey I was wearing most recently, when I've been wearing a watch, had thin silver hands (as opposed to white-gloved black hands) and I just couldn't see them well enough anymore for me to read the time on the watch. I like a Mickey watch with mouse hands, goldarnit. So I got this one through Amazon, not much more than my original Cinderella watch, because I could also never see the point in wearing an expensive watch. This one is very cute, with a bit of a 3D feel to the Mickey, and of course, has the gloved hands. And numbers, I see no point in wearing a watch that doesn't have numbers on it. I don't want to decipher a watch, I just want to see what time it is.

Once again, it is a cloudy, gray day. The temps are inching up, slowly, but we've had heavy winds and overcast skies for what feels like weeks. And allergy season has started early, even before the trees start to bud. I don't know how many people I know who are already having terrible allergy troubles. Although my eyes are slightly better this week, I think. For now.

I keep thinking that I should be twittering from my phone, just because I can. Ah, toys.

WATCHING OPRAH :: ENTRY #1712

All a'Twitter

Yes, I'm joining the 21st century, or whichever century this is; I signed up for Twitter. I have no idea why, because trust me, I'm not that interesting. But it intrigues me, it's a toy, and that's all it needs to be. I was thinking that it would even make me more comfortable at texting because I'm not, but it just occurred to me that I should check my phone plan and see what I have there, because if this toy is going to cost me fifty cents each time I play with it, I'll update from a desktop somewhere, thank you.

Anyway, two of you found me before I was practically even there, and I don't know how you did that, but cool. I put the twitter thing down there on my page somewhere, if anyone's interested. (Not that I am, as I say, inherently interesting.)

I still have like a million pages to read in Truman, but I picked up Persepolis when someone returned it to the library yesterday, and it is most interesting. I've tried reading some other graphic novels but they're too graphic for me, this one is not. And a story I haven't really heard before. Based on my being about halfway through it so far, I would recommend it.

The news on my Aunt is that she seems perfectly fine (except for the Alzheimer's thing) and no one knows what happened to her or how she got better, but she appeared dead on Friday, and was carrying on conversations on Sunday. Who knows.

So here was a nice compliment to my kid I heard about today. She's been in subbing for two days this week for a particular teacher who has poor classroom management, and whose classes are therefore not well behaved. The teacher called in that she would be out the rest of the week. So the secretary who took the call said, after she hung up, "Damn! No one can handle those classes! We'd better get K Chai in for the rest of the week!" Which I know because someone overheard this and told me about it, and the secretary who made the comment never says a nice thing about anyone. So nice when someone thinks your kid is a capable adult.

Who is at class tonight, and the Hubs is coming home late, so I'm on my own here for awhile. Time to catch up on a George Lopez I recorded last night. Speaking of catching up, or keeping up, my house is still clean. I'm doing the little daily wiping up, as well as the vacuuming and shower cleaning on Saturday. K is doing the kitchen and bathroom floors on Saturday. Which goes to show you that if you live long enough, you will see things you never thought you would. Both of my daughters keep their own apartments clean, when they have them, but at home? Why would they clean at home? Well, now I've seen it done, so things must be pretty chilly down in hell these days.

Okay, George awaits.

WATCHING ELLEN :: ENTRY #1711

Nothing New

No news on Edith today, but I'll call my cousin tonight and see what's going on.

Bluesleepy posted the cutest picture of Gracie today in her Oshkosh B'Gosh, so I had to share this picture of R with you, which is roughly 25 years old:



Her hair isn't even really longer now, and she looks pretty much the same, although slightly less elfin. I would post a current picture of her if I didn't think she would have me hunted down and killed for it, so it isn't really worth it. But she was sure cute as a button.

Otherwise, a quiet day of cataloging videotapes, occasionally interspersed with reading bits of nephew JJ's master's thesis. (It's his second attempt; I'm proofreading.) It merely confirms my belief that all graduate level theses are deadly dull and boring, even when well-written or about a basically interesting topic. I've got 20 pages read. Only 65 to go.

Okay, K and I are running out for a few supermarket items --

The Week Begins

So, a new week. The news of the day is that my aunt in Florida is in the hospital but has somehow managed to continue to live, despite having no blood pressure or bodily warmth on Friday. Well, she is only 91. Her father lived to 92, and his mother to 96. These genes did not so much transmit down great-grandma's other son's line, which would be my grandfather's.

(Speaking of the old folks, let me share a picture I may have shared before, because I want you to see how cute my Uncle Joe was. He had a very heavy European accent and sparkling cornflower blue eyes, and lived, as I say, to the age of 92. He's on the left, then my Grandpa Sam (his brother), my Grandma Ida, and my Aunt Becky, Ida's oldest sister. And again, to keep things in perspective, Ida was about five feet tall. So you can guess that Becky was a little wisp of a woman.)



Anyway, it's not as if I haven't been anticipating this. Unlike her forebears, Edith has Alzheimer's and is generally weakening. Uncle Joe and his mother -- known, btw, as Bubbe Pesha -- were blind at the end, but otherwise on the ball. But my sense is that Edith is the last of that generation -- my parents' generation -- still with us, and when she is gone there will be a real sense of finality. A sense that I'm not eager to face, but of course, there will be no choice.

(There is one more aunt among the living, but she is my mother's sister-in-law and has lived on the West Coast all of my life, so I have no real connection to her, although she's very nice. But I don't have the same feeling for her that I have for Edith, who is, to be frank, a bitch and always has been, but she's our bitch.)

So we wait. There will be no trip to Florida for a funeral or memorial service this time, as there was for Edith's son a couple of years ago, because Edith will be buried here, on Long Island, beside her husband. So her remaining son and his family will be traveling here for the burial, and we will probably be the only people left in the New York area to be there with them. But not yet. If she is in pain, soon, I hope, for her sake.

Sometimes this cycle of life thing is a real drag.


WATCHING TWO AND A HALF MEN :: ENTRY #1709

"Counting the Cars ... "

" ... on the New Jersey Turnpike; they've all come to look for America ... " (America, by Paul Simon)

Guess where we spent our holiday?

Really, it wasn't as bad as all day on the Turnpike and/or Garden State Parkway, just under two hours each way. Which is plenty. I just don't like going, although I'll admit this wasn't as bad as it could have been.

You see, I like the people I'm with, I like the restaurant we go to, I like the food. It's the whole experience I don't care for. Part of this, I think, is that the people in charge of the party -- the MIL and the FIL -- do not have the same sense of time that I have, because a) they just don't, and b) they are old. They are getting older faster, if you know what I mean. He doesn't hear well, which, okay, but she has a soft voice, and when she calls to him to do something it sounds kind of like tom and when he doesn't answer, she gets pissed off, and the next try is more like TOM! And he was always laid back, but now he moves so slowly that it's like he's moving backwards. To wit:

The reservation was for 3:30, which is exactly when we all got to the restaurant, all except my nephew, who had to work late and was meeting us there. He arrived at four. At which time, the ILs thought it was okay to order appetizers. We didn't even order our dinners until 4:30! Who's crazy here; is it me? You order your meal an hour after you arrive? The wait staff was totally going at our pace; they are very, very nice there and know the ILs well because they go there all the time. I felt like I was jumping out of my skin and wanted to scream "Let's move it, people!" which of course I did not. The SIL, mother of the delayed nephew, was trying to gently encourage her parents to order, but they wanted to wait for the kid. Who is a nice kid, btw, now that he's an adult and speaks to us. (He was always polite but simply never engaged in conversation from the age of ten or so.) He's a good looking boy, graduating from college in May, and is a good kid. Helped his grandfather to the men's room without being asked. (The FIL has a lot of trouble walking.)

