Lightning does actually strike….

It’s been a long time since I’ve typed anything in the blog genre.  It’s been a long time since I strung together any time to say anything.  I’ve been hungry to write, but every time I get around my computer, someone else finds something I need to do RIGHT THEN, or someone else needs to use it, or I’m supposed to be doing something else, or I’ve been working or eating or sleeping.  Or, as is most recent, having a myocardial infarction:  “Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, also known as transient apical ballooning syndrome, apical ballooning cardiomyopathy,  stress-induced cardiomyopathy, Gebrochenes-Herz-Syndrom, and simply stress cardiomyopathy, is a type of non-ischemic cardiomyopathy in which there is a sudden temporary weakening of the myocardium (the muscle of the heart). Because this weakening can be triggered by emotional stress, such as the death of a loved one, a break-up, or constant anxiety, the condition is also known as broken heart syndrome.  Stress cardiomyopathy is a well-recognized cause of acute heart failure, lethal ventricular arrhythmias, and ventricular rupture.”  I go along, feeling fine, for most of my life.  Don’t get THAT part wrong, I am a rather gifted hypochondriac.  I have manufactured some LU-LUs in my day.  I’ve had headaches, anxiety, depression, extreme dysmenorrhea, plus regular coughs, colds, flu, and acid stomach/gas stuff.  Plus I’ve given myself a couple of really great head injuries, on and off the job.  None of that could prepare this former Christian Scientist for what was going to transpire the couple of weeks leading up to July the 6th, 2011.

I’d been doing so well for about 4 months on my plant-based diet, reduced oil intake, low fat, all vegetable-based foods ~ I’d been losing weight, gaining muscle and stamina and feeling really, genuinely happy.  I thought I would try to wean myself off of my anti-depressant medication.  I didn’t research it, I didn’t talk to a doctor about it, I just started reducing the amount I was taking.  At the same time, I was doing pretty strenuous work at times and would make my chest muscles sore from it.  So when my chest was hurting, it felt like arm-connective muscles from working, not heart pain.  Then some of the symptoms of withdrawal started getting severe, plus I was coping with ingesting a LOT of spicy food, which I love but which does NOT love ME.  (Historically a relationship I am all-too-familiar with and used to continuing, even at my peril).  I was chewing tums before and after a meal, sometimes, if it was really spicy.  So there’s acid and gas involved, plus these normal pains from working a bit too strenuously for a woman my age, trying to keep up with the “kids” on the job.

It had been about a week ~ maybe 5 days or more ~ since I’d taken my last dose of my medication.  I got up, had my usual GIANT cup of coffee, I think I took Excedrin because I had been battling a wicked headache, but I’m not sure if it was that morning, but pretty sure.  I was at work early-on-time, it was going to be another sunny, warm day up in the attic of this school, so I was anxious to get in and get started with the work before the heat of the day ~ the day before, I had sweated through everything on me, wiring in the really HOT part of the day, and promised my foreman I would finish up the next day when it was early and much cooler.  I finished up, and suddenly felt EXTREMELY nauseous, and in my middle generally felt the worst I’ve felt in my life.  I got my self and my tools down out of the attic, sat down, and called Wendy.  I told her I felt like I was going to die.  Now that I was sitting in the cool teacher’s lounge, my heart was starting to clench.  For the first time, it didn’t feel like my chest muscles, it felt like my heart, and I couldn’t shake the nausea.  I was still telling myself it was withdrawal from the medication, and asked Wendy to get me in right away to see a Dr.  I got in the car and headed home.  I felt deadened, achy and sick.  All I wanted to do was lie down on the cool floor in the kitchen.  I denied I was really having anything more than medication withdrawal symptoms, and it was a rare miracle I got myself out of work, because I just NEVER feel as though going home is warranted.  Never.

When I got home, Wendy was working, weeding in the back yard, so I just laid on the kitchen floor.  It didn’t make me feel better.  No position, sitting nor standing, made any difference, I still felt sick, pained, and like I was not able to do anything, which ramped up my anxiety.  We waited an hour for the Dr. appointment, and then Wendy drove us there.  Dr’s office took an EKG, and said everything looked fine, but to be SURE, we should go to the ER, right away.  He said, “an ambulance isn’t going to get you there that much faster, but that’s how you need to go, now, and as quick as possible.”  The last thing the Dr said to me was, “You don’t LOOK bad at ALL, you look GREAT for (feeling the way you do)…”  We left the Dr’s office and at about 11:30 got to the ER, and I was soon checked in and in an uncomfortable backless gown, getting asked dozens of questions, poked, EKG’d, X-rayed, and on and on.  Alarmingly, my blood work showed I’d HAD a heart attack, only not that day, but in the recent past!  Further, they were going spelunking in me to see how bad the arterial blockage was and if they needed to put in shunts right away.

