Election Week

Well that didn't go to plan. Less said, the better.

I filled my mind with work, and a visit to The Club Of My People, where I ate meatballs during a presentation about Norwegian Black Metal. One young man blurted out "My uncle was in that band but he wasn't good enough at singing or explosives," which was pretty funny. I sat next to a woman who showed us photos of her son mowing the grass on the ship burial mound in the backyard of their family property in Norway. A lot of us were people of a certain age coming full circle at this point in life. I met the secretary of the club who had been there ten years ago and felt too young for the scene. He now fits in. His sister dated someone in the Black Metal scene. I ate vegetarian meatballs and one of the best creme caramel of my life. The person who gave the presentation brought his own akvavit. We sang skol a lot. It's kinda like "the wave". You don't know who starts it or why, but once it's happening you have to go with it.

And here we are. New on the horizon is an examination of whether ADHD might frame some of my life's more special / least favorite moments. I don't think that this thought of would be surprising to the people who know me well. More on this as it develops. In the meantime, it's time to go grocery shopping and prepare for sumo tonight. Maybe I'll make some clam dip in celebration.

UPDATE: I sat next to a woman who had a Viking burial mound in her back yard in Norway and showed us a photo of her son mowing the lawn on top of the mound. The site is recently being re-excavated. I looked it up, found it, thought the unusual name of the ship sounded familiar and realized that my 3rd ggfather had lived there in the 1860s.

Kinda cool.

And Now We Wait

Yup. Today's the day. I will descend into the garage and pull out the "Jessie Jackson Urges You To Vote" and hang it in the window, as is the custom. And there's nothing really to do. I'll wear my Vote earrings for one last time this year and hope for the best.

My guess? Kamala by a nose. 

Anything else would be tragic. This is not a drill. 

If he wins, his people will do everything they've been threatening / promising to do, and the world will be worse for it.

Near Miss

In the countdown to election day the old impulse control is really in abeyance.

Witness: two kittens on my "I just want to get rid of this now" group. I was almost going to see them this weekend, but luckily someone else got to them. They were adorable and fluffy and cute. I think that mrguy needs a new kitten now that his little girl is gone and the inky boy has decided that he's obsessed with me (at the age of 14). His response? "To be honest, those cats will outlive me and you will have to take care of them." And when pressed further at a different time he said that even if he lived a normal dude lifespan the cats would outlive him. Boo. Nothing like bringing us down. Undaunted I went back to the lady who was helping her friends adopt out the cats and they had found a family. I am happy for them.

In the meantime, the last cat I brought into the house found his way into the cabinet with the garbage can last night and he bit the electrical cord for the under-cabinet lights, which went dark. Oy. Well I wanted to ask the electrician a question anyway, so tomorrow I'll take care of that. Am I sure I want kittens?

Well of course.

The other thing that got away was the world's ugliest lamp, which would have really tied the pink Lady Bathroom together. It was also on the "get rid of" group. Wow. I wanted to see it in person. And even when I learned that it was 3' high, I wanted it and found a perfect ugly lampshade for it (I was planning to add some pink touches to it, to help integrate lady painters, angels and motorcycles). But then a woman said she had a friend who would love it as a housewarming gift, and I was given the perfect out. I told the giver to please give it to the other lady. For several hours I had the perfect amount of joy from this lamp without even owning it. Whew!

Happy Halloween 2024

I was late in finding this, but please enjoy and know that there are more ancient holiday post cards coming your way. This collection was saved by mrguy's grandmother when she was a child.

I would like the black cat to know that we share his feeling of horror in seeing two pumpkins kiss.

The Mom Report

I did it. I went to see my mom. It wasn't horrible. Her caregiver had told her I was coming the day before. She doesn't know who I am, but when the caregiver tells her that I live up the hill, she knows she's been to my house. The sofa is right next to the bed, so I sat there and held her hand. She said "What's new?" and of course I can't tell her because she is hard of hearing and hard of understanding. I showed her pictures of cats and she liked that.

I really missed our caregiver and we had a really long hug. She's the best. She has *such* high standards for my mom's care and for what my mom gets for the money at the place where she lives. She told me one of her really long stories. Remember when we were interrupted once about 20 minutes into an engrossing story where she had just said "Nobody gives you a goat for nothing"? It was kinda like that.

The regular team of caregivers is a mother and daughter. Then the daughter's sister-in-law came over from Hawaii to help. She and her teenaged son lived with the daughter. She had a horrible abusive husband back in Hawaii who everybody in the family hated and wished she'd divorce.

Toward the end of the time the third lady was working for us she had really terrible health problems. Sounded like endometriosis or something. It would regularly cause her to stay home or go to the doctor or ER. Pretty devastating stuff that was life changing for her and for the family and for my family. Everybody was concerned, but luckily she was going to have surgery this year and get it taken care of. She hasn't worked for us for several years now, but she had clients in the building where my mom lives and I'd hear about how she was doing.

