Riding the Bipolar Roller Coaster part II

It's been a long time, in bipolar terms, since I experienced a real depressive episode. But I remember all too well that depression sometimes presents as organic illness. I start to feel sick. Feeling sick is not my normal state. This feeling sick sends me to my internist. And in the early phase I might have some mild and transient bug that can either be treated or waited out. But I don't bounce back. Feeling ill lingers. Not sick enough to simply stay in bed, but not well enough to want to do much of anything. It's a headache that's hard to get rid of, or a bowel disturbance, or low grade fever, or a slow, creeping stupidity that scares me more than anything. It's the transitions from one pole to the other that are the most dangerous. It's when we, the bipolar, realize depression is bearing down on us and we still have the energy to do something about it, that we know we can't stand it again. That's when we think about suicide. If I were suicidal, I would not be talking about it, so relax. I'm not suicidal at the moment. But I have been there many times. It's why I don't fear death by cancer or heart disease or a fatal car accident.

In Salt Lake, under the umbrella of Medicare, we have Valley Mental Health. And within Valley Mental Health is a group called The Master's Program. You have to be bipolar and over fifty to qualify. I think calling a program for the old bipolar patients "The Masters Program" is both funny and apt. If you've lived past fifty and you are bipolar, you're damn special. You have survived a very difficult life. And I'm always amazed how many of us there are. We are often treated for substance abuse(self medicating) which might result in a bit of trouble with the law, especially for men. Men are more likely to be incarcerated than women, since men are more likely to be violent against others, whereas women are more likely to be self destructive.

We can be extremely charming, and we can be horrid. I would not choose a bipolar friend to hang around with. In my opinion many of us are more trouble than we're worth. In transition we can be seething with barely suppressed rage. In a manic phase we can seem as if we're taking large doses of amphetamines--motor-mouthed and loud. I sure wouldn't choose to spend my time with anyone like me. But for the person experiencing a bit of mania it's damn fun. We all live for the hypomanic phase of the illness. But, like the way down, the way up is also dangerous.

I have over the course of my life dealing with this monster illness found that not that many of the drugs to control my illness are tolerable to me. They all have some side effects, most commonly weight gain, which makes it hard for a lot of women to stay with on them. And some side effects are worse than others. One drug gives you tremors and one drug makes you fat, one drug makes you stupid and one drug steals your dreams. Go ask Alice. I'm guessing she was bipolar.

There are bipolar drugs I am frankly afraid of. I know that if the constellation of side effects is both weight gain and an inability to create I will not take the drug. I can tollerate the weight gain but not the inability to write. And like all medications not all people react the same way to the same drug. The drugs I hate the most are those used to treat mania. In the first place mania is fun and you have enough energy to clean your house, do the laundry, carry on loud long conversations while you bake a cake and paint the ceiling red. Most of the really hard outdoor work done on this piece of property, was done by me working round the clock making stone pathways and patios in the middle of the night with outside lights on.

The dangers of mania are an expansiveness that makes casual sex easy and fun, it makes shopping sprees with a new credit card seem like the best of ideas. It makes an already mercurial personality, capable of inflicting whiplash injury to loved ones with the harsh word and the hot temper more intensely painful to those close to you. Tears flow easily. You feel everything more intensely, like you were on a great high. But the drugs to bring you back to earth are harsh. The are deadening. I've had a major psychosis which is the real danger of uncontrolled mania. It takes at least a two week hospitalization in a psych ward to get that under control. And the drugs to stop the hallucinations left me feeling lobotomized. I remembered nothing much, not even my way home. I lost my way within a few blocks of my house. And I had tremors that were so bad I had trouble drinking coffee. To my friends, my affect was pretty flat. But I've lived to tell you about the dangers of the journey.

If you have one family member with bipolar disorder, chances are there have been many others in your genetic pool. I was doubly cursed in that both my mother and father were bipolar. This is an illness with two genetic markers, not the usual one. So it's a mighty potent gene.

My father was diagnosed with schizophrenia in the late 1940s. I'm told by my psychiatrist that most bipolar patients were diagnosed schizophrenic in those days. He was hospitalized twice that I know of. I knew him as a rage-aholic. He was mean and abusive to me and my mother. Maggy, my mother, was the more manic type of bipolar personality. She always saw my depression and tendency to isolate as being lazy and too sensitive. She would never admit that there was anything wrong with her. She was critical and disapproving of almost everyone else but especially me. She was known to her siblings as the mean one in her family, bordering on sadistic. She was the classic narcissist. She was perfect and everybody else was fucked. Life in my home was hell for me. And I was given the advise by three separate therapists to vanish and never contact her again, to move and leave no forwarding address. But she was my first unrequited love. I never was good enough for her but I kept trying like a woman in an abusive marriage.

Z's Cancer Has Spread

It was on my birthday, June 12th, that we found out Z's diagnosis of small cell squamous lung cancer. It was not inside her lungs but still it was devastating. And it was a late diagnosis since Z doesn't trust or believe in Western medicine. She is a practitioner of alternate modalities (her words not mine). And yet after a while of thinking she could battle this cancer with juice fasts and magic water (my term not hers) the tumor was pressing on her superior vena cava, making it hard to swallow, breathe, talk. It was getting worse fast. Her daughter came and put so many things in order, and it was her influence and research that put Z in touch with the best pulmonary oncologist in Utah at Huntsman Cancer Institute. She got the best pulmonary radiation doctor in Utah. And Z hated every second of her care. I was never allowed to accompany her to any of her appointments despite asking. So I gave her rides to and from her early treatments which she reluctantly agreed to. I helped her put her clean her closets so Z's youngest son and his partner and her son and their son could move in and care for her. They were given the full house and Z was moved out of her bedroom and into the small basement room where it would be cool and quiet. Then I had to butt out, since her kids caring for her meant a great deal to her. I felt their care was not only inadequate, but worse, it created more work for her and very little nurturing care from them. She called me to bring my little French vacuum over to vacuum her bedroom in the basement, crowded with the washer and dryer, piles of dirty clothes, their vacuum and anything else the young woman partnered with Z's son didn't want in the upstairs. I cooked her favorite things and took her anything she craved but I got harder for her to swallow. And all the time I wondered what her son and his partner were doing to help her. The young woman did not work out of the home, but stayed home with her toddler and baby all day. But she never seemed to do much for Z. One day I called to find Z cleaning the fridge. I was seething with rage. She was too sick to be doing anything but getting waited on, fed things that sounded good to her, kept clean and quiet. But any critical comments about her son and his lazy (my word) girl friend and the lack of care, the absence of nurturing they exhibit towards Z makes her jump to their defense. They're sick, they're busy, they're tired. Frankly I don't give a shit what their excuses have been for not shopping, cooking, serving, cleaning up after and around Z. They live in her house rent free to make it easy on them to take care of Z. They have been awful at taking care of Z.

It was months before she told me what stage her cancer was. Stage three. Dire, but not yet matasticized. Her prognosis was 30% chance for a good outcome with aggressive chemo and radiation. She balked and tried to find a way around it. She hated her doctors and claimed the only reason they treated cancer was the big bucks. She said her treatment would buy a new set of golf clubs for her oncologist. I have a close friend who works as a researcher at Huntsman and asked her to check this doctor out. Her report to me was that he was a very good doctor. Not the best bedside manner, but top notch skills. He is the best pulmonary oncologist in this part of the country. But Z could not be convinced that he was not a charlatan.

In the time since June 12th she has had pulmonary embolisms, severe pain in her hips and shoulders, pneumonia, and the pain from radiation burns as they tried to get the tumor to shrink back from her vena cava so she could breathe and swallow. At every turn in this journey there wasn't a day she wasn't pissed off at the doctors and technicians who administered her radiation and chemo. She kept looking for a "natural" cure for her cancer. When her hair started falling out she wanted to stop chemo. She was sure they were going to kill her with the chemo. They didn't understand that she was too "pure" for this level of chemo. She'd been a vegetarian for over 30 years. Her system wasn't like other peoples, she kept insisting. She was furious that her oncologist didn't acknowledge her slight weight as a reason to back off the chemo. Z is 5'8" and weighed 115 when the treatment started. She's now probably 95lbs, if that.

Z got through the first round of radiation and chemo and had a couple of weeks to recover some strength. Then her doctor ordered another round of chemo. She had one treatment and then refused to continue until they did another PET scan to see how much the cancer had shrunk. She got the results yesterday. Her cancer is now in her liver, spleen, and lungs. The original tumor, which was "lung cancer" wasn't actually in her lungs. It was outside the lung and pressing on her airways. That tumor had shrunk some, but the cancer had matasticized. Now she's no longer willing to receive any more Western medical treatment. They offered to give her hospice care. And this offer of hospice is to her a confirmation that Western medicine has failed her.