Suddenly there were people ~ two of the coolest women I’ve ever met, btw ~ working on me, prepping me for a procedure, putting things on my back in case my heart stopped and they needed to jump-start it again.  Now I was fully panicking, partly because I was in total denial up to this point, and had discounted and dismissed all of my symptoms.  This was unprecedented in my little life, and I was not prepared.  Plus my partner, upon learning that the blood work came back with alarmingly high levels of something it shouldn’t  (the enzymes the first Dr at the clinic appointment warned me about), completely went to pieces on me, crying and looking terrified herself.  I began to realize the ripple effect: I was in a hospital.  Wendy was scared.  Chad would find out, and likely be scared, too.  My parents.  My siblings.  Wendy’s parents.  Wendy’s sister and family.  My family of choice. All my Facebook friends.  I had crossed over.  I was no longer in control of being dismissive, of ignoring or down-playing symptoms.  I was “that girl” ~ I had a heart attack, and was potentially going to have life-changing, very serious surgery.  If I wasn’t making the monitor beep BEFORE, (but I was), I sure as Hell was now.

I wasn’t allowed to move.  No comforting Wendy with a hug, no sitting up to show everyone I was FINE…I wasn’t even allowed to take off my own pants.  Couldn’t help getting on/off the gurney.  Lay as still as possible, keep breathing.  That’s the trick, isn’t it?  I realized, over that terrifying 8 hours between when they admitted me to the ER and when I was allowed to sit up again, that much of my life, I hold my breath.  When I’m driving a nail, drilling in a screw at work, I hold my breath.  When I’m unsure of someone else’s driving at a given moment, I hold my breath.  When I’m “swimming” I hold my breath.  I don’t realize half of the time I’m doing it until I exhale and breathe again.  Sometimes I would see spots or flashes of red.  Now all I could do was focus on the in breath, the out breath, remember Pam Wyderka in the back room at the Gem theater, “breathe in blue, feel the cool fill you up, breathe out red, hot, flame hot, get all of the hot out and let the cool fill you up, head to toe…”  Ahh, breathing exercises, essential to serious actors. Wendy wasn’t allowed to go into this procedure with me, which likely was good because they wouldn’t have been able to peel her up off the ground from seeing the big needles they needed to use on me, anyway.  But just before she kissed me goodbye to go to the waiting room, she said, “You have got to stop scaring the otter.”  Bet that made the staff curious.  The Otter is a whole ‘nother blog itself.  At least she stopped saying “don’t ever scare ME like this again.”  I wasn’t going to, I didn’t mean to this time, I wouldn’t if I could help it…

My mind bounced all around my life, but when I was laying on my back, and they anesthetized me, I began to realize there were two different kind of lighting fixtures over my table in this room, and began pondering why that would be, the wattage and type of light bulbs used, and on like that.  Just like that, my old geeky self, survival skills kicking in, because if I’m focused on something logical, something my brain can chew on, I’m not thinking at all about what’s happening to me on that table.  Ever since I can remember, I’ve been able to disconnect with unpleasantness happening, to be someone else, somewhere else, to not feel the bad I was feeling.  (The wicked anesthetic needle was felt, however, but after that, little else.)

They didn’t find any blockage.  No reduction in my arterial walls due to plaque, no hardening, no build-up, my arteries were clean as a whistle! YAY~  NO SURGERY, NO SHUNTS!

Now the REAL fun began….

I was wheeled into a room at the ICU and told that in order to make sure I didn’t rupture the exploration site, I needed to lay flat on my back, motionless, for 6 hours.  Piece of cake, I thought.  They hooked up a monitor to several points on me, and conducted a couple more EKGs.  They did an echo of my heart(pictures from all angles, and a flashy, coloriffic thingy that showed blood in-go and out-go in brilliant color images ~ I told the man I wanted a DVD of THAT, and he said, “you’ll have to ask your cardiologist about that.”)  All the while I had visitors ~ Carialta, my Seattle Sister, dear to my heart and part of my life for the last 13 years, was there.  A very skilled nurse herself, she asked them lots of questions, all the while reassuring me.  I was a lot less alarmed when the beeps and chimes went off on my monitors when her face looked unfazed, but a bit more alarmed when SHE looked worried.  Of course, Wendy was there, through it all, a trooper.  I’m not sure she ever got to eat her sandwich ~ she went to get a sandwich when they were wheeling me in for the x-ray and when she returned with it, they sprung the bad news on her in the hallway.   I thought she was going to drop it!  I’m pretty sure she lost her appetite with anxiety and grief.  Not the way to diet, just sayin….

Anne came to visit, and Chad made it, too ~ I was so glad to see each and every person, but talking was exhausting, and I had had such a very long day.  A meal was brought in, finally, and I managed to eat a half of a sandwich and I think some decaf coffee.  Apparently I was never going to be allowed caffeine again.  So that ended THAT argument Wendy and I had been having for a couple of years (difficult to tell which of us is more stubborn, I still think she has me beat by a small margin) and started a rager of a headache.  The next morning I sweet-talked one of the nurses out of a cup of regular coffee from the nurses station and it was heavenly, plus Wendy brought me a coffee with soy milk and it was half-caf-half-decaf, that same day.  From there on out, I was pretty well cut off from caffeine, and suffered a headache I couldn’t treat the way I usually did, because Excedrin is laced with caffeine!  So there was that.

