Dirty Fucking Hippies Were Right

Found on twitter. I'm not kidding. Twitter is rich with insurrection.

Wee Wee Up

I'm Having An Upside Down Day

This morning while talking on the phone to Z, half asleep at 11:30, I took my pills. I always wake up, get coffee, pee, take the dogs outside and then open my weekly pill minder, take the day of the week container out and slam that handful of pills back with a swig of coffee. There are two doses: the one for morning contains the mood stabilizer Neuronton, the blood pressure drug Lisinopril, the blood thinner Warfarin, Estradiol, the drugs that keep my heart in normal rhythm, Diltiazem and Flecainide, and one tiny aspirin; and then there are the night time drugs that include a dose of Lisinopril, a Flecainide, two of the Neurontin, a whopping 80mgs of Simvastatin, and my antidepressant Doxepin. For the first time ever I opened the pill minder upside down and took my night time dose by accident. I didn't realize it until I got off the phone. Then I looked at the pill minder in my hand and realized my mistake. I had to take the morning drugs that I don't take at night, like the Warfarin, and the Diltiazem. It's a fuck-up, but not disastrous. The worst that will happen is a minor doziness today since my antidepressant is slightly sedating.

I called my therapist Fred, the minute I realized what I'd done. I left him a message. He'll check with my psychiatrist to confirm my decision skip my usual evening dose since I took it this morningish. I'm going to try to avoid double dosing if possible. The worst that will happen if I take another Doxepin will be a mild hypomania. And like most normal people I kind of like a little hypomania. It sure won't kill me and I just might finally get my house clean. I was going to grocery shop today, but now I don't think driving is wise, so I'm going to stay close to my bed as I may be flopping down and sleeping as if this day were night.

The Real Death Panels

Stolen from Sherry at After the Bridge

Breaking News: Obama is Bipolar

Is It a Novel or a Memoir? This Is the Question

The book has been written, the second book started, but the query is killing me. I started the first book as a memoir then changed my mind and called it a novel. 2,000 people have read it and they think it's a memoir. These 2,000 people don't know me, but they say it makes them cry and reads too true to be a novel. That says something sad about the novel as a form.

Many of the readers were men, and even the men said, "This is my family you're writing about." That seems to be the most common comment. Readers can relate to my characters. So now what? Can I market a memoir as a novel or should I look for an agent who specializes in memoir? I can't really write my query until this question is settled. Can I call it Autobiographical Fiction?

I was married to a writer who called his writing Autobiographical Realism. It got him a PhD and a life of slavery as a university professor. That was not the life I wanted. I just wanted to write. Now that I've been writing for 20 years I want to publish. Any suggestions?

First Healthcare, Next Dental Care

As you age, not matter how good your teeth were, they will start to fail. Most of us eat too much sugar and since dental care is expensive and not covered on all employer plans, a lot of you will be having significant dental problems in your thirties. It just gets worse over the ensuing years.

Dental care is way too expensive. I know. I've poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into my mouth. And now even the teeth that have had root canal therapy and porcelain crowns abscessing in the bone. Currently the last three bottom molars on the right lower side are abscessed and the whole right jaw and lymph node on that side are swollen and tender to the touch. I grind my teeth in my sleep, but every mouthguard I had made ($100+ a pop) needed to be replaced with every bit of subsequent dental work.

I am trying to hang onto these bottom molars since they are my only remaining chewing surface. It is your bottom molars that really take a beating in chewing. When a tooth abscesses under the tooth in the bone, the tooth rises slightly making any contact that much more painful. This is probably the tenth time I've gone through this trauma with these teeth. I should have had them pulled a couple of years ago, but a round or two of antibiotics gives me another few months. And since my last experience of having teeth pulled and replaced with a thing like a retainer with teeth has been a complete disaster, I am loathe to lose these teeth. I like chewing. I hate pain. And this time it's really painful. It used to be that if you lost your molars, you got a partial plate and that was that. No more cavities. But like watch makers, it's a dying art.

