Check. Check.

I had a list of things to do today and I did all of them. You know how happy that makes me.

Even better, I forgot to write down some of the things I needed at Staples, so when I got there and picked up the one thing I was looking for, I went on a little Supermarket Sweep type excursion and just kept filling up my little basket. Even better than that, it's all stuff for school, which means I'll get reimbursed for all of it when I get into school on Monday.

Don't you just love shopping with other people's money?

I had a nice lunch visit with the Chum. I got there early so I killed some time in Bed Bath and Beyond next door and got myself a new pillow. I even tested it out when I got home, but never did fall asleep, just watched and/or listened to two L/O episodes.

Tuesday night's bad news was that the Hubs' car died on the Turnpike on his way back from teaching. He had to get it towed off the Turnpike and then towed by Triple A to our mechanic. Remember, this is my father's 1991 Oldsmobile Ciera, which only just turned a hundred thousand miles last week. The good news is that it's all fixed up, and for only a few hundred dollars. If this had been the make-or-break repair, I have no idea what we would have done, although with the Hubs working from home, sharing my car would have worked out pretty well for the short term.

Speaking of Jack, today is his yahrzeit, which means the anniversary of his death. (The true yahrzeit would be according to the Hebrew calendar, but I don't go there.) Six years. Still hard to get a grip on all the way.

I go for a mini-physical tomorrow, but the doctor's office sent me the results of my bloodwork already and it says that my liver is normal, so now I'm going to worry about that whole business even less that I already was, which is not at all. I'll get the results of the CAT scan when I see The Resnick on Monday, at which point I will tell him that barium is now on my list of things I do not ingest. My cholesterol is pretty good, too, 152. I don't know what any of the other stuff means.

I'm still awake -- my eyes have been much better -- so maybe I'll watch Heroes tonight. Or not.


FRIENDS :: ENTRY #1992
READING: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Hold On

I didn't write yesterday. Part of it was that by six or seven I was overwhelmed by the news of Tim Russert and all the coverage, although I kept watching until after nine. I wondered if there was actually too much coverage, but here's what I think about that. I think that if a beloved member of Congress died, the other senators and representatives would pass a resolution to honor him and name a bridge after him, because that's what they do in Congress. If a beloved colleague on my staff died, we would raise money and create a scholarship in his or name, and name the library or gym after him, because we're teachers and those are the things we do. When television journalists lose a beloved colleague, they must cover the story in as much depth as they can, because it's what they do. It's the way they express themselves. I can't fault them for it at all, but I reached a point of sadness where I couldn't watch anymore.

It's the great equalizer, of course, death. Now, it makes no difference whatsoever to Tim Russert who wins the election, or what gas costs. When Fidel Castro dies, it will not matter to him at all that he led his country into a sort of poverty-level equality all those years. When terrorists die in suicide bombings, within minutes, their cause stops existing for them. It makes me wonder why some of these people -- not Tim Russert, but terrorists and the like -- can care so much about the things in this life. I understand, of course, that their religious beliefs are different that mine, and that they think their actions here bring them rewards in the afterlife, but even so. I think that what you do here counts a real lot, but it's not a means to an end. It just is.

I've been having a bit of a pity party for myself for the last couple of days, and I think the whole life-is-a-struggle-and-then-you-die thing since yesterday is just pushing me over the edge. I want to be one of the people who don't go to doctors or take medicine, and don't need to. I said to K the other evening as I shoveled my handful of night time meds into my mouth that I wished I could just stop taking all this stuff. And then I said, Oh, I guess I will. Someday. I don't take anything that literally keeps me alive, like I would die tomorrow if I stopped taking it. I take a lot of things that make living more bearable, like allergy and gastric reflux meds, and other stuff to make me die less soon in the long run, like blood pressure and cholesterol meds. Oh, and the Crohn's stuff, of course.

I think, or maybe I'm pretty sure, that I'm having a Crohn's flare. It's hard for me to tell, because this would be my first flare since I was diagnosed and put on meds for it. I've been thinking it was something I had eaten, which I've mentioned, but it hasn't gotten better since I stopped eating it. It's gotten worse. I think that's another reason I didn't write yesterday. I don't know that I could have written without saying I'm having a flare, but I wasn't ready to say it yet. I started taking the donnatal yesterday, which is very good for the pain but makes me a little vague, and today was actually better. Even so, I decided that if I still think it might be a flare on Monday, that I will call Resnick and go see him and find out what to do.

Except about two hours ago, I was eating something, something soft ... a mushroom, I think, and a very sharp pain went through my mouth, and now I think I'll be seeing the dentist before I see Resnick, because suddenly, things are not good dental-wise. I can tell you that I am not having a root canal because I don't believe they do anything, and as far as I'm concerned, they can pull the tooth right out, but then I'm in for a whole temporary/permanent bridge ordeal, and I'm so not interested in having that suck up my summer, which is already dotted with doctor's appointments.

I can't exactly explain this; it doesn't feel like depression, really, just like sadness. (I don't think they're the same thing, although maybe they are. As I said, my head's a little not clear, and I have a headache on top of that.) I could probably use a nice visit with my new therapist, but that won't be until Friday, by which time, btw, I will have ONLY TWO DAYS OF SCHOOL LEFT. As of this moment, I have the coming full week and those last few days, so that's seven. But K won't be working at school any more this year, and I won't be bringing lunch at all since they're all half-days for kids which mean long lunch periods for staff, so I'll be going out with other folk or coming home, all of which means my mornings will be very relaxed and easy.