The automatic BP cuff was taking my BP every hour and by the time I was entering my first night stay at the hospital, they turned it down to only every 3 hours.  I took off the pulse/ox myself, it was just too much annoying stuff bugging me.   The monitor beeped angrily, but I didn’t care.  The nurse said it was ok for a while.  That all was a relief.  I remember with remarkable clarity the face, but not the name, of the male nurse that assisted me with using and then removing a bedpan for the first time in my life.  Even after the ghastly episiotomy-tear I got when Chad was born, I still got to use the bathroom.  Scary as Hell, but I did.  I don’t know, maybe there was a catheter at first, I HAVE forgotten a lot of what happened THAT series of days, blissfully.  I hated the bedpan, I certainly didn’t want to do THAT again, and they were preparing to give me something to sleep  ~ AMBIEN ~ and one nurse said, “I don’t want her to stumble going to the bathroom in the night, as she’s never had Ambien before, we don’t know how she will react” and I thought, “uh-oh, she’s got a distinctly ‘catheter’ look in her eye” as they both sized me up, and I said, “I can walk to the bathroom” and she said, “do you have to go now?”  Oh my gosh, Ana, SAY YES or she will put a catheter in! “Y-yes ~ YES, I do.”  Think think.  “Here’s what I will do, I will go and use the bathroom, then I should be good for the night and you can administer the Ambien, okay?” “That sounds like a good plan,” she says, and I relax back onto my bed ~ whew!  That was close!  So I sat up and stood up, and used the restroom, gave myself a bit of a once-over from the awful bedpan incident residual, and returned to bed, happy as I could be trailing a monitor on wheels, I guess.

I’d like to say the rest of my time at the hospital was a blur, but most of it I remember with remarkable clarity.  There wasn’t anywhere for Wendy to sleep in my room with me, and certainly the bed wasn’t big enough for both of us, so she went home at night, but she didn’t sleep ~ she couldn’t rest well at all, both from being apart from me and from worry ~ and no one was giving HER Ambien, just sayin’.  My great friend ~like a big brother or an Uncle in my family of choice ~ Sean came to visit me the next day, and he, like most people, was kind of mixed between inquiring, “how the heck did THAT happen?” and admonishing, “you scared us, don’t do that again!”  I’m most surprised by that last part, as everyone seemed to be up on that sentiment, as if I had any control, or was in any way enjoying this little foray into immobility and knocking on death’s door.  It wasn’t MY idea!  Sheesh!  I saw Anne again ~ she visited every day, bless her heart.  Sara, my stepdaughter, visited me a couple of times, and was kind and not neurotic at all, bless her.  Wendy had laundered my iPod just days before all of this and so she loaned me her iPod, bless HER heart, so I visited with Natalie Merchant and Pink and the crew when I had no 3-D visitors.  A great lot of support, kindness and attention was given to me by the nursing assistants at this hospital.  They were like cheerleaders, room service, maid, valet and pinch-hit Moms the whole time.  The cafeteria even called ME once, when I was out of ICU, because I hadn’t ordered any lunch (I had eaten food Chad brought me the day before, for breakfast.  Vegan choices were slim and not too tasty at the hospital. So they hadn’t had a food order from me ALL DAY).  There were Polish, Indian, Samoan, Greek, and good old black and white women tending to me ~ they asked about my name, my ethnicity, so I thought it only fair to ask about theirs.  Fascinating people, caring, kind.  It was as if they got it that this was a dreadful place to be, and several referred to me as their favorite, because I was always alert, cheerful, and painfully upbeat for having just had a heart attack.  One of the ICU night nurses stopped by and saw me when I was in a regular room later in the week.  She thought I had gone home when I left ICU, and I said, “I thought I was going home, too!”  The wonderful woman who prepped me for that procedure the first day also stopped in to see me, remembering Wendy by name out in the hall, and then telling me she was surprised to see me, too, still here.  I felt like I was being visited by a celebrity, she was so cool!  It definitely helped with my recovery.

I got to talk to my Mom on the phone almost right away, and then again a couple days later.  She and Wendy had been talking a lot while I was there, and they definitely bonded over this experience.  My Mom discovered, as she told me, that Wendy is just the COOLEST person and that if she wanted the straight poop on what was really going on with ME, she should talk to HER, because I tend to couch things, I try to protect my Mom from anything unpleasant or bad.  My brother Treb sounded like my brother when he left a message on the phone, and like my Dad when I talked to him later.  Kind of gruff-you-woke-me-up-disoriented, only I didn’t wake him and he was perfectly lucid.  My sister, though I actually HAD her phone number in my phone, I thought I didn’t, so she wasn’t exactly the first to know, poor kid.  She called and I talked to her on the phone a couple of days into it.  She immediately informed me that there were easier ways to get green jello, and what the heck was I doing?  Trying to up-end the family pecking order?  I love that.  Still the big sister.

