Referred Pain

Tuesday was the day it dawned on me that something I thought of as referred pain from my back was a whole new problem.  For awhile now my friend up the street has been telling me I didn't look good.  She'd say things like, "You don't look like yourself." And yes, I did have deep bruised looking circles under my eyes; back pain can wear you out.  But Tuesday the back pain turned into gut pain.  Every step hurt my gut.  I found myself holding my breath or breathing like a woman in labor.  I had a doctor appointment scheduled for Thursday, and I thought I should just take it easy and wait for my appointment with her, but by 5 PM I was in a whole new kind of agony and feeling like I had a fever as well as unbearable gut pain. I have gall stones that have never hurt me, but I thought maybe it was the gall stones finally come to really do me harm.  Since I'd spent the day on twitter I threw the question out there and several people chimed in with questions and suggestions but eventually all the advise was saying "Get thee to an ER, STAT!"

I'm one of those cold blooded people with an abnormally low body temperature. 98.6 is a fever for me.  I took my temperature and it was 99.7.  I waited a half an hour and it was 100.1.  Just before I called my neighbor to ask her what she thought I should do, my gut started to hurt so bad I was doubled over with agonizing pain.  She heard the panic in my voice and said, "grab you purse; I'm coming to get you."  I'd been taking 800mgs of Ibuprofen to deal with the pain but forgot that it should have lowered my temperature as well.  When we got to the closest ER, which is the old St Marks Hospital where my grandfather had been Chief of Staff and is now the new Salt Lake Regional Hospital, the pain had started to localize to the lower part of my gut on the right side.  My friend said, "That's where your appendix is" so when we got inside the ER I was sure that was going to be the diagnosis.  On the way to the ER in her car I was gripping my hands together and holding my breath trying to cope with the pain.  When we got inside my friend noticed that I'd burst a blood vessel in the middle finger of my left hand; the finger was a deep blue/purple and the bruise was spreading.

Fortunately as I was getting ready to leave home with my neighbor I grabbed all my prescription drugs because I knew I wouldn't be able to remember them all.  I'm on a lot of prescription drugs.  Don't do it. Do not lecture me on the horrors of pharmaceuticals.  I'm bipolar. Without those drugs I'd be dead, a suicide. It is the leading cause of death among those of us with bipolar disorder.  Then there is the atrial fibrillation.  That's another three drugs including the Warfarin.  There is a blood pressure drug, a baby aspirin, and a double dose of a statin drug for my high cholesterol which is genetic and can't be controlled with diet.  Let me think, is there anything else?  Well, yes, yes there is. There is the diazepam I take for the occasional panic attack or chronic anxiety. I take three 800mg Ibuprofen a day, I take one of either of two drugs for the kind of headaches I get.  Then there is the Triazolam I take when I can't get to sleep.  I know it 's a lot of drugs, but all my seven doctors have my list of RXs and the pharmacy checks for drug interactions whenever anything gets called in, so get off my back about it.  Are you a doctor?  Well then do not lecture me.  In the olden days I'd have died in my teens or twenties.  I think I'm a fucking medical miracle, and I do not abuse any of these drugs.  My doctors would know very fast.  I never exceed dosage and I don't use the diazepam every day.  In fact some months I don't use it at all. I'm a very compliant patient.  I know my life depends on it.

We waited in the empty ER waiting room for fifteen minutes before they came and got me (very fast by any ER standards).  By now I'm moaning and doubled over.  They took my vital signs and my fever was starting to come down.  But it sure didn't feel like it to me.  They drew blood and took a urine sample.  It was only minutes when the ER doc on call came in and told me they needed to do a CT scan of my gut.  I thought "groovy" until they brought in the quart of lime green liquid I was supposed to guzzle.  I have no idea what it is because by now I'm delirious with pain and unable to actually track a conversation.  I do know it was vile tasting and as I was drinking it I thought I might vomit.  Once in the CT room they inject a dye in the IV line taped to my arm.  I don't even remember when they inserted the IV line I was in such pain.  But it was in the crook of my left arm, the only half way decent vein I have (I've been told a million times by lab techs who have to draw blood from me that I have terrible veins; they are tiny and they roll).  I've had lab techs try over and over to insert a needle into one of my veins and fail over and over.  That I don't remember the nurse in the ER inserting an IV port in my arm amazes me; it's usually such a trauma. Not for me so much as it is for the frustrated lab tech.

