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?

State of the State in Margaritaville:

Write your own blog post. Here are the pictures. Make it good.

Friday night mussels by candlelight

Saturday morning coffee on my patio

Impromptu Saturday lunch: octopus salad and squid salad

Self-Portrait with the Dead

I didn't set out to make a selfie. Dan's memorial was just so pretty I ran around taking photos of everything. I look hunched up and sad, and that's how I feel these days. Like the couch is made of flypaper and I'm a bug who can't get off. Until I'm forced to manufacture some kind of dinner for my mom. Last night was an embarrassing array of no-effort leftovers. Tonight I'm making lentil soup if I get up in the next ten minutes.

I've been in the weirdest state of mind. Like I could sit all day and Google how to bring a person back from the dead and then actually read the shit that comes up.

It's fixing to rain here. I like the feel of it. Like at least the weather is doing something.

And now I'm doing something too. Soup. I'm making soup. I'm making soup. Well obviously, I'm not. I'm typing. But now really, I'm making soup.

*****

I made soup. I chopped up an onion and some celery and sautéed them in olive oil. I added chicken stock and seasonings and lentils. We'll have soup and some sliced avocado and persimmons, and could anything be better? I'll toast some french bread and butter too.

I just made my mom her 2 oz. doctor-permitted martini and if all goes as usual, she'll soon be having a pre-dinner conversation with her dead sister and who knows who else. She's got a talent for talking to the dead.

God, don't you just wanna come over here?

And did I mention that the non-alchoholic gin arrived? I'm going to have some with a little ginger beer--which y'all might think is ass-backwards. Like maybe I should be the one drinking and not the 90-year-old. Truth be told, I'm pretty sure she'd know the difference and be pissed as hell about it, and I really don't feel I can drink while I'm responsible for her. Any minute I could be following the ambulance to the hospital, then acting like a fool when I can't remember shit when the paramedics or the doctors question me about this and that. That's how I am stone cold sober under pressure.  I can act like a drunk with no help at all from a little fermented bunch of berries. 

Sunday Evening Beach Report

I've been away most of September, only returning to do laundry and re-pack for the next adventure. I haven't seen "my" beach in weeks. Usually, there isn't much sea weed here--not like on the L.A. beaches--but tonight it looked like the sand was littered with carcasses.

There have been high tides, too. Pools of water are still standing near the dunes. I've missed witnessing these daily changes. Things are always changing, and the beach is one place where that's readily evident.

So I'm home. My mom is still on the east coast. It's been great to have a break from caregiving, but I feel I could fall back into some of my old ways. Tonight's dinner was Brie and crackers, olives, chocolate, and wine consumed on the couch while watching a movie. If I have popcorn and beer tomorrow, I'll know I'm in trouble.

Unscheduled time without obligations is both liberating and a bit like being in freefall. But I feel I used my day well. Laundry, a serious cleaning up of my patio while listening to podcasts of This American Life, reading most of the last New Yorker, unpacking.

Tomorrow I will buy and cook some vegetables.

I've been out the last two nights in a row!!!

Last night I was HERE. Singing with a tall-ship sailor I know and lots of other folks. Today I'm over HERE singing out about an issue near and dear to my heart.

That's C --2nd from the right. 

The Bright Spot

Gray day at the beach with a bright spot.

Love is always the bright spot, isn't it?

Only sometimes I get confused and think it's wine. I've gone through long stretches of just having water at dinner since Dan died. Alcohol is a depressant, right? It would be wise not to drink, right? Of course. 

But there I am at the dinner table, and my mom is doing her weird sashay between this world and some other world. "Where did you take that casserole?" She asked me the other night as she awakened from her dinner table doze. She'd dreamed I'd made a casserole and taken it somewhere to a pot luck. Last night she began feeling around on the table, eyes closed, touching her napkin, the silverware, thin air. When she began tugging on the edge of her placemat, I asked her what she was looking for. "The shooters," she said, opening her eyes. "You know, the things for leaving something on the table." Or something like that. It didn't really make sense. But she was dreaming and whose dreams do make sense? Me, I dream about bears. A lot. Does that make sense? She woke up. "Oh, never mind," she said. She knew she'd been dreaming and that it didn't make any sense. She knew what was what.