Wendy and Chad made sure I ate properly for having been on the brink, bringing me healthy, low-fat, vegan snacks and refilling my ice water whenever they were there, but what Wendy brought Friday morning was certainly a big surprise.  Our favorite pre-vegan breakfast place discovery, Cyndi’s Pancake House, was going to close, and despite their decidedly NON-Vegan choices, we vowed to go one more time before they were gone from our neighborhood forever. (I will likely blog about my feelings about them another time).  Now, in the hospital, people come at 5AM to take your blood, and you can have breakfast pretty much from 7:30-8AM – ON, so when Wen asked me to wait for her, that she was bringing a surprise, it was HARD to wait, because she didn’t come until later.  (I survived on Chad’s snacks and ice water, I put away a LOT of ice water, because people kept bringing me a fresh pitcher, who can say no?)  When Wendy arrived, I was delighted to find she’d gone by Cyndi’s and gotten my favorite breakfast: two eggs over easy, crisp and chewy bacon, two pancakes, and hash browns ~ YUMMY!  The nurse in charge was in there interviewing me, and she said that since my arterial pathways were not a concern, she was going to look the other way on the whole deal.  Maple syrup and EVERYTHING!  That same day, I got to take a shower, and the lovely assistant made sure I had a clean gown, PLUS she gave me trousers and a robe ~ DOUBLE yay!  It was all in that hospital gown material, but I can’t tell you how happy I was to get PANTS!  The shower was more than welcome, I had showered Tuesday night for Wednesday, and not since, so I had almost 3 full days of yecchy, I felt AWFUL, especially after that bedpan incident, all the way back on Wednesday.  I’d been kind of whiny about it, good thing I was usually so good-dispositiony about everything else…

I felt better accepting visitors after I’d showered. (I was in a pretty weakened state after being in bed for a couple of days, so when the Baby Shampoo they gave me still had the wicked little foil/plastic seal on it, and all I had was my hospital wristband** on me, which was NOT, as it turns out, stiff enough to puncture it.  I used the generic body wash stuff in my hair, too, big whoop, I don’t have that much hair anyway, but you would have laughed to see me looking around like a suicidal maniac for something sharp in the bathroom.  My pinky was just too big, and I wasn’t strong enough to rip it off.  <sigh>)  I also enjoyed a few really swell naps.  Sleeping was okay and even encouraged here ~ yippee!!!  Wendy had to go and get some stuff done, but was coming back in the evening.  I got a surprise to give HER this time ~ they did another EKG later that morning, and found that I was solid enough to go home that evening ~ !!!  I telephoned Wendy and she was VERY excited, and I let Chad and Sara know, too, since they were both planning a visit, bless them, and we called Anne as we were walking out of the hospital, because she was slated to visit again that afternoon/evening too!  I had spent most of Friday and some of Thursday fighting a headache, and now it was really getting annoying.  The nurse in charge on Friday was telling me to press the point between my thumb and index finger, and I was so mad ~ this is a hospital, where the GOOD DRUGS are, and she wants me to WHAT?  I complied, though, cuz that’s what I do!  Finding out I was going home made it a world better, though.  I was out by around 6PM or so, and Wendy, (who had made a LOT of friends with the nursing staff by bringing her homemade refrigerator pickles and fresh picked raspberries for them the first night I was out of ICU) came up and said her goodbyes to all our friends we’d made on the floor.  I thanked everyone on my way to the elevator and was grateful, ever so, to be going home.

