Waiting For Anne

I’ve been sick for what feels like a week when it’s only been for a few days so I haven’t been writing like I usually do. I did spend most of Sunday in the yard and gardens. It was so immensely satisfying to clean up my lovely plants so the new growth was revealed. A few things didn’t make: a couple of relatively hardy things which really surprises me when meanwhile my Pinks wintered over and a couple of delicate hard to grow perennials are thriving. The fruit trees have started to bloom and Wally even noticed how beautiful they were on his run this afternoon. We are leaving for Texas on Thursday and when we return it will be just the right time to clear mulch and prepare soil for the expanded veg bed. I’ve ordered golden beets and English cucumber from Burbee along with the usual suspects: Cosmos, Zinnias and Hollyhocks. My friend, Charlie, has a small green house and has started our heirloom tomato plants. Sometimes, I’m not sure what I’ve done to deserve such generous friends. I will gift him and his wife a large tin of my special herbs d’Provence blend and a couple bottles of tarragon and rosemary oil. I’m already looking forward to playing with the herbs. I swear, the weeds are worse this year and I spent two hours pulling stupid little weeds out of the rocks and out of the garden. It seemed like they would sprout up behind me as I walked away. If I were really talented I would do a CAD piece a la where I’m walking away as dandelions sprout up behind me. The dogs (Buddy was visiting Sunday while his mama went on a ski date) enjoyed each other’s company while I worked. Those two yard apes crack us up. They charge the fence whenever a dog walks by (frequently on a warm weekend afternoon) and act like they are going to kick some dog ass any minute. After they have finished “taking names” they run around one another in a sort of victory dance. If they were people, I swear those two would be trash talking at the fence and then doing airborne chest bumps like a couple of fraternity brothers on a bender. I must say, spending the day in the yard was a two-edged sword. The sun was good for me but the pollen, not so much.

I actually called in sick to work not one but two days. I never call in. My paid time off is too precious and is really just for vacations, right? Screw using it for actual sick leave! Had there been someone to replace me on Thursday I would have stayed home sick that day, too. I slept most of the two days I was supposed to be working. On Friday I resurrected myself from bed just in time to pick up Beav from school and managed to pull it together and go to Annie LeMott’s reading at the our big and famous indie bookstore. A couple of times I just wanted to slide off my chair and curl up on the floor for a little nap. Not feeling well saved me from spending any money. I sat on the floor in a corner waiting for my number and wrote in my journal. Writing in public makes me feel extremely pretentious and a little fake. Complete projection on my part because I think most people who sit and write in public are completely fake and pretentious. Writing is a private act and in order for it to be work worth reading it must be preformed in quiet isolation. So no one can see--at times--my desperation.

The reading was at the downtown version of our well known indie bookstore for the reading Friday night, plopped on the floor with my notebook out and head buried deep in my own thoughts and almost oblivious to the people around me. I felt like a “wadded up piece of paper” and really didn’t want to engage with the other LaMott fans. Besides, this bookstore intimated the Hell out of me what with the uber librarian type clerks. It’s not like they treat those of us from the suburbs like a hick at the Saks jewelry counter they are nice and helpful folks. The customers are mostly well-heeled “downtown types” equally intimidating to me. My assumption is all the customers and all the clerks hold a couple of MS degrees and a PhD or two so I feel like I can’t intellectually keep up with them and I just duck my head and go to the back of the line and sit on the floor with my moleskine and scribble madly hoping I don’t look as goofy as I feel. The other night as I was scribbling, I realized when Anne LaMott wrote Bird by Bird she didn’t have a degree. I’m not sure if she does now, either. This cheered me because there isn’t anything that makes me more discouraged than the back flap of a book lauding the author’s work at University Of Iowa, Princeton or Brown. So I it gave me hope that a college drop out was READING at this fancy bookstore and I was going to hear her read. Finally after six years of admiring her from afar.