When they come with the results of the CT scan, I'm fully expecting them to say it's either my gallbladder or my appendix.  But no, it's my colon.  I have an abscess and diverticulitis or diverticulosis.  I'm still not sure what's the difference, but I do know that the pain is killing me.  The pain is unbearable.

While we wait for the surgeon to arrive and decide if they're going to drain the abscess or take nine inches off my colon, they ask me if I'm allergic to anything.  I tell them I'm allergic to two things: Celebrex and all narcotics. They ask me what happens if I'm given a narcotic.  I say I start vomiting and don't stop until the drug is out of my system.  (This has probably saved me from heroin addiction). I tell them that the only way I can take a narcotic is if I'm given an anti-nausea drug first and that the anti-nausea drug has to last as long as the narcotic.  So they inject an anti-nausea drug into the IV port; then they inject Dilaudid.  Even with the anti-nausea drug on board I still get nauseated, my mouth fills with saliva like it does just before you puke, but I do not start vomiting.

At this point it's clear they're going to admit me to the hospital.  The surgeon says they'll treat me with Levaquin, Flagyl and IV fluids since I am severely dehydrated, and then depending on how that goes, they will or will not either drain it or remove it.  (Honestly, I've never been big on water since it doesn't have caffein in it).  Juices and soft drinks are okay, but really they're mostly too sweet.  So I drink coffee in the morning and tea the rest of the day.  Some of you may judge me, but I drink really good coffee and very good tea.  What I lack in variety, I make up for in quality.  At least I think so.  Interestingly no one's giving me a lecture on my dehydration except my neighbor who always asks me if I've had any water whenever she sees me.  So what water I drink is mainly to placate her or take my handfull of pills with. If I were outside working in the yard I'd get thirsty for water.  There are plenty of things I could do that would make me sweat and crave water.  But during the winter and being so reclusive and all, it just slips my mind most of the time.

At this point, while we're waiting to find out what room they're putting me in, I ask if I can go outside and have a smoke.  The Dilaudid has taken the edge off the pain and that reminds me that my nicotine level is low.  A nurse volunteers to take me out to the smoking area.  Turns out she was jonesing for a smoke too.  See, there are very many medical professionals who smoke cigarettes.  I know this in part because Ms M works in the University Hospital ER. A lot of EMTs smoke too.  It's stressful work.

When we go back inside they've decided where to put me.  I'm going to "overflow" which turns out to be a section of the maternity ward that is no longer needed.  It's called the Postpartum Ward.

(to be continued)

Every Time We Say Goodbye

If I Should Lose You

Pain: Part 2. Renovation Begins

I'm now in so much back pain that every step hurts.  Each step sends an intensified jolt of pain into my lower back and, oddly, to my gut as well.  I have gall stones that have been asymptomatic so far, but now I'm wondering if this pain could be related.  I have a doctor appointment Thursday.  I'm making notes and writing down questions.

When I left you at the end of the first chapter in my pain saga, I had dug a utility trench, leveled an area for a gazebo, and then mixed the cement for the floor of the gazebo wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow.

 Once the garage had been emptied of all it's stored furniture and antique wood working tools, I started making measurements and drawings of what I wanted.  The garage itself is just 20 by 20.  But the ceiling/roof is made up of four triangles which make the interior space seen airy and bigger than it actually is.  The ceiling is pyramidal.  I love it.  The one thing I didn't remove from the garage the first couple of years was the army camp stove that sat in the west quadrant of the room and had a chimney that exited the roof in the west triangle.  And in the coldest days, the camp stove warmed the space in minutes once a crackling fire was going.  I could also use the flat top of the camp stove to heat water for coffee or tea, I could cook on it.  And in the beginning it was very helpful.  Plus I liked the primitive quality of it.  I liked waking up to stir the coals and stoke the fire and go back to bed to wait for the room to become toasty warm.

