Real Life Bird vs. Birdman

Tern contemplating fork in the road. Oh, wait. Terns can fly.

I'd like to say I'm contemplating a fork in the road, but I'm not really. I'm not even envisioning a road right now. More like a merry-go-round. This is one of those times in life when the "it could be worse" conversation is actually helpful. Because things could be so much worse.

And I don't mind really that in the past hour my mom has asked me three times what time her doctor's appointment is tomorrow. Tomorrow's Sunday, I say. Oh, I'm confused because M went back today, she says. Right I say. M went back, but it's Saturday. No doctor's appointment tomorrow. Right, she says. Repeat. Repeat. The thing about losing your cognitive faculties that is comforting is that even when you know you're losing it (and she does know that) you don't really grasp the particular moment-to-moment of it all. Thank god, because that would be so much worse, right?

And I don't really mind that it's impossible to have a real conversation with her in the way I could a few months ago. She's still pleasant and talkative and knows who she is. She listens at the dinner table and tries to chime in. When I told M that I went to the movie "Birdman" on my time off today, my mom said oh yes, she'd read about it and that the birds are very important to our world. When I said I didn't really like the movie as much as I thought I would, and tried to explain that I thought it was like "Noises Off" without the funny bits, and that it seemed inherently confusing to craft a story around an actor who played a flying Hollywood superhero called Birdman, and that the character of the actor also appears to posses certain real-life superpowers like telekinesis and levitation, and yes, even flying, she said well, you should write a story. Write a story about me called "The Life of My Mother." It could be so much worse.

So,"Birdman." Very fine performances. But why can he telekinetically slam the door of his dressing room (or did he fling it open?) and yet he couldn't open the stage door that locked him outside right before his entrance? And really, in an Equity Broadway production, when an actor does not show up for places before an entrance, no one goes to look for him? Especially when there's a make-up person waiting in the wings to do her thing right before that entrance? And the actor exchanging the prop gun for a real gun when it's some prop person's job to hand him the gun right before he goes on? And really, the story he told about how  he was covered with dozens of huge jelly fish and got stung and then passed it off as a sunburn? Gah. I fell out of the dream of the story so many times while watching the movie, I'm covered in bruises. Or maybe I'm just so fucking grumpy nothing can please me, but really, it could be so much worse.

Getting Shit Done...About Grief!....About Caregiving!

Yes. The water was really that blue. And I found beach glass too.

Or as our 4-time governor, Jerry Brown, might say, Age quod agis. Do what you're doing is what this Latin phrase means, and according to the report I listened to on the car radio this morning, it's one of Brown's favorite Latin sayings. There was live coverage of Brown's inauguration, and I almost got weepy. I think he's the current politician I most respect.

I wrote in a previous post that I'm not making any resolutions this year, but if I were, Age quod agis would be a good one. Go ahead, take it if you need one. Meanwhile, I'm just trying to get shit done which is similar, but not exactly the same as doing what you are doing.

What got done today was finding a new desk chair for my mom (has to be ordered, darn) but finally she'll have a safe chair for her to sit in at her desk. The one without arms was pronounced as unsafe by her physical and occupational therapists. New yoga pants were purchased too which means the stretchy pants that I bought after starting Jazzercise about 20 or so years ago can be retired. Honestly, those two pairs of pants really did get worn to the gym most weeks for almost two decades, but I felt I was in danger of stretching up into downward dog and suddenly finding my ass hanging out. Now I have three brand new pairs of identical black yoga pants. (Yeah, I went to Catholic school for 12 years and wore a uniform every day, why do you ask?)

And I waited on hold for 14 minutes to speak to someone at the City of Baltimore, only to find that my memory did serve me correctly, and that yes, it's perfectly acceptable to pay my mom's health insurance premium weeks late in January because that is just how the City of Baltimore likes to start the new year. They will get those invoices in the mail in a couple of weeks. Any other month that you pay late, you'll get a cancellation letter announcing that your policy will be cancelled within twelve days of the date on the letter. Which in my mom's case would be a financial debacle of proportions similar to what Jerry Brown took on with California's debt after Schwarzenegger's reign.