And we get to do it all again in May, since we will be celebrating the FIL's 80th birthday. The Hubs and I will drive the FIL's sister and her husband down with us; our girls will go in their own car, as they did today.

Speaking of the Aunt and Uncle, whom I have mentioned before, the Hubs and I visited them yesterday pre-Easter (and to pick up the Easter Pie, a family and world-renowned delicacy made by the Aunt), and once again, let me say that these are two of my favorite people in the world. They have been married 56 years, and are funny as hell, like a comedy team, and they are loaded with the Black Humor, which I thought only came from my side of the family. I heart them totally.

So one of the reasons my girls like to go in a separate car is that their father has been known to freak out on the ride home. On one notable occasion, the traffic irked him so much he announced that he was going to drive the car into a wall and kill us all. So you can see that this troubles them a bit. He's a very good driver, but he has a habit of following the car in front of us too closely for my comfort, so it's not usually pleasant for me, either. And today I saw him consume a fair amount of wine, so I assumed I'd be driving home. But he drove, and damn if he isn't a better driver with wine in him than without. (He didn't drive back to his folks' house from the restaurant, I did, so he did wait some time after his last glass and getting behind the wheel.) As for me, anyone driving on the same day as having consumed alcohol is too much, but honestly, I had no stressful moments on the whole ride, and the traffic never bothered him, such as it was.

So now I'm just waiting for K to get back from dropping off R, and for John Adams to start on TV. And work tomorrow, oh boy.


WATCHING waiting for JOHN ADAMS :: ENTRY #1708

Science Quiz

My grade certainly wasn't as high as the empress's was, but unlike the empress, I remember my 8th grade science teacher very well. I tried to find his picture via Google, but alas, all I came up with was one print reference.

His name was Barney Finn, and he was unlike most other teachers we had in junior high school, and especially in elementary school. For one thing, he was a man, and there were few male teachers in grades 1 - 6, elementary school. For another, he was old. I'm guessing that he was maybe 65 when I was in his class the first year. Which was, I think, his first year teaching.

Imagine that Santa Claus, after years of loyal service, has been told that due to a medical condition beyond his control, he can no longer fly, or work in a cold environment. He has to do something, right? So he shaves off his beard and gets a crew cut, puts on a gray suit, and stands up in front of a junior high school science class in New Jersey. He's still great with kids, and still has the twinkle in his eye.

Okay, it was almost like that. Except Barney Finn had been a top college football player, and then a professional football player, in the 1920's. My father, who learned to read only so he could read the sports sections in the Boston newspapers, remembered his name. When he retired from playing, Barney Finn became a well-known and respected referee in college football.

The print reference I found on the Internet was about a questionable call he made during the 1964 Army-Navy game. When I started seventh grade in 1965, he was my science teacher. And he did indeed look exactly like a clean-shaven, crewcut Santa Claus.

Something he said once -- and he didn't teach a lot, but he loved to tell stories -- led us to believe that he had had to leave his previous career because he developed a vision condition in which he gradually lost his peripheral vision. A quality that a football referee would need, I guess.

Anyway, my seventh grade class was full of hooligans, and I stood out as the one little good girl, so Mr. Finn loved me. In eighth grade, I was the underachiever in an honors class, and he still loved me, but by then I realized that he loved all the kids who were bright enough to get his very dry sense of humor, which was my entire eighth grade class. We adored him. He rarely taught anything, but he stood up at the front of the room at the big lab desk -- he didn't walk around much, and when his attention was diverted, he turned with his whole body to look -- and held a yardstick in his right hand. (Actually, it was a metre stick, as we were supposed to be learning about the metric system that year.) When we became unruly, he smacked it down on the black surface of the desk. Occasionally, a chip or two would fly off the end of the stick. By the end of the school year, the stick was maybe ten inches long. Which we all thought was pretty funny.

I just loved him, and I learned a great deal about being a person and a grown up from him, as did we all in that class. I don't suppose he taught for very many more years; I never knew why he was teaching at all. I know that he had gone to college as a science education major -- Columbia University, I seem to recall -- but had either never taught or had taught some little bit while he was playing football. I know I once mentioned his name to the FIL, who would have been one of his bosses in the school system, and he just beamed. There wasn't much you could say about Barney Finn, except that anyone who knew him pretty much loved him.

WATCHING L/O :: ENTRY #1707

Being a Goof

So now I have this great project to work on at work, and I'm already bored. What I have before me this afternoon is several videotapes that have to be entered in a kind of library code-language (it's called MARC, which stands for ... something ... machine ... accessible ... record ... I don't know, ceeping? Okay, it's Machine Readable Cataloging, no idea where the A came from.) Anyway, I don't care for MARC coding, but it's what I've got. So I thought I would write you all instead.

My stress level is considerably lower today than it was yesterday. Most of this is due to less stress with my offspring, always good. Had a long chat with K last night about a variety of things, including her desire to move out on her own, but she doesn't want me to feel bad about her moving out. Uh ... really, no problem, no problem at all. I love her dearly and enjoy her company, but it's time -- past time -- for both of us for her to be on her own. It's the financial issue, though, and graduate school, but she's examining options. As for the other one, I hadn't really spoken to her when they got home Tuesday night, other than a quick hug and a hello when I went to pick up K at R's apartment, so I was stressed over worrying if she'd had less than a good trip, since K had some issues (which was part of my Tuesday night stress.) But no, R was tickled with every minute of the whole trip, so I breathed a sigh of relief after talking to her last night.

I'm not being stressed much today, but I haven't had the chance to call the therapist yet. I'll call tomorrow, since there's no school (Good Friday) and I can call from the privacy of home, as opposed to calling from school. I am very, very psyched about sleeping past 5.45 am tomorrow. Less so about going to the gynecologist at 10.30, and having mixed feelings about going to the accountant in the afternoon. I am such a numbers and money dummy that I just never have any sense of how taxes are going to work out each year. If they tell me I owe, I'm not surprised; if they tell me there's a refund, I'm delighted and amazed. Since I didn't do anything overtly stupid this year, a refund is a better possibility, but again, I never know. I just like the accountant thing to be over. (Although I'd really like a nice refund to put in the Hubs' new car fund, so we could get that whole debacle over with at last.)

Oh, oh, get this. In the period before I went to lunch, I got a call from one of the school social workers, who tells me that she has a girl there with her who needs to find information for an assignment on anorexia. The S.W. says to me, very hesitantly, "Do you have ... anything ... on that?" I bit my tongue and did not reply, "What are you, a freaking moron?" and instead I said sweetly, "Yes. Of course." So then she goes on and says "So what should I have her do?" Uh ... didn't you go to college, lady? "Tell her to come to the library and see me." "Oh. You'll help her?" Why yes, yes I will. That is the condition of my receiving a salary. People come to the library and I help them find the information they need. And what is it that you do again?

Anyway, the kid, thank god, was way more on the ball, and remembered how to the use the library catalog when I reviewed it with her, and had no trouble whatsoever locating the information she needed in the books we found, and even explained to me why one of the books was better than the others, and so on. Why she didn't just come here herself I have no idea, but it probably had something to do with the assignment being late and needing an excuse on file with her caseworker. Even so, just another case of people who should know better having no idea whatsoever of what a library is or what I'm here for. You know, it's disheartening after all these years. I shoulda been a fireman; everybody knows what they do.


