Inside and Out

Last night's sunset looked like a scene from a disaster movie. Empty streets. Blood red sky.

But inside on the kitchen island there are tulips because I pre-ordered and pre-paid for them at the neighborhood farmers' market and simply had to sweep by and scoop up the wrapper with my name on it.

This is the not close-up version with the kitchen island devoted to making hand-marbled paper book covers. I think I will post a picture soon of all the journals I've made. I think of them as Corona diaries. If you want one, you can private message me, saying which one. Some are very tiny, and I imagine them as "It's the little things" records of what has gotten you through this so far....or what is destroying you. Of course as much as I would like to send these things I've made to you, it means I have to go to the post office. Sigh. (see previous post) I hope to have the full array displayed in the next blog post.

My anxiety is better today. (How's yours?) Probably because I have not put on a mask in an attempt to go out. I had a lovely chat with a friend today wherein I explained that having been nearly strangled to death by an acquaintance decades ago, I don't do well with my mouth and nose covered, or the feeling that my air supply is restricted.

A couple of days ago as I was talking on the phone with my younger daughter M., I was describing to her the shape of the plant stand I wanted for my balcony (plants are super important to me right now) and she emailed me a photo of one from Target which turned out to be perfect. I ordered it online and it arrived in our building's package room a day later. I was going to live the big city life--one token plant on the balcony. Now I want more, more, more.

There's so much to do in any given day. How was your day? xo

Here in the Land of Lakes, not quakes

waiting for the fireworks

The barometer of my body says it's in a new and different place. My hair wants to part on the other side, and I'm still lost in this curvy city by the big river. But last night I connected the place where I went out for a glass of wine with the neighborhood I live in and the neighborhood where my St. Paul condo was. Three dots on a map of a zillion dots.

I'm afraid to drive here. Don't get into the bike lane when you turn, and watch out for the orange cones, orange cones, orange cones. There are giant potholes and trenches in the interstates (don't say freeway) from all the construction. And don't say the 94 or the 35W. Here you just take plain 94 or 35 W to wherever. And let's not talk about the W. Anxiety ramps up in the car like it did after the divorce when I marooned myself in my condo in South Pasadena, going to almost nothing. But I can walk or take the train. My new (to me) red Subaru has been christened Freiya, and I will drive her...eventually.

The sky is bigger and bluer here. Sky is distinctly separate from clouds. No grey linty what-is-what sky. Storm clouds barrel in every other night or so, and  lightning unzips the darkness. The 5th floor is a very satisfactory height from which to view the drama.

There is free yoga in the park before the farmer's market. Two seconds lying on the grass and I'm five years old because it smells like childhood. (That's me bottom right.)

The produce in the farmers' market cascades into more variety every week. First it was only asparagus and rhubarb and peonies. Then morels and bok choy. Now squash and lettuce, lettuce, lettuce, green beans, new kinds of spinach, gooseberries and red currants, and so much more.

A huge crowd came to fireworks along the river. Standing room only by the moment of showtime,and then bound in by rows and rows of people. It  sounds terrible, but it wasn't. The next morning it was all cleaned up even though they said 75,000 people came.

My living room still has its wall of boxes of books, and file boxes strewn with things I'm too lazy to file because it means bending down or lifting the box. And the TV is on a card table, but my bedroom is perfect with my favorite art hanging above the bed. And there's my desk where maybe the muse can find me if I ever sit down there.

Sometimes the morning light makes the view look like a painting. I see beauty everywhere, but I miss my friends. I wish they were here in the land of lakes instead of the land of quakes.

I believe Christine Blasey Ford

I think the place I wondered into for dinner was called the Mad Rose. A good place to go on the night when you are mad and going to see a movie about a mad king.

I watched her testimony. I watched Kavanaugh's. That night when I'd had enough, I took myself out to dinner and to the Fathom Events' "King Lear" with Ian McKellan--a film of the play from London, captured live. "Lear" is a typical Shakespeare tragedy, by which I mean almost everyone dies. It felt like a party. Popcorn and my silent cheers every time another manipulative character met his/her bloody end. Though I flinched and squirmed when Cornwall gouged out the good Gloucester's eyes. Earlier in front of the TV, I'd felt like gouging out my own.