The night before last I was at the cooktop when I heard the martini glass topple and felt a splash on my heels. The glass had only tipped to the countertop and miraculously didn't break even though its contents flew through the air. It's like she's a poltergeist. You think she's just your mom reading the newspaper on the iPad, then she closes her eyes while her hands cast spells and the next thing you know things are crashing around you. I went for the wine that night. And took a walk. Maybe I'll walk with wine. A nice travel mug. Me and the sunset. Wine and a podcast. That's about as perfect as it's gonna get for now. 

But speaking of love and bright spots, where's your bright spot these days?

A good book is always a bright spot. I just finished Kate Atkinson's "Life after Life." It's going to churn around inside my head for a while. You can read about it HERE if you want.

Report from Pillville: the pulmonologist, the vascular surgeon, the ultrasound, the foot doctor, and it takes a village...

See these birds? They hang out in a flock. Genius.

My mom's pulmonologist fired her today. That's right. When she arrived here two years ago she was still smoking, still taking breathing treatments that were required after a bout of pneumonia or something, still sleeping with a C-Pap, skinny as could be despite all the good food at my brother's house, and she was still somewhat frail from her lung cancer surgery that had occurred three years earlier. A year and half off cigarettes, she sleeps with oxygen, but that's it. She no longer needs a pulmonologist.

And that wasn't even the best part of the day. When we got home from the doctor, my friend Paula was making carrot ginger soup. That's right, I came in the door, and the kitchen had someone else in it making food, and my house smelled delicious. (And right now, this very minute, she's pouring us wine and bringing me chocolate.)

Tomorrow might go less well. My mom is having some leg pain, so the vascular surgeon is working her in. Later in the week, there will be an ultrasound of her neck because of her coughing fits which originate from a mysterious tickle in her throat, not her lungs. The ENT doc is stumped. Then next week, it's the foot doctor. Keep in mind, it's foot doctor number 3, and she doesn't particularly like him either. No matter how it goes, we won't come home to the smell of soup, and I will be pouring my own wine, so it can't possibly be as good as today.

I would like to belong to a flock. A village. A cooperative of old women taking care of their even older mothers. Or maybe I'd like to be a bird.

Local Author Moderates Discussion at Book Club

Artist: Belinda Jack

Yeah. I did.
Chocolate. Cheese. Divine wine served in exquisite antique goblets.
Oh, and did I mention the razor smart women?

When the subject of sealed birth certificates came up, not everyone knew how that worked. Go HERE. You might be surprised too.

Just Hanging with the 10-Year-Old and the 90-Year-Old

"Sometimes adults think they can bribe us with sweets," said the 10-year-old as she devoured a cup of cookies and cream ice cream.
Not that I was trying to bribe her. If I wanted to bribe her, I'd bribe her with the promise of playing a board game.
"Oh," I said, "I guess I'll bribe you with green beans then."
"That would never work," she said.
"I was joking," I said. She can be serious, this girl. And she seriously doesn't care for vegetables. But I'm not pushing it. Tonight's dinner was fish, baked potatoes, bok choy, sliced tomatoes, watermelon, and cantaloupe. The girl found out she likes baked potatoes. She was so exited she called her mom. Adorable, right? Then the girl and the 90-year-old debated which was better, sweet potatoes or regular potatoes. They didn't agree.

Last night over dinner, the girl told us that she'd heard being an adult sucked. "Not at all," I said. The 90-year-old agreed.
"You get to be your own boss," my mom told her. And somehow that segued into how she and her twin sister went off to live on their own in Baltimore when they were only 17. Which segued into how they eventually rented a very stylish apartment from a retiring prostitute they knew. Only she couldn't think of the word. "Sex. Girl. Worker," she said.
"Prostitute," I said. The girl took this all in and then we circled back to growing up and going to college and working. Welcome to my dinner table where we have multi-generational discussions about potatoes and prostitutes.

And speaking of circling,  I told the girl I liked the circles she'd made with all the toy animals. It's called "The Night of the Dances" she said, and informed me that the humans are dancing too. They are.

My mom gasped with delight when she saw the toys when I first set them out for the girl. When all of the kids are here, they play in the "family room"/garage so my mother doesn't get to see what's going on out there--and I guess she doesn't remember the toys from when my own girls played with them. Her delight breaks my heart a little. It makes me think of one of the patients in the nursing home where my aunt resided her last couple of years. This lady often carried a baby doll, cradling it as if it was real. My mom stands over the box of figures and furnishings that haven't been incorporated into the girl's scenes, handling them, whispering to herself.