Once I had my drawings of the things I wanted to do to garage to turn it into a cottage, I had to find someone willing to do the construction and do it without permits.  The garage was so far at the back of the property and construction was not going to be the kind that neighbors or anyone driving by the property in the front would notice.  But I did need someone with good enough contacts that we could get the concrete guys to pour the foundation for the bathroom/solarium addition.  Amazingly I found two guy with just those qualifications.  What I didn't want to pay them for was the work I could do. So before the foundation could be poured, I did the digging out and leveling the earth.  More backbreaking hard labor.  I had to dig up the root system for a big wild yellow rose bush probably as old as the garage.  I was amazed at the rocks I found in my digging.  I found more slate as well as big chunks of coal buried in the hard clay dirt on the south side of the garage.  I found big round river rocks. I found blue glass bottles and shards of china.  I found ancient marbles that I have kept as trophies of that work.  This site must have been the old garbage dump for the main house in its early days.

While I was digging out the foundation for the extension, the two guys I hired were taking out the garage door and putting in a wall with a window.  They knocked out a door that would lead to the new room where only a window had existed.  They framed the interior, insulated, built a largish walk-in closet for my massive wardrobe and a small utility closet for the water heater.

So all the first spring and summer I dug and moved stones while the two guys worked inside.  At the end of that season I had the foundation poured for the extension and the interior was sheet-rocked and ready for the kitchen to go in.  The 400 sq ft interior was now not just a big square.  It was still open but for the two closets.  That fall I had the exterior cement block sides of the structure stuccoed.  I had a tool shed built along the exterior north wall and a deck built across the west wall that wraps around the cottage.  By the end of that season I had a toilet, tub, and sink in the bathroom portion of the addition.  Once that was in, I laid the tile floor myself.  I was very proud of all the labor I contributed to making the cottage not only livable but lovely.  I did all of this while still working as a model and department manager at Nordstroms.  I had never been in better shape.  I was muscled and strong.  I think the word is not just toned, but ripped.  I was stronger than I'd ever been and I was in my forties.  And I thought I was invincible.

All that first winter living in the cottage I woke up at 5 AM to stoke the fire and got back in bed for a delicious half hour of drifting in and out of sleep.  When I came home from work in the dark I chopped kindling.  I didn't have a fridge that first winter so I kept a cooler on the porch and kept milk, cheese, and eggs there.  I was living like a pioneer at home and a fashionista at work.  It was an intersting year.

Women in Art

For All We Know

Here

Here at the pulse where the blood brings a blush
Here at this tender spot
Here is the heat, the scent
Here the flesh awaits your
tongue
Here is where I want your
lips
Here at the beginning
Here

A Case of You

Black Rock 1992

After Santa Barbara
First photo shoot
I was forty eight
Location: Black Rock, Great Salt Lake
I like the strength of the gaze
The curvy body, the hair cut
I like the contrast of flesh and rock
The grainy quality of this proof
cropped from the original
I can't remember the photographer's name.