Christine Blasey Ford walked into an environment where she knew no one except the small coterie of lawyers, husband, and maybe another few persons that she'd brought with her. She was in a room mostly populated by men to talk about being sexually assaulted. In a strange city. In a different time zone. Participating in a process she knew so little about that she was surprised to learn just a few weeks earlier, that she'd need a lawyer. She was there to tell what had happened to her 36 years  earlier. A story of assault and how she'd feared for her life. A hazy story with many of its details lost to memory's inherent failings while other details had drilled themselves into her being.

Dr. Ford suffers from anxiety. Check. She suffers from claustrophobia. Check. She's afraid to fly. Check. Yet she flew to D.C. to appear at the hearing. Check. While the fear of flying yet flying conundrum seemed to puzzle a few people, I wasn't one of them. I am afraid to fly. Flying is anxiety and claustrophobia combined. But I have to fly if I want to get to the places I need to go. I need an aisle seat. Near the front or the rear of the cabin. I need booze. I need the strange man sitting next to me not to touch me. Not his leg against my leg. Not his arm against mine. I need more booze. I need something completely engaging to read. Preferably something somewhat terrifying. Though not something terrifying about flying. Terror to cure terror. A weird homeopathy.  I might watch a movie if there's an appealing one offered, but if there's genuine emotional content, often I will sob uncontrollably--like I did recently when I watched the the Mr. Rogers movie on the way back from Minnesota. Love and its companion emotions  move us in the face of terror. Those are the moments during the hearing that Christine Blasey Ford cried.

Bret Kavanaugh was in his element. D.C. Familiar faces. Scores of men ready to believe him, rooting for him, the esteemed federal judge. Yet he came in full of bluster and protest. He would not or could not answer many questions directly. I might believe that he believes that he did not attack Dr. Ford. But that doesn't mean that he didn't attack her. In the best case scenario that I can imagine the Bret Kavanaugh of then and the Bret Kavanaugh of now might not know one another, but there was a struggle going on inside the weeping man blustering and bullying in order to protect his honor. A knock-down, belligerent, eye-gouging battle wherein the now Bret would pluck out the "vile jelly" in order to not see the past Bret.

I was such a stupid 15-year-old. I would not have survived the wild 80s in a big anonymous suburb brimming with affluence and influence. But I know how boys can be boys. In 1970 I went to a party in the woods after prom with my date. A bonfire, the night night sky through the treetops. Stars in my eyes. Romance. A perfecting ending to big event of senior year. But the only other girl was leaving just as I arrived. "Hey, why don't you pull a train for us?" one of the football players asked minutes later. I didn't know what that phrase meant. I'd never heard it. The look in that boy's eyes told me. The laughter of the other boys told me. I remember all their faces in the firelight. And their names. I remember how my date escorted me back to the car and we left.

I want to hear the testimony from the other women who've accused Kavanaugh and those who have told about his drinking. There are so many survivors of sexual assault. I want those stories. Terror to cure terror. Voices to give voice. Every time a woman speaks, another woman will speak. I have to believe that story by story, vote by vote, jail sentence by jail sentence, impeachment by impeachment, change will push its way forward. And I believe that the good men, even those who have suffered from the madness of not understanding, of not believing will, like Lear, come around to see the truth of their own tragedy.

Get thee glass eyes, 

And like a scurvy politician seem 

To see the things thou dost not. 

---(Lear to the blinded Gloucester)

East Meets West...and they pretty much agree

The treatment room's only decor

I went to see an old-school acupuncturist today. Next to a barbershop, the dark doorway opened into a waiting room full of ornate Chinese furniture, some of it covered in plastic the way your most fastidious aunt might have kept her living room in the 50s or early 60s. Not a gurgling water feature, a buddha, or an orchid in sight.

I diligently filled out the form, detailing my acid reflux diagnosis of a year ago, including the details of my reaction to the medication which nearly ended in a trip to the ER at 3 a.m. the night that my kidneys felt like they were on fire and my stomach bloated like one of those full moons that appear to be sitting on the freeway, occupying all six lanes. The scene in the acupuncturist's office then went a little Mel Brooks on me when the older Chinese lady at the desk got up to lead me to a treatment room, and I saw that she could not straighten up. Whether permanently bent at 90 degrees or not, I had a moment of Oh, nooooooo. Ruuuunnnnn. But I didn't.