I think this little scene might be her creation.

Vegetarians Go Wild

This is either vegetarian nirvana, I told my friend Paula, or we've lost our minds.

The recipe for the grilled hearts of romaine came in my CSA box, so we tried it. Drizzled with its homemade lemon dijon dressing and accompanied with grilled lemon slices and sprinkled with shaved parmesan, it was fabulous. Meaty, even.

The evening meal also included Paula's homemade hummus.

the finished product

the process

And beets with goat cheese--which I didn't photograph.

And not only do Paula and I love to eat the same things, today we discovered we were wearing the exact same t-shirt from Target.

This Morning

It's morning. I come downstairs and do what I always do. Coffee. Pull up the window shades. And this particular morning I talk with my friend L who is flying back to Hawaii. How long have you two known each other, the nurse asks. L and I laugh. Three days, she says. But she's known Dan for 50 years, I say.

I tell Dan I'm taking L down the street to catch a shuttle that will take her to LAX. Tell him I'll be right back. Kiss his head. There's activity under his eyelids, and he tries to say something.

When I return I sweep the floor, stopping by his bed, which is in my living room, to kiss him or lay my hand on his head. I tell him I'm back. That his daughter is upstairs. That his family will be here soon. Friends too, maybe, I say.  I unload the dishwasher as quietly as I can. Drink coffee. Take out the trash. Throw in a load of laundry. These are the things that need doing even when there's someone you love lying in your living room actively dying. A hospice phrase. Actively dying. Right now, it seems like Dan and I are dividing that phrase in two.

I talk to him. Read him some of Jack Gilbert's poems. Then I turn my attention to the piles of things on my kitchen island. I take cookies out of their bags and arrange them onto plates. The candy that L brought from Hawaii into bowls. The strawberries that K brought into a bigger bowl. Bright red into green. Beautiful opposites. I peel all the stickers off the bananas so they look prettier. Are these the things a person should do when someone you love is actively dying just across the room? The nurse suggests a basket so all of the morphines and other medicines can be tucked inside instead of strewn across the counter. I pull one out. Perfect, she says. Thank you, I tell her.

Then I settle onto the couch. Open my laptop. I am actively living.

Report from Pillville: Life is Sweet

I am seldom out of my mother's sight when she goes to the doctor. I am the translator (interpreting what she "hears" with her nearly deaf ears) and the rememberer of what she forgets (although she remembers plenty.) Today I took her to get a CT scan, searching for the cause of her recent 12-pound weight loss, and a mammogram. When it was her turn, a curly-haired man in blue scrubs came for her with a wheel chair, and told me he could handle everything. He spoke loudly and looked into both her eyes and my eyes, so I gladly let him wheel her away.

"I take care of my mom too," the pretty blonde sitting next to me said. Both her wrists were trussed up in those braces people who have some kind of repetitive motion injury have to wear.  We talked about everything two women can talk about in ten or fifteen minutes. Men. Childbirth. Aged parents. Death. Illness. Injury. Children. Joy. Depression. Self-reliance. Technology. Love. When they called her name, she turned fully towards me and we grabbed one another's arms and held on for a moment. My strength into her. Hers into me.

 In a sappy version of this story, I'd remember the name that was called and go up to the receptionist before I left to see if I might leave a note for her so we could maybe get together again, and the receptionist would tell me they didn't see any patients by that name today. Something mystical for mysterious would happen then, and we'd all find out that she was really an angel or something like that. But she was real.

When one stumbles into encounters like these, there's not much to be done except savor the gratitude.

So my mom endured a long afternoon--mostly of waiting. She sleeps more these days than ever before, but hardly needs a pain pill. She sleeps late and often naps before dinner. Anytime a person comments on her age or asks her how she is, she says she's able to be up and around, or that she takes it one day at a time, or that she's fine except for the aches and pains that come with being old. It was not always thus. When she first moved in, there were a million things she had to have, never quite content. Every day seemed to bring a new errand for me. Now it seems that as long as I have gin, vermouth, half and half, and coffee, and yogurt in the house, all else can be done without.

Today we stopped for fro-yo at one of those places with a dozen serve yourself flavors and the full range of toppings from balsamic vinegar to old fashioned candies; from boba to hot fudge. Last time time she had the butter pecan. This time the sea salt caramel pretzel. She remarks over and over how delicious it is.