I found LaMott late, I didn’t read her blog at Salon nor did I read Operating Instructions Wally is just a year younger than her son, Sam, and I didn’t read books about babies when Beav came along. But a few years later, I did read Bird by Bird and it changed my feelings about my own writing and made me realize, just like nursing, I am called to write. And all you have to do is read the archives of this blog to see how I feel about LaMott’s Christianity and her idea of Grace. I was very nervous about even speaking to her if I had the chance. My biggest fear is I would have some sort of fan girl melt down resembling a ten year old girl at a Jason Bieber concert. The notebook was my shield against getting all worked up with the people around me. Because the people around me, were complete fan girls and it was a little embarrassing.

As I waited for the reading, I started reminiscing about the other signings I had attended. The first one was Rita Mae Brown and I was mesmerized by her. Of course, the book was forgettable but it was still a big experience for me to hear her soft accent intoning the details of her fictive universe. Next up was William Least Heat Moon. I was so crazy about Blue Highways I carried a copy of it around with me for a few months and talked Ward into taking a small dirt road off a highway near Missoula Montana because a placed named “Rivulet” was at the end of the road. I wanted to see a town called Rivulet and it felt like something Moon would have done. Rivulet was a ghost down with a few shacks but the road through the deep forest was worth it. Besides, Rivulet is one of my favorite words. A few years later, Velkram Seth read from his book which followed a A Suitable Boy and it was a delightfully personal experience. There were very few people there and he had conversations with each one of us. He was completely charmed by my story of cutting his 1400 page novel into two pieces because the hardcover edition I had was just too heavy. His disappointment I didn’t bring it to be signed was endearing. My least satisfying experience at a signing was Joyce Carol Oates. Such a strange little woman who seemed to work at appearing affected and otherworldly. Oh if you are so utterly precious and ethereal spare us your drama by staying at home.

I do like to watch the people at these things; despite not wanting to engage with them. My fears of being an overwrought fan girl were in vain because the very idea of carrying on like a couple of the women who had been there since lunch time (it was six-ish) to be the first in line made me want to reach for a vodka martini with a Xanax garnish. The woman sitting next to me was in her seventies and terribly elegant: tall, willowy with her lovely white hair pulled into a chignon. She moved and looked like a dancer. She was sweet and did try to talk to me a couple of times but I wasn’t forthcoming. Mostly because at that moment a wave of malaise had swept over me and I wanted to lie down on the floor in the fetal position and sleep. I imagined this ballerina beside had once been Balanchine’s mistress; never fully recovering from the brief but passionate affair. When the affair ended, devastated, she left dance and moved to Marrakesh where she organized the first micro loan group. Sure, we would exchange phone numbers and after one coffee date she would realize I was too ordinary and offered nothing to her life and would then find it necessary to spend a few months avoiding me while I continued to try and set things up with her, blind to her disinterest in a friendship with me. Behind me were the quintessential 30-something housewives, over earnest and over thinking. These women make me wistful that I didn’t enjoy my children when they were little; they make me wishful for my youth. These women were way more self-confident than I was at they age, too. Not one single hand wringing comment over preschool. The last woman to enter the room had the most self-assured and thoroughly together continence I’ve ever witnessed. She was like Harrison’s character Dalva in the flesh. Her hair was wildly curly and swept back in a simple pony tail and she had on the hottest red Frye cowboy boots I’ve ever seen in my life. Had I not been sick I think I would have tackled her and stolen her boots; forget the reading.

Surrounding this crowd of adoring women and the few men who were good sports were pictures of the writers who had read at the bookstore before. The first picture my eyes landed on was of David Sedaris. Of course. Because I want to be the lesbian version of Sedaris. Regrettably, I’m almost the lesbian version of his mother sans cigarettes and alcohol. I do have terrible fantasies about just letting myself go, drinking gin out of a white coffee cup and locking my kids out of the house in the snow so I can be alone. I’m not sure I’m qualified to be the lesbian version of Sedaris because my childhood wasn’t messed up enough either. Nor did anything funny like the Miss Coppertone contests happen. There was not a photo of Raymond Carver, one writer I regret discovering shortly after he died. Carver is the reason why attending readings by favorite authors is important to me. The tenuous quality of life is one of the lessons I’m learning this year. It is becoming important to me to seize opportunities when I can do and see those things which matter to me. Seeing LaMott read is one of those things.