My Foolish Heart

For LBR

My Foolish Heart

The Talent

I've sealed myself away from love and ceased
To live with passion, hiding where once I wore
Cobalt silk and saffron, where once I stood
In hot white light and stayed up late to have
Martinis.  Eating mussels at the cool club with
The fashionista girls in full throated laughter
Heads thrown back, necks exposed, lips glistening red
We were the ones, the last of the smalltime superstars
In this cozy little world in the good times when money
Flowed like Champagne at midnight, and then one day
It flew apart, and one after another, life took us by the throat, the lovely
Pulsing throat, the long neck, exposed just when it all comes
crashing down, and one by one disappears to babies or booze,
One gets her PhD, another a divorce, one checks her bottom line
And makes a marriage deal worked out by lawyers in a conference room.
In agents terms we were the talent,
We seemed to have it all out there on the
Catwalk in the blinding light, bright women
With talent and brains and appetites flying
Smoking through the evening on the phone
As we drove to the next booking for a big
Show wielding a mascara brush in the dying light,
A flash of red lips and cobalt silk.
You see us in your rearview mirror gaining on you
As the sun sets just behind the island we flash by
We are laughing and oblivious to any danger
We lived on credit like the rest of you waiting
For the good times to return.
And then in resignation get on with living alone in a small house
Kept company, protected by three dogs
Existing only as a cyber link to an outer world I will never likely
Enter again with anything but words typed on a keyboard late at night
In anything but a naked face and beige at the grocery store or the bank

© 2010 Peggy Pendleton

A Few Thoughts On the Orgasm and Men

I've never been turned on by pornography.  I know plenty of women say they like it, but I have never seen porn that didn't embarrass me.  And more than one man has tried to share his love of the porn with me, believing that if he found just the right film, it would change my mind.  But no, all pornography does for me is make me dislike the men in the films and the man who wants me to watch that crap.  What turns me on happens between my ears, and I'm not speaking of the mouth orifice or throat.  If my brain is not engaged or is repulsed by the content of something I'm supposed to be watching, my clit will be repulsed too.

It's also a problem for me if too much is going on at one time in the actual in the flesh (not porn) sex department. For instance I'm not a fan of cunnilingus and especially not a fan of 69 though I should be since the numbers typed like that resemble my astrological sign, but it's too much stimulation for me and has never ever brought me to orgasm.  I could never come home from a stressful day and decompress with a little hot steamy 69 or really any sex.  I couldn't get my mind to shut off that fast and distraction is the enemy of the female orgasm or at least this female's orgasm.

This is not to say I haven't tried damn near everything that came my way, sexually speaking.  I've had so many lovers over this long life span that I can't count them.  Hell, I can't even remember half of them; that's how significant they were.  Nameless, faceless young or older men moved through my life in a way that left me unmoved and incapable of either remembering or sometimes preferring not to remember.  That's not to say there weren't some astounding standouts I'll never forget. Tom was such a man.  But his taste for porn turned me off and he isn't really a relationship guy.  In 1965 there was Nino Cerruti.  He was my favorite Italian lover.  God was he wonderful.  He was so wonderful I refused to continue seeing him.  That's how much love scares me.  But I'm not talking about love.  I'm talking about sex.  Not to say they're mutually exclusive; to the contrary, love might be the only way for some women to feel secure enough to relax enough for orgasm to happen.  I'm not one of those women.  I was sexually objectified too young, for too long, to put sex and love on equal footing.  Love had very little to do with it. But orgasmic sex with little effort on my part has always been my preferred way to go.  Too much need or too many expectations or too much fear and orgasm is impossible for me.

And then I gave up on men.  I was through with men.  Men tend to want to control me.  Men seem want to tell me what to do.  I'd rather they just do it and pay for it and not bother me with the details.  For a brief while I had an affair with a Salt Lake doctor who despite the fact that I not only found him repulsive and rather stupid, made the claim that if I'd just look him in the eyes as we were having sex he could guarantee the worlds best orgasm.  I know, I laughed too.  But I'm a wee bit evil and a good sport, so I let him have this test of his powers.  What I proved was that I can look a man in the eyes during sex and convincingly fake an orgasm.  And I'm not nice enough not to tell him afterwards.

There was a Sculptor in Costa Rica who made quite a nice gallant civilized effort to get me in his bed.  I knew he'd be wonderful in bed.  I found him sexually attractive in the extreme.  I spent the night at his house.  But I would not have sex with him and I would not sleep in his bed.  I knew I could fall in love with him.  I didn't want to fall in love with anyone.  Sometimes sex means a great deal.  Sometimes it means nothing or next to nothing.