WATCHING GEORGE LOPEZ :: ENTRY #1706

Good News, Less Than Good News

First, the less than good news. I believe that I am sinking into a depression. There are a variety of factors here, my illness, stress-inducing family, and so on. This morning, I was feeling very, very sad, and trying to get a handle on what to do about it. I think what I need is to go back to therapy, and I even looked up my old therapist on the Internet, but I don't think going back to her is an option. Although I'm sure she would see me, the group she's in is now specializing in treating eating disorders, and I think I would feel very out of place there. They had already started to move in this direction before I stopped going, and just sitting in the waiting room was sometimes awkward, and I was always concerned about running into a kid from my school there. (Not that I would have cared if anyone knew I went to therapy, but I thought it might be very stressful for the kid to think a teacher knew she was going there.)

Anyway, I was thinking about that, and how on earth to find a new therapist, and how I feel I am without someone to talk to, as I wrote yesterday, and then a very cool thing happened. The phone rang.

On the other end was my dear Colleague, she who was formerly the library secretary and who is now banished to another office in the school. (She's not actually banished; she got promoted away from me.) She called up to see how the girls liked their trip to Paris. And stuff just started to spill out of me. I realized that she is the person I'm missing in my life. She is the one I always talked to about anything, and she to me. We've gotten accustomed to being separated, but not really adjusted to it, if that means anything. As we were talking, I couldn't believe how much I was missing her -- yes, she's only in another part of the same building, but we rarely cross paths -- and it felt wonderful to talk to her. (We do talk on the phone, but not often enough, and then it's all we can do just to catch up with each other's lives.) And then I remembered something else: her daughter, married, in her thirties, goes to see someone for therapy, based mostly on my success and recommendation that it would be good for her. So, the upshot is, I got the name of someone to go to.

It's a good decision to go to therapy, and good to have a name to start with. I don't feel like I need to dig as deep as I did last time, I just feel like I need some support for awhile. When I first got my diagnosis in January, even then I thought that I might want to go see someone after a couple of months. So that's the good news. (Being depressed is the less than good news.)

I also kind of traced back a little of what's irritating my stomach, so hopefully I will stop eating that -- edamame, which I love -- and it will clear up this little bit of a flare I seem to be having. So I felt good about figuring that out, too. I hope it's not the apples that I've started eating again, because I really like apples, and it's easier to give up the edamame. I think that's it, anyway.

(Crohn's, btw, is one of the two major inflammatory bowel diseases, the other being ulcerative colitis. The main difference between the two, as I understand it, is that U.C. occurs only in the colon, but Crohn's can affect any part of the entire digestive system, including *ahem* both ends, the mouth/tongue, and ... the other end. Also, because these are auto-immune diseases, they can also cause rheumatoid arthritis [the big auto-immune disease] reactions in the joints, particularly of the hands and feet. I could go on, but that's the basics, that's why I get sores on my tongue when it acts up. I didn't have the ankle and wrist swelling until I got very sick, but the tongue is apparently an early sign for me.)

I also undertook a pretty big library project this morning, one that we had started last year but had to put off due to the change in the library software over the summer. (I'm cataloging our video collection. We have about 900 videotapes.) So that was a good decision too, to immerse myself in work that needs to be done, is somewhat interesting, and just the right amount of challenging. I'm also weeding out old and/or never used videos while I'm at it. I'm up to about 480, which includes all the ones we got done last year, so I guess this should keep me busy until June, at least.

(Why do we still have so many VHS tapes, you wonder? For one thing, we've got them, and we don't have the budget to replace them all on DVD at once. For another, many of them won't be available on DVD, maybe ever. Not to mention that we have relatively few DVD players to go around in the building, but we still have VCR's in many rooms, and many VCR's on carts to move around. The newer or remodeled classrooms have computers connected to video projectors, so they can just show DVD's through that system, but it's not widespread enough to make our videotapes obsolete. Yet. Although anything new that we buy is on DVD.)

I do feel better than I did this morning. I can't say that what I was feeling was despair, but I felt very, very sad. Oddly, I slept very well last night, which surprised me, so that didn't contribute to the morning's mood, but I woke up feeling like I'd gotten to my last straw. Better now, some. Of course, I do still have to go home (whence I shall post this) and talk to the people who live there (or used to live there), and I do still have to spend some time in a car with them on Sunday so we can go have Easter dinner with the ILs -- mm boy, looking forward to that -- but there you go. You gotta do what you gotta do, n'est-ce pas?

(K did indeed bring me a copy of Harry Potter et le Prisonnier d'Azkaban, which I could even read, some. It made me giggle.)


WATCHING ----- :: ENTRY #1706

They're Flying Again

It's about 10.45 my time, so I'm at work, of course, and in between other things I'm doing, I'm trying to track the flight that the girls are on. The flight tracker websites are doing me dirt today. Two of them, including the one I usually depend on, say the flight is delayed, but the airline's site says they left on time, a minute early, even. Then I looked again at my favorite site, the one that shows a nice map of where the planes are in real time, and it says it can't show the map because the plane is still on the runway, but underneath that, it says that the plane is in the air and left a minute early. Come on, people! The Internets are supposed to work, you know!

So I've been on this whole tidying up kick, and I've been doing at work as well, which means my desk area and the shelves behind my desk are neat and everything is in its place. It also means that I've been tidying up the little tasks -- in library language, we call these "snags" -- that ultimately need tending to. As a result, I am 100% caught up on all my work. I have nary a book nor a video nor an audio CD that awaits cataloging. My budgets are closed for the year, so I can't do any ordering. I have no classes in today because the counseling department is sucking up our computer classroom for some career program that the entire tenth grade has to learn how to do. (I remember doing a similar career survey, not on a computer of course, when I was in eighth grade. One boy in my class got results that said he was perfectly suited to being a shepherd.)

Which means what I have left to do is read journals, annoying because I'll be picking out books to get and we won't be able to order them until maybe June or probably September. Not a good system.

Anyway, I have another health issue or two to discuss. First, you know, when I got the Crohn's diagnosis, I felt certain that I was going to be living every day for the rest of my life dealing with this as a kind of primary thing, almost the way a diabetic is always aware that he is a diabetic. This has not turned out to be the case, which is a surprise. Yes, I always know I have it, and I am always alert to what might happen, but for the most part, I am very stable, and can eat and do whatever I want that I could eat before. I'm not carrying around my Big Bag O' Crohn's supplies wherever I go anymore; in fact, today, like many days, I am back in my standard mode: my wallet in one back pocket, my Palm in the other, my cell phone in one front pocket, and my lip balm in the other. My only concession is that my daily Crohn's pills container is in the pocket with my lip balm. My default is always not to carry a bag; I can get away with this at work because I have other stuff in my desk that I might need during the day, like eyedrops and such. And of course, because I always wear jeans.

Having said that, I am seeing the resurfacing today of a symptom -- I have a couple of lesions on my tongue -- but I'm not all that worried about it. They're not really bothering me; I'm just aware of them. I guess this means that I have some increased inflammation. I did start taking one fish oil capsule a day and now I'm going to start a second (and work my way up.) But here's the other thing.

I no longer feel comfortable sharing any awareness of illness with my family. This is peculiar, and after all, you should be able to do that, but I don't at this time. The Hubs is, as you know, very caught up in being the only person who has ever been ill or ever will be (and yet he seeks no treatment or relief because he is also a martyr), and I'd rather not deal with any of this with him. (Of course, he would know if I were really sick or were going to the hospital or something.) The girls, other than being away, are my children, and again, would know if I were really ill, but I don't need to bother them with the day-to-day stuff. I don't want them to feel that every time they say they don't feel well, I counter with "Oh yeah? Let me tell you ..." because I totally hated it when my mother did that.