In other news, I won a new convert for my cult yesterday when K decided the time was right for her to start using the Bare Escentuals make-up, so we went to the mall and I got her started with it. Today, R came over with all of her stuff and the two of them were on the floor, swapping little jars and taking samples of each other's eyeshadow colors and mine. The jars are tiny, but last forever, so you can split one jar three ways and still never use it up.

Tomorrow we're off to the SIL's for Father's Day, which is not my first choice of how to spend the day, but it's the Hubs' decision, since it his day, not mine. And, as my sister pointed out, she and I never want to go anywhere, but if I've gotta go somewhere, this isn't a bad place to go. It's not far, it's a nice area, it won't be a big crowd. I do think it's kind of gift-begging since it's also to celebrate her son's college graduation and today is also the kid's birthday, but I guess the timing isn't anyone's fault. And we haven't given the kids birthday gifts in years, although I don't know if she gave my kids gifts for high school or college graduation, but if you're going to a party, you kind of have to. She had a high school graduation party for him, too. Whatever. My sister's youngest, Little K, is graduating from high school this coming Thursday, and I know what to give him because I know what I gave his older brothers and sister, so that's one's easy.

I am so rambling, which I knew I would be. I never even got to the story of what was on TV today, which was kind of strange -- I saw, among other things, the Little Rascals and My Favorite Martian, and Clarissa Explains It All. Anyway, now I am going to settle onto the couch and finally get to watch the Best of The Carol Burnett Show that came too late from Netflix for me to watch last Saturday. So I'm going to end the day with some laughs, anyway. Oh, and it's time to take my meds, too.

WATCHING THE HONEYMOONERS :: ENTRY #1781

Yahrzeit

This is such a strange week now, Memorial Day weekend and the week that follows. It was always closed linked to my father, whose birthday was May 30, and who was told as a little boy by his own father that the parade every year was for him. (Aw.) He would tell us that he remembered seeing the Civil War veterans marching, all with white beards. (This would have been in the early 1920s.) Memorial Day was Jack's birthday.

Then it wasn't always, of course, when it became a Monday holiday. Six years ago, my mother died on Memorial Day Sunday, so to speak, the day before Memorial Day, which was today's date, May 26. Technically, then, this is not her yahrzeit because it's not the same day on the Hebrew calender, but I think she'd understand.

We couldn't have the funeral the next day, as is the custom, because it was Memorial Day and the gravediggers don't work holidays. And we needed a day for my cousin to fly in from Colorado, so we scheduled it for Wednesday, the 29th. Less than an hour after we got home from the funeral, my cousin got a call from her son that his wife was in early labor with their twins, so she flew right out to San Francisco to be with them.

The twins -- a boy and a girl -- were born just after midnight, on Jack's 83rd birthday, less than a week after my mother died. As if that wasn't excitement enough, that night was K's senior prom, which she only agreed to go to because it was really the last thing Shirl took interest in that last week of her life, and she had been very interested in all the details of the dress, the date, the shore trip for the next day. So there was a prom. A death, a double birth, a birthday that would turn out to be father's last, and a prom.

That's a lot to remember for one week.


WATCHING FRASIER :: ENTRY #1763

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

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

I Had a Busy Day

It was the kind of day that even when I was sitting down, I was busy.

I've been getting up at 7.00 for the last few days; the alarm is set, but I always wake up before it rings. Next week I'll have to move it down to 6.00. Anyway, I got up, got ready and dressed, and left for school around 8.00. I had a 9.00 meeting scheduled with the principal, but I thought I could get some things done in the library first.

It looked like a bomb had done off in there. The custodians picked everything up off the floor -- chairs, trash bins, you name it -- to clean, but nothing is put back yet. It took me several minutes just to find my chair. I went down to the office at 8.30, where the Colleague told me that the principal was coming in later today, i.e., 9.30 or later. Swell. I had another meeting scheduled at the central office at 9.30, not to mention a million things to do.

So I left, made my return at Staples, picked up coffee, and went over to the central office to hack out our last issue with the new library software. Back to the high school around 10.15, where the great man not only saw me, but had his calls held while I was in there with him. So that was nice. Had a nice long talk with him about all kinds of issues, including my displeasure with our secretary/staffing issues last year. So we'll see how that goes.

Left, made a brief stop at home and then to the Apple Store. Long story, I came across a portable hard drive I wanted to use, but couldn't find the cable, and it needs some very odd firewire cable. Hence the return at Staples, and three stupid trips yesterday to a computer store to buy the wrong thing and return it, wash, rinse, repeat. But they had the cable at the Apple Store, which is where I bought the drive last summer. And then to the computer store for the last return.

And then home, to change to go to Joel's wake.

The Other Chai arrived before 2.00, as we were going together. K was supposed to go with a friend, but he was called away at the last minute, so she went with us. As we were leaving the house, she said -- the fashion expert -- "You know, crocs aren't formal." What can I say, it's all I had. She's right, but I didn't have anything else to wear.