Fast forward to this week. I was asking about the daughter, and our caregiver started talking about the third lady. I heard that she'd gotten married, and that sounded like a good thing. I also see that either she or her new husband looks me up on Facebook, because they're suggested as friends. Anyhoo, the story goes like this: our former caregiver comes to the daughter one night, crying. She says I'm getting married. The daughter asks a bunch of questions, because as far as she knows there is no boyfriend, definitely a current husband, and what the heck? She says "You better tell my mom".

In her community our main caregiver is a person of substantial standing. She's the head of her family line, and everybody knows her. The idea that this side-relative, who everybody else at church knows, is getting married and there has been no preamble makes it look as if our caregiver's been hiding this knowledge. And once the daughter has shared with her that the relative is getting married, our caregiver senses what's up. So she sets a trap to get the woman to confess. She was over at her daughter's house after work: "Come have some dinner with me and we'll talk," she says. The lady keeps folding her laundry in her bedroom and says thanks but no. "Come get a bowl. There's plenty," she says. Then she encourages her to have a second bowl. The woman starts to cry. "Why are you crying? Is there something that my family has done to hurt you? What is wrong"? In the telling of this she seems to be saying this in all sincerity (also cause that's the person she is). "I'm getting married tomorrow". "Whaaaaat?"

The woman tries not to tell our caregiver the name of her future husband. She tells her the name of the father, who lives in Salt Lake City. Our caregiver knows him and figures out who the son is. He has eight children. And more than that our caregiver has figured out that all of the times she went to the doctor and the ER and was sick and maybe was going to have surgery (which was mysteriously canceled) she was with this guy. All of the extra shifts that those guys worked and times when we all jumped to rearrange schedules -- that was because she was lying to her family and my family about what was happening. Argh. Nothing to be done about it but I feel bad for our caregivers being lied to. There is also a son and he, too, would have to rearrange his life around this woman. There's more to the story, but the punch line was that her new husband mopped the floor and then they both skipped town when rent was due.

At this point in the story a PAL came to give my mom a shower and I pounced on the opportunity to leave. I kissed my mom on the cheek and she smiled.

Nobody gives you a goat for no reason.

Loving The Weekend

Last week I was a mess. A few things cracked me open and ripped my heart out. After therapy I had a ball of used Kleenex bigger than my head.

This week is fine.

So many things have happened. Last weekend we had the 'ohana over for dinner and there was so much laughing and so many hugs. I love them so much. 

This week I invited myself to a dinner at a club that my parents used to belong to, and met really fun people there. Instead of being one of the young people, I am now about average. Can't believe I went by myself because it involved many things that make me anxious: public transit, humans I haven't met before, unexpected public speaking (spotlight on guests, who are asked to stand and say something). I never do such things without mrguy as my manager.

At public transit I saw this bit of awesomeness:

On the way to the dinner I wasn't entirely alone. I was accompanied by celebrity chef David Chang and a pointy fork from my mom's storage space that I brought for self defense. 

The dinner itself was great. I was a big girl and started conversations with people. Awkwardly at first, with the guy giving the night's presentation about labor history. He and most of the people in the room shared a version of my first name, with a few Ragnars and Stigs thrown in to spice things up. So it wasn't as awful trying to remember what people were named.

On the way home the train engineer held the train at the transfer station, so it wasn't a painful trip home with long waits. I was so exhausted, though.

Unrecovered from Thursday's evening of communing with adults, I went to a long but lovely work event on Friday, celebrating the work anniversaries of people who have met milestones in their career. I go as the company historian. Sat with friends and the CFO. I perhaps said too much and am trying to stop flogging myself for doing so.

Yesterday I met precious nephew at the storage space and we cleaned it out for real and closed our account. Only took 30ish minutes. The downside is that now we have lots of chairs in the garage that I haven't managed to shift to other people's possession. But wow. This was one of my projects that I told my therapist would help me feel less burdened. And it does.

After storage space time, I met with nephew's mom, who had just come back from seeing our mom. It might be time for me to break my 8 month streak of not seeing her. According to her Saturday caregiver "It's mama's Time". Also she can't fully use her hands. Her humor is still intact, though. When told by one of the nice workers in memory care that she was coming to give mom a shower, mom said "Maybe next year." Oh, also my mom thanked my sister for visiting and asked how long she's known her. "76 years," said my sister. I can imagine that if my mom doesn't know who I am I could possibly see her. Could it be that she wouldn't remember all of my shortcomings if she doesn't know who I am? That might be worth a try. I am taking the day off on Wednesday because mrguy has an appointment with the eye doctor far away at a ridiculous time. Maybe I can visit my mom in the morning.