So what did I learn?  A little about myself, in that I have gotten really good at ignoring, blowing off, minimizing, and otherwise ignoring the usual and customary signals my body gives me all the time to tell me how things are going.  I learned that the whole “single stressful event” to this day evades me,  I have NO idea what triggered that attack.  I will never leave hospital tape on longer than is required and necessary, because the one arm lost skin when I took the tape off the daily tap spot for my labs, and that hurt almost worse than the spot they went spelunking from ~ YIKES ~ and the IV spot in my other arm took about a week to work/wash/wear/live the tape residue off of after I was home.  Great glue stick, Mary, what is that stuff MADE with?  I learned my family rallies around me when stuff happens, because stuff usually doesn’t happen to me, but when it does, it’s nice to know they are with me, everywhere and always.  And most importantly, I learned that the hospital, while no place for a sick person, CAN be full of people who care and is actually not that scary after all.  This particular hospital treated me with care, respect, and kindness, and didn’t treat anyone in my family ~ my partner, my kids, my odd assortment of friends ~ they didn’t make anyone feel alien, awkward, or unwelcome.  In fact, they made everyone feel just as they should feel, a part of my care and getting betterness.  That was key in my quick recovery ~ that, and we are made of sturdy stuff in my family.  What I learned from this experience is that I’m definitely not done.  I have living to do, people to love and a son who still needs me to be his Mom.  I have sights yet to see, things yet to write and think about and digest and write again.  I have Christmas trees yet to decorate, pies yet to bake, I have pictures to take, graduations, weddings, and yes, funerals to attend, music to play, bikes to ride, parades to be in, people to touch and be touched by, and I am NOT DONE HERE YET.  It didn’t SCARE me so much as it settled me.  I can hold on tight to things that bother me, like always, or I can smile and let them go.  Like a newly reformed addict, though, I am quick to try to point out other people’s hanging on to stuff, and THAT doesn’t go very well, understandably.  I’ve been through this experience, alone in my conclusions and resolve.  Everyone else is going to have to have their own ~ epiphany, paradigm shift, a-ha moment, whatever you want to call it ~ this is mine alone.  I’ve been struck by lightning, and survived it.  I met some amazing people along the way, discovered friendship and love I didn’t know how much I had, and I won’t forget that any time soon.  I guess that’s enough.  For now.

**the hospital wristband has taken on a ride-pass quality nowadays, where they scan everything to be charged to you ~ take an aspirin? scan the wristband.  Eat a meal? scan the band.  It was a little unnerving, but I got to cut it off and take it home, and since I was wakeful so much of my visit, I feel confident no one snuck in and scanned anything really good/illicit on my band while I was “out”. )

Don’t Get Around Much… Anymore?

I find myself with a lot to say and no real time in which to say it.  When did that happen?  Much of my carpal tunnel problems and almost immediate numbness when I go to write by hand on paper  (a way around not having access to a computer, at least in days past) are attributable to endless writing sessions.  Staying up late while my son was young, even though I’d known he was an early riser and that I was going to have to drown in coffee, both at night and in that early morning, to stay awake ~ I had to get my thoughts, my stories, my observations, (dare I call them witticisms?) on paper.  Nowadays I go MONTHS, literally, without the slightest word on my blog.  Instead I keep a list of topics that I write about in my head driving home from school nights, or riding the bus from work or some other such contemplative time.  Home has become a sleeping, eating, dressing/undressing, and homework place.  I relax through on-line pursuits, like Facebook, taking Harris Polls, and the occasional Solitaire game.  (I don’t play Free Cell anymore, I couldn’t do it without keeping track of the games I’d already played, and couldn’t stop playing a game until I’d beaten it. Got that out of my system, doesn’t hold any charm for me anymore)

But I have a lot to say.  I want to talk about how blackberry picking was the highlight of my summer, ab out old friends, new bicycles, lunches my mother packed for me as a child, my lifetime hospital experiences, how my partner and I discovered Bariactric Donuts this last year, how this Fall has been one of the most beautiful, colorful shows of natural wonder and glory I’ve seen in many a year; how pets and their owners begin to resemble and behave like one another, about what it was like working the graveyard shifts for the first time in my life (though balloons used to happen all night, we just didn’t get extra pay or any kind of breaks, but that in and of itself is a NOVEL, not a blog entry).  I want to talk about the noises the car makes, how I believe my parents only really loved my two oldest brothers, what the “Deaf Expo” was like, and what my theories are about my Mother and the way she treats me and my son.  I want to get up on my “soapbox” and go OFF about elderly drivers / “scooters”, the smells and racket-noise on a job site, and the abysmal failure of the American election system.

Question is, what do I start with?  Do I go with what’s immediate, the stolen elections, the fund-raising that could SO be better spent on real causes like medical research, homeless help, health care for the poor, and finding alternative fuels and actually putting them into action?  And then work backwards toward summer?  Or do I start with blackberry picking, smiling, the sun warm on my shoulders, the bees buzzing around us, my wrist numb from holding the bucket for such a time (more evidence of repetitive strain injuries), and then work my way forward to present day?

What about random stuff from years ago?  My highly unusual ballooning experiences, working in an industry that didn’t exist before us, doing it first and from the tender (cocky, selfish, immature) age of 12 – on.  I have a wealth of stuff there.  What about stories from Chad’s growing up?  I’m the vessel of those stories, they will die with me if I don’t write them down (again, in some cases ~ many were lost in the fire) someplace!  What about funny stories about my childhood growing up largely alone and often very lonely?  Or perhaps I can launch into the sad, uncomfortable stories that shaped my youth and ultimately who I am today, the demons I battled, feeling sure the experiences I’d had were not anyone else’s, and made me purely unlovable, undesirable, and surely would be the deal-breaker should they surface at ANY time during the relationship, friendship, etc, with ANYONE.  What about that?

Instead, I pose my quandry, in over 600 words, and wonder how it is that anyone gets anyone else to read their blog and comment on it.  Does one have to use words like President-Elect Obama?  Saudi Arabia?  New Orleans?  I don’t know why that’s even necessary or desirable, except for my constant and sad need for approval by and acceptance from others, even strangers.  What’s THAT about?