The wake was quite the experience. I didn't know any of Joel's family -- cousins -- although he had spoken of them, but I do know his friend, W---, who in the obituary was listed as his "lifelong friend." As I wrote the other day, they were friends since they were little boys. So we went over to him when we got there to express our sympathy, and here's the conversation we had, but of course, with real names:

As we took each other's hands and embraced -

"W--, I'm so sorry. I'm Chai; we've met several times."

"Oh, Chai! Joel LOVED you!"

I turned a bit and said "And this is my daughter K; I think you've met a few times, too."

"Oh, of course, K! Thank you so much for coming!"

So are we talking about another wonderful person, or what? K had asked me the other day if I thought Joel -- who was Mr. H. to her -- knew how many people loved him. I said I thought he did, because he loved so many people, and he knew it was reciprocated.

And, boy. The place was pretty well packed, and mostly with scads of other retired and current staff members from the high school. It was like a reunion. In that sense, it was wonderful, and I think Joel would be happy to know that we were all seeing each other. Some of the retirees have a little group and they see each other all the time; Joel was among them, and I know they will continue to include W---. I saw one of my all-time favorite people; I wrote about him a long time back, but I'm not looking for the link just now. He was my teacher in 10th grade, and the Hubs and I met in his class; he later became a treasured colleague. He retired maybe 15 years ago, so when can I ever see him? At wakes, of course.

So that was an interesting experience. The funeral is tomorrow morning, a mass. I don't think I've ever been to a funeral mass. I'm thinking it will take some time.

Anyway, after we got home and the Other Chai left, I conceded to K that I cannot wear crocs to church tomorrow, so we went to DSW and I bought a pair of black shoes. With little bitty heels. Hopefully I shall survive this experience.

We had dinner out, and I am exhausted. And achy. But I have a portable hard drive that works, I have black shoes, and I saw many people today who are very dear to me. With a lump in my throat, as they had in theirs, but dear nonetheless. I expect I will see more at the funeral tomorrow. One of my favorite students of all time was also close to Joel, he and the boy's parents were good friends. The "boy" is now ... let's see ... 30, and works in the city, I think, so he was probably going to the wake tonight, but I imagine he will be at the funeral tomorrow. The last time I saw him, in fact, was at Joel's mother's funeral. It will be another bittersweet meeting.

WATCHING LAW & ORDER :: ENTRY #1564

Vale, Magister

The rant I promised you today will have to wait until tomorrow. My friend Joel died yesterday. I can't believe that I've never written about him before, but I searched the archives at my old diary and I couldn't find anything. I used the search term "Latin", because it would have come up in anything I wrote about him.

Joel was a big man with a deep voice, perhaps the deepest voice I have ever heard in person; he was also one of the most gentle and shy people I ever knew. But I didn't know how shy he was until years after we had become friends because of this: On my first day on the staff at the high school, I was terrified to go into the faculty room in the morning, but I did, and I sat in the smokers' room and lit up, and the next thing I knew, this giant man with intensely blue eyes sat down next to me and was my friend. He had a fabulous laugh and an interesting backstory, which was that he had spent about ten years as a teaching brother in a ... I guess monastery is the right word .. not far from here. He had given that up, and since then lived at home with his parents; I guess he would have been in his mid to late thirties then. He did all kinds of interesting crafts; one of his jobs in the monastery was to make the brothers' robes, so they taught him to sew. We talked often about the various craft projects we were doing.

The following December, as I have written elsewhere, my sister gave birth to twins, had seizures the next day, and then went into a coma for a week. I had to go to work every day because ... well, because I had to, and Joel held my hand whenever I came into the faculty room and told me he was praying for her. Although this is not my thing, I knew it was his and that he was sincere, and so it meant something to me. I never forgot that. A year or so later, his father died, and I had someone help me figure out how to send a mass card. Joel was incredibly touched by that, and commented on it even years later.

We were mostly faculty room buddies, although for my first few years there, we also had the same graduation night duty, so we hung out then, too. When I became pregnant with R, he was incredibly excited. Once, we were sitting side-by-side in the faculty room and I felt the baby kick, and put his hand on my belly so he could feel it. Tears came to his eyes. You realize that this is a man who never married and was never going to, and was never going to have children. Again, this was something he brought up years later, and thanked me for letting him have that experience.

Was Joel gay? A good question, and one of the school's eternal mysteries. He was certainly not straight. He actually lived in the same house his entire life, except for those few years at the monastery, so he lived with his parents, and then his mother, and then alone. He had a very best friend whom he always introduced as "my buddy W---", but they had been best friends since they were little boys, and their parents were close friends before that. They never lived together, although they often traveled together and socialized, more or less, as a couple. I don't know if sexuality was even in Joel's make-up, though. It's possible that they were non-sexual soulmates. It is, of course, irrelevant.

When he was being honored for 25 years in teaching, he refused to go to the dinner because he couldn't bear to be the center of attention (except in the classroom), but my friend E and I convinced him to go. He sat between us. Someone got up and made a lovely speech about him, after which he came to his feet at the table, intoned a deep and nearly silent "Thank you", and sat down. He was too shy for more than that. He did not go to the dinner when he was one of the retirees six years ago.

He taught, primarily, Latin, and secondarily, Spanish. Some years he also taught German. He also spoke and read Hebrew, read classical Greek and some Aramaic, and I believe, finally Italian. He was insane in the classroom. He had funny names for each and every child, did all kinds of routines, and showed every class every year "The Clash of the Titans", to which he added his own running commentary.

