Friends and Time

I have a friend coming to town I haven't seen in over thirty years. She was, along with Z (a mere girl, like me) my first grown-up female friend. I met her in the Huddle Room at the University of Utah. She has been a Professor/Tutor at St Johns University, Santa Fe campus, and is now retired. She's coming to town for a high school reunion and I get to spend Friday afternoon with her. So I'll be cleaning house and cooking up a storm.

I have raided the large garden next door; I gathered loads of fresh organic eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, parsley, and basil. The bag of purloined vegetables had to weight at least fifteen pounds. Yesterday, after my doctor appointment (I am still clotted just right) I stopped at a fruit stand and bought a Utah watermelon, two cantaloupes and five peaches. I have enough food for a small army, but I just want to feed these two very important women a lovely lunch. I'll fix a very fresh eggplant parmigiana, a fresh chilled melon plate, and fresh peach cobbler for dessert. My bar is well stocked and there is beer in the fridge. I have soft drinks and two varieties of iced tea. I could fix a great iced coffee. And last but not least, I have a HUGE bouquet of late summer flowers. I think I've got all the bases covered.

It cooled off for a few days last week, but it's very hot again now. Our days are in the 90s; our nights in the high 60s. It's too hot to do a lot of cooking in the middle of the day, so I'll probably get up very early Friday morning to cook the peach cobbler. I will make the tomato sauce this evening. Then while the cobbler is in the over Friday morning, I'll cook the eggplant and assemble the eggplant parmigiana. Once the cobbler comes out of the oven, I'll slip the eggplant dish in the oven for about a half hour--long enough to melt and lightly brown the cheeses. Then a quick shower for me, and I'll be ready. Even if neither of them feels like eating, it won't be wasted effort. My friend Tracy and I shared the last fresh eggplant parmigiana I made. She's ready for another such treat, and her husband, who didn't even get a taste of it last time, is planning on leftovers this time.

I am frantic to get my house clean, but things just keep popping up that can't be ignored. Am I making excuses? Probably. I used to go to group therapy where one of the women in the group always talked about getting up and vacuuming and mopping all the rooms in her house, cleaning all the bathrooms and doing laundry EVERY DAY! I thought she was especially crazy.

I'm a once a week sort of cleaning lady. I change the bed, clean the bathroom, vacuum and dust and call it good. Then another day I do laundry and think I've done a good days work. I try to keep things neat, but I hate vacuuming and mopping floors. I just don't ever plan on eating off my floor. I would like to get all the windows clean, but that's optionaly given time constraints.

For some odd reason I seem to be very popular the last little while. Phillip is coming back for another pit stop on his way back to San Francisco, and Larry, my boyfriend when I was twelve, is also coming to town for the reunion. It's a hive of activity here, and drastically cutting into my blog reading time. I've become an addicted tweeter too. I need a little cooling off time there.

Z is having a very rough time of it right now. She has radiation burns on her chest and back. She's allergic to sulfa drugs and when they treated her burns they didn't check her chart and put sulfa/antibiotics in a salve on the burns. She had a very bad reaction: high fever, chills and shaking, and extreme pain. All of this makes her dislike of western medicine more intense. She hates them all. It was a nurse who dressed her burns with the sulfa drug and didn't check her chart for allergies. Every interaction with a medical professional turns into another trauma. She is going to take a radiation break this week. She still has two weeks to go on radiation, but just can't take it anymore. I'm not sure she's going to feel well enough to get together. I'll just have to clean house with my fingers crossed.

The Time of Illness

I had two days off. No schedule for radiation, but
The tests for clotting factor went on as usual
Without me. I rested like a long distance runner
My drug fueled system humming along as if I ran
On chemicals alone. Did you know that Warfarin is
Rat poison? This is proof to Z that all medicine is poison
To me it means that someone found a really good use for
Rat poison. I take twice as much Warfarin as Z to keep me
From blowing a gasket, to keep my heart humming along
Like a clock that runs a bit too fast, but steady as she goes.
The bruises that cover my arms and legs don't bother me at all.

Z hemorrhaged again last night but refused to go to the hospital.
She determines that she just needs to cut back on the Warfarin
I ask her why and she says, "What can they do? All they can do is
Give me a transfusion." I wonder why that is such a bad idea. I want
Oxygen. I want oxygen rich blood. I think they might give her Oxygen
But keep my mouth shut. I took her fresh peach cobbler hot from the oven
Vanilla ice cream. She eats it as if she were a starving child and I choke back
The truth that the peaches were purchased at the grocery store and were only
99 cents a pound. I make up a perfectly plausible story about my neighbors friend
Drew who grows peaches in Southern Utah for peach brandy. He always has too many
Brings a bushel basket for the neighbor who passes plenty to me for fresh peach cobbler
Thankfully she doesn't ask about the ice cream. It is Bryer's All Natural, Natural vanilla
She eats it like a starving child. I took certified organic red potato soup, organic milk,
Watermelon cut into bite sized pieces and chilled. I know from having spent a lot of time
With Z that she does not get enough fluids to stay well hydrated. I liked the idea that when
She was in the hospital they pumped fluids into her veins. She says it made her swell. Well,
Yes, when the tissue is hydrated it plumps with pulsing life.