I am happy to see I didn’t cry or squeal or say something asinine or stalker-ish which has resulted in a restraining order against me in Marin County when she approached me (as she did many people) and asked if she could sign my book. She looked me straight in the eye and fully engaged with me for about thirty seconds with a presence that seemed natural without pretense or force. I could feel her pray a silent prayer for me. She was probably begging God to please not let me breath on her.

This is my first garden report of the season. To say I'm excited I have things returning to life and blooming and actually coming up is an understatement. I'm pretty gobsmacked some things are actually coming back, too.

I have spinach which has perrenialized. It tastes a little bitter but that's ok, winter makes me bitter, too and I don't have to live outside in the dirt.



I have daffodils!


Hyacinths!


The apple tree is budding!


And I didn't kill the lilac!



What I want to know is why the Hell can a four year old grow peas in a styrofoam cup but I can't get them to grow outside in the dirt? A question for the sages.

Spring Threatens

image found here
This morning, I took Wally downtown for a job fair. It was tricky to find and in one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city and one of the places referred to as "The 'Hood". It was the first black neighborhood in the city and the houses were all built sometime during the last few years of the 19th century. Once upon a time it was a stop over for jazz musicians, porters and waiters on the cross country trains and then the thrill seeking Beats. Our little city had it's own artsy Harlem. But then the trains stopped running as frequently... Twenty plus years ago, I stumbled into this neighborhood and the once festive store fronts and club entrances were either boarded up or in shambles. The houses had sagging porches, peeling paint and trash in the yards. The cars lining the streets were as dilapidated as the buildings and houses. I had a few co-workers who lived there and they told me I was foolish to go down there and stay there even if it was an accident because any given time you could hear people shouting at each other, gun fire and squealing tires. I’m still naive enough to think a white woman would have only garnered curious stares rather than attracting violence. A few years after that, community groups started a re-gentrification project, the gang violence was under a little better control and a sense of pride had returned to the neighborhood. My co-worker who had once been so negative about the place was now passionate about saving her home and making it something to be proud of. The old jazz clubs re-opened and the soul food restaurants started advertising. The light rail moved in and the neighbors could get work on the other side of town and the white folks from the SE could come and gawk and spend their money. Ward, me and the boys went down there one Sunday afternoon many years ago. It was a chance to ride the train--something the boys loved--and a novel way for me and Ward to see something other than our Fabulous Suburb. Besides the restaurant I wanted to try was one of the oldest restaurants in town.

The train wound its way through the deserted Sunday afternoon streets in the financial district downtown before moving past the train yards and to Five Points. We got off the train at the end of the line. We stumbled off the train a little disoriented; neither of us had been down there on foot. We walked a couple of blocks along the main street and I spied the houses down the side streets, most of them still looked a little shabby but more hopeful with old mass plantings of heavily scented purple and yellow iris, old spirea, snow ball and forsythia heavy with blooms all surrounded by patches of bright green grass. We stood on the raised platform and looked around below us. The street was empty but the businesses had an efficient rather than derelict air about them. There were a few men sitting on the sidewalks in the shades of awnings, some were asleep some sitting on their haunches and staring at us. There was a kid standing near the train stop and he was hunched over with his hands jammed into the pockets of his over ample pants. We stepped off the platform and I started walking towards the young man. Ward was about to stop me but I was too far ahead. This kid didn’t give me a chance to ask him a question before he was questioning me.
“Whatchu want?” He leaned back, took his hands out his pants and crossed them over his chest like some kind of Biggy Small wannabe. I think he was trying to intimidate me but he didn’t realize I had a long history of working with gang bangers, junkies and your average street thug so nothing shook me up too much. Especially on a Sunday afternoon, in a city with the reputation of being more Cow Town than Mean Streets.
“I’m looking for Mamma’s; it’s supposed to be around here.”
“Over der. Good food , too. “ He relaxed a little and continued to size me up, his head nodding up and down, still unsure I wasn’t a cop or a warrant officer or a social worker or a bounty hunter disguised as a white suburban housewife.
I tossed thanks over my shoulder as I walked towards the family and we approached the poorly marked restaurant with a rickety and decrepit door.