When my oldest nephew came to the high school and took Latin, Joel was delighted. The year he had each of my sister's twins in class -- one in Latin, one in Spanish -- he was beside himself, as these were the very recipients, along with their mother, of his prayers years earlier. My own R somehow managed not to get into his Spanish class, but my K was a Latin student, and she and Joel developed quite a bond. He adored her. When she became ill during her junior year, he was a rock for me, and would attend administrative meetings about her as representative of all her teachers and would hold my hand under the table. He retired just before her senior year of high school.

Several months later, K and I were at a craft store and I saw him across the store, and nudged her and pointed to him. She dropped everything she was holding and raced across the store into his arms, shrieking as she ran "Magister! Magister!" That's Latin for teacher, or master, which is how his students addressed him in class.

Religion was a very big part of Joel and who he was. He attended a Catholic church that focused closely on the Jewish roots of Christianity. Although I had always known this, I was unprepared for what I heard when I attended his mother's funeral; I can't recall the details now, but there were so many loving references to the Old Testament and to Jewish customs and traditions. I know I once had a discussion of anti-semitism with him, and he was appalled by it and in fact couldn't understand Christians who were anti-semitic. "Listen," he said. "I follow a Jew. Case closed." Faith was real and deep and just obvious to him. And comforting. I was told today that he had fallen on Sunday, at home, alone, and when someone came and found him Monday morning, his face wore an expression of peace and happiness.

You know, if you've read two words of my site, that I follow no organized religion and have a somewhat disorganized sense of my own personal faith, which is strong nonetheless. And today, I believe that Joel is with Jesus. It's where he deserves to be, and where he is without a doubt.

K and I are going to the wake on Thursday and the funeral on Friday. He has no family left at all, but W--- will be there, as well as decades worth of our colleagues from the high school who loved him, and, I suspect, many former students as well. A former student once mentioned him by name as the teacher who had changed his life, in a letter that was published in Newsweek. Joel was so embarrassed, but the rest of us were like, well, of course.

I'll be back tomorrow.

WATCHING FRIENDS :: ENTRY #1562

The Next Day

So it goes. Yesterday was, of course, very stressful. We had come to realize by mid-afternoon on Sunday that sweet Boo had entered a decline, and for us to make him continue to endure it would be cruel. He weighed just over 3 pounds, and had not eaten more than a teaspoon's worth of baby food in days. And so it was.

It is strange to live here without a cat, although I grew up without animals, and so I was used to it at one time, and for a long time. I almost hadn't realized how many adjustments we had made here to living with elderly, ill animals, but even yesterday afternoon, I took the towels off the furniture and began the rest of the cleaning that I would have to do. Today, I took down the living room curtains to wash them -- Boo would brush against the edge as he slipped past to take his place on the window-ledge -- but then I saw that they were dry-clean only, and since they were cheap to begin with, I went out and got replacements for probably less than the dry-cleaning would cost.

You know, my motivation to "de-cat" the house is a strange one, which I'm sure I've mentioned before. My sister's husband is intensely allergic to cats, which means that not only can he not enter my house, my sister won't, either. Well, she will now, I guess. She has said that if she comes into my house, she has to wash her hair when she gets home or her husband will react to the cats when he hugs her. Hmmm. I'm going to assume this is true; I certainly saw his intense reaction the one time he did come into my house and said, gasping and with red, swollen eyes after about two minutes "Do you have cats?" So I know his allergy is real, I just don't know how real it is second-hand. And of course, all their grown and out of the house children have cats, including the one who is the provider of the so-far only grandchild. Does he visit there? Of course he does. Does he react? Well, yes, I believe he does that, too, although they make some adjustments or other to help him out.

Anyway, I have vacuumed like mad, changed or cleaned the curtains and the slipcovers, washed the washable floors, thrown out two pillows on the couch that I could not remove the cat-hair from, and ... what else? I don't know. My house looks very clean, as long as you don't examine the tiles in the bathroom too closely, but that's not cat related.

My bedroom door is standing open now, as is the door at the base of the steps up to K's room. They were both closed before to limit the areas Boo would randomly poop in. We noticed last night while we were eating dinner that we could step away from the table for a moment without moving our food to some protected place that he wouldn't jump to. (The stove is the only place he never jumped to.) And so forth. Our lives are easier, but out hearts are heavier. It will take some time.

Those little beasts just get right under your skin. This is the only post I'm going to write about losing him and making those adjustments, so I'll go on for a tiny bit more. But no more after today.

It is their strength and their weakness, you know, that they get under your skin. It's their weakness because, under normal life conditions, they cannot outlive us, and this will break our hearts. It is their strength that we can come to love an animal so, almost as if they are people.

BooBoo was the cat that listened to my daughters' teenage angst, and the cat that curled up at my knees when I came home from the hospital after my brain surgery and I was too weak to walk around, so he stayed where I was. He was not generally a cat who curled up next to you, although he always curled up to R. She was 10 when he was born, one week after her 10th birthday, in fact.

Okay, I'm rambling, and I want to be done now. I live in a cat-free house, and it is very strange. As much as I hoped that some day I would no longer be a slave to elderly, ill animals, I knew that I would be devastated when the time came to make that transition, and of course, I am. I didn't realize how much of the house was centered around them, and of me. My stomach is at peace today for the first time in a long time. Of course, there's nothing left after yesterday, but whatever.