Before really studying the form, the doctor asked me to stick out my tongue and said, "Big digestive problem! Big nervous system problem!" After he read what I'd written down and asked me some questions, he explained acid reflux to me pretty much the same way the ENT doctor did last year when he looked at the lesions on my vocal chords that he said were caused by acid reflux.

So my sexy voice might go away. I'm supposed to eat 20% less at my daytime meals, and 40% less at my nighttime meal (which I'm supposed eat early.) So maybe I'll run into you at some restaurant that has an Early Bird special. I'm also supposed eat very, very slowly.

Eating slowly is difficult. Like almost impossible. I get excited about eating, and I just eat it up. Boom. Done. I think I've always been kind of a fast eater, but I think things got out of hand post divorce when I ate pretty much all of my meals on the couch, flanked by two large dogs. Later when I began to care for my mom, I ate slowly because she ate VERY slowly, and I didn't want to seem rude or in a hurry. And we ate early. So that was actually good for me.

The acupuncturist was a old Chinese man with decades of experience (and with his round face and sweet eyes, reminded me a bit of the man who loved me.) He says that after a while, the antacids stop working and you just need more. He says I can get better without antacids, but it's a 50/50 deal between me and him. I have to do my part. So, wish me luck, and I hope that sometime soonish, my normally irritating nasally voice will return, and that my stomach will be more like a crescent moon. And who knows, maybe the treatments will be good for my anxiety. Pretty nifty coincidence that I blogged about that EXACTLY ONE YEAR AGO. And yesterday I was a nutcase and had to walk for hours.

And tell me, how are you?

Thank You

I've turned my bath tub area into a place to put plants. Eventually, there may be plants IN the tub.

But what I really want to say here is thank you. I've gotten some very nice responses to my anxiety post here on the blog and elsewhere. I'd send you flowers if I could. Your kindness is beautiful.

Monday: a Day in Pillville

Leap out of bed when the alarm sounds (new resolution.) Do the morning things. Put away the clean dishes. Tidy things. Walk. Update the caregiver when she arrives.

But I can't flip the switch in yoga. I'm breathing. I'm doing. But I'm not in the room. Or I am, but I'm not processing the instructions. Weird thing: At the end of savasana when the teacher's singing bowl makes it tone, I'm really discombobulated. The sound was coming from inside me. Maybe I fell asleep and was dreaming.

Then the anxiety. Oh my god, I have to get my car washed because I'm driving my mom to Miracle Ear this afternoon and I can barely see out the windows, and she always has to steady herself against the car and it's awful for it to be so grimy, but wait, Oh my god, I know I'm subbing for a fellow T'ai Chi Chih teacher next Sunday and Monday, but wait, she wasn't in yoga class so maybe it's this Monday, and now I probably can't take my mom to Miracle Ear and she is so tired of not hearing jack shit. So I make calls and texts while driving to the car wash. (Thanks, Siri.) And it all turns out swell, I didn't fuck up, but I lose my wallet and my phone in the carwash for a bit. Find them. Hooray! Get my car back. Clean! Hooray.

I go to CVS to use my 10 dollar coupon and buy headbands for my mom. I obsess for an hour. I buy a hot pink sharpie because I'm worried that her POLST form which the new doctor should have put on pink paper, but didn't will not be noticed by the paramedics if they come again. For months I've been keeping the old POLST in the front of the packet for visibility (remember this ) The paramedics are trained to look for pink.  And having two POLSTS confuses everyone. So the pink sharpie is super important. Which one? Which one? And the home care nurse calls me--ah I did fuck that up--I thought she was coming after I got home. Which is okay. The caregiver knows what's up.

And when I get home, the caregiver looks worried. "Your mom broke a piece off her dentures, and it's stuck in the drain." I should call the plumber--but no--who cares about the piece of pink plastic in the drain if it can't be glued back on? So I call the dentist. Email them a photo. Fixable? I wait to hear back. Still waiting.

Meanwhile I call the pharmacy about a prescription we're having trouble getting renewed. The doctor isn't responding to the faxes for a new prescription. Then I see that the name on the bottle is her old doctor. How can that be? It's been renewed soooooo many times since we changed doctors. Has the old doctor been signing off on it? Did the pharmacy enter the old info on a new label? I call the  cardiologist because it's a cardiac med. She  should be the one prescribing it anyhow. But they turn off their phones for 2 hours at lunch. And now I have to remember to call later.  Oh, and note to self, call the primary doctor for the post-hospital follow-up. But they're probably at lunch too. Note to self: follow up with dentist. Call the plumber if need be. Call the cardiologist and the primary doc after lunch.