Now dentists are all about the implants. An implant starts at $2,500. That's just for the tooth. These are the variables. The implanting itself is a separate charge from the implant. You may need bone grafts. You may get infection, and you may have problems of alignment. I can't afford any of this and I'm not sure if I could afford it I'd risk bone grafts. My jaw is rather delicate.

What I need is a dentist who is a partial plate artist. I just don't know how to find such a dentist. In the meantime, I'm on antibiotics again and in pain again. Thank god for Compazine and Hydrocodon. I'm sedated, the pain is still there, but I don't mind quite so much and I'm sure to start itching soon. And day after tomorrow I'll be able to chew again for a month or so.

Dental care is the next big need for the elderly, the poor, and children. Dental infection can kill you. And if you can't eat, you won't survive.

To All My Writer Friends

This is one more reason to tweet. I'm following Writer's Digest on twitter and woke up this morning (10 AM is still morning) to this email notice. Get your stories out and start editing. I am not a genre writer but I think I have at least one story that can be considered horror or suspense. There is an entry fee of $15. but even I can afford $15.

Barney Takes On Bat Shit Lady

Just another light hearted town hall meeting.



Another tidbit from Twitter.

Tweeting My Life Away

I spent all day yesterday on twitter tweeting. I am learning the fine art of the retweet. I find an interesting tweeter and follow them, then they follow me. It's just all so smart and fast moving and takes a certain wit so say something smart in 140 characters. You know me as a rather long winded whiner, but I can pitch snark with the big boys on twitter. There are certain bloggers who are natural tweeters. Tengrain is one, ConecticutMan is another.

For every cause there are a group of tweeters who make it their own, who do the research, follow the news for up-to-the-second updates, and for every profession there are tweet networks. I think it was just a few months ago I started tweeting and now I have almost 400 followers. I wake up every morning to 10 invites to follow other tweeters. Throughout my day at twitter I find smart and interesting tweets from people I follow home to follow, then next morning there they are, following me. I think this is what they call "going viral." I could be wrong; I often am.

For every interest there is a twitter network. I'm following reporters, and pundits. For instance I follow Rachel Maddow, David Shuster, Don Lemon, Anna Marie Cox, Contessa Brewer, Jake Tapper, and many many more. I follow the NY Times, The Nation, NPR, MSNBC, CNN, The LA Times, The Washington Post and more. I follow too many news sources to remember them all first thing in the mid-day upon just waking. Twitter's an interesting place. I could follow Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, and every other right wing nut job if I choose, but I let others follow the crackpots and relish their skirmishes with them. It's a fast, wild ride on twitter.

I tend to be a bit long winded when I write. That's one of the reasons writing a one or two page query letter is such agony. So much to say, so little space to say it. Twitter forces me to condense my writing. I think it's a good discipline for me.

And after I have an experience like getting together with an important person from my youth to find myself shaken to my core, twitter is the kind of meditation that keeps me focused for a day on something else and breaks the cycle of painful looking back and wondering why.

There are twitter rooms for those with very specialized interests. I have found agents, publishers and other writers. I even follow The Writers Digest. The networking aspect is one of the reasons for tweeting. Find an agent who handles the type of fiction or non-fiction you write and then follow them to their blog site where you will be able to read about all the agents in their agency and what each is looking for. I've found tips on how to write a query letter and who accepts chapters with a query letter. I can't imagine another social networking site that would let me move so quickly and freely through these many diverse worlds.

Some of you have invited me to join FaceBook. I tried it once and then realized quickly that I didn't want any of the people I knew in High School or College to find me. I've been hiding from them for fifty years. And social networking takes time. So choose the place you want to spend your time and jump in with both feet. Hope to see you on the twitter.

Talk To Me

I've been taken back to my youth by a visit from the woman who was most influential in my young life. She was a rebellious and unconventional young woman who grew to be a classicist, an academic, an intellectual, and ever more conservative in her lifestyle. I want her to talk to me for as long as it takes to make me understand this journey toward the right when traveled so far from her radical youth. I was not as radical as she in my youth but have grown ever more so in my old age. We still have the same affinity for each other but we have moved past each other and are on such different journeys now. I can't bear the thought that the thirty years since we last saw each other is a marker for how far we've grown from each other. She, as much as my terrible family, influenced the journey I took toward this now, this here, this fascination with words and their power. We won't have another thirty years. We are old women striding toward death and time is of the essence. What sent us on these philosophical trajectories? Why are we here now at this time in our lives and in the vast scheme of things and places, so near and yet... Thirty years is a lifetime and for us like a blink of the eye.