Moving on. So it goes. Thank you all for your kind words.

WATCHING ELLEN :: ENTRY #1546

Sad Day Today

Goodbye, my little man.



See you on the other side.


WATCHING --- :: ENTRY #1545

Five Years + One Day

I posted twice yesterday, but I didn't make mention of the anniversary, which I didn't realize myself until late in the day because I really didn't know what the date was all day.

My mother, the lady in the picture just over there on the right, died five years ago yesterday. It was Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, so in that sense, it could be five years ago today. Clear as a bell, of course, every minute of it.

The Sibs and I talked about it briefly before, but we talk about our parents often, so nothing new. Like me, I think she has way more trouble getting beyond Jack's death, since Shirl's was so obviously coming for a long time. His decline was much more subtle. Anyway, enough of that. Let me just note that it is the anniversary of her death and move on. Wednesday -- the 30th -- would be his birthday, this year the 88th. So I'll freak out over that one on Wednesday.

In the meantime, yet another trip to R's this morning, this time to pick up cartons I was taking back or taking to recycling, which I did afterwards. It's about a 20-25 minute drive over there, and it's becoming second-nature. But it looks like I have a day off tomorrow, both from work and from R, since she's on her way at the moment to visit friends from the UK who are visiting briefly with family in Pennsylvania, about 2 hours away, and she's staying with them overnight and until late tomorrow. So she gets a break from all the unpacking and settling in, too, although really, she's made tremendous progress.

Meanwhile, K and I did the food shopping, and I got the bills paid, and although I have more laundry to do -- some of it R's, what a surprise -- I'm actually pretty caught up on that, too. Tomorrow K and I are hoping to go see the Shrek movie. I haven't heard great things about it, but you know I rarely go to the movies in a theatre, and we've gone to the last two Shreks together, so we're completing the set. I'm sure I won't see another movie until the Harry comes out in July.

Have a good holiday weekend, all.

watching Wings on DVD :: entry #1477

See? I Told You

[copied from dland]

You'll die of a Heart Attack.

You will die of a heart attack really late in life, after you've lived to your fullest.

'How will you die?' at QuizGalaxy.com

On to other things.

K did indeed call me within minutes after I posted yesterday, and made it home safe and sound and alive and all that good stuff. As she came into the house, K flotsam and jetsam followed in her wake; she left a trail of stuff starting in the living room, continuing onto the kitchen table, and finally erupting all over the family room. It is just the way she is, i.e., part of her charm.

I'm really liking the new hearing aids a lot. I found myself today not doing "the deaf dance", which is when I subtly shift myself to the right of whatever person I'm walking with so that I can continue to hear him/her as we move along. I could hear the person who was on my right/deaf side. Very cool. And the phone is actually better on the deaf ear because the microphone/transmitter there is so good. Next week I hope to get the second program for hearing in crowds put in.

So now I'm just waiting for K to come home from work so we can decide what to do for dinner. As for me, I could go for some Subway, but I doubt she's in the mood for it. Even so, if she wants to pick up something else, I could still get that. Somehow, even in little Bizarro Town here, what is laughingly called our "downtown" area has its own little Subway, Quizno's, and Panera's, all kind of on the same street and either across or around the corner from each other. And that's with a McDonald's on the other side of town and a Wendy's just up the road from it, albeit over the border into the next hamlet. I don't know that she will want any of these at all, but she's got to eat something, and I'm not in a sit-down or a drive-far mood.

So it's April 3, and the weather is now apparently going to be getting colder, dropping into the forties at best for the next two weeks or so. Some nights will go down into the teens. This is just crazy, man. It's all Bush's fault, you know. (Well, isn't everything?)

WATCHING FRIENDS :: ENTRY #1420

Let Me Tell You About My Day

[copied from dland]

It's day two of The Sinus Headache That Will Not Die, and it's exhausting me. Not to mention my excursion into the cold today, from which I'm taking some time to recover.

I got dressed this morning in layers upon layers, and revived my heavy winter coat which I haven't really worn all winter (in lieu of the jacket which isn't really warm, but whatever) and got myself all put together. I went over to the Sibs' a little after noon, since I was going along to the funeral with them. She was finalizing her going out outfit with what looks like two or three sweaters. Her husband comes into the room wearing slacks and a button-down shirt and answers her request that he wear a jacket by saying he had no jacket suitable for a funeral. She insists that he find some jacket to wear and he comes back with a heavy windbreaker on. She, meanwhile, tops off her layers of sweaters with a heavy shawl. A heavy shawl? It's 15 degrees, with a wind chill of 5, maybe! The only one of them dressed at all appropriately is the 16 year old, Little K.

So we take the ride, maybe 20 minutes, and get there and have to wait a half hour for the hearse to arrive and get ready to go to the grave site. We all say hello to the BIL's sister and her various family members, and drive over to the right spot. (This is an absolutely huge cemetery, actually two or three adjacent cemeteries that merged long ago.) And we walked over to the grave.