Note to self: Your oldest California friends are coming to dinner. They're bringing a meatloaf. You've made a strawberry ice cream cake. It's going to wonderful. It's going to be fine.

The border of the POLST is now pink. That's wonderful. It's going to be fine.

Oh, and I found out recently that a rather long essay of mine is going to be published in what I think will be a very good anthology. It's going to be wonderful. It's going to be fine.


This is what's going on this Monday in Pillville. What's happening where you live?

Signs, Proof, and the Buddha Makes Lemonade

This is proof.

That this happened this weekend.

And this.

But I have no proof of what I saw this evening when I went for a walk around the block. Looking in my patio window, I saw my mother reaching behind my cookbooks where I stash my unfinished bottle of wine. Her martini glass had been drained just minutes before, and I mistakenly thought that her body had forgotten the sea of alcohol that it had been afloat in for so long. Of late she's been congenial about her two-ounce martini. She might have seen me. But maybe not. The bottle of wine was tightly sealed with one of those vacuum corks, and when I returned (just minutes later,) it was still sealed. "That sure was a short walk," she said. "It was," I said.

And this novel I'm reading, "The Debt to Pleasure," by John Lanchester---SPOILER ALERT---overwhelmed me with its darkness this afternoon. I have no proof, but there are signs that our narrator is a psychopath who has murdered his parents and caused the death of  perhaps two household employees. The book is a feast of language and wit and actual recipes. Not to mention a banquet of arcana that regularly sends me on a Google tangent. BUT. Either I've figured out on page 111 where this story is going or my prediction of where it all will end is a sign of my own darkness. 

And I'm not sure what's going on here in my iPhoto as it interfaces with Blogger, but for the second time in recent months, a photo that I have not selected--a photo from months ago--has appeared in this post. It's a photo from Dan's memorial. I'm going to call it a sign. 

Report from Pillville: Ghosts, the Grim Reaper, and Other Thrills

my mother and her twin Millie

If you're a regular visitor here, you've probably heard that my mother frequently yells in her sleep. Or maybe you've just plain heard her. She's loud.

One morning just past dawn I heard her proclaim, "I really don't know all that much about baseball," and then proceed to sing "Take Me Out To the Ballgame." Mostly though she yells things like: WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? WHO ARE YOU? AAAARRRGG. NOOOOO!  GET OUT OF HERE RIGHT NOW! I'm usually awakened from a sound sleep sometime between 3 and 4 a.m., heart pounding, adrenaline rocketing through my body. Fight or flight, the horrified brain and body ask each other. Don't know. Pantpantpantpant. Don't know. 

Last night it was 4:45 a.m when she screamed all of the above. I leap out of bed and run to my door to lock it, considering that there might be an intruder downstairs. I dash back to my nightstand, grab my phone, go to the keypad and dial 9 to get a head start on 911. I listen. More screaming. Do I grab the martial arts stick of Dan's and go downstairs? Hahahaha. (Anyone who's seen me actually panic is laughing right now.) But, hey, I do grab the stick--I just continue to cower behind my locked door, a third of the way to an emergency phone call.

Holy shit, right?

Well, I determined that it was just my mom yelling, and I got back to sleep and then had a ridiculously stressful dream wherein I drove to Phoenix to help my friend P with her mother, knowing full well I had less than 24 hours to do so while M was here with my mom. I got lost. But finally found P's apartment which was massive and shaped like a Mayan temple with narrow curving driveways to each of the levels. It was so confusing I parked my car down below and then realized there was no way I could walk to the top. Plus, I had my cat from decades ago, Little Guy, with me, and he was squirming in my arms and I was afraid he'd run away, and then trying to get back to my car, I forgot where I parked it and then, in a panic, called M who was completely unsympathetic, but I found the car, and drove it up the terrifying driveway and found my friend P. Maybe I helped her, I don't remember, but when I went to leave I accidentally let her chihuahua, Max, escape, and he went running down the street with a pack of dogs who were chasing a car. But when a car came toward me, they turned around to chase that car, and I somehow grabbed him before P noticed and put him back on her patio, but I got lost again, this time in the network of courtyards and nearly bumped into an old tattooed woman who called me stupid. When I finally got to my car, driving down was more terrifying than going up, and I kept thinking that I must be on a pedestrian path instead of a street, so I kept turning onto an intersecting route every time I had a chance, but the roads kept getting smaller and smaller until eventually my car was squeezed and tipped onto its side, wherein a grumpy old guy with a narrow trailer just wide enough to hold a Prius on its side, said he'd take my car down the hill for me. But when I turned my back, he'd pulled it into his garage and covered it up with an old carpet and said he didn't know anything about my car. I realized he was a thief and then I woke up, horrified that I'd lost track of my cat.