The strange thing is that I can't talk to my sister about this. Oh, I could, really, but what happened was that when I was so, so sick a couple of months back, she became terribly frightened and stressed and it triggered a variety of stress-related health issues for her. She's still dealing with some of them, and at the moment, her health needs to take precedence, too. So I won't tell her I'm having tongue issues because I don't want her to start to stress out and get more migraines, among other things. I'm not telling her because I'm watching out for her this time, the way she watched out for me when I needed her to.

So that leaves you -- thanks, by the way -- and I should probably make sure I talk to OldFriend at least once a week -- sometimes we let it go to two or three -- because she's a fabulous sounding board, especially for health things.

That's enough for today, don't you think? I have to wait to post until I get home after I get my nails done today, by which time, with any luck, the girls will be on American soil. I'll let you know.

5.15. They are in America. I just went out and picked up corned beef sandwiches so they can have some dinner when they get home, which should be seven-ish.


WATCHING GEORGE LOPEZ :: ENTRY #1705

What a Nice Day

Any day I'm not at work starts off with an advantage, but this was generally a pretty good day. For one thing,

My house is soooooo clean. It looks nice, it smells nice. It makes me happy. Too bad I can't afford this every week, but I will look into some more affordable options. I thought these ladies were very thorough and didn't put too many things back in the wrong places. (Although the pictures on my piano, oy vey.) I didn't even let them go into the Hubs' study, because I didn't want to deal with any of his stuff being out of place, but I just did some dusting and swept the floor before they got there.

And I got all kinds of stuff done on the phone while they were working. I now have insurance on my hearing aids. I got the last piece of the stuff-for-the-accountant puzzle in place. I solved not one, but two, health insurance snafus. I got the monthly cost of the expiring cell phone cut down until it's gone.

Oh. I got a toaster. Not a free toaster, mind you, but a fourteen dollar toaster, which is close enough.

And then an early dinner at Red Lobster with my sister. No complaints here. Although it would be a nice change if I got some sleep tonight, I think.

WATCHING FRIENDS :: ENTRY #1704

Now: Nobody Touch Anything!

This is as tidy as my house gets. Everything is where it's supposed to be, except in K's room, of course, but nobody's looking up there, and in the basement, where the only proper place for whatever's there is "in the basement." And tomorrow, it will also be nice and clean. Then we'll see how long I can keep that up.

Once I finished the tidying this morning, all that was left was the final stage of getting papers ready for the accountant, and I did that too. It's a real self-esteem blaster, since it's a job I should do well and I don't do well at all. This year, there was only one thing I needed to keep and didn't, but I can call for that information tomorrow. Some years I lose really important stuff, or forget to make tax payements that I was supposed to make. I really do need a keeper.

And then it was a long boring afternoon. I never put on a movie or anything because I wanted to read, but reading kept making me sleepy. It's so interesting to read a biography of a famous person, because you generally know how things turned out before you start reading. I mean, I'm reading about the election of 1948, and I know who won, right?



And the girls called from Paris before, so I know they're alive, which is all I care about. And incidentally, they're having a good time.

Anyway, here's a little something to amuse you. It relieved my boredom for five minutes.

Which Character on The Simpsons Are You?

More on The Simpsons. Created by BuddyTV

Who is Your Ideal TV Boyfriend?

More on The Office. Created by BuddyTV

Which Gilmore Girls Character Are You?

More on Gilmore Girls. Created by BuddyTV

WATCHING NEXT TOP MODEL :: ENTRY #1703

You Don't Know What You've Got Til It's Gone

I must have touched my hand to my right ear dozens of times today, not checking to see if the aid is lost, but to enjoy it being there. Moving on.

I really did get most of my tidying up done today. All I really have left is a shopping bag full of old PC stuff to get rid of, and I'll take that out to the trash Monday morning. But I know somewhere I still have my DOS 6.0 floppies because I wrote on them NEVER THROW THESE OUT!! and so I never will. They weren't in the bag, anyway.

That leaves tomorrow to finish getting ready to get my taxes done, finally. I always think that I should just get one of those tax programs and do it myself, but who am I kidding? Filling out that financial aid form online when my kids were in college stressed me out beyond a reasonable point, and I'm so glad I'm done with all that; why would I want to do the same kind of thing but worse? I am not a numbers person. Even my brother-in-law, who is a numbers person and also a CPA (but has never worked as an accountant) goes to someone to get his taxes done. You can know numbers, but not all the tax laws, I figure.

The Hubs and I went out to dinner tonight, since it was just the two of us. In the last week either his coughing has gotten better or he's gotten better at dealing with it. Or both. It still won't hurt him, or me, for the house to get a good cleaning on Monday.

And that's my day. Back for a little more Truman. I think I'll be reading this book forever, although, ever the optimist, I got A Thousand Splendid Suns today, which is by the author of The Kite Runner, which I thought was excellent.


WATCHING ----- :: ENTRY #1702

OMIGOD!

FOUND IT! FOUND IT! FOUND IT!

And now we are so happy, we do the dance of joy.

I swear, I posted the last entry not three minutes ago, after which I went into the bathroom to get the towel hamper to put in a wash, and I picked it up off its shelf -- it sits in a kind of metal shelf tower, so the hamper itself is about two inches off the floor -- and THERE IT WAS, SITTING ON THE FLOOR UNDER THE BOTTOM SHELF UNDER THE TOWEL HAMPER!! YES!

So I was almost right. It was tangled in my clothes and fell off when I went into the bathroom. It could just as easily have fallen into the toilet but it fell on the floor instead.

My day just got a whole lot better.

WATCHING --- :: ENTRY #1701

Finally Friday

No luck yet on the hearing aid. I thought there was an outside chance that it was at school, but no. Turns out it's not covered by homeowner's insurance, what a bummer. (I needed to put it on a separate policy for jewelry and other personal items.) The audiologist's office is closed today, so I'll keep looking at home.

I tore apart the couch. It has a slipcover on it, so the thing couldn't have fallen too deep, but I pulled the slipcover out and checked all over. I moved the couch away from the wall in case it fell behind. I moved the coffee table. And now I'll get to do it all all over again tomorrow, because the damn thing has to be somewhere. (My biggest fear -- I don't think I mentioned this yesterday -- is that it was tangled in my clothes somehow before I knew it was gone and fell off at a bad moment and got flushed down the toilet. Coulda happened.)

In other news, my offspring are safely arrived in Paris. Their flight from the US was delayed and so they missed their connecting flight from Amsterdam to Paris, and then the flight they were re-scheduled on was delayed. So, a long day and night for them. Hey, it's good to be young. But they texted me from each airport, and again from the hotel. What good girls.

And I slept. No more of this nonsense of staying awake all night in case the FAA calls. They're fine.

And here's a thought: about a hundred years ago, my grandmothers gathered up their belongings, made their journeys by train to some seaport and then got on boats, and weeks later arrived in the United States. At some point after that, they made their way to where they had relatives living, and took up residence, at which point they wrote letters -- that took weeks to arrive -- to let their mothers know that they were still alive and had safely completed their adventures. And my kids texted me, from Amsterdam and Paris, and I texted them back, and all is well. It's amazing, isn't it?

I must dash home at lunchtime today to change, because I suddenly have a wake to go to after school. One of the people I have lunch with a couple days a week lost her ill and elderly mother yesterday; the wake is today and the funeral tomorrow. Seems everything is happening very fast, but that may be because of Palm Sunday and Holy Week fast approaching. We had all assumed the wake would be tomorrow, so it never occurred to me to dress for it today. But I'd much rather go right from school that go tonight, since I'm not that familiar with the area where the funeral home is.