It was just unbelievably cold. I was the only person wearing a hat. The Sibs, not surprisingly, was freezing, and I ended up standing behind her to block the wind. The BIL's sister's husband, apparently some sort of rabbi's assistant, led the service and such, and started and ending with two very long and very clichéd poems about the history of the Jewish people and so on. When it came to the actual prayers, he had to ask his daughter to turn the pages in the prayer book because his hands were too cold to work. None of these people wore gloves. I think maybe he could have eliminated the poems, huh?

By the time we got back to the car, my face actually hurt from being scrunched up tight in the cold. That's also when I realized that the headache had multiplied in strength while I was scrunching.

So it's over; I came home and only now, five hours later, am I starting to consider taking off some of the extra layers. (But I'm not still wearing the coat.) My feet are still cold.

Anyway, K had rented Little Miss Sunshine, which we watched this afternoon and enjoyed very much. Very well done, fabulous acting, and many unexpected moments. Thumbs up from Chai and K.

I just installed a little weather thingy in my browser -- it's a Firefox extension, not Weatherbug, which I never liked on my PC -- and it says that the high for tomorrow is 17. I am not keen on K walking around campus in that, since the parking is always so far from the buildings. I told her to keep an eye on the school website and her email to see if anything is canceled.

Well, the kid has just relocated up to her bedroom, so I can now take full possession of the couch and the remote. We've been watching a lot of the various history channels recently, which I may leave on. I'm certainly not watching the Super Bowl, about which I could not possibly care less than I already do, so my choices are limited.

I haven't watched An Inconvenient Truth yet since it's the Hubs' and he hasn't opened it yet, but I saw the producer on TV yesterday talking about some of the "green" things we can all do. We've already changed all the light bulbs in the house to compact fluorescents. I'm considering paper towels from recycled paper. But my big project is going to be not keeping things plugged in all the time that don't need to be, especially those things that recharge your phone and iPod and whatever. I gotta get me another power strip and a label maker and just go ahead and do it, but I never got to it this weekend. Maybe next.

Okay, I'm putting my head down now.


WATCHING THE NAKED ARCHAELOGIST :: ENTRY #1367

And Then ...

[copied from dland]

It's Monday night, I've already posted, but I'm getting a head start for tomorrow because I just saw Meryl Streep win a Golden Globe and make a speech, and K and I were talking aobout her early film roles, and so I've got a Sophie's Choice anecdote to share.

Now, if you haven't read the book or seen the movie, this is a spoiler, but since they came out 30 years ago (or thereabouts), I think I'm on safe ground.

In brief, Sophie is a Polish Holocaust survivor who was forced upon her entry to the concentration camp to choose which of her two small children would be given the opportunity to be saved and which would die. For reasons which we are asked to imagine -- not spelled out in the story -- she chooses life for her son, her older child, and death for her smaller daughter.

At some time after the movie came out -- which was 1982, actually, so this was a few years after that -- the topic of the story came up in the faculty room, how it would be an impossible decision for any mother to make (which is why it was so tragic, of course), and my pal The Other Chai, then and now the mother of an only child, ultimately concluded that Sophie made the only choice anyone could, because she saved her firstborn, and every mother feels a special -- and greater -- love for her firstborn than she could for any other child.

The others in the room, mothers of multiple children, had no reply. We looked at her, in some cases, with dropped jaws. Do you really need to have more than one child to get that? Uh ... isn't that what the book was about?

---

Tuesday Afternoon

Great name for a song.

So we have printers in the library, lovely new excellent printers. We still have five computers yet to be installed (because the architect had computer furniture installed that blocks the electrical outlets) and the teacher's computer in the computer lab/classroom installed (because the architect didn't plan for an electrical outlet at the front of the room) and our photocopier is still on order (but due within a week or two, I hope.) All that and about 300 bookends (also on order) and we'll be up to speed. The day keeps me busy, and that keeps me happy.

It's cold at last, for what that's worth. I haven't heard of any snow in the forecast yet, but the temperature's dropping. It's not that I like it, but I do like the whole normalness of it.

I pulled a muscle in my back this morning, not a big deal, but I thought that the weight machines at the gym wouldn't be the thing for it. I put on a heat wrap when I got home, so I'm hoping for a better tomorrow on that. How did I pull a muscle? I reached for the tea bags on an upper shelf -- with my right arm -- and felt a lower-left back muscle spasm. How does that work, anyway? (And no "neck bone connected to the head bone" please. I get it, I get it.)

What I'm doing here is trying not to write about a local tragedy, a wonderful man who died unexpectedly on Friday, but it's all I can really think about. He was unbelievably community-minded, had a wonderful family ... we're all very sad here. I've known him a long time, as his late mother-in-law worked at my school for many years. He was only 48, and left four children, the oldest of whom gave him CPR, but the heart attack was massive. I tried to go to the wake this afternoon, but the line was literally out the door; I heard that last night the line was three hours long. It seems that everyone in town knew him or his wife or her sister (my kids' first grade teacher) or one or more of his kids, two of whom are already out of the high school and the youngest not yet in it. What can I say. It's overpowering around here.

Okay, so I didn't manage to avoid that very well, but I guess it's better that I didn't. And on that note ...


WATCHING STILL STANDING :: ENTRY #1350

Jack

[copied from dland]

Jack died this morning. He had a heart condition for over 20 years, and a whole host of other ailments, as befit his 83 years. Even so, my first reactionwas, and still is, surprise.