Today I asked my mom what she'd been dreaming about, thinking maybe she'd seen a ghost or the grim reaper. "Oh, Millie and I were lost in the woods again," she said. "I thought we'd never find our way home."

Report from Pillville: It's all about me, me, me.

me

The trip with my mom to the blood lab didn't start well. Half-way there I realized I'd forgotten my phone, which brought on a wave of anxiety. I know. First world problems, right?

I wonder what it must have been like for my grandmother out in the country somewhere when she went to look in on her bed-ridden mother at her brother's farm and found that she really wasn't being cared for all that well. I guess she didn't whip out her cellphone from her apron pocket. She carried on.

So I carried on (anxiously) and just as I was about to turn into the blood lab parking lot, that rarely heard Prius chime, warning me that I was very low on gas sounded. Oh great, now I'm going to run out of gas on the way home with my 90-year-old mother in the car without my cellphone. Don't you just love the voices inside our heads and all the worrisome shit they come up with? And of course now that my brain had shifted into that gear, I remembered that on the blood draw the time before last, my mom got horribly nauseated with a brain-cracking headache afterwards and as we were headed home, my mom asked me to drive her to the ER where her blood pressure was found to be dangerously high. Oh great, you idiot asshole, now what if your mom gets sick again and you have to head for the ER and you run out of gas or what if  you're driving home and you need to call 911 and you can't because you forgot your phone, you fool? 

But the blood draw went so smoothly my mother said she didn't feel a thing and the tech doing the draw was wearing a button with a teddy bear (his spirit animal, I'm sure) on it that said "HUG ME!"and when he was done, my mom said, "Okay, I'll take that hug." Oh, no. Mom, he really doesn't want to hug you, said the voice. But he did. He hugged her and his eyes welled up and he told my mom she'd made his day. You're an asshat, Denise.

So my mom felt fine and we got gas and drove to get fro yo and then went home. But before that, as we were walking the mere 20 feet to the car, she made a tiny misstep, not a stumble exactly, just a minuscule something--oh my fucking god, she's falling, oh no--and my brain and my muscles conjoined their anxious efforts so that evil talons of pain clutched my lower back. Now you're fucked up for sure. 

And I kind of am. I almost never take Advil, but I took two this morning before I went to yoga where I pretended to be 90 and stretched the tiniest bit while moving almost imperceptibly and imagining my breath and powers of the universe marshaling forces to heal me. I'm somewhat better. Oh, shut up, Denise. Just shut up.

"I'm in it for the endolphin rush" --quote from Postcards from the Edge

Dolphins are too hard too hard to photograph. So here's a pair of terns. It looked like an argument.  

The beach this morning walk yielded many dolphins (many of them babies) twirling out of the waves, and a pair of body surfing sea lions. Somehow that wasn't enough for me. The day devolved into anxiety, and I suppose it was a good reminder of how I used to be about 97.6 per cent of the time in those early years post divorce. 

It rarely happens now, and when it does, I ask why instead of thinking, well shit, this is the way it is. This is the way I am.  It might be that I have some pre-flying anxiety  since my mom and I will be going to the east coast soon for her annual trip, and after I leave her at my brother's place I will be flying around here and there. I can handle that. It might be because last night I dove into the inner depths of Dan's iPad and found beginnings of songs he'd started but never finished. So I emailed them to myself. Like this:

How I long for your crazy sadness,
Enlightening gladness
Inexplicable madness

And then this morning when I woke before six and turned on my computer, wow--for a split second, Dan was alive because there was email from him in my inbox!--and I suppose that started my day in an unbalanced fashion. I could not concentrate on writing at all today, but did manage to read, so that's something. 