I will say I miss my father, I love my son, I’m terribly sad that my son doesn’t get the love and attention from a father-figure, I miss my Aunt Gloria and my Grandma Peters (Americanized version).  I wonder if I’m ever going to FEEL like an electrician, and not someone wearing a costume, a fake, an imposter to be discovered and shamed and shunned.  I wonder if I will ever get to see Kory again, and how I will ever be as wonderful to my life partner as she has been to and for me.  I miss my house in Minnesota, I miss Loring Park, the bookstore, the cafe, and especially the mighty Mississippi River.  I don’t miss the danger, the dearth of happiness in my job then, the back-biting and secretive old boys club that was Graybar Minneapolis (and probably still is,) though a couple of people were trying to help me, give me a chance, encourage me, and break the bad cycle.  I still miss the grocery stores and the parks, if that isn’t too dumb.  Downtown Minneapolis, Foshay Tower and the “Birthday Cake Building.”

So many things were so long ago, it’s hard to remember.  It’s why I think I should start recounting things that happened today, and work backwards, because I do not know how much I will retain about ANYTHING this far from it.  So far it makes for a really disjointed, and probably to the reader, very unsatisfying, but to me it’s the kind of stream-of-consciousness that really helps me.  Some things are so very clear, from years ago, that it seems as though they just happened.  Pieces of things come back to me, and I have to write down some stuff because it’s really not something I can squeeze into conversation anywhere.  Interesting, just not really relevant or pertinent to the shopping list, to Grounding and Bonding, to gas economy, human rights, the tallest building in town, or coffee grounds.

I chose the title because I never got out, never got “around” even when youth was on my side.  I stayed home nights, in front of TV, yes, I drank alone, I didn’t like talking to people on the phone on my own time when I started working at Candela in the mid 80s because it was so constant in my work day.  Later my phone exposure was less, but I really enjoyed writing letters.  My letter writing skills were honed writing to my Aunt Gloria and Grandma in New York as a kid.  I wrote to Julianna Williams as she traveled all over the country.  I used letters to further my career, to talk with civil servants about snow removal responsibilities, to get stuff done, and to convey love, and obsession, which filled my closeted little life for most of my youth (my youth, I estimate, ended at about 30)  Not that I’m old, I’m just in-between.  Once you’ve had a baby, worked for about 17 years, own a house and drive a minivan, the youth just isn’t there, not in spirit, not for me anyway.  It’s not to say I never sowed any wild oats, either, because I sowed a few.  I have friends still who will attest to it.  And other things no one will ever know about, they will die with me, and that’s just fine.

I don’t get around much, don’t get to the Saturday dance, don’t even get to the movies out more than a couple of times a year.  My vacation this year was broken up in the middle by the death of my Dad, and though the people we were visiting were awesome, I can’t say it didn’t take some of the shiny off of it for me.  I was having such a good time, relaxing for the first time in such a while, and our hostess was amazing.  I just felt at sea.  I still do.  My Dad was my only connection to California, to what was going on, what the family was up to, doing, achieving, marrying, divorcing, etc.  It’s like when you go for weeks without any messages on your answering machine, you know?   It’s kinda sad, kinda depressing, and kind of telling.

Perhaps I just really never wanted to get around much.  When I went to the Saturday dance, my social ineptitude glared so badly that I drank myself sick.  I don’t remember a fun time that was a sober time, except for a couple of times going places with my freshly-sober alcoholic brother, but those times didn’t feel so much fun as they felt like a sort of obligation.  Maybe because what I really wanted was a girl, and where we went, there were only boys for me.  The relationship between my brother Whit and I could fill several volumes of text, so I best only strum that string for a moment, lest I am writing all night.

So I’m happier at home, I have the grrrl I was secretly hoping for, I have the kitties I always wanted as a kid, I get to eat what I want, watch on TV what I want, listen to Swing Time music Saturday nights, read what I want, wear, for the most part, except at work, what I want, and come and go as I please.  Perhaps the happy up-beat tempo of the song excerpted in the title chosen is more telling than I realized.  On the other hand, maybe a cigar is just a cigar.

Peace to you all, unless you are gay, you are not allowed to have peace, as you are less human than any other people in America.  Yes, I’m bitter and pissed off that I still belong to one of the last accepted, allowed minorities to legally and socially be discriminated against in this country.  I know, trying to conclude this gracefully, and yet launching into another heavy topic on which I have a LOT to say.  Still, think about that while I await another opportunity to blog, which, at this rate, may either be over the holidays, or sometime in  February.  In the mean time, I will be at home, fireside, with a kitty in my lap, a song in my ears, and likely a book or magazine in my lap, my partner by my side, my son probably out getting around, because he’s much more social than I EVER was.  And that, my dear readers, is how it should be, in MY life.