I'm a woman who takes a handful of pills every morning with her first mug of latte.
I don't do a lot of research on the drugs I take or study inserts for dire
Side effects.
Life has some nasty side effects. Life can kill you.
Don't we start dying from the moment we're born?
I took so many risks, still do, daring death to take me
Like a lover, who sees an opportunity when I sleep
I should be so lucky

So, the schedule is set for this week. Radiation every day
Clotting factor and food are on Z's agenda and mine
If all her radiation treatments are in the afternoon
I can take her, park the car and wait with a book
Patiently. I hope I live up to her expectations
I hope I don't disappoint her. Today it was peach
Cobbler and vanilla ice cream, tomorrow begins
The hard part, now that the tumor is bleeding
She's no longer just getting rid of the blood clots
In her lungs. Now the tumor is bleeding. Isn't that
A bad thing? I try not to show my extreme distress
I come home and take a handful of pills with my
Evening cup of Earl Grey Tea and smoke half a dozen
cigarettes. I resolve to keep on doing what I'm doing
As if it will protect me from her loss. What are the odds?

I Took Your Advise

I went outside, pulled weeds with my naked hands, now my back aches and my hands are like sandpaper. Are you happy now? I came in for ice tea and in bending down to find the slice of lemon left in the veggie bin I got a good whiff of the inner depths of my fridge. It was not pleasant. I pasted up a sign on the front that labeled my fridge "Denmark" and opened the freezer to get some ice. It was a jumble of haphazardly thrown in portions of everything freezable. Little single servings of one bone-in pork chop, one skin-on ribs-in chicken breast. Two unopened bags of peas, frozen pineapple, blueberries, raspberries, vodka, old ice cream that got tossed right away since who wants ice cream with an inch of frost? So I moved from the mess in the garden, that still doesn't look any different, to the refrigerator which I can't remember cleaning in the past year.

One of the neurosis I caught from my mother was the always packed fridge, as if she were cooking for a family of four even when she lived alone. Crammed with every condiment known to man, exotic oils, bitters, capers, gibson onions, three kinds of pickles, four varieties of jelly and jam, beer, vermouth, soft drinks, milk, mayonnaise (which I consider a food group) mixed greens, green pepper, sliced portobello mushrooms, wilting celery, green onions, one limp jalepeno pepper, a small wad of liquifying cilantro, and so on. The cupboards are similarly stocked. I could feed unexpected guests though there will never be unexpected guests. Anyone unexpected will never get through the gate without having the dogs let out to greet them. No, there will be no unexpected guests.

Well now the fridge is clean, I discovered a collection of small containers of some kind of left-over way at the back of the second or third shelf, and they were completely unrecognizable, so covered in furry mold were they. Out damn spot! Yes, I can hear you making that universal sound of disgust. I will pretend I didn't hear that, but I did.

The freezer is now clean too. I feel ever so well provisioned now that everything that's in there is actually edible and not reeking either.

But I cleaned the whole thing without using gloves. I used water with a little soap and enough bleach to chap my hands further. Now there are little cracks at the end of a couple of fingers. And my back aches. I did fix myself the most delicious dinner. Pure comfort food. Milk soaked breast of chicken, breaded with flour and cornmeal, seasonings, fried in peanut oil and butter, mashed potatoes, chicken gravy, and peas with dill and butter. Uummm. It was great.

I'll take one of my 800mg ibuprofen, a 5mg diazipam, and stretch out for an evening of channel surfing and chain smoking.

I did not visit the blogs today. If I could drag my computer into my bed, I'd be reading and commenting up a storm. But the tips of two of my typing fingers have little red fissures and my computer is not a lap top. It hurts to type. Can you hear the whine in my voice? The fingers will get the hydrogen peroxide and bag balm treatment. A good night's sleep and I'll be right as rain tomorrow. Then I'm going to talk a bit about therapy. I've been mulling it over.

Where The Hell Did This Fat Come From?

I eat two meals a day and I'm not a snacker unless it's after midnight and I can't get the chocolate out of my mind. But even then I only let myself have two squares of the Special Dark, or the Breyer's all natural chocolate ice cream. I like an ice cream cone once in awhile, but not every night. I eat brunch which usually consists of cantaloupe and toast or whole grain unsweetened Cheerios and frozen blue berries with 2% organic milk. I might have a banana sometime in the afternoon, or I might have nothing. And then a modest meal around eight or nine. I do drink a lot of very milky espresso with a tablespoon of sugar. Two big mugs full. I drink very good tea that I order from Special Teas and I either drink it sweet and iced or milky and hot. I'm trying to force myself to drink more water, but I watched Frontline last night and now I'm afraid of tap water and any water that's in plastic is full of PCBs. Where was the plastic made and how toxic is it? And how much more money can I spend on water for Christ's sake? So I take it straight from the tap. I guess I could make it more palatable if I squeezed some lemon in it, but I can't afford lemons. I'm complaining about water to avoid something. I'm avoiding the fat. Can you tell? Still, you should be very nervous about your water supply.

This long and harsh Winter and long slow wet Spring have kept me inside. I have turned into the Venus of Willendorf over night, or so it seems to me. There have been weeks I haven't bothered to look in a mirror because it's just too painful. So my eyes slide past without ever focusing on the blur that is my rather large moving form. I was outside yesterday cleaning the gazebo and had my camera with me. Walking to the tool shed I looked down to take the two steps down from the porch to the deck and saw my Wellingtons, and then my shadow. I turned and twisted trying to get the light just right to slim the figure in shadow and could never quite find the woman I once knew.