Fro-yo every time we're out. That's my new plan.

State of the State of the Margaritaville

It not yet 8:00 p.m. here in Margaritaville, and I am in bed, wearing my warmest pajamas while the wind tosses patio cushions askew and makes my house feel about as airtight as tent fashioned from a fishnet. In bed with me is my heating pad, a sorry substitute for the man who loves me. The man is tucked into a hospital bed (where he's been since Thursday night,) and if the energy level he exhibited when I left him around 4:30 remains the same, I'd say he is fast asleep. Once again he's been laid low with a soaring white cell count, and this time he had a racing heart and a fever to go with it.

"You knock me out," he murmured when I kissed him good-bye. He looked at me the way he looks at me. Go ahead, imagine it--because I don't have the words for it. Maybe it's the way you'd look at a woman made of water if you were dying of thirst. The way you'd look at a woman breathing out sunbeams if you were freezing to death. Yeah, something like that.

I came home from the hospital and made my favorite no-brainer of a dinner. Salmon poached in a little vermouth, sweet potatoes, green beens, and sliced tomatoes and avocados. I loaded the dishwasher and left my 89-year-old mother to wash the pots and pans.

And in other news, before going to the hospital, I drove to 65 miles to a divorce mediation first thing this morning. Long time readers of this blog, those of you might recall its original name, which I am prohibited by order of the court to render into  print here, sit yourselves down. The mediation went well. Yes, indeed, two months short of seven years since the uttering of the sentence with the trifecta of bad news (our marriage is over, I'm marrying someone else, and we want the house so we can raise our new family here,) the mediation went well. 

It's been a mixed day. And while I would not have ever thought it possible seven years ago to imagine   being more sad than happy on a day when the divorce mediation went well, that is how it is here on this particular evening in Margaritaville.

Red

heron with rocks and bougainvillea to take your mind off this post

8:30 a.m.

I am 61 years old, and I am wearing red pants. This is mitigated somewhat by the fact that my red pants and I are in a yoga class. But after this hour of serenity, I will drive to the seedy side of Hollywood, check my boyfriend out of a nursing home, and take him back to my house where he will take a break from the chemo and radiation that have been rendering him weaker and weaker. If chemo and radiation were assigned a color, in my mind, it would be red. So the red pants might be appropriate after all.

I do not like to buy clothes. Visiting the mall always propels me toward anxiety. I feel like a greedy consumer when I buy new things and much prefer a thrift store, but mostly, I don't shop anywhere; I just wear what I already have. I bought the red pants for daughter M to take on her 8th grade class trip. She has a master's degree now. When she abandoned the red pants early in her undergraduate days, I claimed them. They still look new, but usually I wear them only when my other two pairs of yoga pants, sedately hued in brown and gray and more than a decade old, are in the laundry. Today the gray pants were folded neatly in my drawer, but I chose the red pants anyway. I don't know why, but it seems important.

1:30 p.m.

We're home. I make fresh juice. Two kinds of kale, celery, carrots, grapefruit, lemon, blood orange. M and the boyfriend and I agree that it's tasty--though I briefly consider dumping some gin into mine. For the rest of the afternoon, it's managed chaos. There are meds to organize and discharge instructions to digest. We need a glucose meter and test trips, so M goes to Rite-Aid. I discover there's stuff, "an appurtenance," the boyfriend calls it, attached to the chemo port and taped to the outside of his chest. Tubes with dried red blood in them, a white clip and a yellow clip. He thinks a nurse in the hospital put it there on Tuesday. He has no idea if this thing needs maintaining. I make him promise he will not try to uninstall it, and I call the nursing home and then the hospital where he spent some time at last week. I call the chemo center and talk to the doctor on call. No one has anything relevant to say, so I Facebook my ex-sister-in-law who's a nurse, and then  I cook dinner. Rib-eyes on the grill, more greens with radishes and onions. Sweet potatoes.

10:00 p.m.

 I'm on the couch with M watching the watching the Clipper game. The boyfriend is in my bed, asleep. The blood in the tubes needs to be flushed, the sister-in-law nurse writes back. I fill my wine class, watch the Clippers win, all the while thinking of blood. Of red wine. My red pants. I might obsess all night over the blood in the tubes taped to boyfriend's chest. I might sleep, oblivious to all this terror, relieved that after two months away, he is finally lying next to me.