It's been four years since I had the slightest interest in a man.  The last man to turn me on at all walked into my backyard to give me an estimate on a new roof for the little house.  I didn't really notice him all that much until he started calling me at night.  Then there were months of cheeky email chats.  He wanted to show me his house.  But it wasn't really his house he wanted to show me.  I stayed home and gave him shit about hitting on a woman a year older than his own mother.  This didn't seem to cool his ardor much until a real estate woman with lots of tats and piercings started hitting on him.  I was relieved.  I did find him very appealing.  But he was forty something and had his twelve year old daughter and twenty something son staying with him.  And I didn't want any complications or distractions in my life.  So I turned myself off.

Readers of my blog will remember my blooming romance with Cal and how badly it turned out. There was the idea of the very young Peggy and the very young Cal.  That memory was lovely until I invited him over for dinner. And the very old Peggy was not only not sexually attracted to the very old Cal she was mean to him, and told every little detail on the blog.   It was then I decided to stop thinking I'd ever have a sex life again.  I'm not looking for a companion.  I never want to live with a man again. That's never worked out well for me.  So I turned the sex spiggot off.  My clit might as well have dried up and blown away.  I even forgot where I'd put my vibrator.  I thought I might have thrown it away, that's how serious I was about not having an interest in sex anymore.  And then a man I don't know at all said something interesting to me on twitter and now I've found my vibrator and have used it enough to make the muscles of my inner thighs and my butt sore.  Don't let anybody tell you the female orgasm isn't good exercise.  It may not burn many calories but it sure can tone muscle.

The Judith Blue Stories: #3. Black and Blue

Judith realized even before she decided to let him ride with her that Junior was useless.  He couldn't drive her car.  She always thought being able to drive anything was an asset in a man or a woman, but a man's inability to drive a car with a stick shift was pathetic.  Out of the blue she asks him, "How did you evade the draft?"  The moment the words are out of her mouth she realizes that her assumption may be all wrong.  Maybe his fondness for heroin is a habit brought back from Vietnam.  But he has a softness about him that does not speak to any kind of military service, and could a man make it through basic training without learning how to drive a stick shift?  She can always leave him in a truck stop men's room and take off without him if he becomes a problem.
"I drew number two in the first lottery."
"And yet, I'm betting you did not go."
"You would win that bet."
"Do you find it difficult to carry on a conversation?"
"Not with you.  Ask me anything."
"Tell me something.  Anything.  Make it true and then elaborate.  Kind of like telling a story.  That's right up your alley isn't it?  Verse?  Anything.  I'm having to do all the driving so you can do the talking."

"I was a scholarship student at the University of Arkansas, in Fayetteville.  I got married to keep me out of Vietnam and when that wasn't enough we got the child.  You read about that.  She thought the baby would get me a deferment,  Then they changed the rules again and went with the lottery, no deferments, no exemptions.  So when I came up with a two, I starved myself, fast, the hard way.  I had to get as close to death as possible.  They were taking everyone.  So I did some research and found how many calories I'd need to consume to stay alive but lose weight the fastest way possible. Along with the starvation diet, I took speed with my speed-freak wife and ran obsessively while she doodled the days away.  The day I got on the bus to Little Rock for my physical I was eighty nine pounds and I was speeding and on acid.  They didn't even bother to weigh me.  When I got off the bus I winked at a Sergeant and asked if I could suck his cock.  We all had to undress to get our vitals checked.  When I stripped for some reason I had an erection.  My heart rate and behavior was so alarming, they took me out of line, helped me get dressed and turned me loose.  I found the nearest cafe, bought a donut and a coke, and stepped in the phone booth outside to call my wife.  I shoved the donut in my mouth, started to dial and passed out.  I came to in the emergency ward on IV fluids."
"Any lasting health problems?"
"Not that I know of."