I drank two glasses of wine with dinner while my mom and I talked about the birds that will be showing up this winter. The buffleheads. The grebes. It was your basic "Tell me about the rabbits, George" conversation.We're waiting for those winter birds. And we're hoping for pelicans. The first winter they were diving into the marina non-stop, the next winter not so much. Who knows how it will be this winter. Who knows.

Secret Tuesday Afternoon Margarita or How Not to Be Afraid

Set out to mail a letter and when your feet want to take you to a Mexican restaurant, let them.

When the hostess tries to take you to a table, tell her you want to eat in the bar.

In the bar, order a a Margarita and a bowl of albondigas--never mind that you are a vegetarian and drink wine only on the weekends.

Admire the orbs of grease shining in your soup bowl. Look for constellations as you cut into the meatballs while praying that the animals providing this feast lived and died at the hand of kindness.

Notice the men at the table against the wall. The 80-something father, white eyebrows like awnings, his hands gripping the edges of the table as if the earth's turning on its axis might be power enough to spin him into the next world--while the son (your age) silently sips his coffee.

Listen to the conversation at the bar behind you. Young Guy With a Beer speaks to Older Woman:
"That's one big ass tortilla chip you've got there."
"Tostata or something like that," she says. He goes on to tell her without a trace of an accent that he's from Spain, and in Spain they eat soup out of bread bowls.
"You eat the soup and the bowl," he says as if it's the most exotic thing ever. She offers him a bite of the big ass chip and some guacamole,  and he takes it while you nearly go insane with anticipation.
"Can I buy you a drink?" he asks.
"No, no, no," she says, but somehow its seems as though the door is still open. "I only ever have one."
"Are you sure?"
"What are you doing in the U.S.? she asks. "Are you working here?"
"I have a plumbing company" he says. "But my manager is handling things today."

Meanwhile, when the waiter comes to your table and offers you a second Margarita, order a Mexican coffee instead.

When he brings the coffee that smells more like tequila than coffee, ask what they have for dessert. Then ask him if he'd mind going through the list again. Give up pondering the three kinds of flan. Order the cheesecake.

When Older Woman gives Young Guy With a Beer the rest of her guacamole, and he takes it, imagine for minute telling her how kind she is when you run into her in the women's restroom later--which won't really happen.

Do your best not to turn around and stare when Young Guy tells Older Woman he's having lunch out as a tribute to his niece's birthday. "She has Trisomy 18," he says.
"Oh no," Older Woman says. "I'm sorry. How old is she?"
"Two," Young Guy says. "But she looks like she's a month old. My sister is beside herself."

Meanwhile a man sits down at the bar. He calls the bartender jefe. The bartender calls him jefe back and gives him a big glass of something.

Turn around just a little when Young Guy orders a shot of tequila. "The cheapest you have," he tells the bartender. Young Guy is clean cut and very tan. His ball cap sits next to him on the bar. He  offers Older Woman a drink again. She's pretty. Red hair out of a bottle. Fifty or fifty-five.
"No, no, no," she says. "I only drink Chardonnay."

Tell yourself that you only drink on the weekends. That you're a vegetarian. That you're not afraid.  That you're the jefe--at least of you. You are. You are. You are.

Pay your check and get the hell out of there. Walk home the long way, alternating looking up at the sky and walking with your eyes closed, counting the steps--working your way up to thirty. Thirty steps blind, always cheating with eyelids fluttering open when you try for thirty-one.

Scream. Laugh. Scream. Laugh.

Life in Margaritaville had a few days where it felt like we were on a tightrope affixed to a seesaw on a pitching ship.

The trip to the endodontist seemed like a good thing last Thursday since the tooth had been wanting some attention for a while. My mom was full of novocain Thursday evening. It was after 6:00 when we arrived back home. She had a little leftover homemade cream of celery soup and a martini and called it dinner. Her mouth was so numb that chewing anything at all seemed like asking for trouble. She went to bed. I slept with my door open, fearing that moment when the anesthetic finally wears off.

She looked rather peaked in the morning, her jaw on the affected side a purple golf ball, but she had already mushed through a donut soaked in coffee by the time I got downstairs. Her tooth was definitely hurting, she said, but she'd taken her arthritis acetaminophen. She wasn't great, she said, but she was okay. I went to T'ai Chi Chih.