What I Cooked, part II

Collard Greens Salad with Quinoa, Strawberries, Walnuts, and Avocado

My friend Paula is game. She likes to eat. She likes to travel. She's not afraid to change things up. I might not have made this salad without her here, and I certainly would not have made my own tahini for the tahini based salad dressing....but I did. One peek at the salad dressing labels at Vons with their to the moon sodium content and roster of weird ingredients sent us to the Asian food aisle where I bought a jar of sesame seeds instead. After a little dabbling, the concoction  transformed from paste into dressing. 

But the cutting of the collard greens was the most entertaining part. Remove the center stem, the instructions commanded, then stack the leaves, roll them up like a cigar, and slice them into narrow ribbons. The result was beautiful. 

We also had a radish and cilantro salad in a citrus dressing.

And ceviche from the local fish place.

We lingered at the table, and I am grateful for that.

The wind has been blowing manically since yesterday afternoon, non-stop. Having a houseguest has keep me from retreating to my bed and pulling the covers up over my head.

What I Cooked

At the end of a week during which my mom seemed especially tired, and a week during which every conversation with the man who loves me contained the words cancer, or chemo, or radiation, this is what I cooked:

Artichokes. Pasta with pistachio/spinach/basil pesto. Heirloom tomatoes with basil and fresh mozzarella.

My friend Paula arrived with a lots of wine and chocolate.

And she brought her dog.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go eat some more chocolate.

Healing Meals

This is just marvelous, the man who loves me says when he sits down to dinner. He smiles at his plate  and gets a faraway dreamy look on his face. Tonight, day four out of the hospital, we had salmon poached in vermouth with dill and roasted cauliflower with sweet red peppers, garlic, and onions. Last night it was spinach and onion quiche (and 2 strips of bacon for that comfort food feel.) Side dishes were squash and beet greens with garlic, sesame oil, and peanuts. The night before that was meatloaf and sweet potatoes and a green salad. The first night home was lentil soup and sourdough bread. He's been so enthusiastic that I feel I'm now my own hard act to follow. Tomorrow night I might have to make this:

Before word gets out that I am a very lazy cook.

From the children's book "A Medieval Feast" written and illustrated by Aliki,

How to Heal

First this happened.

And yesterday, after nine days in the hospital, this. Welcome home committee included Piper, the ancient cat.

Tonight there was even a little music.

The daughter of the man who loves me is staying here, too--and that has been the silver lining--getting to know her a bit. Today she slept and rested most of the day. The relief crash. I'm feeling it, too. The sweet slowdown. The knowing (as much as we can know) that this will all be okay.

We are all burrowed in. Heads full of song. Bellies full of meatloaf. Present full of wellness.

Comfort Food (and that, dear blogosphere, is all the news that's fit to print)

The Eve of New Year's Eve Dinner
Meat Loaf and Roasted Veggies

Tonight: Homemade Chili and an 8-Dollar Fabulous Cabernet

And if you're a 19 & 1/2 year-old cat, comfort food is served on the coffee table.

And a fine Christmas it was!

the daughters

Thanksgiving is our holiday.
Christmas is when the daughters go off to be with the families of their significant others.

This year was different. With  C's husband off doing his four-week shift of work out on a boat, and M's girlfriend with her family on the east coast alone, both daughters were here. Old friends had their adult children home for the holidays too, so I made dinner. I was waaay to busy to take pictures, so you'll have to believe me when I tell you the lemon bars were better than ever and that the flourless chocolate cake with the powdered sugar snowflake stenciled on top was divine. I made a green salad with mini heirloom tomatoes that looked like Christmas lights and  roasted veggies that were white and red and green with a little orange thrown in for good measure (cauliflower, red peppers, brussels sprouts, and carrots.) I made salmon in vermouth with dill and I grilled a marinated tri-tip that I wish had been more tender--but people ate it. My friend Ellen brought her  famous wine jello. There was pink champagne and ginger ale and lots of coffee, and I stayed up talking until 1:30 a.m.

I meant to take a picture of all the dirty glasses this morning, but I washed them instead.

I meant to tell everyone how happy I was that they were here--and I think I did that, but if I'd said it fifty times it still wouldn't have been enough to express how much I love these people I got to spend Christmas with.

And the day after tomorrow the son and his family will arrive, so the love will multiply.

the mothers