And also under the heading of unhappy tidings, I researched the cost of a power washing service to clean my boat dock which, as has been called to my attention by the HOA, needs a thorough cleaning. I'm normally all into maintenance and cleaning, but since I really don't get away to kayak anymore, it's like outta sight, outta mind. I'm the disgrace of the neighborhood.

And I am monitoring the fuck out of my mental health. I plan to take the month of January to record my lack of wellbeing in some cogent way and consider getting back on some meds. For those of you in a similarly leaky boat, I found some worthwhile things here:

Resolutions after a Trauma
Your Resolution Absolution
Self Portraits of Living after Loss

And in the caregiving department, I found THIS immensely helpful as I pondered whether or not it would be okay to try and get my mom into assisted living.

And meanwhile, here in Pillville, I'm doing what I do.

The Hit Man Report

Where the Christmas tree used to be.

In the dark, leave a note. Leave your ancient mother behind, asleep in her bed. Go buy milk so you can make a latté. Creep out of your sleeping house. Skulk through the dawn. This is what you must do to survive. She could die in your absence. She could die any time. So could you. Whatever. Make the coffee. Leave another note. Put her cup by the coffee pot. Open the brand new carton of half and half so she doesn't have to struggle. Sneak away again. Go to yoga. When you come home, she's in her room with her coffee. The arthritis is killing her knee. Her hip. Heat the hot pack. Re-heat the coffee. Make her breakfast. Make yours. Drag the dead Christmas tree out the patio door. Spend the day cleaning away the Christmas spirit which barely materialized anyway. Relish the vacuuming. Relish the mopping. The polishing. The dusting. Breath in the Windex. Heat the hot pack, this time for you. Read between loads of laundry. Relish the story in the New Yorker that you know would have been murdered in your MFA workshop had it been written by a student. Where is the forward motion of the story. This  is all just interior monologue. Where is the fucking scene? How about some dialogue? Realize the day is nearly over without much forward motion at all. Dialogue only if you shout.  Make dinner. Hold firmly to the new regime of salad for you. Grilled cheese for the ancient mother who needs calories. Ice cream for her dessert. Then when she's asleep, attack  the cheese and crackers. Hypocrite. Make a gin and tonic in your closet and carry it downstairs in a water glass. Just in case she wakes up. Watch a movie that makes you cry. Walk through the neighborhood, mumbling to your dead lover. Why are there so many stars? Why can't you be nicer?

I took the colored Christmas lights down from the top of the armoire and put up white ones. 

What the Yoga Teacher Said And Other News

I awoke this morning convinced that I might as well begin the new year fulfilling my potential to become the mean and angry person it seemed I was meant to be. Maybe this was the year I would  yield to my destiny as a hit man or a dognapper or a baby snatcher. Maybe I could at least get a job writing parking tickets or turning down deserving people for home loans. Even if I had to settle for being a bitchy old woman who patroled the beach threatening to turn everyone in who walked an un-leashed dog, I felt I could do a damn good job at it.

Then I went to yoga. In the park. At the beach. You know. All that blue sky and glistening water. Swaying palm trees and dunes simultaneously all soft and resilient against the sea. And the yoga teacher. What she said was something about the word hatha meaning light and dark--and I think she said it meant both the light side of the mountain and the dark side of the mountain. Or maybe I was just looking at the dunes and interjected the image of a hill into the business about dark and light. In any event, I thought  Yeah, I sure as hell am on the dark side of the mountain. And I am. And I'm not sure I have what it takes to climb up and over that mountain to the other side right now, but maybe I should not pursue becoming a hit man and just stand still and wait for the light. It will probably take a while.

I like how the light here looks both like a mushroom cloud and a palm tree.

By some miracle I had the foresight to plan a full day of care for my mom today. Feeling the way I did, I stayed outside pretty much the entire day. My new iPhone (yes, that would be the iPhone without the voicemails from Dan on it) says that I walked over 5 miles. Pretty much every step of that was on the beach. I even found beach glass, so maybe the beach glass drought is over. That's something, right?

The pile on the left is what I found today. The pile on the right is what I've found in the past 6 months.

And yeah, I'm still not really returning all my phone calls right now. I start to call people back, but then I get the feeling I might burst into tears as soon as you say hello. I have to time it just right. But we'll talk. Thank you for calling.