I thought the howling might be the neighbor's dog. I could hear it from the garage as soon as I opened my car door. My mom was in her room hovering around her pill boxes, hands to face like Edvard Munch's screamer. "I can't take it, Millie," she said. "I can't take the pain, Millie." I am not Millie. Millie is her twin sister who lives in a nursing home in Maryland. I  called the dentist immediately. Got a prescription for vicodin. Gave my mom an ice pack. Ascertained that she was in her right mind despite the ache in her jaw. Checked to see if she had a fever. And proceeded to suddenly feel my own weird array of aches and pains swirling with a large dose of anxiety as I headed for that state of omygodwhaddoido.

The doorbell rang then. M was here earlier than usual for the weekend. When I told her what was going on, she threw open her arms and said, "Well, I'm glad I'm here then!" In the surreal movie version of this story, the camera would pan back to her and there she'd be in tall boots and a super-hero cape.

M and I went to the pharmacy and got the pain meds. Vicodin. Which my mom can't take. But forgot-- until the next morning when she woke up with the dry heaves. "I know I can't be pregnant," she said. "But I sure feel like it." But by noon on Saturday, she was almost feeling like herself. We got dressed up Saturday night and went out to the yacht club buffet and watched the boats float by festooned with Christmas lights. Shortly after we got back the man who loves me arrived. He and I sat at the kitchen island drinking wine while my mom stood across from us with her martini (so much better than the one she had at the club) and we laughed and talked about I don't know what. But we were laughing, which is the best pain killer ever.  Oh--and we were feasting on the cookies my mom had made off with from the dessert platter. She swiped a big linen napkin and tied them up like a present. Feeling like herself again. There are still a couple of those cookies left. I'm going to go have one.

Escape from Pillville

Thanks to the presence of M who has been a regular weekend visitor, I drove away from Pillville on Saturday afternoon. The man who loves me and I met for dinner wherein we devoured a stack of panini and went to see my friend, the famous actor, peform in a show. I then had my typical anxiety attack while driving at night, nearly hyperventilated on the 2 South, and was actually relieved to be lost for a quarter of an hour in the man who loves me's hillside neighborhood. Nobody died. And I strengthened my complex love/hate relationship with my nav unit. "Turn right," she said.
"Are you fucking kidding me? I am not turning on that dark and narrow winding death trap of a miserable excuse of a city street. Figure out a different way to get me there, bitch."

I got there eventually. Nobody died.

When we were first dating, the man had to come get me after I'd tried to drive to his place and ended up on a street called Valley of the Moon or something like that. It was on the edge of a cliff and had no guard rail--and may have actually been on the moon. I was so freaked out that I felt as if I was bounding, gravity free, around those hairpin curves.

But it was a lovely respite, this Saturday night and Sunday morning, despite the hyperventilating and the getting lost, though I think the man who loves me would have, these three and one-half years later, come to retrieve me again. I believe he told me this very weekend, that he not only loved me, but that he liked me. Which is nothing short of amazing because, if I may be so retro as to dip my toes into the waters of Divorceville for a moment, it's worth noting that Mr. Ex neither loved me nor liked me.

But I no longer live in Divorceville. And I'm not sure I could even find my way there from here at this point. And if I tried I would, most probably, hyperventilate.

My respite also included breakfast with excellent coffee, perfectly toasted toast--which is always more of a miracle when someone makes it for you. Why is that?

I returned to Margaritaville/Pillville late Sunday afternoon to find everything in good order. There was leftover homemade lentil soup that M had made for dinner the night before. I heated it up, added quesadillas, and smoked trout, and there I was back in the rhythm of my regular routine. Just like that.

Today M left to go back to school. "I miss her," my mom said tonight at the dinner table. Yes, Monday is brim full of missing. And this particular Monday is also full of moon.

At My Window With a Broken Wing

There's a Canada goose with a broken wing at the pond in the mobile home park where my brother lives. Some asshole came through in a pick-up truck and tried to hit a flock of them that were blocking the road. They do that, the geese, just take their good ol'time slap-slapping their flat goose feet in the middle of the street. So this guy, Mr. Asshole, missed on his first try, so the story goes as told by the person who saw it happen, and he backed up and made a second run at them and got one. Now there is a goose with a wing that drags on the ground. I saw him when I went out for my walk the other day. He looked happy enough, hanging with the other geese on the side of the pond. There is some discussion as to whether the wounded goose should be sent to a rescue place or just hang out in his usual spot. This flock does not migrate anyway. They have a good thing going at the pond where some domesticated Embden geese live for the enjoyment of the park residents. A couple of Mallards joined the flock some years ago, and last year or the year before, two Chinese geese showed up--perhaps dumped by someone. This morning there was a blue heron literally sticking out of the crowd with its long legs and long neck. Kind of a waterfowl convention.