We walked into the restaurant and the contrast between the bright afternoon and the dark room temporally blinded us; my guess is we all looked stunned for a few seconds. Once my eyes adjusted I noted we were the only people in the restaurant except an elderly gentleman and an older woman in a smock apron. The room was simple and painted a industrial/institutional green. Each table had four chairs and red checkered oil cloths. Near the back, the only thing on the wall was a picture of Jesus. Predictably, it was white Jesus. The people were sitting at the table under the picture of Christ. The man addressed us after he stood up using a cane for support. He had a suspicious tremor in his voice, and probably had good reason to distrust white people. He was old enough to remember the danger of making eye contact with a white woman or not duck his head in the direction of a white man.
“You folks lost?”
“No sir, we heard about your restaurant and would like to have Sunday dinner here if you are still open.” Ward was respectful but direct and completely nonplussed by this adventure I had taken us on. His parents had been incredibly liberal and politically active in the 1950’s and 60’s. Had they not had teenagers at home, my guess is they would have been registering voters in Alabama and Georgia; marching on Washington, the whole deal.
“We open?” he turned his entire body towards the seated woman who was looking us up and down and up and down again.
“We open.” Was her quiet answer. She heaved herself up and went into the kitchen.

All I remember before we had our delicious food as the kids were thankfully and remarkably well behaved; and the buzz from the window air conditioner was so loud if you had wanted to tell secrets you didn’t dare. I do remember the man coming to our table asking why we had bothered to come all the way across town for dinner. We explained we had heard what was happening in the neighborhood and wanted to see it. His daughter (the chief) came out every few minutes and joined in the conversation, warming up to the idea of white folks coming in for lunch. He told us there were still people living in the houses they were born, some close to one hundred . He was proud of his home, a pretty place with old iris blooming in the yard and big leafy trees along red stone sidewalks. The roasted chicken was smothered in gravy; the greens were smoking hot with cayenne, the mashed potatoes buttery and the corn bread sweet. My then three year old ate a quarter of a chicken and his picky eating older brother had almost that. The food was simple and straight forward but there was enough different about it I felt like I had stepped into another part of the country when I got off the train.

I grew up in Texas but don’t remember eating southern style food as a kid. Years ago, my black co-workers thought it was because I was a racist until they figured out I had never had opportunity to try it. So they would bring crazy things for me to try just to see if I would eat them and then have a big laugh over the white girl from Texas who loved chitins but didn’t much care for the pickled pigs’ feet and gushed over mixed greens. I can still hear one of them saying: “Baby, those ain’t nothing’ but weeds that grows in the ditch!” (I remembered that line when I fixed our collards last summer) So my palate had a bit of a swagger to it that afternoon at Mamma’s.

Today, I drove down that same street and the restaurant is still there. The front has been repainted and the tiny sign has been replaced with a fancy new sign. It cheered me to see one of the oldest restaurants in town was still open. The notorious jazz clubs from the thirties and forties were there, too. I wondered if the now famous jazz names would stop in and jam after their real gigs, like they did fifty years ago. Inviting benches lined the sidewalk and invited people to sit and watch the world go by. It wasn’t terribly early in the morning nor was it cold but their weren’t kids skulking around on the corners or older guys sitting against buildings like there had been in the past. I drove the side streets and the yards were clean, the houses were painted and had many had been carefully restored. The Queen Anne style homes rivaled the one’s I had seen in San Francisco a couple of years ago. All of the yards had shrubs and plants threatening to bloom and there were even a few scraggly and ancient cherry trees already in bloom. Spring was threatening to return to Five Points. I knew I was going back one sunny spring day armed with my appetite and my camera.