Before she got the results from the PET scan, she'd found the cure she'd been looking for. It's hash oil. She found a site on the internet that promises to cure lung cancer with the use of hash oil. To my way of thinking anything that gives her hope or makes her feel better is a good thing. She says she's leaving Friday for Southern California where her two oldest sons live. I wanted to get her a first class ticket on a plane, but she wants to have her car with her. So her brother is driving her to Southern Utah where she'll spend the night. Then she plans to drive herself to Las Vegas to meet up with her middle son. He'll fly in to Las Vegas to drive her the rest of the way to San Diego. Her oldest son and his wife and twin daughters live close to the beach in San Diego.

Z is my oldest, closest friend. We met at seventeen as early admissions students at the U of Utah. We were the first early admissions students the University accepted and the only girls in that first group of six. We were as different as it's possible to be. But for some reason the friendship grew and though we have spent years living in different parts of the country, married, divorced, and out of touch, whenever we did see each other the old friendship was just like it always was. She is my Executor, has medical power of attorney for me. We never thought I would outlive her. I'm bipolar and have what used to be called Malignant Hypertension. The leading cause of death for people with severe bipolar disorder is suicide. I wasn't expected to live this long. Now it looks like I will survive her. How strange is the landscape of my life without her in it.

This Cat Betrayed His Girlfriend.

How I Became Crazy

My mother nearly starved me as an infant. She had postpartum depression and could not stand to hold me. She did not notice that there wasn't a hole in the nipple on the bottle and that I was not getting milk. She thought I was willful and unwilling to suckle the bottle. This event set the stage for a lifetime of conflict and desperate need.

At three I was raped by a nineteen year old boy who was a friend of my brothers. My mother was the only one who knew, since she walked in on the act in progress. She told no one. But when I had to pee and it burned, she told me "Never let a boy do that to you," giving me responsibility at three for what an adult did to me. I regressed and hid in the bathroom, the only door I could lock.

She taught me to smoke when I was five. She told me no one likes children, so I should act like a grown up. She taught me how to mix a cocktail. Though these were skills of a sort, they made me freakishly grown up and set me up to be objectified.

She ran away from my family and only took me with her, then sent me to Texas to live with relatives. I was well cared for but knew I'd been abandoned.

She married a pedophile from a very prominent family and took me back when I was six. This man adopted me and began sexually abusing me which went on in her presence until I was eleven and started menstruating. I was told I was too old for my Daddy anymore. I was then turned over to my mother who began to use me like her own personal cleaning lady. Again, this responsibility for all the housework did give me skills, but let me know that my only worth was now as servant to my mother. I was told there is no such think as unconditional love. "You have to earn love." My dad no longer found me useful, so I had to earn my mother's love by keeping the house clean and the laundry done. I was an A student but was told I wasn't living up to my potential. I was never praised for anything but the way I looked. My mother then started telling my my nose was too big. She pinched my budding breasts, she spit in my face, she goosed me at every opportunity. We were a good looking, well educated, upper middle class family. My mother always worked and my father was a psychologist. I was a ticking time bomb.

When I began to date I was told by my family that the only reason a boy would be interested in me was to "get inside (my) pants." I was told my only worth was between my legs. I began to loathe myself. I started cutting and puncturing my skin with things like an ice pick. I put cigarettes out on the back of my hand. I clawed the flesh of my face. I detested myself.

By the time I was seventeen I knew I couldn't live at home anymore. I skipped my senior year of high school so I could go to the University of Utah and live in the dorms.

Depression took me like a gentle lover. All of this is enough to drive a child crazy. By seventeen I had PTSD. But I was also bipolar and full of unfocused rage.

Running The Maze

Daddy was an expert at driving the lab animals mad
It was his job, it was his passion. Daddy had talent for it.
Daddy married a woman with a pretty child and no maternal
Instinct drove them to it. Unhinge that child Daddy, see what
She can take. The little whore becomes your slave until she is
Too old. Unhinge that child. What is she but a ticking time bomb.
Call her a liar and she becomes one, threaten the cage again, bind her
Mind with fear like Chinese women’s feet. Women are used to torture
The women her mother hates so much, apron wearing women, domesticated
Dumb cows. The girl will run the hamster wheel of repetition repetition repetition
Until she’s the only one left alive, alone at last. Talks about it like normal life, like
normal life
Like Normal life.

Dear Congressman Jim Matheson

I called your office a couple of weeks ago to express my hopes that you would support a public option as part of healthcare reform. The person who answered your phone in DC hung up on me the minute the words "public option" passed my lips. I was stunned. The next day there was a letter to the editor in the Salt Lake Tribune by a man who had the same experience. Unlike me, he kept calling back until he found someone who would answer his question, which was "Why would you hang up on a constituent calling to express their opinion?" He was told, that there were just too many calls coming in for a public option and that it had always been "off the table." My question now is, "Why did you run as a Democrat if you don't care that your Democratic constituents support a public option for health care reform?" It seems to me this is a slight of hand. You are not really acting like a Democrat. We already have two powerful Republican Senators who don't care what our wishes and concerns are. You ran for Congress in Utah's moderately liberal district as a Democrat, but you are not representing your constituents interests. I will be working very hard to find a liberal to run against you in the next primary. I will do all I can to defeat you even if this means voting for just another Republican. Better to have an honest enemy than a false friend.

Sincerely,
Peggy Pendleton

It's Boob Squishing Time Again

It was only a week and a half ago that I got my boobs squished. But they found a hinky spot on both breasts, so today I have to go back for a diagnostic mammogram and maybe an ultrasound as well, depending on what they find with the diagnostic mammogram. If it were just my breasts and everything else were fine, I wouldn't be worried. But I've had a low platelet count for a long time. There is a big range between high-normal and low-normal. I've been below low-normal for well over a year.

So now I'm under the care of an oncology hematologist. He ordered an ultrasound of my liver and spleen three weeks ago and the only thing they found with that test was a few gallstones. These gallstones aren't bothering me, so I plan to do nothing unless they get to be a problem. And in my latest round of blood work they found that my platelet count was up a little from the last time it was checked. Still not low-normal, but better, on the upswing, maybe. At least for the time being. I'm hoping to avoid a bone marrow test. That is the next test if my platelet count is lower next time I go in to get it checked--in three months.

So, for a relatively healthy woman with a family history of high blood pressure, heart disease, and bipolar disorder, all of which require the taking of pills, I'm sort of peachy. And I plan to come back after this new boob squishing has been read, to tell you, I really am peachy.

Pablo Casals plays Bach

The Huge Green Ash Tree Turns Gold

The single gold leaf is on the glass roof of the sunroom in the little house. The photographs of the Green Ash tree are taken aiming my camera straight up. This tree is the first to turn color in the fall and loses all its leaves in a two day period. And after one day of wind it looks like the photo in the bottom right. I have a forest in my urban back yard. The leaf raking is nearly endless. It's always a race to get the leaves up before the snow falls.

Autumn Work Week Ahead

I will have to spend every spare minute this next week working in the gardens, getting ready for Winter. This wall of vines on the south facing glass wall of the little house needs to be pruned down and cleaned up. The back driveway needs the same kind of vine taming in order for the gate to slide on its runners. And yet, all I want to do is tweet and edit fiction.

Orrin Hatch Is Undone By Small MoveOn.org Demonstration

Hey "scurrilous" folks,

So, we knew the fight would be hard and long... but it's begun to really heat up now...

On MSNBC this afternoon, Andrea Mitchell asked Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) about a MoveOn-organized protest outside his Salt Lake City office, where protesters criticized Hatch for allegedly being beholden to the insurance industry because it donated a lot of money to his past campaigns.

"I'm supported by people all over the health care system," Hatch said, "including doctors, including hospitals, including insurers, including
liberal people, conservative people and moderate people. Everybody knows how much money you have to raise to run for the Senate."

Then Hatch turned his fury to MoveOn and George Soros.

"MoveOn.org is a scurrilous organization," he said. "It's funded by George Soros. He's about as left wing as you can find in this country. And they're
up to just one thing, and that is to smear good people. And frankly, they're
not gonna smear me without getting kicked in the teeth by me."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/33330046#33330046

(This from the Deseret News.)

MoveOn.org executive director Justin Ruben responded that when Utah members of his group questioned the money Hatch took from insurance interests, "What did he do? Go on national TV and threaten to kick them in the teeth. Apparently this was easier than defending his ties to the insurance companies."

He added, "Hopefully whoever Sen. Hatch kicks in the teeth is independently wealthy, in case their claim is denied by one of the insurance companies who've been funding his campaign."