Pausing for now. More later.


Later.

I did go to the wake, which was mostly family, of course, but from school it was very math-department heavy, since the teacher whose mother died is a math teacher. I think I was the only non-math person there, at least at that time, although I know the Other Chai, who goes to every wake, would have certainly gone, but she's on an out-of-town field trip and won't be back until tonight. I digress. There was another woman there, another math teacher but one who retired last year, and as it turns out, her mother died last week. Now, this retired woman is herself in her mid-sixties and has seven or eight grandchildren, and she was, up until last week, still taking care of her mother. I know this is very hard for both of them, but I had the opportunity to pass a bit of advice onto this second person as we talked in the parking lot afterward, and boy, did it bring stuff back to me. Even so, I was okay until about a half hour later, when I was walking down some random supermarket aisle and I suddenly got choked up. But not in a bad way, really; it made me smile to think of my mother at that point. But I can't help but wonder when, if ever, it gets easier.

So now I'm home, and for three days, since I'm staying home Monday to have my house cleaned. The tidying up has begun; I'll be doing it in bits and pieces all weekend, I guess. Not to mention that I will be taking apart the entire family room tomorrow morning to look for that damn hearing aid again.

Okay, gotta go change over a couple of loads of wash.


WATCHING GILMORE GIRLS :: ENTRY #1701

Well, This Is Different

Just a short entry, I'm having a bit of a crisis here. I was very, very tired when I came home from work, so I lay down on the couch to take a nap. I had my phone at hand, and my cell phone, and about an hour later, I woke up when the phone rang; it was the girls checking in from the airport, all is well, their flight takes off in an hour or two. All good.

But when I went to sleep I was wearing two hearing aids. I woke up wearing one. The other one is gone.

How can this be possible? I don't remember taking it off to sleep; maybe I took it off in my sleep. And put it where? I have looked everywhere. I even moved the couch in case it fell off onto the floor and somehow scooted under the couch. But I don't think so.

Maybe I wasn't wearing both when I got home, although I think I'd remember if I took it off when I was awake. And they're too tight to just fall out.

I keep looking in the same places over and over, because it has to be somewhere, right? This is definitely the time for my mother to look down upon me kindly, because I tended to find things I was looking for when I was talking to her on the phone. Maybe I should just start talking to her and see what turns up. Shirl? Shirl? Can you hear me now?

Oy vey. I wonder if this is covered by homeowner's insurance, or if I have some kind of really incredible warranty on these things. I haven't even had them for a year yet. It's like they're cursed.

WATCHING GILMORE GIRLS :: ENTRY #1700

Aren't You Glad I Didn't Say Banana?

Oh, wait, that's orange. Orange-you glad I didn't say orange. Never mind.

It's nice to know that I'm not alone in my banana-hate. It sure looks to me like everyone in the world is a banana-lover, at least in my school lunchroom.

Enough of that foolishness. I was so caught up in the political scandal yesterday -- he hasn't resigned yet, as of 10.00 this morning -- that I forgot to tell you that I was having a conversation with the SCM yesterday, and I said something about finding something unexpected when I looked through my papers for taxes, and then I remembered, and I thanked him for his Christmas gift card and he was fine with it all, and today I brought him in his gift. So that case is closed, at least.

I have a busy afternoon ahead of me after school today. The very moment I get home, I have to drive K to R's, where she will then borrow R's car and go to her class tonight. (The college is in the town R lives in.) Once I leave her there, I will be offspring-less until they return from their trip on Tuesday. (Well. They'll still exist of course, but not in front of my face.) K will stay tonight at R's and tomorrow they will journey to the airport at some point and then get on a big plane and fly over the ocean and go to stay in other countries where they don't speak English and the food is all different and they have to sleep in hotels. Oh, I'm being silly; all of this is wonderful, except for the flying over the ocean part. That part sucks, at least for the mommy left behind. I hope I don't do that staying up all night thing tomorrow night, since I have to go to work Friday, but I think I'll be better knowing that neither one of them is traveling anywhere alone, and they're together. Either that or I'll be a complete wreck because they're traveling together, so if the plane goes down, I lose both of them. Oh, sorry, the insanity is taking over again. Let me make a few adjustments.

Ahem. Ahem. Oh yes, I'm fine now.

I also need to pick up some groceries after I drop her off, and then the Hubs has to leave his car at the mechanic's on his way home and I have to pick him up there. I actually had the foresight to take some fish out of the freezer to have for dinner tonight, which I never ever do. Oh, and I have to go to the cleaners, and to pick up a prescription at the pharmacy next door. Looks like I'll be busy for awhile.

(See what happens when you got to lunch? Governors resign and everything.)

Okay, more later, perhaps. I have to try a new feature on Google Documents and see if I can just publish this to my diary right now.

.
.
.

An experiment that failed, both at work and at home. Not a useful feature of Google Documents for me.

So now I'm home, and I did all that stuff and I even ate dinner and it's a little before six. I'm expecting a call from the Hubs any minute to pick him up at the garage, or else he'll forget, come home, see both cars on the street, and then we'll go together whenever he's ready. Yes, I do lead a fascinating life.

So this was like a whole entry about nothing. I'm going to post it now before more nothing gets written about.


WATCHING GILMORE GIRLS :: ENTRY #1699

Nuts to Bananas

There was a science teacher in here the other day who was giving out these handouts that listed the many virtues of the humble banana. It would appear that eating a banana a day is the sure cure to anything and everything that ails you. Yeah, all right, I get it. Bananas are good for you. Now leave me alone.

I don't like bananas. Oh, I can eat them in the right circumstances, like sliced in a bowl and buried in sour cream (with sugar on top), or sliced into a bowl of otherwise flavorful cereal. I can sometimes eat banana-flavored things, like a smoothie. (But banana-flavored Bonomo's Turkish Taffy, for those of you of an age to remember it, was gross. Remember SMACK IT AND CRACK IT?) But I digress.

I brought a banana with me for a mid-morning snack yesterday, and again today, because if they're that damn good for you, then I can eat one a day, because I Am A Big Girl Now. I peeled open today's number and it was all bruised inside. I had to throw it away before I threw up.

What is the deal with bananas? Are you supposed to eat them all soft and icky like that? I can force myself to eat a banana if it is absolutely perfect and unblemished under the skin, but these are hard to find, and of course, once you know it's bruised -- because you opened it -- it's kind of useless to anyone else. It's the just-past-ripe and anything older than that banana that revolts me. I can't stand the smell or the texture. Why is the whole world raving about these disgusting, smelly, yellow and brown torpedoes?

.
.

And then I went to lunch, and one after another, each of my pals pulled a banana out of his or her lunch bag. Which launched a discussion of who can eat bananas just ripe, very ripe, refrigerated, etc. Which discussion was followed by the real topic of the day, which was the headline-making news of yesterday concerning the governor of New York.

Now, not everyone of you will have heard this story to death, as we have in this area, but in brief, the governor of New York, a man named Eliot Spitzer, was known for years as a tireless campaigner against corruption of all kinds, a crusading Attorney General. Among other things, he broke up a couple of major prostitution rings. So yesterday, of course, it came out that he has been patronizing very expensive call girls, if not for years and years, at least since he became governor. Can you spell "hypocrite"?