Hamburger Gravy

What a glorious spring day! After taking a sleepy Beav to school and working out at the gym, I managed to get Wally out of bed and into the yard this morning and we turned some mulch and raked up multiple bags of needles from the stupid evergreens. I hate, loathe and despise evergreens. They are messy and the acid in the needles is a threat to my lovely lawn and make my ornamental rocks look messy. The only thing I hate more than evergreens (aside from a few politicians and a couple of political commentators) are aspen trees. Aspen trees are stupid unless you live at about 7-8 thousand feet and then they are large enough to tower and quake like…you know…aspen trees. Otherwise at just under a mile elevation, they are small and look like trash trees. Besides looking like trash trees they become trash trees and throw out suckers through out the yard and your neighbors yard and your neighbor‘s neighbor‘s yard. Twenty years ago I was waging war on our next door neighbors‘ aspens and threatened to water kill them with Calcium carbonate. (OMG I didn‘t do it!!!). Give me a big oak tree, a messy cottonwood or a larch any day of the week. Because of my nemesis’ evergreens my yard work warm up was an imaginary tantrum, complete with foot stomping, swearing and genral bitching about the tasks. But as I moved from raking to gathering, the sun warm on my back and defrosting my late winter blood. I could feel the seratonin swell in my blood stream and I didn’t mind it so much. It felt good to be moving and outside without a coat or even a sweater this morning. Once Wally was awake and outside for a few minutes he was actually almost enthusiastic as he started the poop scooping. I was amazed how fast we knocked out the winter clean up and sort of disappointed we didn’t have more to do. When Wally bounced up to me and asked what else there was to do and I was tempted to hand him clippers and tell him to trim the dead stuff from the perennials. But it’s too early for that sort of thing and the tender green stuff peeking out from beneath the spent leaves would suffer when we have our next--and inevitable--snow storm. This evening when I asked Wally to be home at a decent hour his response was: “Sure! we Have stuff to do in the yard tomorrow!” (All I can say is God works in mysterious ways because I have a heck of a time getting this one excited about anything and in view of his enthusiasm I‘m inviting stuff for us to do tomorrow)

After we finished working in the yard and I had retrieved Beav from school I spent an hour or so sitting in a lawn chair, face to the sun, listening to a This American Life pod cast I didn’t finish at the gym earlier today. Heaven.

Until I had to go inside and fix dinner. Yuk to the twelfth power of five thousand and eight.

Fortunately I had planned a quiche for tonight which is the only thing I like to make besides reservations (ba-dum bump) It’s quick, simple and can be cheap. And we need cheap because we are having a “hamburger gravy” week at June’s house. Hamburger Gravy is something we would eat when I was growing up and I referred to it as “Depression Food” because it was sort of greasy and gray and pathetic. Everyone loved it but me. In fact, the other night The Girl and I were having our usual: “What do you want for dinner…“ conversation and I quipped out of the blue and from a long forgotten memory:
“Not Hamburger Gravy. “
“Oh God, I know what you are talking about and don’t worry, I hate that stuff.” was her rocket fast answer. We had a good laugh over the fact her family had their gravy over potatoes and we had it over white bread. (TG’s family was deemed “fancier” in this instance) When I remembered this particular “delicacy” it made me wonder if we didn’t have it when Mom was running a little short just before payday because someone needed shoes or glasses or the dentist. I kind of like this turn of phrase: “Hamburger Gravy Week” and I think it will become part of the family lexicon (along with “too many hands”, “hairplane” and putting a “y” at the end of each kids’ name). Someone asks for a new pair of jeans or a video game? All I have to do is look them dead in the eye and sagely intone: “Dude, Hamburger Gravy Week.” and the inquisitor will know their desire/request will have to wait a few days or longer unless they are naked, ill or starving; something that wouldn‘t happen unless it was Ditchwater Gravy Week.


Gravy isn’t all together a bad thing, it’s usually associated with an abundance of something (like meat drippings and fat) or an additional or superfluous but treasured something or extra money which makes the whole saying extra appealing to me, what with my love for all that is ironic or satirical.

Today really was a gravy day, with the warm sun and youthful enthusiasm for a stupid task coupled with a warm night with windows open, a full moon and one more precious day off:

It’s all gravy.

"Not On Fire"

Yeah, it’s me again. I received an email from Dad this morning and he claims I picked out my second car, the yellow Sunbird, I however have no memory of doing this. Mind you, it was a great car and pretty darn fast. Not that I ever EVER drove it faster than 70 on the highway…now the old runways at a deserted airport…He also denies ANY INPUT on the first car I actually bought for myself. Um...sure Dad, whatever you say... (See yesterday’s pontification about memory and history).