I had planned to write so much about him, and even started another diary for it, just about him. I wanted to get more of his stories before I got going onit, but now I'll have to go on memories. That's okay, too.

He told me once that in all his life, he'd never had a dream in which he wasn't a little boy, playing marbles or riding his scooter. He never dreamed of anything in his life after the war, never dreamed of Shirl or my sister or me or even the grandchildren. It must have been some way that his subconscious mind protected him from remembering and dreaming about the war and all he saw there.

The how and why of today is pretty strange, I guess; that's a story for another time, too. I was in the car with K, driving back home (we were about an hour away when my sister called on the cell phone to tell me), and so we had that time to talk. Mostly, we talked about where he is now. Pretty funny, since he himself was an agnostic, and didn't believe in any kind of afterlife at all, although I seem to. So we were picturing him in all the possible places in heaven he could be.

He could be a chubby ten-year old, playing baseball in the schoolyard next to his house in small-town New England. He played badly, he said, but he always played. Or he could be at the Y, learning to swim. He might even be at Fenway Park. A neighbor boy, a few years older, would take him on the train to see the Red Sox play.

He could be in high school. He was handsome, and a little bit of a flirt, and a good student, although not as good as either of his older sisters. He was an officer in the Cadet Corps, and hung out with all the cool kids, even though he was Jewish and nobody else was.

He might be in college, the first in his family to go. He had a very good time in college. He was an officer in his fraternity, where he learned to drink beer, although he never liked it.

He might even be in the army, although he wouldn't be in the Huertgen Forest, the worst combat he saw. Maybe it would be when he got to see Paris, or Brussels. He would be laughing with George Johnson, his best buddy.

I think he's spending some of his heaven time with Shirl, who died last May. But he's not seeing her that way, sick for years and sucking all the life and energy out of him. He's with the Shirl he first knew during the war, when they met and then married. In Jack's heaven, Shirl is still bright and sweet and really built.

He's not 75 pounds overweight, or bald. It's not hard for him to walk, or remember. He's still a hunk.

His children are little girls, his business is just starting out. He goes into the office every morning and talks over last night's ball game with his partner, Murray. Murray died two years ago, so I know that Jack is spending some of his time with Murray. They were partners for over 45 years.

He bought his house in the suburbs, and bought into the American dream he helped save in World War II. This is my favorite picture of Jack and Shirl ever, in the backyard. He might be mowing the lawn there, or burning the leaves. No, he's shoveling the snow. It seems like he was always shoveling snow.

It's most likely that he's someplace with his grandchildren. He loved them best of all.

He hated having his picture taken (so he won't be doing that), but there was nothing AT ALL that was better for him than his grandchildren. So he might be playing with them on the floor, all of them babies together, or at the July 4th barbecue, or at Thanksgiving.

He won't be wearing a tie, because he didn't like that at all. He only got dressed up for weddings and such, like this one, where he posed with both grandsons. He did not smile for the camera.

At least, until later in the evening. He was, after all, sitting at a table surrounded by all the people he loved. Two daughters with husbands, and five grandchildren. And of course, Shirl.

Where is Jack in heaven? He is playing ball, and having milk and cookies at his mother's kitchen table, and at a school dance, and drinking with his fraternity brothers, and walking hand in hand with Shirl all around Manhattan before he went to war, and talking football with Murray, and buying a house, and teaching me to read or tell time, and playing with his grandbabies, and giving rolls of quarters to his grandchildren, and sitting with them at the Thanksgiving little table because he didn't want to sit apart from them, and telling stories about all of it to all of us, and even letting his youngest grandchild take this picture of him for her photography class because she asked him to.

Now he's in heaven. Now he's dreaming about us.


:: ENTRY #----

With Remote Firmly in Hand

[copied from dland]

**In 16 days I will be 50 years old**

I admit it: I am the keeper of the remote control in this house.

I know this is generally considered a male thing, but since my Husband likes to think of himself as anti-technology, he prides himself on never touching the remote. He doesn't like it when I keep flipping though the channels either, but since we rarely watch TV in the same room, it doesn't matter. I watch by myself and I keep a firm finger on the remote. I have no attention span anymore, and I can't stand to watch commercials.

So a few weeks ago, I was flipping around and I came across Touched By an Angel, a rerun. I rarely watch the show because I rarely watch hour long shows, but I have seen it from time to time. Here's the scene that caught my attention:

A young man (the young doctor on Dick Van Dyke's doctor show) seems to be clearing away the possessions of his deceased wealthy father, and he asks the butler, an older man, if he too has lost both his parents. The butler assures him that both his parents are long gone. And the young man asks "Do you get over it?" meaning the loss of one's parents. And the butler says, "Oh no, sir, you never get over it. But you get past it."

I was driving around yesterday morning, running last minute errands for Christmas eve, when I began to feel something I can only describe as a heavy heart. So what is it exactly about Shirl dying that I still need to get past?

The last 8 years, not to mince words, sucked. I felt miserable for her -- she was the one dying -- but she made life miserable for everyone around her. Not intentionally, I like to hope, but she was not above manipulation and guilt to get people to do things for her, not even before. Sister and I made a pact that, once she was gone, we would not glorify her in our memories in death. We would want to remember everything, bad along with the good, and not sugarcoat honest feelings.

Yet I miss her - what is it that I miss? She drove me crazy, no question.