Anyway, quite the story, with some interesting sidebars. As it turned out, R had met Eliot Spitzer Friday night -- yes, this past Friday night -- at an educational conference she was working at and that he was speaking at. It seems that after he spoke, R and her boss had to show the governor and his entourage to a small conference room, get them coffee, etc., and R found that the gov was, somewhat creepily, ogling her chest. So she knew he was a sleaze before everybody else.

The other thing is that I've read several headlines about how the Lieutenant Governor, who would take over if Spitzer resigns, would be New York's first black governor. Uh, hello? Might it be significant that he would be anyplace's first blind governor? I would think that would get a mention in a headline or two.

Anyway, it's getting late now, close to Beauty and the Geek time. Gotta go get my jammies on.

WATCHING THE SIMPSONS :: ENTRY #1698

This Does Not Compute

It's 7.15 and still ... well, not light out, but it was light out five minutes ago. I don't know why Daylight Savings Time gets harder for me to get into my head as I get older, instead of easier. Shouldn't I be used to it by now?

We had some nasty winds here last night, it felt as if they were surrounding the house. I fully expected to wake up in Munchkinland this morning. Instead, I saw a big branch on our front lawn from the tree out front. I'm glad there aren't branches hanging over the house anymore.

It was so windy that R decided to stay in the city an extra night rather than deal with the train and then the drive home on the Parkway, so she came back early this afternoon instead. I admit I was just a little concerned about the grandkitty being alone all night with that wind going on, but of course, she was fine today because she is, after all, a cat.

My mission for today was to get a paper shredder that works, which I did, and I spent the rest of the day happily destroying papers I had no business keeping anyway and completing stage two of getting ready to go to the accountant. (Stage Three is next weekend.) And there was a Beauty and the Geek marathon on, so that kept me occupied in the background.

I also managed to read some more Truman, and to tidy up things in iTunes a little. As for Truman, I have managed to finish about a third of the book, and it's June, 1945. Seriously, how much more can there be? You drop a bomb, you win an election, you retire. Actually, I enjoy David McCulloch's writing because he makes all the details interesting. Next week, HBO is starting a mini-series about John Adams, based on McCulloch's book about him, which was almost as long as Truman and also very good.

It seems to be dark now, which I think is altogether appropriate for night-time. So I'm going to change into my jammies and curl up on the couch with Harry S. until sleepytime.


WATCHING KING OF THE HILL :: ENTRY #1697

As Promised

It has done nothing but pour all day. I haven't been out since about noon, and I won't be going anywhere unless R does indeed decide to come back from the city tonight. If the weather's bad, she's staying over another night, but it's letting up a bit. I guess I'll be hearing from her within the next hour or two.

I can't get it into my head that the clocks are changing tonight. I always find this disorienting, but much more so now that we're doing it so early in the year. Once again, before I go to sleep -- or before the Hubs goes to sleep, since he goes early -- I'll have to ask him specifically what to change the time to. I know the reminder: Spring ahead, fall backward, but it's one of those things that doesn't seem to mean the same thing to me that it does to other people, and I am likely to interpret it differently each time I think about it.

I ate pizza last night, and edamame. Go me.

I've had the tidying up bug this afternoon; I even went over all the stuff that was magnet-ed to the refrigerator and got rid of things we didn't need there anymore and re-arranged what we did. And cleaned up the stuff in the corner under the kitchen table (like three soft-sided coolers; what was up with that?) I guess I'd like the cleaning people who are coming to be able to actually get to what I want them to clean. I think I'm going to be very busy next weekend.

And now the Chinese food is here --



WATCHING PBS :: ENTRY #1696

Thank God It's Dark

At least now that it's dark, I don't have to look out my window and see hopeless gray and be all bummed out. It started to rain around four, and is supposed to keep up through tomorrow, and heavy. It's depressing.

Now I'm thinking about a Ray Bradbury story called "All Summer in a Day", about a little girl who moves from earth to a planet where the sun never shines, and I want a copy of the half-hour dramatization of it that was on TV 25 years ago. Note to self: pursue this after posting entry.

Ahem, yes. So, on with things. It's Friday, finally, at long last. My plans for tomorrow include a lot of driving around in the rain and stuff, going to feed the kitty in the morning. I'm going to bring my camera so I can maybe get a decent shot of her at last, but here's one that K got with her phone:



Her favorite place to hang out is in the bathroom sink.

Okay, I'm going to post and get back to Truman. World War II has already started, and I'm not even a quarter of the way through the book. I can only assume that every word he spoke in real life from this point on is in there somewhere.

WATCHING THE FAMILY GUY :: ENTRY #1695

O.Hai.

My tribute to the LOLcats, whom I adore beyond all reason. I have never been one for sappy cat pictures (which always seem to be posted around the desk areas where doctor's nurses and/or receptionists work; why is that?) but I love me the LOLcats. I am especially fond of Ceiling Cat, since my late BooBoo loved to sit on my bed and stare hopefully up at the ceiling, even when no one was upstairs walking around, and now that I have come to know Ceiling Cat, I have to assume that's what he was looking at. Or for.

Moving on.

Long day today. Hall duty, followed by boring boring boring, followed by endless P.A. announcements about nothing, followed by theatre-of-the-absurd email from one of our fearless leaders, followed by not leaving school soon enough. I'm going to see the doctor after school, my once-every-three-weeks visit (I wonder how long that keeps up), followed by going to R's to feed the cat, followed by dropping off her car for service. She says she will bring me something really nice from Paris. I don't actually believe it, but I deserve it. I also need to run some items through the wash for her before Saturday night. Thank god they're going away for several days next week; I really need the vacation.

And Lost tonight. I'm afraid it's getting too complicated for me to follow. I'm also afraid that when it's all over and all the questions have been answered, I'll still be sitting there saying "WTF was all that?" and I won't get it even when I know, and nobody will.

Later.

Back from my tasks in the world. The doctor (and Personality Nurse, one of his two assistants) were tickled pink with my progress, so much so, that finally I asked them if most people don't make progress like this. They hesitated, and then said it wasn't that, but it was that I was just so, so sick when they originally saw me, and my progress from there is pretty amazing to them because it's like I'm a different person. And so, my inflammation is down, he is not touching my medication, I had a bag of McDonald's fries with dinner, and I'm getting some edamame over the weekend, so there.

Now I need to call the MIL, who called for a doctor's report while I was out feeding the cat, who is cute as anything but who will not hold still for a decent photograph.

WATCHING FAMILY GUY :: ENTRY #1695

Go Me! (and a meme)

I just got home; I wrote most of my entry below at school today. I decided that when I got home I would call a cleaning service and make an appointment, and I did, so, go me. I can barely make it up and down a flight of stairs, so doing any real cleaning myself is not a consideration, not that I would want to consider it anyway. But it's nice for things to be clean, and I'm also being the good little wifey here and hopefully making it easier for the Hubs to live here without coughing up a lung every five minutes.

I made the appointment for March 17, since the girls will still be away, and I can use the weekend to tidy up so stuff isn't in the ladies' way. I'll have to take off one of my precious and few sick days, but I guess it's worth it. Maybe I can do something with my sister in the afternoon. So we'll see how that all goes.

-------------------------------

It's an odd day. Everything around me seems very loud today, but I don't think I turned up the hearing aids too loud. Almost as if I'm more sensitive to sound today than usual.