It must be weird not to be able to fly if you're a goose. Maybe that goose is uncomfortable with the prospect of that, just like I'm uncomfortable right now bouncing through turbulence in a Southwest Airlines jet telling myself that the rough air is bound to smooth out soon. I cope much better when there's wi-fi on the plane. I feel connected to people I know and love when I can read blogs and post to my own blog, and email. Facebook helps too. There they are the faces of my family and friends. I can get pretty tense without that little link to my fellow humans.

There was the gin time not so long ago when I just drank myself unconscious. But the anxiety just rose up to meet the gin, so now I don't drink at all or have just one half-way through. Wi-fi is the best solution I've found so far. If I were that goose with the broken wing, I would want to stay with the geese I know in the pond where I've been.

Title of this post is from a Bob Dylan song. Thanks, Elizabeth, for making the connection.

High Anxiety

I have been hair-standing-on-end anxious all day. Jet-lag? Post-wedding blues? Withdrawal after a record-setting 5 days and nights with the man who loves me? Pre-turning 59 angst? Realization that I am a financial life-boat? (see previous post). Contemplating and fighting against the idea that I might be linked to Mr. Ex forever just because he fathered my daughters? Grandchildren withdrawal? The fucked up news about Iran and the assassination plot? Because I miss my dogs? Air pollution after spending time in Maine's pristine air? The current heat wave/Santa Ana? Allow me to quote Raymond Chandler here:"There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Ana's that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen.


I don't have a husband.I do have a carving knife. And I'm anxious. I'm sitting outside because it feels better than sitting inside. I'd sleep out here if I had a tent. Sleeping out here without a tent gives me the critter jitters. Racoons. Squirrels. Snakes. I really don't think I can sleep at all.

A Rather Strange and Interesting Thing-- and Another

I took a picture of this house in Monemvasia on my trip to Greece last year. This year I spent a wonderful night there. I didn't know last year that the house was owned by an acquaintance of my friend T. Then I knew only that I liked the look of it--the door and the rock wall and the way the steps turned and the geraniums. I was actually sitting at the dining room table in the house when I looked at the photos from last year's trip and realized that the sole house I had photographed on that trip was the one I was now inside of.
This morning as the man who loves me drove me home to my place, I talked to him about the anxiety attack I had in Greece this year. I told him how terrified I was of falling off the narrow mountain roads that had few guardrails, no center lines & blind curves. "I need a healer," I said. "I don't want to take drugs."
Tonight a healer held my hand in a the bar of a Mexican restaurant. She happened to be in town visiting the friend I have drinks with on Tuesdays. We laced our arms through margarita glasses and coffee cups and reached across the table and  she held my hand  for a long time. She took some negative energy away, she said. We had been talking about my divorce and the on-going grief.
I can't quite explain why, but the marriage, the divorce--it seems to me the anxiety is woven through all that. They're not really separate.

I suffer from anxiety.  I like my feet on the ground.  Flying requires gin.
During my trip to Greece riding on mountain roads without guardrails generated one moderate anxiety attack--that thanks to the understanding of friends was averted just minutes after it began. T. taught me how to wrap my thumb and index fingers. Fellow writers put their hands on my shoulders when the road got dicey. T. offered to let me out of the van when turning around on a narrow road was required.
I am terrified of falling. Out of the sky. Off the edge.
When I flew with Mr. Ex, he would take a Tylenol p.m. & and fall asleep before the plane took off. No touching. No talking.
Once I had a bad anxiety attack on a plane with M. She talked me through it. "You can do this," she said. And then she just talked while I cried and sweated. There was no gin because the flight attendants had to be belted in during a storm.
I'm in the air right now. It's kind of turbulent. The pilot told us he's trying to find the "soft spot" through the weather.
That's what I crave. The soft spot. Human hands. Kind words.

Photo content courtesy of L. Y.'s notebook with info provided by T.