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

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

Here's what the media advisory will say about tomorrow's event:
---------------------------------------------------------------

MEDIA ADVISORY FOR October 16th, 2009
CONTACT: Richard Lafon, (801) 815-3870

Event Begins at Senator Hatch’s Office at 12:00 PM, October 16th, 2009

MoveOn Members Protest Sen. Hatch’s Threat To “Kick Them In The Teeth” Event Held in Response to Hatch’s Threatening Remarks Made Towards MoveOn.org On National Television


On Friday, October 16th, MoveOn.org members will gather outside of Senator Hatch’s office to protest his threat, made on the national cable television
station MSNBC, to kick MoveOn.org in the teeth. The threat was made in response to a question about a rally held on Wednesday, where MoveOn members
criticized Hatch for taking $913,614 from HMO and health insurance interests and being opposed to a public health insurance option. Insurance companies
and HMOS are spending nearly $5 million per week fighting against health care
reform, and one of their top targets is the public health insurance option—the heart of real reform crucial to lowering rising health care costs and expanding high-quality, affordable coverage to more Americans.

There are nearly 23,000 MoveOn.org members in Utah.

Senator Hatch’s remarks can be viewed at (1:30 mark):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/33330046#33330046

WHAT: Rally Outside of Senator Hatch’s Office
WHO: MoveOn members
WHERE: Federal Building, 125 South State Street, Salt Lake City, UT
WHEN: 12:00 PM, Friday, October 16th, 2009

*** VISUALS: Participants will be holding sets of chattering teeth***
(cold and rainy)


MoveOn.org Political Action is a political action committee powered by 5
million progressive Americans. We believe in the power of small donors and grassroots action to elect progressive leaders to office and to advance a progressive agenda. We do not accept any donations over $5,000, and the average donation to MoveOn.org Political Action is under $100.

A Strange Woman (a short story)

"I was born with a flair for the dramatic but it was ridiculed out of me young. Not eradicated entirely, just driven under the bone, deep into the heart and spleen.” She pauses as if that’s all there is, finishes her Old Fashioned, plucks the cherry out with two long, slender, well- manicured fingers, tilts her elegant head back exposing a long supple neck and plops the glistening cherry in her open mouth. After she chews her cherry she continues, staring into her empty highball glass. “As I grew teeth, I ground them into cracked and splintered nubs. I eventually made tourniquets of the muscles surrounding my head, which I’m sure must feel like the binding of Chinese women’s feet in the old days. I only got to perform when I was assured of privacy. And there was precious little of that. Not that we were a big family. No, there were only the three of us. But there was only room for one performer in that small audience.”

She says this with a straight face and in a fairly convincing southern accent. Her voice is husky and deep, a whisky voice with that rough edge of a smoker. The whole thing sounds like something from a play. She’s addressing this load of crap to some big old John Wayne clone who’s muscled himself into the narrow space next to her at the bar. She’s responding to something he whispered into her right ear. He looks frankly bewildered, furtively glancing around for less complicated prey.

You can tell by the way she looks that what she says just might be true, but she tells it like a bald-faced lie. She’s a head-turner. Not flashy-dramatic, but eye-catching. Classy, chiseled face. Even if she isn’t terribly thin or young, she’s got great bones. Her clothes are expensive—quality, well-tailored, good fabrics. Her dark brown hair is cut about shoulder length and it gleams. It sways when she turns her head. Everything about her is striking, but quietly so. She’s the sort of woman everyone will turn to look at, but won’t approach. She looks self-contained and needing no one. Part of it’s her age. She’s not young enough to hustle. Not old enough to con. And despite that line of bullshit and her age, she’s sexy.

The man who sits next to her at the bar wears a huge silver and turquoise watch and matching belt buckle. He’s tall, balding, and beer-bellied. She isn’t wearing any jewelry, no ear rings, no wedding band, no watch. They don’t even come from the same planet.

A tall, slender man in his thirties sits at the far end of the bar where it curves around and ends in the wall--something to lean on if need be. It’s the opposite end from where the bartender takes orders from the cocktail waitresses. It’s a good place to watch the waitresses and the rest of the bar clientele. He watches one of the cocktail waitresses for a few minutes. She smiles at the bartender as she rattles off the list of drinks she needs, and the second he turns away and starts working on her order, her face is a total blank, completely losing it’s warmth, as if a light went off. And just then she catches the slender man watching her. Her eyes lock on his, and he finds it impossible to look away from that completely expressionless stare, as if it were a dare. When she finally turns away from the bar with her two vodka tonics and three 7&7s loaded on that tiny tray, he looks down the bar at the dark-haired, older woman who is watching him with a bemused expression on her very interesting face.

She raises one eyebrow and lifts her highball glass in a salute. He lifts his drink to salute her back and feels his face flush. He signals the bartender, and when he looks back up at her, she’s looking in the mirror behind the bar bottles. At first he thinks she’s looking at herself, but her face is completely unstudied, and it occurs to him she’s watching the table behind her. She has the rapt expression of a voyeur. When the bartender takes his order, the slender man also orders one for “the great broad drinking the Old Fashioned,” he nods in her direction.

A small, aged, black man at the piano finishes “‘Round Midnight.” The slender man at the bar pays for the bourbon and soda the bartender sets in front of him and leaves his stool to walk over and put a dollar in the pianists tip jar.

When he passes the back of the aging beauty’s barstool, she’s still watching the table behind her in the mirror. She sees him pass in front of them. When he walks back, after delivering his compliments to the pianist, she turns her head and flashes him a high voltage smile. He smiles back. She says, “Hard to beat “‘Round Midnight,” isn’t it?”
“It’s one of my favorites.”
“Thanks for the drink. Care to join me?”
“Sure, for a minute.”
Still smiling she says “My name’s Judith,” and extends her hand. She has long slender fingers. Her hand is soft but looks like it’s done some work in it’s day. There’s a small round scar just above her little finger. Her nails are short and expertly painted the color of Mexican tile.
He turns to her and says, “Would you like to share an order of escargot?”

“I’d love to.” Her lips are red and shiny. Her teeth are white and even. He asks her if she minds if he smokes. “No, not at all, I used to smoke and I’ll enjoy yours vicariously. It’s one of the reasons I still come here. Most places are so sanitized these days. Lord I love Larry Horton for keeping his bar properly smoke-filled.” Again the almost southern accent.
“You know the owner?”
“It’s a small town. Everybody knows everybody else and their business. So, since I don’t recognize you, you must be new in town or passing through. There are few strangers at this restaurant, since it’s small and far off the interstate. How did you find our little treasure?”

“I spent the day at Dillard’s today and asked the manager where to eat. She recommended Horton’s, so here I am. Sorry I’m so rude. My name is Martin. Martin Laterite”
“How very French.”
“The name, yes. I’m named after a great-grandfather.” He waves the bartender back and asks for the escargot. It will take about fifteen or twenty minutes.
“I noticed that you’re wearing a wedding ring. I find that so touchingly sweet in a man. Were you shopping for your wife?”
“No, I was selling. It’s what I do for a living. I sell women’s designer sportswear.”
“God! What a hellish job for a man.”
“Most women think it would be a great job.”
“Well, unlike most women, I hate stores and shopping. Did you like Lilly?”
“Lilith Jacobson? The store manager?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Yeah, I do. She’s a strait shooter. I like her directness. And I’m grateful to her that I’m not eating at Howard Johnson’s or the golden arches.”
“I play bridge with her once a month. And she does my shopping. God bless her for that. She’s a terrific friend.”
“And a wonderful job she does if the outfit your wearing is her handiwork. It’s Ann Klein Couture and they don’t carry the couture line in-store. So you must be a very special customer.”
“Just a picky friend. Besides, I only buy a few pieces each year. It’s not that much more work to buy special things for me. She knows my wardrobe and only adds what’s missing. I’ll bet she’d be here with you if it weren’t for her husband's business party.”
“Why aren’t you at her party?”
“Because I’m here having a drink with you Martin.” she raises her glass and sips her drink.
the pianist starts playing “So What," and the bartender heads toward them with a plate of escargot. When they’re finished with their appetizer, the hostess comes over and tells him his table is ready whenever he is. He asks Judith to join him for dinner and to his surprise, she accepts. This scares him a little.

They are escorted by the hostess in her long black dress to a table by the only bank of windows in the crowded room. As the two women lead the way he watches them whispering to each other. They bump hips and he notices Judith’s ass. The bias cut of her silk-jersey skirt pulls slightly as she moves from foot to foot and her hips rock from side to side. Martin balls his dangling hand into a soft fist.