What’s Men Got To Do With It?

Lately I’ve been having terrible difficulty reconciling my past lives (all in this body, this time, just vastly different ACTS if you will of the same play) and especially the interest in men.  I have a really distorted, what I think is a messed up feeling about men in my life and on the planet in general.  I don’t want to blame my mother or my father, for that matter, but I do want to jerk myself to stand up right about it before it seeps over any more into how I raise my SON.  

See, all along he’s been a baby, a toddler, a boy.  He’s becoming a man, now, and I don’t have sage words for him about that.  I don’t know how to teach him to shave, I don’t know who will teach him to drive, but not me (!!!) and the best I can give him in order for him to grow up as a good man is the womyn’s perspective.  He has a Big Brother, in order to give him the actual testostorone-swagger version of what it is to be a man, and I have to say, his Big Brother is one of the best male human beings I’ve EVER met, in a straight, gay, transgendered or otherwise male.  That’s a very positive influence in his life.  In mine, too, as it turns out.  

It’s just that the more I get to know about the male “animal,” the more I dislike them.  I am turning into the one thing I never thought I could be, having been so broad, diplomatic, understanding of all perspectives, empathetic and such ~ me, a MAN-HATER?  Yet I don’t think I outwardly portray that to everyone.  I think I disguise my disgust for their base, simple, often disgusting way of walking through their life, focusing on what can get them laid next or what they’re going to read the next time they take a shit.  These many men I’ve known in my life have not made a good example for the few that I’ve liked.  And I’ve begun to wonder if EVERYTHING these beasts do is not some kind of show for the other half of civilization, whether, if laws were abandoned, every one of them would revert to some raping, eating with their hands, shitting where they sleep, depraved, uneducated lunk.

That is not to say that there aren’t some men ~ a fraction of a percentage, I think ~ who would behave well even when no one is watching, and similarly that there aren’t womyn out there who don’t wash their hands after they use the bathroom, who think “American Pie” and the “Police Academy” movies were the pinnacle of human achievement, who scratch their privates and maybe even spit for no apparent reason.  Is it bias or life experience and knowlege that makes me think the fraction of the percentage of those “womyn” would be carried out SEVERAL more decimal points?

Manhater is one of the terms/people I grew up with, and until about ten years ago, associated with being a lesbian.  I assumed one naturally went with another.  Then life turned again and showed me that my assumptions and biases, once again, were unfounded and immature, just like every other assumption I’d carried from my childhood: guys with beards are hippies, fat people are lazy slobs, black people can dance, womyn are naturally predisposed to housework and child-rearing, poor people just don’t want to get a job, and on and on and on.  Well, shocker, I’ve decided that to a certain extent, I CAN blame my parents for these.  Where else would an 8-year-old get this kind of information?  Where but parents do all of our societal norms come from?   So here’s a “Father’s Day” card and a belated “Mother’s Day” card to myself, I’m gonna let myself off the hook for thinking the way that I do nowadays.  I’ve reversed and revised all of the above assumptions, and I’ve never stopped questioning the assumptions that pop into my head from then on.  I’ve ditched most of my hatreds, my unfounded accusations and assumptions about just about everything, and surprisingly, haven’t come up with any new ones of my own.

Here’s to all our Moms and Dads, who were living based on the ass-umptions, unquestioningly, that their parents and grandparents and other older / influential family members passed on to them, consciously or unconsciously.  They did the best they could, and can’t be penalized for what they didn’t know or were incapable of embracing/changing.  Thing is, I can think, and rethink, all of my stereotypes, all assumptions, and I can change.  That change will be apparent to my son, and hopefully he’ll go out into the world and spread the word that people can be flexible.  People can change.  No two people are alike.  I “do” gay differently than any other gay person, and I’m still his mother and I still love him.  Most of all, even if I find every single male walking the earth reprehensible and repulsive, I am constantly examining that, revising it, and changing my own mind.  That openness to change, that indecisiveness, if you will, is the one thing I pray, I hope, I dream he’ll carry with him out into the world, and spread it like jam.  It’s not weak to change ones opinion, it is strong.  Find a position, and go with it until it no longer suits you.  Then adapt it, tweak it, remodel and redecorate it until it does, and go on again.  THAT’S life.

Starting with P

I’ve decided this, my very first blog, will be about things that start with, or can be described with, a word with the letter P.  For instance, first the perils of going to do “one’s business” in a Port O Let, “Honey Bucket,” etc. that has two steel hooks on the top strung with a cable accross it.  The cable is capable of suspending said porta-potty from a forklift to deliver and remove said units.  There are forklifts being employed all around me, and my head is flooded with images from TV and the internet of people being “funny” by knocking over, or, ~worse, I think ~ lifting the can in the air so the occupant is stuck and just leaving it there.  JUST THE THOUGHT, the image, the supposition of all of those contents SLOSHING THE SIDES and, so very surely, out the hole-opening makes me dizzy to the point of almost paralysis.  So I guess that could fall under Paranoia as well.   Hm.  Moving on.