I'm feeling very tired, although I slept well, as far as I can remember, I just got up too early, as I do nearly every day. I hope I perk up some later, because R is driving her car here when she gets home from work -- seven-ish -- and then I have to drive her back home. (She's working in the city until Saturday night, staying over in a hotel, so it's a good time to get her car serviced, and anyway, she'd need it here on Saturday to get home since the trains run to B-Town but not her town on the weekends.) I don't know if the Hubs will even be home yet when I need to go drive her, and I know K will still be in class. She's getting sick, it seems, which is unfortunate since they're flying off to France next Thursday. Let's hope whatever she's got, she's over it by then. She was just on antibiotics for a few days, and they killed her stomach. But now it looks like she's just got a cold.

I'll be very curious to see what the doctor says to me tomorrow afternoon about where we go from here. The next medication, if I need it, is one that suppresses the immune system somewhat, if I understand it correctly, so I'm wondering how I would go about continuing to work in the germ pool that is any public school. Unlike most other visits, I'm not going with a list of questions to besiege him with this time. I only have one (about the fish oil), but if he starts talking new medicine, well, that'll open up a whole new can of worms.

Hey, big night tonight, Project Runway finale! I'm guessing that Christian will win, because it won't be Jillian, and Rami is way too smug. Not that anyone else cares.


So here's a meme that I got from Robyn.


MOUTHOLOGY


Q. What is your favorite fast food restaurant? A. I pretty much love fast food, although there isn't much of it I can have anymore. I do love me some McDonald's fries, as well as a Junior Cheese Whopper, no onions, no pickles. I'll have to fall back on McD's as my favorite.

Q. What is your favorite sit-down restaurant? A. Hard to say. We eat out once or twice a week, generally, at chain-type restaurants. I think the nicest restaurant I ever went to was a little Italian place in DC off of Dupont Circle, after K's graduation.

Q. On average, what size tip do you leave at a restaurant? A. At least 20%, then I round up.

Q. What food could you eat every day for two weeks and not get sick of? A. Like Robyn, I like edamame, but I've been off that for a while now. i could probably live on macaroni and cheese, and BLT sandwiches, and plenty of eggs.

Q. What are your pizza toppings of choice? A. Mushrooms.

Q. What do you like to put on your toast? A. I usually only eat toast when I'm sick, or if I'm having some kind of soft eggs. Just margarine, or if I'm sick, seedless strawberry jam.

TECHNOLOGY

Q. What is your wallpaper on your computer? A. I currently have a big Mickey Mouse on my home computer, and this centered on my screen at work.



(If it wasn't that clear, it looks like an old touristy post card that says "Greetings from New Jersey", and under that it says "It hurts our feelings when you make fun of us.")

Q. How many televisions are in your house? A. Lots. One in every room except the living room and the bathroom. So that's ... five, plus the one in the basement that isn't currently connected.

BIOLOGY

Q. Are you right-handed or left-handed? A. Right

Q. Have you ever had anything removed from your body? A. An acoustic neuroma (brain tumor), an appendix, buckets of blood (or so it seems), a couple of teeth, and two babies.

Q. What is the last heavy item you lifted? A. I'm actively avoiding that these days, so probably a load of laundry. (And after I first wrote that, a small box of books that came in today.)

Q. Have you ever been knocked unconscious? A. Not that I can recall.

BULL****OLOLY

Q. If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die? A. No. I've already got enough to worry about.

Q. If you could change your name, what would you change it to? A. I certainly do hate my first name. Growing up, I considered changing my first name to my mother's maiden last name (also a first name), but I gave it to my firstborn instead.

Q. What color do you think looks best on you? A. I have been told that pink looks very good on me, which is unfortunate for me because I detest pink.

Q. Have you ever swallowed a non-food item by mistake? A. I'm sure I have; doesn't everybody at some point? What's that old saying about having to eat a pound of dirt in each life?

Q. Have you ever saved some one’s life? A. I don't think so.

Q. Has someone ever saved yours? A. The doctor who diagnosed my brain tumor.

DAREOLOGY

Q. Would you kiss a member of the same sex for $100? A. I'm not opposed to the kissing, as such, but I'm not a fan of doing such things for money.

Q. Would you allow one of your little fingers to be cut off for $200,000? A. No. That would really hurt.

Q. Would you never blog again for $50,000? A. I don't know. I'd still have to write, and I could email people, I guess.

Q. Would you pose naked in a magazine for $250,000? A. Actually, no. And for what, Old Bats Monthly?

Q. Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1000? A. Not a chance. Not for any amount of money. I'd sooner pose naked, and I'm not doing that either.

Q. Would you, without fear of punishment, take a human life for $1,000,000? A. No. Not for anything would I intentionally do that.

DUMBOLOGY

Q: What is in your left pocket? A: Nothing at the moment. When the testing in the school is over for today, I'll turn my cell phone on and put it in my left pocket.

Q: Is Napoleon Dynamite actually a good movie? A: I thought it was clever; I enjoyed it. It wasn't Casablanca.

Q: Do you sit or stand in the shower? A: Stand. Even when I could hardly stand, I stood. The idea of sitting in the shower squicks me out.

Q: Could you live with roommates? A: As opposed to the jabroneys I live with now? (As in, my family.) I would prefer not to live with any other roommate, I think, except a dog.

Q: How many pairs of flip flops do you own? A: I can't walk in actual flip-flops. I have a pair of Croc flip-flop type shoes that I wear for pedicures.

Q: Last time you had a run-in with the cops? A: I've had some encounters with lovely police officers in the last few years, mostly when they were helping me with something, and I got a ticket from -- I have to say it -- a real pig about five and a half years ago. Nothing I could really call a run-in. (Curiously, the two good and one bad encounter all took place in the same town -- not mine, a neighbor -- so all the officers were members of the same police force.)

Q: What do you want to be when you grow up? A: I think at this point my two main ambitions are to retire and to be a grandma.

LASTOLOGY

Q: Last Friend you talked to? A: Chatted with the Other Chai about an hour ago in the school office. A real deep talk with a friend? My sister, Monday night.

Q: Last person who called you? R, last night.

Q: Last person you saw? A: I'm at school at the moment, so I've seen at least a hundred people already today. The last one was a chemistry teacher.

FAVORITOLOGY

Q: Number? A: I have two favorite numbers: 42 (no idea why; this is from before I read Hitchhiker's Guide) and 732, my dorm room number in college.

Q: Season? A: Summer.

CURRENTOLOGY

Q: Missing someone? A: Not so much at the moment.

Q: Mood? A: Stable.

Q: Listening to? A: I have the New York City oldies station playing on my computer, something I can only do when there are no kids in the library.

Q: Watching? A: The only time I'm not watching TV is when I'm at work.

Q: Worrying about? A: Always money at the back of my mind.

RANDOMOLOGY

Q: First place you went this morning? A: To the bathroom.

Q: What can you not wait to do? A: Retire.

Q: What’s the last movie you saw? A: Ooh, tough one. Oh, okay. I watched Idiocracy on Sunday. It reminded me of Americathon.

Q: Do you smile often? A: Also a good question. I think I do, but apparently it does not always appear so to other people, because strangers will sometimes accost me with a command to "Smile!", to which I respond, if I'm not totally taken aback "This is smiling." Part of my face is paralyzed, you know, and my mouth doesn't move on one side.

Q: Are you a friendly person? A: Well, I certainly think so. But I am also a shy person, so the friendliness isn't always so out there. I could sit in a room full of strangers, like in a waiting room, and smile (for me) but never speak until someone speaks to me, and then I will chatter away and make all kinds of conversation. But I can't start it.


WATCHING L/O :: ENTRY #1694

Too Much to Think About

Rough night last night. I could hear the Hubs in the other room, coughing and swearing. The quitting of the smoking has not gone well for him. I think he was healthier before.