They don’t talk much during dinner, but he does find out that she’s married to a college professor who doesn’t have time to go out, so she goes out by herself. He notices she doesn’t wear a wedding ring and says, “Women who don’t wear wedding rings scare me.”

“They ought to scare you. You are married to a woman I presume. What’s she doing while you’re on the road?”
“Staying home with the kids, I hope.” When she laughs he notices her neck is creamy white. She eats with relish and makes slightly sexual noises with her first few spoons full of lobster bisque. It is a soft moaning noise deep in her throat. He wonder’s why she and her husband aren’t at Lilly’s party.
“Do You work?”
“You mean, do I work outside the home, honey? Yes I do. I’m the wife of a poor college professor, remember? I have to work so I can buy my Ann Klein Couture.” She throws back her head and laughs. Martin thinks about his penis.

After dinner he asks for the check and the waiter says the check has been taken care of.
He says, “No, I’ll get the check! Judith, I travel on an expense account. Please let me get the check.”
She says, “I have nothing to do with this. It’s probably Larry or the guys in the kitchen.”
“Who was it? I’d like to thank him if it was the owner. And I’d want to thank the kitchen anyway for a great meal.”
The waiter says. “I’ve been asked not to say. I’m sorry.”
Martin pulls a twenty out of his wallet and leaves it on the table. He says, “Judith, would you like to have a cognac in the bar and maybe some dessert?”
“Yes, thank you. I will join you for an after dinner drink.”
The waiter, still hovering, pulls her chair out just as Martin reaches for it.
When they head back into the bar, the pianist is playing “For All We Know.”
They order cognac and sip it warmed. The crowd in the bar is thinning. Soon the kitchen crew starts coming in through the restaurant. It’s almost eleven.
Before he gets a chance to invite her to his room, Judith stands up, nods to the two tall very young men and says to Martin, “My dates for the rest of the evening are off-duty and ready to escort me to my job.”

One of the two young men looks like Mic Jagger when he was twenty-something. The other looks like Jim Morrison alive. They hover a discreet distance from the drinking couple.
Judith leans over and whispers in Martin’s ear, “Our meal was comped by one of those two characters. They’re the chefs, and we’re going to the club I run for this rich boy who lives in Paducah. These guys want to go for the last strip show of the evening. They’d be very cross if I invited you. But I had a lovely evening with you Martin. Maybe next time you’re in town we can do it again.”

Too Damn Big (a short story)

Judith Blue stands by her Gran Torino in the parking lot and watches as two women scream at each other out their car windows. “Jesus! Will you learn to drive that thang!”
“I was here first.”
“So the fuck what! You can’t drive worth shit!”

She turns and looks at the line of women that snakes out the door and down the sidewalk in front of the small specialty stores that share this rather large strip mall with The Beefeater, the restaurant, bar, and disco she manages for Chuck Smart. Women are beginning to push each other in front of Yin Lee’s Oriental Delights.

“Oh god, what am I going to do now?” She thinks this aloud and the sound of her own voice startles her. A very pregnant woman gives a mighty shove at the woman in front of her, who goes down, hits the pavement on her knees, and as her hands come down on the concrete she screams, “Jesus H Christ!” Judith turns toward the restaurant and starts moving as fast as she can, considering her high heels and the slope of the parking lot. She keeps thinking, ‘I didn’t know this many women lived in Springfield. Oh god, what am I going to do?’ When she gets to the doors she slips past a trio of women standing too close jostling a little against the two men stationed at the door. One of the guys guarding the door whispers in her ear as she squeezes through, “We need more wait staff.” It’s 5PM of a Tuesday night. The show doesn’t start for two hours and the restaurant and bar are packed already, and the only men inside the place work there. Them and the cops guarding the stage in the disco. A couple of months ago she took this job as a lark. Now it's turning into an albatross.

She needed a distraction from the faculty wives parties. When they first arrived she’d amiably gone along with the suggestions that she “participate.” The first abomination was a tea for faculty wives. Full dress regalia. It looked for all the world like the 1950 version of the Junior League, The Garden Club, and the DAR all rolled into one. Like something out of a Cheever story. Then there was the Gourmet Club. What a fucking joke that was. Someone brought a green bean casserole, with canned green beans and Campbell’s mushroom condensed soup. God, it was so sad. After that she knew she had to get a job so she'd have an excuse.

During her interview with Chuck she asked all the questions while Chuck’s girlfriend/accountant Linda, gave her the skunk-eye. Both Chuck and his girlfriend came from Paducha where Chuck’s daddy owns the Caddy dealership. Must be a lot of pimps and drug dealers in Paducha. Chuck and his accountant/girlfriend are in their late twenties and have no idea what they hell they’re doing but seem to have unlimited funds to do it.

She must have been his first interview. When she’s thinks she's through asking him questions, she asks one more. “Do you want to ask me any questions?” He stands up, and giving her his most charming look (which is one raised eyebrow and an Elvis lip curl) sticks out his hand and says, “Welcome aboard.” She shakes his hand and asks one last question. “What do you plan to pay me to make this into a profitable venture?” His left eyelid flutters a little and he says, "A grand a month!” and beams. She says without batting an eye, “Thanks, but no thanks,” and turns toward the door. He says, “Whoa, not so fast, that’s just base salary. If you can turn a profit, I’ll give you 2% and of course, you eat and drink for free.” She pauses for a couple of seconds and says, “I’ll think about it and get back to you.”
“4%?”

“Make it 5%, and don’t hassle me about the changes I want to make. By the way, what’s your advertising budget?” She looks at the accountant who looks at Chuck who says, “Let me know what you need to spend, and we’ll pay the bills.”

“On time?”

He looks at her sideways and says, “Sure. Is that it?”

“No, I need to spend a week or so assessing staffing, supplies, talent. Any changes I want to make, You’ll Okay?”

“You’re the boss.”

“If I find that you have not paid staff, or vendors, or advertisers on time and in full, I’ll quit. Are we clear on all of that?”

“Yes mam.”

Walking to her car she knows she has just made a huge mistake, not asked for enough, got nothing in writing, but what the hell, she can always quit.

When she gets home Henry is there, smoking, drinking straight lukewarm vodka in a half full ice tea glass reading student papers. If you are a lucky student he gets to your paper just before that ice tea glass is empty. By then he doesn’t even bother to read them. He just gives the last four or five A’s and leaves it at that.
“I got a job.”

Silence.

“Have you eaten?”

“NO.” He says this rather too loud for her taste, and she wants to say, “Henry, go fuck yourself,” but refrains for once because she really doesn’t give a shit if Henry’s eaten or not, she’s not cooking for him, so, why engage?

She heads for the shower. An hour later, after the shower, drying her hair, and getting dolled up a little, she grabs her handbag and starts toward the living room. Henry says in his whiniest voice, “Aren’t you going to fix dinner?”

“How astute, Henry. Was it the click click of my high heels?”

“Yes.”

“Want to have a conversation, Henry?”

“NO. I want to eat. Are you going out?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I got a job, Henry. I told you, but it didn’t seem to register. I thought maybe you’d nodded off. I’d take you to dinner, but I doubt you could walk, and really, I want to see what the dining experience is like for a woman alone.”

“Why?”

“Henry? Are you in there? Why, to what? Are you so obtuse in class?

“A restaurant? Really? Will you bring me something back?”

“Probably not, since you’ll be asleep before I get back. Stay sober and I’ll buy you dinner tomorrow night. Till then there's food in the fridge. Good night Henry.”

As she drives to Beefeaters, Judith thinks about the possibilities. The place is huge. Restaurant seats two hundred. The bar is another hundred . Fire code says the disco can hold a maximum of five hundred. She does not know the population of Springfield, but thinks keeping this place busy is really going to be a challenge. It's Thursday evening, just past 6 PM when she pulls into the parking lot. Stores are still open, but even so, the lot is almost empty. Oh God.

That first week she feels she has located all the major staffing changes she will need to make. She spends most early afternoons meeting with the back of the house—mostly the three cooks, one of whom has Culinary Institute training. They revamp the menu with specials that will not necessitate reprinting menus. Add dessert specials, everything is made in- house, bread, desserts. They work on a new wine list. Not necessarily more expensive, but better. Printing costs will be small. She gets rid of the English serving girl dresses with all the cleavage exposed, and the long skirts that are a tripping hazard, and puts everybody in black pants and white shirts.