It's almost midnight but they're not far from Fort Collins, Colorado.  They've been snacking on the food Judith packed for herself when she left her lunch shift at the Beanery in Salt Lake. If Junior could drive her car they could have taken turns driving and not had to stop for the night.  Judith has a fondness for road trips.  But she can only drive so long without a relief driver.  She says, "We'll find a motel outside of Fort Collins.  You get your own room."
"I have a friend in Fort Collins.  A novelist.  James Crumley.  I'm sure he'll put us up."
"It's kind of late to call him don't you think?"
"Maybe your right.  I think he got married.  He teaches here."

She finds a Motel 6 just off the interstate and they pull into the parking lot.  And just as he's getting out of the car she says, "What's your real name?"
"Junior Lee Black"
"Is your first name really Junior?"
"It is now.  Why are you asking me about my name?"
"I don't know.  It's just that I've gone to school with you and worked with you and to everybody you're Junior.  But guys called Junior are usually guys with the misfortune to be named for their fathers."
"Why misfortune?"
"Because the men who insist their sons carry their names usually want their sons to be an extension of themselves.  It seems so narcissistic.  Is your father a dick?"
"No, he's a great guy."
"Does he know you do heroin?"
"Yea he does and he still loves me."
"Did you have a happy childhood?
"It was perfect."
"Then why are you such a fuck-up?"

Strange Episodes

 
First I'll give you a description of what the first three or four of these episodes felt like:  At first it only happened if I'd been sitting at my typing chair or on the edge of my bed watching TV.  I'd stand up and feel an intense gathering of the muscles of my pelvic girdle.  The muscles would all bunch or begin to feel as if they were in a spasm or cramp.  It was instantaneous and though not exactly painful, it was the strangest sensation I've ever had.  Not exactly a cramp but a more like a muscle seizure, as if they were grabbing my hips tightly, so tightly that the next sensation I felt was the loss of mobility of my legs.  I felt my legs go useless and floppy.  I had to hold on to something just to stay upright.  I leaned on a desk or the back of a chair to hold myself upright while my legs were useless.  First the knees buckled and then my feet went floppy.  It wasn't just the muscles surrounding my hips and buttocks that were seized this way; it was the interior muscles as well as if my bladder and bowel were also in a gathered, spasmed state.  And in each case I felt I needed to head to the bathroom pronto, but had to help my legs by picking them up with my hands and helping them move forward.  My feet would flop out and then hold.  And within a few seconds my pelvic girdle would uncramp and my legs would come back online.

In the recent past I took a couple of falls.  Both falls were easy to explain.  When the first on happened I was trying to find out what was wrong with the clothes dryer (loaded with clothing fresh from the washing machine and so adding considerable weight to the dryer) so I muscled the dryer away from the back wall and then wedged myself around the side of the dryer to peer at the place where the vent hose attaches to the back of the dryer close to the floor.  It was a tight fit, me between the dryer and the short wall beside it.  I was both bending over and stretching to reach the back of the dryer when my feet lost contact with the floor and I tipped forward onto my head, neck, and shoulder.  Even to me, struggling to get my feet on the floor, it had a comic aspect.  Just tip me over and pour me out.  The other fall was my flight from the end of the movie Crazy Heart which was a kind of mad dash from my past.  I tripped and fell on my side, all the way down, from head to toe.  It knocked the wind out of my and I lay there stunned for a moment in the still dark theater.  I don't think the falling and the odd loss of the use of my legs and feet are related.  I don't think the falling was much more than clumsiness.  But I've been experiencing sever lower back pain.  This is nothing new, and it doesn't take much to tweak the muscles in my lower back.  I spent more than a year in the grip of sciatica in 2003.  Often the pain was so intense I could do nothing but weep and wait for the pain to lessen so I could climb the rest of the stairs.

But three days ago I was standing at the kitchen counter fixing myself a chicken sandwich and it happened.  I wish I'd watched the kitchen clock as it happened, so I'd know how long it lasts.  It's probably only seconds, but seems much longer since the sensation is so intense and goes through a very specific progression.  This time I was standing up.  This time I did lose control of my bladder, this time I realized whatever it is it's serious.  Leda keeps coming to mind.
                                