Same Port-a-Potty topic, different area of “interest”: isn’t it disgusting enough to have to walk into an already cramped and tiny space, avoiding getting your clothes and/or tools in the urinal replete with “cakes,” and keeping one’s trousers(pants) up enough not to drag in the “mud” and sundry other trackables, most assuredly including pee that has missed either the urinal, the toilet part, or both?  Boys that use these things ( I immedeately leap to the boys sheerly from the absolute ratio of 1 in 100 of womyn to boys on these sites, it is very simply math and not predjudice, though the latter can also be covered on this blog.  Later.) invariably leave reminders that they have been there: they write in pen over the advertisements of the seat liners, making the waxed liners’ taglines into suggestive, I think repulsive propositions; they leave newspapers there belying the fact that they spent an inordinate amount of time POOPING there instead of working, and no wonder this job is taking so fucking long; (shitting doesn’t start with a “P“, therefore…) they carve words into the walls and sometimes they leave wads of toilet paper, chewed gum, and especially cigarette butts [Note: often the air is poluted BEYOND just the foul stench of their human remains, I mean, wtf are these boys EATING?, plus the chemicals used to keep breaking down that stuff and the air less putrescent ~ poluted additionally to the point of almost unbreathe-able by SMOKING.  I fucking hate that.] ~ strewn all over the floor and seat area.  Navigate your butt amongst ALL of that, finally to sit on a flimsy plastic seat,  and suddenly you’re faced with what can only be described as an infantile drawing of some dolt’s idea of the female anatomy, occasionally coupled and/or accompanied by an even  more caveman-oriented version of a penis with balls, usually spurting something with a dotted line to pool somewhere gravitationally lower than where it starts.  Why?  Now I understand why LITTLE boys persist in this, but is it physically impossible to grow up?  To progress?  Hell, at the very least, to improve upon their artistic / anatomical skills?  Yes, the answer is yes, it is impossible.  Words like bitches, gay, and cocksucker must be somewhere inside as well.  [Sidebar: whole 'nother blog on how "gay" and its derrivatives is/are still the worst thing(s) you can call someone.]  Perhaps the “P” portion of this is “port-o-let prerequisites” ~ ???

Pants hanging down below one’s butt.  Pet peeve of mine.  They’re wearing a belt, so clearly the boy is aware of the concept, just addled and sad when it comes to its actual USE.  Pants don’t need to be Sergio Valente in the 70s – 80s – tight, just not looking as though there’s a load of crap hanging out behind them.  Please, boys, and I emphasize boys, because Real Men don’t employ this lazy, unimaginative habit, PLEASE pull up your pants.  I am sure many will think it’s because I work in one of the trades, and the boys around me are, by definition and set-up, occupationally predisposed to have pants hanging below the equator.  It has, some times, on the job, to do with a volume of tools one wears around one’s waist, attached TO the belt.  Others just have a body shape not conducive to the mainstream manufacture of clothes, i.e., they’re FAT.  Bringing us to the ”P” in this portion, Potbelly.

What baffles me is not the potbellied men who wear suspenders and yet not-long-enough of a shirt to protect us all from views of their considerable, often dirty, and occasionally (shudder), extremely hairy butt cracks.  What baffles ME is the way grrrrls with a soft middle, some belly, some hip ~ insist on wearing low-rise jeans and letting the belly flop or hang over the top, or worse, drive the low-rise jeans even farther down!  What a waste of fashion sensibility and good money.  I love womynly forms, I adore every aspect of the femyle form, but it doesn’t have to be adorned with a very restrictive, exclusionary, limiting garment like the low-rise jeans.  Embrace your curves, get some Levi’s comfort fit and let it all hang IN!

That’s all I have for now, I’ve started with P, I can go anywhere in the alphabet I feel like now, and it doesn’t even have to be the regular 26 characters, as my wyfe is learning Russian this summer, so I feel certain that my immersion in her learning process will strengthen my vocabulary as well.  ”Lightning Strikes” is a play on several word sets, as lightning first and foremost is an electrical atmospheric discharge and generally only strikes once in one place.  Electricity is my bag, and lightning, while frightening, also deeply excites and energizes me.  Lightning is also a form of easing up, like decreasing the dark or heavy, lightning up the tension in a room, lighting someone’s burden, etc, and correlating THAT lightning, which I know is really “lightening” but seriously, bite me ~ correlate that with the strikes of keys on a typewriter on paper.  Lightening strikes, if you will.  I also feel that lightning struck me with the greatest relationship I could ever hope for in my Partner (still on P) Wendy.  Lightning does strike, and in this case, it will be only once, and I don’t need it to strike me again, for this life, I’m good.

Peace out, word to your mother, hope you have enjoyed.  Today’s blog was sponsored by LIGHTNING and by the letter “P.”