She spends her evenings in the bar. They have a cowboy quartet that starts playing at six. She gives them two weeks notice and puts up posters at the University’s music department and an ad in the classifieds of the News-Leader asking for jazz musicians. On Wednesday afternoon she auditions three groups. Hires a band called Entropy. Judith thinks the bands name is pretentious and not apt, since they play quite swinging or soulful Jazz standards but decides it isn’t worth arguing about, since very few bar patrons will have the slightest idea what the fuck it means. She hires a great looking female bartender and keeps the one male bartender who doesn’t hit on her right off. She asks everyone to put out the word that she’s looking for another bartender. She has three cocktail waitresses to start with. She’ll add them as she needs.

Judith Blue is now on a mission to poach talent from restaurants and bars in the surrounding counties since she’s stolen all the good ones in Springfield. She’s left Horton’s alone because it is her only refuge from the Beefeater, so Larry and his staff are safe for now. Henry is too deep in his cups to really notice her absence.

Now she is concentrating on the disco. It’s days as a disco are numbered. Donna Summers is sort of old hat now, and it's time to transition to another incarnation. But what the fuck will that be? The place has a stage and dance floor and is too big by half. One morning in Fayetteville she stops for breakfast at a coffee shop near the the U.A.F campus, and while reading the paper, notices a small piece on page four about a club in Kansas City that sparks her interest. This little club, the Plug Nickel, has made news by offering the ladies a male strip show. The reason it makes any news at all is the huge crowd it draws—all women. Fancy that. She finishes her coffee, puts out her smoke, tucks the paper under her arm and heads for the parking lot. She climbs into her Gran Torino and lites another cigarette before she turns toward Springfield. It’s a beautiful drive once you get past the strip malls that blight the landscape around Fayetteville, Benton, Rodgers, then she’s off the beaten track and on to Cassville, then Monett. Gorgeous farmland, no strip malls here. And she’s thinking all the way home.

She spreads the word among her staff of mostly S.M.S.U. students, that she’s looking for male dancers, real dancers, for an all female audience. Within a week she has fifty eight names on an audition list. And Beefeaters is buzzing. Business is picking up at a steady rate. Sometimes on Friday and Saturday nights there is a waiting list for dinner and the overflow is enjoying the jazz in the bar. Everybody’s making money and bickering and backstabbing is at a minimum. Even Chuck and the accountant are pleased.

So far the disco is a cavern still mostly empty, despite the sound of Donna Summer, Grace Jones, Gloria Gaynor, and Chic blaring from the huge speakers, the glittery disco ball still twirling in the dimly lit space. She has banned the Bee Gees from the playlist, but there is always a small crowd late at night around the long bar, and a few diehard dancers still making the most of the big dance floor. But the times, they are about to be changing.

For three mornings she holds auditions in the empty disco. There are the dancers, the cocktail waiters, and the female DJ’s all in separate lines. Judith stands on the bar platform and tells them her plan. DJ’s have always been guys, but that is going to change on Tuesday nights. The women auditioning for DJ head to the booth. Dancers are limbering up down by the stage. But the first players in this performance are the cocktail waiters. Sixteen guys begging for ten spots. Mostly college athletes and frat boys, thinking this is going to be easy. They have to audition just like the dancers and the DJs. She is going to turn the night-life gender roles upside down and see what falls out just one night a week for a month. She tells everyone exactly what her intentions are and what she expects of them. She will be the choreographer and majordoma of this whole shebang. An experienced cocktail waitress from the bar gives lessons to the waiters auditioning. They have to be able to carry a heavily loaded tray high above their heads, arm fully extended, weaving their way through closely placed tables, with a certain grace and agility while not spilling a drop. Almost every guy fails his first couple of tries. We're just using plastic glasses loaded with water and ice. The weight is less than it will be, but the balance is what we're working on at the moment

The regular DJ is demonstrating in a showoffy way the inner workings of the booth. Music gets going and then stops abruptly. Judith leaves the bar tournament to the cocktail waitress who will assist the female bartender. These two very competent and charming women will now make Tuesday night a regular part of their schedule. The buxom redheaded bartender Jeannette is filling fake orders and the tall thin brunette cocktail waitress Cathy is loading the trays for these desperate waiter wannabes. Judith heads for the dancers.

This is going to be the tricky part of the whole deal. They needed to have a little sit down. “Hi, I’m Judith Blue. Nice of you boys to show up, but this might not be exactly what you understood from the ad and posters. We are going to put on two shows a night one night a week for an all female audience. Women only. And you guys will be the entertainment.” There is a slight rise in the energy level of this group of attentive young men. They look at one another and smile. “I want to incorporate several elements to this performance, but I know this is a highly religious community, so to be fair to all of you, I must tell you first off, that there will be a little stripping involved. Anybody object to taking off your clothes while dancing and ending up nearly naked ought to leave now. We’re not doing anything illegal, but…” She shrugs, and sits at the small round table at the edge of the dance floor looking at the handsome, eager faces arrayed before her, spread out in repose on the dance floor, languid and muscled young men. Not a sound. No one moves to leave or even shifts his weight. “Is there a choreographer among you?” Three hands shoot up. She motions them over. They take chairs flanking her. “Will the remaining fifty or so of you break into groups of ten or eleven”? She waves her arm in the direction of the DJ booth and shouts, “Keep the volume low for awhile. We need to be able to talk in a normal tone, OK?”

There is a low murmur taking place in every part of the room now, then a large crash as one of the loaded trays hits the concrete floor. Dead silence for just a long moment, then the murmur starts again.

She has a powwow with her three choreographers and sketches out what she wants to see tomorrow, same time same place with some rough costuming. Is this possible? Yes, it turns out, it is.

Everywhere she goes she tells the women, in hushed and whispered tones that they might want to come for a special night just for women at the disco. At the bank, the grocery store, the doctors office, and throughout her strolls through the halls of academe.

By the following Monday morning they are ready for a dress rehearsal. She has ten well-trained waiters in black shorts and white wife-beater T-shirts, wearing white tennis shoes on their feet. She was tempted to make them wear high heels, just for the object lesson, but decided against it in the end. Her DJ is not only a hot babe, but she has great taste and timing. Judith’s strippers are dressed up and ready to go. The only thing missing is the audience, but it all works flawlessly in practice.

By six, the restaurant is full and the bar is overflowing. Women all over the place, and the excitement of anticipation is palpable. Conversation is decidedly more animated this evening. Judith surmises that without the sobering influence of the menfolk, the women are a little more uninhibited. She opens the disco doors and there is a near stampede from the bar. Women are running for the tables up front. Oh my god. Judith has the first of what will be many moments of dismay this evening. She stands inside the huge room and watches it fill in minutes. Her waiters are in full swing fast. She slips into the stock room behind the disco bar and uses the wall-phone to tell the boys bar-tending in the bar to come into the disco and assist the waiters at either end of the bar. This frees the two women bar-tending to mix drinks for the female customers three deep the length of the disco bar. Oh shit, this is not going to work as planned, there are just too many of them. Not one single ad and this is what has happened? There is a half hour to go and she already senses the chaos that might ensue if the bar fills with men waiting for the end of the shows and the emerging women. She checks with the wait staff in the restaurant. All the waiters agree that they will help out in the bar or disco when their tables empty. The waitresses express their displeasure at being left-out. Judith says, “Check your pockets at the end of the night and then tell me how left-out you feel.”

The show is perfection. But it is not the show that concerns Judith, it is the audience. This is like a fucking rock concert. Women are screaming and jumping up and down, throwing their panties. Waiters have come to her saying women are pulling their shorts down when they bend to take an order. These guy are getting groped. What the hell’s going on here? She gets goose bumps on the back of her neck. But gives a quick demonstration on how to squat at a table to take an order so as not to get ones shorts pulled down. This does not however solve the groping behavior. These guy are going to get groped. Nothing she can do about it now.

There are obviously things to be worked out, but there is no denying Judith is on to something here. Just what, she is not sure. She decides right then and there to do a fashion show on Wednesday night. She wanders into the bar and sees a milling mob of cocktail drinking men. They are waiting almost patiently.

After a month of strip shows with an ever growing mob of women and the men who follow them, she has received television news coverage as far away as Kansas City. Now she gets a visit every Tuesday evening from the fire marshal to make sure they do not exceed capacity. Two burly cops flank the stage. Boys are coming out of the woodwork begging to cocktail for free, claiming all kinds of experience. But the crowd of screaming women of all ages and in all kinds of conditions, like hugely pregnant, or swooning and falling from the arms of their chairs where they stand to get a better view? This she cannot deal with. So, once the first show starts, she heads for Horton’s for a drink and a quiet dinner. They hold a seat for her at the bar and a table in the dining room. She loves the piano bar. Johnny plays jazz classics so soulfully.