Getting his email this morning while I was wallowing around in self-bity because I tried to take Wally clear across town for a cattle call interview for a job that is actually within walking distance of our home but no one at the golf course fifteen miles away knew what was going on…so it was a useless trip and he was understandably frustrated. My email to Dad looked like some sort of: “poor me…blah blah…poor me.” And after I hit send I realized I hadn’t bothered with my gratitude journal this morning because I woke up after a short and almost sleepless night of IBS (good times, I gotta tell ya!) symptoms the only thing I could think to say was something my dear and funny and sweet friend Kevin is wont to say when things are going too wrong too fast and he is looking for a positive:

“I’m not currently on fire.”

That was about it for me this morning, too. I wasn’t on fire. Yet. But give the universe a chance and I’m pretty sure I would self-combust any minute.

But by the time I sat down to write this blog I came up with a big ole’ list of short term things I’m grateful for.
The Beav got up for school, the first day after spring break without comment or problem.
The sun was up for our commute at 0645.
I heard a great song that pretty much sums up my relationship with God.

I’ve been living out of sanity
I’ve been splitting hairs and
blurring
lines
I am a house that is divided
In my heart and in my
mind

I
use one hand to pull closer
The other to push you away
If
I had two
hands doing the same thing
Lifted high, lifted high

I
have a broken
disposition
I’m a liar who thirsts for the
truth
And
while I ache for
faith to hold me
I need to feel the
scars and see the
proof

And if
we just keep digging we can reach
the foundation
Of
our souls
And if we
just keep cutting all the
chains from our hearts
We’ll lose control

And it feels like giving
in
It feels like
starting over
It feels
like waking up, and you
know it’s coming
It
feels like a brand new day

I could do without feeling the scars…and I’m a control freak.

Wally’s frustration drove me to the basement and I was sewing and muttered an Anne LaMott style “beggy prayer” that something wonderful would happen to him. A few minutes later his sweet friend, J came over. He told The Girl: “I heard about Wally’s accident and he has driven me all over the place so I borrowed my sister’s car and I’m here to see if he needs to go anywhere.” (Chokes me up just typing about this) Wally told me later he was really surprised J just showed up like that. I wasn’t because I knew the second I heard the knock on the door it was a gift.
Wally made it to the cattle call interview and it went well.
Wally, me and Beav had a great time driving home from school; we laughed all the way home.
Buddy was waiting for one of us to let him in our house when Wally came back from his interview. Buddy is like family and Kipper hasn’t been feeling well but brightened and played a little before going taking another nap.
TG’s vision continues to improve after her lasik surgery Saturday.
We are actively planning our trip to Cambodia and are separately devising itineraries and next week we will put them both together.
I’m grateful one of my decisions I need to make is whether or not I’m going to the Gulf of Thailand or not.
I heard from an old friend (the other EdgyJuneCleaver in Fort Worth Texas) and despite the unspeakable and sudden death of her beautiful twenty-four year old daughter she had time to write me a thank you not and give me a hug across the internets.
I also heard from my friend with stage 3 colon cancer and his spirits are good.
One of my new virtual friends has met someone and is in the beginnings of a romantic relationship and is very happy.
Another virtual friend after six months of unemployment in the high tech sector has a promising job interview this week.
The Girl made some awesome brats for dinner tonight.
Baylor women beat Notre Dame (ok, that was yesterday but Yay! Baptists! Smacking‘ down the Papists!)
I have hyacinth buds, they are green and will need to be protected from our next freeze but they are there.
It’s supposed to be 78 degrees tomorrow and Wally is looking forward to working outside in the yard with me.
But the best thing: It’s after seven pm in my world and the sun is still up and won’t be gone for at least thirty-minutes.

And Baylor beat Duke!

image found here

I Gots Nuthin'. Whats you got?

Kipper doesn't always make the best decisions. Fortunately, what he lacks in intellect he makes up with enthusiasm. Goof-dog insisted on carrying his moose like this. Walking down the stairs was a foolhardy choice and fortunately didn't end in a trip to the vet. Like my dog, I make foolhardy decisions. Most recently I decided to blog every Thursday. You know, exercise my writing muscles, create a habit. But this week the well ran dry and I have nothing to say.

I Got Nothing.