Maybe I miss my childhood, not unlike the way my daughter at 18 is now confronting that her childhood is over. Maybe this is the struggle that never ends: growing up. Getting past all of it.

The adventure continues.

ENTRY #34

Living the Stress-Free Life

[copied from dland]

Is this even possible? If there's no stress, is it really still life, or what? One year ago I would not even have been able to believe that anyone anywhere lived life without stress. If they said they were, they were lying, and if they really thought they weren't, then they just didn't get it. One year ago, stress was like a cargo net that contained all the details of my daily existence. Now, it's gone. No net, no threads connecting the dots as it all swung and slipped above the harbor. Dots seem to be connected on their own now, thank you very much.

It is a way of life unfamiliar and strange. If I'm not dashing from task to task all day every day putting out fires, what am I doing? It turns out that I'm not doing much of anything, a little errand here and there, a daily phone call to dad. Life without stress, it turns out, is somewhat boring.

But not unpleasantly so; I wouldn't want to sound ungrateful. No stress is also no pain: no headaches, no gut pain, no body aches (except the backache I've had since I slipped on the ice in 1974, but that's another story). No pain is a good thing. I can tell you exactly when I realized the pain was gone (and so the stress). I made peace long ago with all of this making me sound like the worst person on earth. I'm not.

It was May 27, a Monday, Memorial Day. I had spent the morning with daddy, going to the funeral home with him, picking out the casket. Mommy died the day before, on Sunday. Mommy died. When I talked to my sister later, after we got home from making the arrangements, we both noticed that suddenly our pain was gone, both of us. All because Mommy died.

I was at the hospital with my sister and her daughter, 24. We three were there. Daddy was home. We didn't know that she would die that day, and anyway, he'd already taken his medication and couldn't leave the house. Sister and I went with her to the hospital. Niece arrived about an hour later.

We were in the emergency room all day. They talked about controlling her internal bleeding, about taking her for a CAT scan. It was about noon, I guess, that Mommy stopped knowing we were there, or that anything else was going on. She looked frozen. Her eyes were open. She looked scared, as if she had been frozen about one second before she was going to be okay.

Some tech person came into the cubicle holding two giant cups of yucky something to drink and said brightly "You need to drink this for your CAT scan!" The nurse shhd her and turned her out again. About a half hour later I realized that the nurse had been with us the whole time. That's when I knew what she knew: that mommy was going to die any minute now. The nurse wanted to be with us at the end, not for mommy, but for us.

But, tough old girl, she just wouldn't go. For eight years we had been saying to each other "Doesn't she know she's got cancer? Doesn't she know she's not going to 'beat this'?" That's what she would always say, "What's going to be with me?" She was wasting away, physically and mentally, and she still thought that one day she would get better, would drive again, would go out to lunch. She was 81. She'd been smoking a pack or two of cigarettes a day since she was 15, and had only just stopped in March when she was in the hospital for a week.

"What's going to be with me?" She wasn't asking anymore, even though now we knew the answer. We knew what was going to be, and it looked like it was going to be any minute. We held her hand and talked to her and looked into those scared, frozen eyes.

Niece turned up and took center stage. She told grandma that she was beautiful and strong and wonderful. She was a source of stress and pain to her daughters, but to this grandchild, she was still beautiful. Imagine.

Sister went outside for a smoke and to make a phone call, while niece and I watched the heart monitor beep less and less often. Finally the nurse turned it off; it kept setting off alarms each time it went below a certain level and it freaked us out. Sister returned. We watched, all three of us, as the heart monitor went lower and lower. I felt like I was having a stroke. I felt light-headed and foggy. I'd been having blood pressure problems for a few weeks; my blood pressure went up each time mommy called on the phone. I was thinking, this is it and I'm going with her.

And then it stopped. She hardly looked different. Still frozen. No heart monitor beeping. But we could see that there was no line any more. Over. Over.

We went home and told daddy. He went into captain mode, telling us what had to be done and who to call. No one was stunned or startled, except niece, of course. She thought grandma would live forever, always suffering and dying, but living forever. I called mommy's best friend, who was in the bathroom, and her husband gave her the message.

I went home so I could tell my daughters in person. As I entered the house I saw #2, age just 18, standing in the middle of the room with the phone to her ear and a horrified look in her face. She saw me: "I don't know what she's talking about!" she said softly, gesturing to the phone. I took the phone from her. It was my mother's friend, calling back for details, and telling my daughter how sorry she was that grandma had just died. So that's how she found out.

I told and hugged both girls, and my husband expressed sympathy. Within minutes, we four were imagining where mommy was now: sitting someplace in a comfortable chair, her feet up, with a cigarette burning out of each side of her mouth, both nostrils, her ears, and one in each hand. There were clean ashtrays everywhere. She was sighing in constant contentment. Ah, death!

Am I macabre? Black humor is our crutch, all of us. Mommy liked it too. And I liked thinking that wherever she was, she was happy.

As was I. Eight years killed her, and took its toll on all of us. I thought I was getting old, going through menopause, developing an ulcer, maybe. My heart was going, my blood pressure was going up. I'd been wondering if I would live long enough to be a grandmother.

Then she died. My mommy died, and my pain all went away. Living the stress-free life. Now I just have to figure out what to do with it.


ENTRY #12