The minute she's seated at the bar a dirty martini is placed in front of her by a smiling bartender named Bill Bailey who always winks at her. Everyone up and down the bar looks at her and they all smile. The gorgeous waiter named Tom blows her a kiss when he comes to the bar to pick up an order. This is more like it. She eases out of her jacket and crosses her legs, letting one black open toed high heel dangle from her toes, rocking slightly. Johnny swings into "Straight No Chaser" and she smiles and nods at him. He winks at her too. A tall blond man in his early twenties walks up and wraps his arms around her from behind. She takes a deep breath and nearly swoons he smells so good.

She longs to leave Chuck and Beefeaters, the screaming hordes of women, repressed too long and full of pent up rage and randiness. Her success is a monster she can no longer control. She's made more money than she imagined she would. It's socked away in her own account.

She longs to leave the sinking ship that is her third marriage. Henry is on his way down. He'll probably drink himself to death and she knows there is no way to stop him. She doesn't participate in Henry's drinking. He takes no pleasure in it. He's just getting drunk. Henry's started to stink.

My Blog Is Fading Away

I haven't given you much of interest lately. And my blog roll just makes me feel guilty. My two year anniversary is coming up in December or January, I can't remember anymore.

I've been talking about my novel forever it seems, and now it's time to get serious. I can't write here and keep focused on the story. I've disassembled a linear first person narrative story and now I have to figure out how to write it anew in a more interesting way. I have to sneak up on you with this story or it's just too awful, relentlessly painful. I insist on keeping the major events intact, but they will be revealed in a present time, mostly in Santa Barbara. See, I can't even write a decent placeholder.

And to be honest watching my numbers climb on twitter while they dwindle here is not a great incentive to be prolific here. I like the immediacy of the conversation on twitter. I like seeing you there and discovering a new you that I never saw in your blogging. I'm not dismantling Utah Savage, but I am going to be posting less frequently.

I've found lots of agents on twitter and some of them are on my blog roll. I've found publications that are having contests or are asking for submissions from poetry to the novella. I need to focus my attention there and start getting serious. I'm old and time might be running out.

I've moved most of my writing to this place, relearned to write here, on blogger. So I'll keep writing here, but mostly on the fiction for now. Feel free to look in and see whether I'm making a story better or worse. And if you want to start a conversation leave a comment here or find me on twitter. It was fun while it lasted.

My Horoscope This Week

On the surface, everything looks just fine as your day moves along according to your plan. But even if you have an upbeat attitude today, it's apparent that something weird is going on and you cannot put your finger on it. Just accept that the wall separating your life from the Twilight Zone has worn thin and there is a surreal flow of energy between the two worlds.

National Equality March

This is a lovely fall day and I have spent it inside listening to the speakers at the National Equality March and tweeting my support for granting full equality to all our citizens. It is astonishing to me that in 2009 there are still people who are afraid that their rights will be trammeled if we respect the rights of others (already guaranteed by our Constitution). And so we go about deliberately taking civil rights from our GLBT family, friends and neighbors, state by state. We write legislation taking rights away. There is nothing less democratic and more hateful than this. Why is it that the right wing always wants to deny full citizenship to Native Americans, women, African Americans, and GLBT people? It is exactly like the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s, which gave full civil rights to all citizens, excluding no one. But these civil rights have been amended by various states to exclude GLBT people explicitly--most notably by California in it's recent passage of Proposition 8 in November 2008. Utah is another state that has recently attempted to legalize discrimination against GLBT from every aspect of full participation in society--housing, employment, marriage, service in the military and national guard.

Bill Clinton had the opportunity to oppose Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the Defense Of Marriage Act, but failed to do so. In my opinion this was his greatest failure, this abandoning of the rights of all our citizens to full participation in our society.

President Obama gave a wonderful speech last night in support of granting full civil rights to GLBT citizens by ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the Defense Of Marriage Act. He did not set a time limit, but I believe he will follow through on his promise. If he does this, he will have earned his Nobel Prize.

Now the Good News

Today I had the follow-up appointment with my hematologist. I went with trepidation, since last time I saw him it seemed I was facing a bone marrow test. I've heard this is a hellaciously painful test. I also know the the diseases they're looking for are bad and worse. There is no good thing that they are likely to find when taking bone marrow, since what they're looking for are mostly autoimmune diseases that range from bad to dire.

Today they had the results of my abdominal ultrasound which showed normal spleen and liver. The only problem they found was several gall stones. I have no symptoms of gall stones--no pain, no nausea, no vomiting. And even better than that news, was the news that my platelet count is up. It's not normal yet, but it's better than it was two weeks ago.

From now on I will have an appointment with Dr Frame, my sweet, cute, friendly hematologist every three months to monitor my platelet count. This means between my once a month appointment with my internist to check my clotting factor as well as the four appointments a year with the charming Dr Frame I'll be getting the best possible care. If he ever decides I have to have my bone marrow looked at, I'll know it will be an early diagnosis and that he will make sure it hurts as little as possible.

Hooray for Medicare, the best health insurance in this country! This is the public option I hope all of you get. I have never had any test or referral challenged by Medicare.

Big Cyrus

Cyrus came to me from Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. I'm one of the few people who prefers an adult dog to a puppy, so when Best Friends found Cyrus in dire straits and on very shaky ground they called me. He'd been kept for nine years in a "shelter" in the desert outside of Tucson. The woman who was collecting unwanted animals had Cyrus since he was a puppy. For nine years she fed and watered him, but did not address his health problems. Then she died, suddenly, of a heart attack, leaving 93 animals unattended until a family member of the woman couldn't reach her by phone and called the authorities. The police called Best Friends to come deal with all the animals. Cyrus was the biggest of the lot and had some of the biggest problems. His teeth were a mess, he knees were shot, his thyroid was in need of medicine, and he was in serious pain due to arthritis. Best Friends did all the work they could to improve Cyrus' chances. His teeth were cleaned and the worst of them extracted. He was put on pain medication and thyroid medicine. Then they needed to find him the right home. I feel very lucky to have been the one they chose to take him. He is a saintly, sweet, loving soul and I've loved every minute with him.

Due to Cyrus' joint problems he's only able to hobble outside a couple of times a day to do his business. He isn't comfortable outside. He's very sensitive to loud noises and will cut off a pee mid-stream if a walnut falls from the neighbor's walnut tree and hits the ground with a soft thud. I know there will come a day when he can't rise. That will be the day I call The House Call Vet to come give him the easy way out. Too bad our doctors aren't allowed to ease our way out of a bad end. How is it we are more compassionate to our pets than we are with our fellow humans?

Yesterday The House Call Vet came by to check on a sore on Cyrus' muzzle, close to his nose that flared up and required antibiotics. Turns out it might be a tumor. It's in a very bad place for surgery and even if it could be treated it would take a forklift to get him out of here. He weighs 170 pounds. I weigh 145 pounds. If Cyrus doesn't want to budge from his bed beside my bed, I can't make him. He's had two good years with me. More than Best Friends thought he'd live. So I will cherish every second I have with him.

This Week in Bad News

Tomorrow I go to the oncology hematologist to find out the results of the tests he ordered and to plan the next step in diagnosing the cause of my low platelet count. In the meantime I've seen both my therapist and my psychiatrist. They seem to think I'm reacting to bad news well. We just didn't know how bad bad news might be. So, up to that point I was reacting to uncertainty the way anybody would, bipolar or not.

But now I have the result of my recent eye exam and I have rapidly worsening cataracts. My eyes are getting bad fast. This might have something to do with my seeming inability to read a book. I used to read a book a day. I might forget my vitamins but I never went a day with out taking a very big bite out of a book. It's been two years since I read with the sort of passion and focus I always had. Maybe the new glasses will help brighten my outlook, but I'm feeling pretty gnarly. right now.

I called my Congressman, Jim Matheson this morning to express my hope that he vote for a robust public option in healthcare reform. The staffer who answered the phone, hung-up on me the minute I said, " ...robust public option..." Then I went to twitter and looked up Congressman Matheson to tell him how offensive that hang-up was. I sent him messages for about an hour. Then I noticed other twitterers were picking up my tweet and retweeting it. Pretty soon two Utah reporters were retweeting my tweet. I hope Congressman Matheson gets my message.

I was shocked to find that I actually made a doctor appointment at 10:30 tomorrow morning. I must have been rattled when I made the appointment. 10:30 AM for me is like 4:00 Am for most people. I hate mornings. I'm a night person.

And to top it off, my big dog Cyrus has had a sore on the side of his very large muzzle, next to his very big nose. It was so bad over last weekend I called his Veterinarian, The House Call Vet, for a prescription for antibiotics. Monday it looked a bit less red, less swollen, but Tuesday it looked bad again. I called The House Call Vet again and this time asked him to come take a look at it before this Weekend. He'll be here any minute.

I'm dreading tomorrow.