I could blather on about how much I enjoyed Milk and experiencing what it was like to be a gay man in the 1970's. I was seventeen when he was killed and I vaguely remember his assassination as just another news item. But it didn't really mean anything to me, in part because I was seventeen, but largely because I was living in the Bible Belt and most of my peers sided with Anita Bryant and thought those dirty homos were going to Hell. Actually, if I think too hard about Bryant's opinions and how much they threatened to shape my own, I throw up a little in my mouth and cringe for my classmates who knew in 1978 they were gay but didn't dare come out. I didn't have a clue I was queer and even when I ran into a teacher at a gay bar my senior year, it didn't register I should be shocked, upset or outraged. I was completely oblivious to gay people until I was in college and came out for the first time. And I was happily oblivious to discrimination. I suppose it was easier for me in Lubbock Texas because I'm categorized (grrrrr...) as a Femme. So I can "pass" as straight. The whole dichotomy of femme/butch makes my head hurt so I need to change the subject.

Is the gym eating my brain? I've been accused of becoming a gym rat and up until a few weeks ago, I used every excuse in the book to NOT exercise. Hell, I even went to work on my day off to avoid the gym! Now I look forward to my exercise routine and wish I had the energy to go after work in the evenings. But it isn't like I stare blankly into space, feeling the burn when I'm exercising. I listen to uplifting podcasts while I row or walk. I still think riding an exercise bike is a glimpse of Hell. B-O-R-I-N-G. Especially at my gym, where Fox News is the television station of choice. But I love to row. I crave rowing. I remember years ago when I was visiting a dear friend in Kailua Hawai'i and being amazed at the strength it must have taken for the Crew teams to skim those long boats over the rough water. Picturing Kailua as I row lulls me into a peaceful state. It could be the gym...

The economy would be easy to blame but I've chosen to ignore the meltdown and just live my life; go to work, pay my bills, have some fun. TG's industry is changing; health care is changing and how we do what we do now, will be vastly different in ten years. And this isn't a bad thing because I will be forced to grow and change. Like this picture of my chunk of photo optic glass, everything is changed but the end result remains the same.

My life's work isn't eating my brain either. In fact, the mix of patients we have has been interesting and each possess an interesting or poignant story. I wish I could tell them, they would individually make for an interesting blog. It has been a welcome relief to be able to actually manage and care for my patients without feeling as if any minute I was going to miss a crucial detail and fail at keeping them safe. Nor are they aren't a bunch of addicts who ran out of Oxycontin and just need a legally sanctioned fix. We are seeing a lot of abdominal pain. People hurting in their core and usually without a readily identified cause. We take X rays and CT scans and MRIs and ultrasounds and come up with nothing. Like my imagination, they got nothin'. My therapist once told me belly pain equals the fear for survival. It can also be a way the body deals with emotional/sexual/physical abuses. One of our young physicians and I discussed this and how we do a terrible job of screening for these things. Dwelling on their pain makes my heart hurt.

I blame group malaise for all of this belly pain. Everyone on the planet needs to take a day off from the news. Everyone. No one reads the news or listens to the news or looks at the news. And then we all need to breath deeply. Collectively for 17 seconds, concentrating on what is right in our world and in our lives I think the malaise would lift and the economy would begin to improve. The belly pain would resolve without a milligram of Dilaudid IV push. Breathing does so much more to increase the vibration of the soul than opioids.

Tomorrow is the first day of spring. Sometimes we have snow, sometimes we have sun. It looks like sun tomorrow. Frankly,I'm the only person in the US who wasn't upset about the time change. It's chilly here in the evenings but it's light outside so I don't have the dual burden of cold and dark. Just cold. And we are back on the the clock in Kipper's belly so he doesn't start asking for dinner at 5:00.

Flowers are gracing the kitchen table. A birthday present a couple of weeks ago that are now celebrating the equinox. Coincedently we are having dinner with the Divine Ms. A on Saturday. The weather promises to be nice enough to start out on her lovely patio in her garden. Spring is better than Christmas because it's about flowers and lengthening days. Spring means summer--sweet lazy summer--is just around the corner. The promise of summer exchanges limp brain cells for flowers and promises.