Anyway. He is a person with a fair amount of bottled up anger that occasionally erupts, never directly against one of us, although we are sometimes caught in the crossfire. I think he is mostly angry at himself, and his anger, as I have mentioned before, is frightening, even though he has never and would never hurt anyone or even say anything directly mean to anyone. He just looks and acts crazy and scary. More so when I hear him swear violently two rooms away when I know he's sitting in there alone.

Anyway, it got to me and I was very upset and had trouble falling asleep. I was thinking about how stress will make me sicker, and this was stress I had no control over. I also got to thinking a little about how I feel that when I am ill I am a burden to others; I've been thinking of that off and on for the last couple of months. But last night I was thinking it's not that I'm a burden, it's just that I don't want to be involved with craziness. That sounds like it makes no sense. Here's more. I don't like my being sick to take center stage and make everyone else feel like they can't be sick if they have to be. Why would anyone feel that way? I don't know, but when I was a kid, I sure felt like being sick was first my mother's privilege, and only open to me when she was feeling okay. I think that's why both the Crohn's and the brain tumor were so strange to me, to be center stage like that. Anyway, I'm working on all my feelings about illness and so forth; I really could stand to go back to therapy, but I'm thinking that writing about it may do just as much good. (And I haven't even gotten to the parts about my sister yet.)

So tonight, I happened to pull into the driveway with stuff from the deli just as the Hubs was coming home from work; he pulled in behind me. He got out of the car and we were cheerful and joking, and he was like that when he came into the house, too. He went and changed his clothes, and went into his little study to read the mail, turn on his computer, etc. I went back into the family room. And I heard a might sneeze: once. twice. And then a vehement "FUCK! GODDAMIT!"

Well, they say timing is everything. I'm guessing he's allergic to something in the house, and that's why he gets sick when he comes home, and his cough is worse. He's always had a sneezing fit after he eats dinner, as long as I know him, but I guess it's worse now. So maybe he does have a legitimate physical condition -- god forbid I call it an illness -- but again, we'll never know, because he is my polar opposite when it comes to illness: he does not acknowledge it, he will not abide it in his body. Hey, I wouldn't mind having that choice too, but it didn't seem to be on my menu. So I guess he'll feel like crap until he gets better or dies, and when he does get sick, he'll get angry at himself or at microbes and he'll roar. At least I got that much figured out.

Good. Maybe I can fall asleep tonight.

WATCHING RAYMOND :: ENTRY #1693

Hey Hey Hey

What a wonderful day.

Not living-wise, just an average day of living. But it was beautiful out, like an early spring afternoon. It was over 50 degrees, bright and sunny, with warm breezes blowing. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, but be nearly 60 degrees.

We had a fire drill, of course, because we need two a month by law, so they jump at any nice day in the winter. It was a little weird to be out there in the beautiful air with the kids still stepping over mounds of snow to get out to the field. After school, I couldn't just sit at home, so I went out and got some nice fish and stuff for dinner. K's at class tonight, but if she wants it when she gets home, everything's all ready to just be put in the microwave. I already had mine, and it was yum.

No new foods for me today. I've had some gut pain since last night, although nothing else unpleasant accompanying it, so I'm just being a bit more careful. I'm wondering if it could have been the fish oil capsules I started last week, so I'm stopping them until I talk to the doctor on Thursday. They supposedly help bring down inflammation, and I had my bloodwork done this morning, so any good properties won't make a difference in my test results at this point. I'd like the inflammation down so the doctor won't suggest that I start the next level of medicine. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Thanks for the input on the gift thing, btw. I'm going to look for an opportunity aned say something, or at the very latest, get him a birthday gift (next month) and explain it then. He probably doesn't even care, but it's just such a weird situation.

State testing starts tomorrow, which is more boring than anything else, for me, since I have hall duty for the first half of it. I have some library journals to go through, and then Truman on the Palm; I just have to hope the battery doesn't wear out. What can I say: I really do like reading an ebook on the little device. It's just easier than holding a book, I guess. Don't get me wrong, I love books and will love books eternally, but over a period of time -- say, sitting on a hard chair for nearly two hours -- my hands will cramp up and I will get tired of moving my head back and forth, which I have to do with a regular book because of the progressive bifocal lenses I wear.

Okay, back to Harry S.


WATCHING RAYMOND :: ENTRY #1692

Food, and Tunes

New food for today: honeydew melon.

Funny, I've been very fruit-phobic since I got sick, but honeydew is a kind of odd comfort food for me. After the brain tumor, my tongue was affected for a couple of months, and most foods didn't taste their normal taste to me. One of the few things that did was honeydew, and it was so cold and refreshing; I would eat it all the time. But I've also heard that if you have hay fever -- as I do -- avoid honeydew during hay fever season, because it's part of the ragweed family of plants and will make you worse. Anyway, I'm safe, I guess, given the weather. I also just put together a jello lime pie, but that's for later.

Today is supposedly the first day of a week of warm weather, and the temperature is actually about 42, but it's still windy and damn cold. It's getting into the fifties this week, but there's rain a-comin' on Tuesday.

Okay, so I have a bitty problem, and I'm curious to know if anyone has thoughts on it. I finally got around to my first stage of sorting papers for taxes today, which means I threw out all kinds of stuff that I kept for no reason, put aside other stuff to shred, and now I have only a very small pile to sort for tax stuff. Buried in the pile -- okay, it was in a big paper shopping bag -- were Christmas cards from people at work.

Here's what happened. On the last day of school before Christmas break, someone came by and dropped off a manila envelope for me of school mail, including paycheck stubs, that had been accumulating. I took out the paystubs, and somehow managed to keep bills paid while I was sick (No "Oh, you're so sick; should I pay the bills or something?" but that's another complaint) and then threw the other stuff on top of the bag and went back to bed to collapse. Anything that was not super-urgent got thrown in the bag, until today, because I forgot all that stuff was there.

I picked up the half-dozen or so cards today, and noticed that one of them was thick. I thought, okay, maybe someone sent out hand-made cards, I don't know; I opened it, and there was a $25 iTunes card, and note from the SCM.

Now, here's my dilemma. Ordinarily, each year, we library folk exchange holiday gifts among each other. I wasn't there this year, and by the time I came back, it seemed awkward to bring it up, although I had -- have -- a bag in my living room of wrapped gifts for them all. Neither Media Girl or the Secretary brought it up, either. We always give these gifts in person, as in, I wasn't there so there was no gift giving. (I'm sure the other three of them gave each other gifts, which is as it should be; I just wasn't a part of it this year because I was lying in bed like a limp rag.)

So now, this is strange. If he had said to me on my first day back, "Oh, by the way, did you get the iTunes card?" I would have found it, thanked him, and brought in my gift for him. He didn't, because I know him, and he doesn't care if I got it. He only cares that it was on his list of tasks to do -- to give it to me -- and he did it. This is how he operates. He cannot bear to have even the most minor task hanging over him; if it exists, it must be done now.

But I think it's also awkward for me to say now, in March, "Oh, I just went through my mail from December; thanks for the gift."

What I'd really like to say is Hey, idiot, we give our gifts in person, or at the very least, we indicate that we've given a gift, and we provide the receiver the opportunity to reciprocate. He does know how sick I was and that I wasn't reading or doing anything except lying there with the TV on. Okay, I wouldn't call him an idiot to his face, but our relationship is such that I do sometimes have to correct his social blunders, the way a sister would. (If you tell him a secret, you also have to remind him not to repeat it in the faculty room. He's like an 8 year old.)

Say something or let it go?


WATCHING PROJECT RUNWAY MARATHON :: ENTRY #1691