I'm Losing My Keys; Am I losing My mind?

This first happened about a month ago. I was cleaning up a bit--doing laundry, emptying trash, tidying up, making trips from the little house to the big house to change the laundry from the washer to the dryer, bringing clean clothes into the little house to fold and put away. And somewhere between here and there, I misplaced my keys. I hadn't left home so the keys are here, somewhere, unless I tossed them in the trash when I poop scooped. I searched pockets and purses, I looked under furniture. I emptied trash and looked behind the garbage cans. Nothing. And all the while I looked I grew more panicked, more desperate. Two friends helped me look. Nothing. I finally gave up and started over getting a new set of keys made. Once I'd done that, I moved on, forgot about finding the old set and resolved to hang on to the new set. Well it's happened again, and in much the same circumstances. It's not like losing a key. This is a gob of keys on a key ring with a bright red plastic tag.

Keys are a metaphor for a lot of things, but the one that worries me most is my mind. Am I losing my mind?

Losing keys was one of the things my mother started to do when she lost her mind. She first lost her keys. Over and over again, she lost her keys. Lost keys was not the only thing that was going on with her, but it might have been the first sign. I wasn't living in Santa Barbara when all this loss began. But by all accounts of the progress of her illness vascular dementia, it began with her losing her keys and then moved on to losing control of her bowels and bladder and not even realizing it. So I'm terrified.

The Maze

This poem is what my childhood felt like. It's what my life as a young woman felt like. It's only now when all the rest are dead and gone that I feel safe. I can't claim that all women who were sexually abused within what should be a safe place, with family, at home feel like this, but I bet it's a lot. We could be a terrifying army of wounded women, who might have become just a little bit heartless.

Daddy was an expert at driving the lab animals mad
It was his job, it was his passion. Daddy had talent for it.
Daddy married a woman with a pretty child and no maternal
Instinct drove them to it. Unhinge that child Daddy, see what
She can take. The little whore becomes your slave until she is
Too old. Unhinge that child. What is she but a ticking time bomb.
Call her a liar and she becomes one, threaten the cage again, bind her
Mind with fear like Chinese women’s feet. Women are used to torture
The women her mother hates so much, apron wearing women, domesticated
Dumb cows. The girl will run the hamster wheel of repetition repetition repetition
Until she’s the only one left alive, alone at last. Talks about it like normal life, like
normal life
Like Normal life.

The Cost of a Childhood Stolen

Yesterday I felt compelled to write about Roman Polanski and the little girl he plied with drugs and drink and raped. I'm as shocked by his defenders as I am his own behavior. I think of him as a sexual predator who preys on children. The thirteen year old girl was not his only child victim. Jang-chub Ozer pointed out to me in a comment to that post yesterday, his next little girl was Nastassja Kinsky. At fifteen Kinsky was Polanski's sexual partner. Did he drug and rape her? I have no idea, but no matter the how and why of that relationship, it did lead to a Golden Globe Award for her role as Tess in Polanski's adaptation Tess of the d' Urbervilles the marvelous novel by Thomas Hardy. It was at the urging of her parents, that Polanski was prodded into helping her career along, perhaps keeping promises made. Two more parents who should have remained childless. A movie career doesn't make up for a childhood stolen. And who are all the people in Polanski's social circle who have no qualms about a middle aged man and his child lovers?

This is a topic I know a thing or two about. I was raised by a pedophile who used me sexually until I was too old for him at eleven. I was six when he started. My father was a psychologist and I was not his first child, I'm sure. But he knew very well how to gain my love and trust and how to keep me a compliant and willing victim. And it was my willingness that he used against me to keep me silent long after the sexual abuse had ended. It was his skill as a psychologist that transfered his guilt to me. I seduced him. I was a very provocative little girl. I begged for it. I never protested. I never told anyone. But I didn't need to tell anyone. Everybody knew. My mother knew. My grandparents (father's parents) knew. Family friends knew. Neighbors knew. No one intervened. No one tried to stop him. My menses was the event that made me too old for him. He liked his little girls very young. I sure I 'm not the only one who spent all her money on therapy. I'm sure I'm not the only one who tried to kill herself over and over. I'm sure I'm not the only one who failed at every relationship she ever had with a man. I'm sure I'm not the only one only feels safe alone.

Roman Polanski and the Little Girl

I was working for the Fat Bald Jew (that was how he answered his phone-more on him another day) in Denver while my last husband got his PhD at the University of Denver, when Roman Polanski got busted for drugging and raping a thirteen year old girl, whose mother had given permission for her daughter to have a photo session with the famous director. As I recall two other bad boys were on the premises at the time of her rape. I remember both Jack Nickelson and Warren Beatty were there that day. She should have had an adult with her. Notice I do not imply that any of the three men could be called an adult supervisor or agent/parent surrogate. I've never really thought of any of this trio of old bad boys as "adults."

I remember that all of the men I knew at the time, including the Fat Bald Jew and the graduate students at DU who were friends and acquaintances of my last husband, all thought it wasn't rape. "The girl looked at lot older than thirteen." "Her mother gave her consent to the photo session." "Come on now, rape, really?" Yes rape! No one thirteen is capable of giving consent ~ drunk, drugged or sober. There is no place in the United States where getting a thirteen year old drunk and drugged and having sex with her in several orifices is considered okay or legal. If she were your daughter and anyone, famous or not, got her drunk, drugged her and had anal sex with her, would you think it was "not worth prosecuting?" "Her fault?" Or any other bullshit rationalization for giving Polanski a pass? If you answered yes to any of that, you are not fit to be a parent. If, like this girl's mother you gave consent for her to go to Roman Palanski's place for a photo shoot without an adult chaperone, you are not fit to be a parent. But no matter how unfit the thirteen year old's consenting parent was, it isn't her fault Polanski drugged and raped her daughter. It's Roman Polanski's fault and it's illegal anywhere in this country. It's a crime and no matter how it's handled, there will be long lasting consequences for the child, now a mature woman. And there were nude, provocative photos taken. That makes it kiddie porn. So let's all stop bullshitting ourselves as to who's guilty of what. Roman Polanski not only pled guilty, he skipped bail and left our jurisdiction. He should be prosecuted for that. And I don't give a shit how talented or special he is. He's a pedophile in my book.

I had screaming fights with almost every man I knew over this case, when it was everywhere in the news and everyone had an opinion. However, not one of those men was a father of a girl. They argued that because she looked so sexy and mature the crime was maybe not such a bad crime. And they argued that the mother gave consent to the whole thing. They argued that it was a shake-down, that the mother and daughter somehow set the whole thing up to get money from a famous man. I did a lot of screaming of the word "Bullshit!" What was wrong with all those men?

Introducing Snarly Gnarly Miss Marley Honey-Fitz

But My Mental Health is Great!

I had a mental health summit today on very short notice. When I get bad news and or the days are growing shorter, I call my therapist to schedule a check up , much like I take my car in for winterizing and a safety inspection. If you're bipolar and you don't have regular check ups you're crazy.

While I'm waiting for test results on medical stuff it seemed quite possible that I might get depressed and as winter comes on not be able to pull out of it. I didn't expect that my call Monday would be returned this fast and time made to see me. Usually you need to make your appointment with the psychiatrist a couple of months in advance. Not this time. She skipped lunch to meet with me. And I'm feeling pretty good that both my mental health experts think I'm peachy in the mental health department. I've been doing the happy dance. Don't worry, it's just the happy dance not the manic dance.

Even My Horoscope's Crappy

You would be smart to exercise caution today because it's easy to set your sights on something you want and start off in a new direction before you think about the results of your actions. Additionally, nearly anything you do now has unforeseen consequences and there's no way to get around this dilemma. Delaying major decisions for a day or two may be your best strategy at this time.

I'm Slipping Down the Rabbit Hole

There have been things going on with me I'm barely aware of. But yesterday when I had to get up at 7:30 AM (a reasonable hour to most of you, but the middle of the night for me} and forego coffee to have an ultrasound of my liver and spleen it hit me that my low platelet count is a potentially serious problem.

A big storm is blowing in and I've been running around putting cushions and dog beds, rugs and baskets and garden tools in the shed. I still need to pick pears, cut my Pucchinis or Zumpkins, toss the vine. I have to pick a few more plums, put the ladder away, bag the debris and toss it in the garbage.

I grocery shopped earlier today and now need to reorganize my cupboards, clean the fridge. Anything to keep from thinking. I've cancelled scheduled dental work because I don't know how I'll afford it now that this diagnostic process goes forward. What looms on the near horizon is a bone marrow test. I've just had a couple of routine tests that are considered preventive and will be paid by Medicare which might be of interest in the search for solving the low platelet mystery. But none of the possibilities (and there are many) sound good to me.