The Tarot Cards

Back then when we were young and after I'd had a lover or two
I wasn't looking for a man at all but if I were I'd want one
Who didn't want to fuck me
Like looking for an honest man in college or a bar or a truck stop

But you found the glance with slit eye and the slow slide down
Found your body of great richness and utility anywhere like
The wall of the bar just outside the back door, the bushes plumped
Like pillows for your hips. Strange men, old friends, ex lovers,
All comers. You fascinated me so unlike were we

I was the girl they all wanted to fuck
You were the woman who fucked them all
Married with children, it didn't change a thing
You were the one expelled from the campus coffee shop
Obscene language, solicitation and other outrages and I
Worshipped you. Let me live with you.
I'll watch the children, I'll wash the dishes, I'll be the nanny
I'll be the bait and then we'll switch

You read the Tarot Cards and you were the Queen of Cups.
You drew the The Tower reversed, bodies flying through the air
You insisted I was only a Page. I'd had no children. I would always
Be a page, a child, childless, no matter what my age. A Page
I drew the Devil upright and the Hierophant reversed

For a costume party you would go as Medusa, and knew
Enough to call me Persephone. I was that girl, the mere Page
Carried to the underworld by Hades, another name for Daddy
(I told no one your real identity, Daddy, King of the Underworld)
And yet the Queen of Cups knew the ghost of you in the circles
Under my troubled eyes too damn pretty to really be seen.
Ice girl Holding The Devil's hand wearing a well pressed black dress
The Page of Swords in love with the Queen of Cups
I still am.

Happy Birthday Tom

It's First Love/Last Love's birthday today. He turns 65 today, finally old enough to get Social Security and Medicare. Woot! Hurrah! Happy Days Are Here Again!

Where ever you are, Happy Birthday!

The Amazing Things I Get In Email. Thanks JackieSue

Pretty amazing works of art! (How do you step back and make those final touches?) Stunning crop art has sprung up across rice fields in Japan . But this is no alien creation . The designs have been cleverly planted. Farmers creating the huge displays use no ink or dye. Instead, different colours of rice plants have been precisely and strategically arranged and grown in the paddy fields. As summer progresses and the plants sh oot up, the detailed artwork begins to emerge. A Sengoku warrior on horseback has been created from hundreds of thousands of rice plants, the colours created by using different varieties, in Inakadate in Japan . The largest and finest work is grown in the Aomori village of Inakadate , 600 miles north of Toyko, where the tradition began in 1993. The village has now earned a reputation for its agricultural artistry and this year the enormous pictures of Napoleon and a Sengoku-period warrior, both on horseback, are visible in a pair of fields adjacent to the town hall. More than 150,000 vistors come to Inakadate, where just 8,700 people live, every summer to see the extraordinary murals. Each year hundreds of volunteers and villagers plant four different varieties of rice in late May across huge swathes of paddy fields. Napolean on horseback can be seen from the skies, created by precision planting and months of planning between villagers and farmers in Inkadate Fictional warrior Naoe Kanetsugu and his wife Osen appear in fields in the town of Yonezawa , Japan . And over the past few years, other villages have joined in with the plant designs. Another famous rice paddy art venue is in the town of Yonezawa in the Yamagata prefecture. This year ' s design shows the fictional 16th-century samurai warrior Naoe Kanetsugu and his wife, Osen, whose lives feature in television series Tenchijin. Various artwork has popped up in other rice-farming areas of Japan this year, including designs of deer dancers. Smaller works of crop art can be seen in other rice-farming areas of Japan such as this image of Doraemon and deer dancers . The farmers create the murals by planting little purple and yellow-leafed kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed tsugaru roman variety to create the coloured patterns between planting and harvesting in September. The murals in Inakadate cover 15,000 square metres of paddy fields. From ground level, the designs are invisible, and viewers have to climb the mock castle tower of the village office to get a glimpse of the work. Rice-paddy art was started there in 1993 as a local revitalization project, an idea that grew out of meetings of the village committee. Closer to the image, the careful placement of thousands of rice plants in the paddy fields can be seen The different varieties of rice plant grow alongside each other to create the masterpieces . In the first nine years, the village office workers and local farmers grew a simple design of Mount Iwaki every year. But their ideas grew more complicated and attracted more attention. In 2005 agreements between landowners allowed the creation of enormous rice paddy art. A year later, organizers used computers to precisely plot planting of the four differently colored rice varieties that bring the images to life.