Leda and the Swan

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
    By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
    He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

    How can those terrified vague fingers push
    The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
    And how can body, laid in that white rush,
    But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

    A shudder in the loins engenders there
    The broken wall, the burning roof and tower[20]
    And Agamemnon dead.

                        Being so caught up,

    So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
    Did she put on his knowledge with his power
    Before the indifferent beak could let her drop? 

And Now for the Second Act: Ralph Lauren Spring 2010

Dust Bowl Chic from Ralph Lauren

 This thrills me because I can put this together for about $30 from my favorite thrift store.  Half of it is at the back of my closet. Oh joy it's going to be an easy Spring.

Pain: Part 1

I did it to myself when I decided to turn the garage into a cottage/studio.  It had gone through many incarnations since my parents bought this piece of property in the mid 1950s.  It was a double garage back then, very modern for the time due to its size.  Most garages in those days were single garages in this neighborhood, unless they also contained a "workshop."  But since the entry of our garage was off the ally behind the property and you actually had to walk farther from the garage to the back door of the house than from the street in front of the house to the front door, my parents always parked on the street.  Laziness won out and the garage began its incarnation as very big storage shed.

In the late 1960s after my parents divorce and my mother's taking a lover who was a friend of my current husband's and only a three years older than I, the garage began to be used as a workshop and hideout for asshole men who had been temporarily been asked to go drink somewhere else by their long suffering female partners.  The garage had electricity so the boys could have a huge old fridge and a TV to watch sporting events while they drank beer or "Crybaby" wine. When the gang of drunks began to move away with new women (suckers) to other parts of the state or country, and my mother's very young lover died of a brain tumor, the garage again languished as a big storage pod.

When Tom and I had one of our many falling-outs I decided to remodel the garage and turn it into a cottage/art studio ( I was painting in those days).  I wish I had pictures of the transition.  It was a huge undertaking.  For one thing the garage and the entire back third of the property was situated on a gradual rise full of rocks and deep tree-roots.  There were plantings of antique lilacs and thorny  shrubs.  There are two huge pines back here.  And to complicate things a bit, huge slabs of slate had been deposited by my ex-father when he tore out the original antique mantel and fireplace and made the whole fireplace-room dark as a cave and butt ugly.  The slate hearth  he built was nothing more than a tripping hazard.  When my mother's young lover took up residence, he tore out my ex-father's hidious low acoustical tile ceiling and opened up the bay windows again.  He also tore out the slate fireplace and replaced it with a mantle he and my mother found at a garage sale.  It wasn't as pretty as the original, but it is a huge improvement on the slate slabs which my mother's young lover stashed in random sections of the back of the property (as if they were naturally occurring in this soil).

So when I began the excavation for the bathroom/solarium addition to the garage I had to do several very big jobs with very little help and even less money.  A girlfriend and I dug the utility trench from the main house to the garage.  In a climate like this utility lines (gas and water) are buried six feet under.  And these particular six feet run under a pathway that has been used since the late 1800s.  They also run beside the biggest Green Ash tree in the Salt Lake Valley.  So not only did we have to dig that trench, we had to dig around roots as big as a weight lifter's thigh.  We used shovels until we got to the tree roots and then we used coffee cans.  So we dug a trench three feet wide and six feet underground and roughly eighty five feet long.  We worked from dawn to dusk for two weeks.  If Tom had been doing this remodel he'd have rented a backhoe and dug the trench in a day.

Then my friend and I made the gazebo from a kit she bought ages ago and never used.  The kit itself was simple, but preparing the ground for it was not.  More digging was required along with moving slabs of slate.  Then, once the area had been leveled and the beams in place, we mixed concrete in a wheelbarrow and made five triangular sections of floor.  Putting the kit together was simple compared to the mixing and pouring of concrete one wheelbarrow at a time.  It took three wheelbarrows full for each triangular section.  You do the math.  Just writing this is making my back ache a little more.