I called my therapist to let him know that this morning it was clear to me I'm teetering on the abyss that is depression. I had no desire to get up today. I might have slept till noon or later, if Nick hadn't called and told me he was coming over in a half hour to pick plums. He's offered to be my medical trustee, to be he one with power of attorney to make sure my wishes are honored.

Ms M is talking about moving. This afternoon she's looking at a job as the maintenance person for an apartment building. There would be housing, but she has big Roscoe, a yellow lab who has spent most of his life here with a pack of dogs and a permanent baby sitter. He'll miss us and we'll miss him. And she won't have benefits. I hope she doesn't do this, but a landmark birthday looms and she's lived here a long time. Boredom is driving her now. Maybe a bit of fear as well.

I have no apatite for twitter now. I'm starting to look inward again. There's work to do. I am half way through a difficult rewrite on the novel. It is becoming a complex jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces are here, what is missing is a frame to hold them in tight frightening suspension. I need to finish, give it my best shot and then move on. When you think you see the end looming you want to tidy up all the lose ends finding that one tiny missing piece.

Then again, when it's cold and raining hard, I may feel smug, snug and peachy. You never know.

Life Like Twitter

What would it be like if we all said our tweets to real people in the real world? Watch this. This is probably how it would be.

I'm Not Feeling Well

It's funny that I was feeling well until I saw the oncology hematologist Friday. I thought it was only a one time thing that my platelet count was low. But it's been the last two tests (6 months apart) that showed a low platelet count. Now that I know it's been going on for awhile, I'm starting to worry a little. After my exam yesterday and talking to my new doctor, it looks like it might be more serious than I thought. How powerful is the mind that once I realizes it might be a more serious problem I start to feel ill. They took more blood to do other tests, more specific tests. It's now a waiting game to know whether it's bad or really bad.

Tomorrow at the crack of dawn I have to haul my ass out of bed to go get an ultra-sound of my liver and spleen. I have to do this fasting. This is tantamount to torture for me. No coffee with loads of milk and a bit of sugar? No dallying with the dogs? Out to pee and then breakfast for them and then I'm gone for most of the day. I have to drop my car off in the AM for safety inspection and to have it winterized. Then a friend is giving me a ride to the ophthalmologists for the appointment I should have made two years ago.

Again, I apologize for not visiting you at your blog to read and comment. I'm still rewriting the novel and tweeting. I've found that twitter is a powerful tool for lobbying politicians for healthcare reform. Now that I'm old and less inclined to do the boots on the ground work of real protesting, along comes twitter to make it possible to demonstrate online. It's a powerful tool. Not a social networking tool, but a power to the people network for societal change. I resist the "friending" thing. If I talk to you on twitter, your part of my network. You're all special to me, so "friending" seems silly to me. It is the friending aspect of FaceBook that turns me off, like high school cliques. Twitter is not like that. And I love the challenge of saying something meaningful in short bursts. I think in many ways this can only help with writing in general.

For the few of you who do still stop by, I thank you from the bottom of my shriveled little heart.

Let's have a passionate conversation about racism in America

Grayquill said...

The speaker seems very invested in keeping racism as a tool in his tool box. Some truth but mostly huge generalities made from a few extremists. I think he became in his talk the one he speaks against.

themom said...

I saw a little of what Graquill mentions...but the general premise is the point. I get more and more frustrated by those who state that this is NOT a racial environment. I beg to differ, and believe just about all the rethuglian mechanics of the moment are all to "stonewall the black man." When will this mentality go away? Not in my lifetime I'm afraid.

Ghost Dansing said...

for pete's sake.... we're talking about the rump core constituency of the Party that has been using the "Southern Strategy" for the last 30 years....

As a member of the Reagan administration in 1981, Atwater gave an anonymous interview to Political Scientist Alexander P. Lamis. Part of this interview was printed in Lamis' book The Two-Party South, then reprinted in Southern Politics in the 1990s with Atwater's name revealed. Bob Herbert reported on the interview in the October 6, 2005 edition of the New York Times. Atwater talked about the GOP's Southern Strategy and Ronald Reagan's version of it:

Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn’t have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he’s campaigned on since 1964… and that’s fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster...

Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps...?

Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can't say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

Utah Savage said...

Interesting points of view here. I believe most of it is racist and isn't even coded. It's blatant. It's in-your-face. It's a view of itself as entitled to be on top even when one lives at the bottom: at least they think they're better than black people who they still think of as niggers. I think that's not even conscious. It's drunk with mother's milk and all of daddy's conversation. It's preached at the pulpit and taught in the schools. Texas school boards have been trying to find a way to take the negative parts out of the history books. What are the negative parts? White emigrant culture slaughtering native peoples and working slaves stolen from Africa. Yes, by all means lets take the history books back to the 50s before everybody got so damn uppity.

All this in response to this video. What do you think?

And They Say It Isn't Racism

Grotesque, Unprecedented, Bizarre, Unbelievable.

You guessed it. I'm talking about Sarah Palin. Those words were used to describe her "speech" in Hong Kong by attendee Robert Fisk.

"There'll be one or two self-deprecating remarks, a reference to healthcare, taxation, out-of-control spending and a poorly told joke,"

To prove her shining Republicanism, Sarah quoted Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. She quoted Lincoln. She quoted Thomas Jefferson. History and common sense were not on the side of liberalism and "utopian pipe dreams". But there'd been progress. In the past, we had the "horse and buggy business", she said, then Ford came along with the motor car and the kids sat singing in the back, but now the kids have headsets. And what happened to the Reagan legacy? "Many Republicans in Washington gambled it away."

She talked, of course, about the infamous "death panels" – a big smirk here from Sarah – and "market-friendly responsible ideas" (this must have been the speech-writer) and offered slippery advice: "We can responsibly develop our resources without damaging the environment."

She spoke too fast. She gabbled her words. Scatty was the word for it. We slalomed between the fall of the Berlin Wall, the break-up of Yugoslavia and 9/11. Then it started. The war on "vicious terrorism", the war against "violent fanatics who wished to end our way of life", our battle against "radical Islamic extremists" with "twisted vision". This was not a clash of civilizations but "a war within Islam". We slalomed again. Asia – "what an amazing place!" – was at its best "when it was not dominated by a single power".

What on earth was happening? Had Sarah just looked up from her podium and seen China? Addressing what was surely the neo-conservative wing of the Republican party, she could not "turn a blind eye" to Chinese policies that created "uncertainty", which supported "questionable regimes" and "made a lot of people nervous". America wasn't going to impose its values on other countries, but America was going to have to "ramp up" its defence spending.

I would have run screaming from the room, blood pouring from my ears. But there is this last tidbit from Mr Fisk: "Then family again. "I have a husband," she said. "I think I could have used a wife. He's awesome." This really floored the Chinese. Poor Todd."

Peach Cobbler for Cody_K

This is the simplest recipe in the world. You need four medium peaches or three large peaches.
Peel and slice peaches

In a mixing bowl combine:
1 stick melted butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup milk
1 cup flour
Mix well and pour contents into baking dish
Gently add sliced peaches evenly
Bake in 350 degree oven until golden brown.
(roughly 45 min, depending on oven)
Let cool on rack.
Serve warm with ice cream.
Yum!
Cody_K I ate your serving and enjoyed it for you. Your hips will thank me. My hips will hate you next time I get weighed at the doctors office.

It's Boob Squishing Time.

This morning I had a mammogram and a bone density test. I have no reason to suspect any problem, but this is part of the early warning system for a lot of women. If I still used the thing, I have my vagina looked into to too, but sadly, it no longer exists. It is true, if you don't use certain things they just close up shop, so to speak. Anyway, whether you use it or not, get your vagina checked out and you boobs squished and if you're old enough to be concerned about bone loss, or have had eating issues, get a bone density test. It's called preventative medicine. If your health insurance doesn't cover preventative tests, it's worthless.

I have medicare, so all this yearly checking, is part of how we keep healthcare costs down. Private insurance companies are all about making money on your healthcare. They know they're going to dump you when you get really really sick and finally need them, so why do preventative tests to catch costly illnesses early? You need to start thinking about this industry whose primary duty is to shareholders, so you can assess how good a job they do taking care of you. You need to examine the books. How much do they pay top executives? How do they come up with record profits year after year? How much do you pay them to deny coverage for your medical needs? Is it worth it?

Medicare does a very good job taking care of me. I've never had better healthcare coverage, and my last experience was with United HealthCare. I was paying them $1,000 a month so they could refuse to cover the specialists I needed to see to stay out of the hospital. Insurance companies don't like the sick.