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.

I'm Getting Ready for the Ladies Who Lunch

Query Fear

I have written longish short stories in less time than I've been working on an almost two page query letter. There are so many things the tiny query letter must do. It needs to make me sound interesting, smart, talented, and marketable. Not just my book needs to be marketable; I must be marketable, too. Everything but the writing and the story depends on marketing. Well, I take that back--the story needs to be marketable too. Once written the handling of a book is all about the marketing. I have very little confidence that I am capable of marketing myself in a two page letter. In a couple of paragraphs I need to say an awful lot. I have to pack into as few words as possible why I chose to write about a crazy family, and why that might be a good thing to read.

I do believe that the novel I've written has something that almost everyone can relate to. We all have crazy families. Maybe not this crazy, but crazy enough that almost everyone can relate to a mother like Maggy, the mother in my book. Almost everyone has been through some aspect of divorce and the fracturing of a family. There has to be at least one narcissist in every family. Doesn't there? I'm betting on it.

The other kind of universal experience that I tell in excruciating detail is the care and feeding of a parent with dementia, on the long slow slide to brain dead; perhaps a parent who potty trained you and who now needs you to change her diapers for years, and is like any toddler, surly about giving up the shit. However, a toddler and a grown up the same size as you, are not the same to change. And if you are the least bit phobic about grownup's poop, it will turn your stomach and test your patience long past your patience's limit. Somehow a mean parent just gets meaner with dementia. Odd how that works. The very sweet seem to just grow sweeter. The marginally mean can turn into remorseless sadists, slowly, over a too short time that seems to never end, until you are changing the diapers of a person who has no idea who you are, but knows he doesn't like you, in fact hates you, and the struggle to keep his shit seems like a matter of life and death to him.

I won't say Maggy is a how-to-book on surviving taking care of crazy momma. But it is a book about a very dysfunctional family told from the point of view of the baby who is saddled with the worst jobs of all. I'm betting it doesn't hurt to know what's coming down the road as momma and daddy start going batty, giving the farm away to scam artists, and crapping their pants in public. And my generation, the baby boomers, are now going batty at an alarming rate. We are the most populous of generations. Think about that my darlings, while you ponder your future as you lie in bed worried about your children's education, their prospects for a job, your ability to keep your job as the economy goes to hell and the next generation is bringing its freshly minted graduate degrees to your boss, offering to work for less, and your daddy is now alone and not doing so well. Sleep well. Then tomorrow, tell me Maggy isn't a horror story.

Smile, Like I've Never Heard It Before

A Saturday Night Song for a Sunday Morning

The Odds and Ends of Today

We finally have a day that isn't going to fry my brain. We've had two months of 95-100 degree temperatures and not a drop of rain. It's all parched and crunchy, and I'm not just talking about my brain.

Today it will only reach 80 degrees and I'm actually going to be able to take Marley for a walk. Yes, I am going to get a little exercise. Shut up! No one likes a smart ass.

I'm also getting my head shrunk at 3:00 this afternoon. I'll come home and take a picture so you call tell me how my smaller head looks. There will be a few errands run on the way home from the therapist's.

Phillip of Sitenoise is stopping off here for a very short visit, so I'll be baking brownies and getting questions written so while he's here I can get a wee bit of help with my first submission to a Literary Agency.

It's a busier day than usual, so I'm off to take Marly on her walk.