It took most of one summer to do this much, and as winter was approaching we used particle board and my friend's table saw to make the fourteen triangular sides of the structure and then wrestle them into place(leaving one side open as a door) and hammer them securely enough to weather the winter and protect all the tools and antiques that had been stored in the garage so the actual remodel could begin. 

To be continued...

We're Number Thirty-Seven!

The Judith Blue Stories: #2. Junior

While Judith is finishes waiting on the two stragglers from the lunch shift, Junior "borrows" her car keys from her purse in the Beanery basement.  He unlocks the trunk, peers in, and then chickens out.  He closes the trunk and opens the back door on the passenger side.  There's a blanket over some suitcases on the seat behind the driver.  He quickly slips back into the Beanery and heads down the stairs hoping he beats her to it.  No one's there so he dumps her keys in her purse.  He retraces his steps and ends up on the back floor of her old Chevy sedan with the blanket pulled over his shoulder.

When Judith leaves the restaurant she doesn't say goodbye to anyone.  She lights a cigarette as she leaves the backdoor and strides across the parking lot toward her car.  She fishes around in her purse for her keys and comes up with the wad of them in her hand.  The cigarette dangles from her lips and a breeze sends a stream of smoke into her eye.  She's blinking back tears as she unlocks the driver's side door.  She flings her purse in the passenger seat, climbs behind the steering wheel and pulls the door shut.  She backs smoothly out of her parking place and edges into traffic on 7th South then turns right and then left to take the drive-through at the Capitol Credit Union to cash her check.  Then she turns right and right again to ease into the left lane of State Street where she'll  catch the one-way traffic of westbound 5th South onto the freeway heading north toward Ogden, then Logan, and who knows where from there.

She pulls into a 7 Eleven just off the freeway in South Ogden to fill her tank and get snacks.  When she comes out of the store after pre-paying her gas she sees a man sitting in her car.  She stops in her tracks and yells, "Get the fuck out of my car!" He opens the passenger door, leans out and says, "It's me, Junior."
"I don't care if it's Jesus Christ himself, I'm not taking passengers.  How did you find me?"
"I was on the floor in the back."
"Of my car?"
"Yes."
"Well, I'm not taking passengers.  So get out.  You can hitch a ride back to Salt Lake."
"I'm going with you."
"No you're not!"
"Yes I am!"
"You don't even know where I'm going.  Do you have any money?"
"I have my paycheck and I don't care where you're going.  I'm going with you."
"What about school?"
"I'm their star pupil, they'll let me finish my degree from anywhere so long as I publish something."
"I'm not taking you back and I'm not taking in strays."
"I'm the guy who loves you.  I don't treat you like shit.  I'm going to be famous and rich.  I'll take good care of you."
"Oh Christ!  Why are all the men who insist on being in my life such fucking babies?  You said you'd never had a job before the Beanery dishwashing job.  And in the Beanery case your sole motivation getting that job was potential pussy?  How old did you say you are?  I don't want to raise you.  I chose not to have adolescent kids."
"Wow!  Have any of the men in your past been feminists?  I don't have a great opinion of my gender either, but I'm not those guys.  Gimme a chance to prove it."
"That's what they all say in the beginning."
"No they don't."
"Open the glove box and pull out the maps, will you?"
"I have contacts in Boston."
"Do you now? What kind of contacts?  Are we just talking drugs?  What's with you and the smack?"
"Most of the time I'm bored.  Heroine lets me drift, peacefully.  I feel normal then."
"Normal, huh.  Pump $10 worth of gas and then let me know the next time you feel normal so I can dump you on the side of the road."  She takes the maps and sits in the back seat looking for an easy route east.  There isn't one.  And why is she considering taking him with her she wonders.  And what's in Boston for her?  And why not?  Her hand is massaging the tight knot of muscles between her eyebrows. She has the beginning of a headache.