I am listening to a book recommended by my therapist about narcissistic mothers of daughters. There's a checklist of behaviors, half of which I recognize. And half I recognize in myself, which is always depressing. But she suggested the book because when I talk about my mom's behaviors my therapist has noticed that I usually explain the behaviors by undermining myself. Apparently children learn to do this because it's conceptually so wrong to think of their parents as not living up to their role as parent. I guess it's something like "If I weren't such a cruddy kid they wouldn't be such cruddy parents." I will be learning how this fits in with my mom's dementia somehow. It's super easy to explain it all away by saying that she has Alzheimer's. But if that's all it is, why did I avoid my mom for a lot of my adult life before she had Alzheimer's?

Digging into this will be interesting, I think. My mom had a narcissistic mom, and she never forgave her. I intend to break the pattern and forgive my mom, but I will not forget. I mean how could I, after the crazy memories she's given me the past ten years?

Joys of the Week

This has been an interesting week. So much joy, and so much crying. I've been worried about my throat, but now I have three different appointments to see if it is an issue. My worry these days is always: if something happens to me, who will take care of mrguy? And if something happens to me who will take care of me? I am tender these days. I saw a film on Wednesday and it ripped my heart out. When I saw my therapist this week I ended the session with a ball of used Kleenex bigger than my head.

I used to never cry. Never ever.

On to joy. I just came back from the front yard, where I was potting wheat grass seeds to make cat grass for my chonky love. I keep a basket of lemons from the tree on the blue chair on the porch for the neighbors -- we're the lemon dispensary for our street. While I was potting, a fancy car rolled up and I didn't recognize the occupants. They rolled down the window and said they were on the lookout for lemons. I ran four of them out to the car. The driver declared that they are our biggest fans. That put a smile on my face. Then I grabbed a few more lemons off the tree to replenish the supply in the basket.

And this just happened. The yellow ginger is blooming. I saw it, stepped into the bed, leaned in, and took a deep whiff. And then laughed because it smells like the cologne from the ABC Store!

Yesterday mrguy and I walked around the island in the middle of our street. He continued home, and I chased down the mailman and gave him our mail. Then I walked up the hill, around and then down the stairs to our street. Without friends to distract me, I stopped quite often and also huffed and puffed, hoping that nobody from work happend to be driving past. Is that weird? On the way down the stairs the color of this bougainvillea against the sky made my heart swell. I captured this sight for mrguy.

Also on my walk, some googly eyes on a tree. Much appreciated, neighbor!

This has nothing to do with anything, but I got a fang-tastic photo of our grand fellow as he begged for a piece of Saturday's breakfast omelette.

I would say that the following is the best news of the week, but it is actually second. Yet, I revel.

In this photo you see flowers, but if you look a little more closely you also see teensy green fruit. This, my friends is our orange tree. "But mrsguy doesn't have an orange tree," you say. That's a pretty accurate assessment. This orange tree came with the house. It was in the "wrong spot" according to certain occupants of our home, so we dug up an apple tree (4 kinds of apples grafted onto one tree) and gave it to our nephew. Then we planted the orange tree in the apple hole.

If this were a 1950s film, newspapers would be spinning around to indicate the passage of time. Nothing has ever come of this tree. In the meantime the lime tree went from major sadness to (eventually, around year 7) solid production. The orange tree is pretty solid, and I've considered ordering scions from UC Riverside, which is the only legal source of live citrus wood. But after my camellia grafting turned out so sad, I lost momentum on this idea.

One of my dear friends who is a landscape designer, and in fact our landscape designer, told me how much she likes to water. I like to prune, but I don't really like to water much. I decided to break the cycle. It's meditative, and I need anything that has that quality right now. And then I got my excellent nozzle and it made watering fun. I started to water in the back yard, even the orange tree.

I have been rewarded. Look at this! Last weekend I was watering during the heat wave and I saw flowers. This week I saw the beginnings of teensy fruits! It's a miracle, I swear. I am so darned pleased.

But the best of the week was dinner with the 'ohana. It's been a year since we've had people over for dinner. And so long since our bandmates have all been in one place with us. They brought food, I made food, and we drank beer and hung out. Caught up on all of the news. Mrguy was in excellent form, and when I was tending to last details in the kitchen he was able to talk with them without me barging into the conversation. The sound of my beloved friends wafting up from the livingroom while I was puttering in the kitchen made me feel surrounded by love. We talked and laughed and ate A LOT in the glow of candle light. And we hugged endlessly as we wrapped up. "Just one more," we'd say and there would be another round of hugs. They said how great mrguy looks. And that was great, as well.

He slept a little better last night after all of the excitement.

9 Tiny Diamonds

The prompt was to take an object, map out stories and write them.

The stories represent the 9 tiny diamonds in my wedding ring.

During the search for a wedding ring, a shop owner turned to my boyfriend and said "Why don't you find something in that case over there?" There was one ring, made out of an unknown metal, with enamel letters that spelled out Haboru Emlek 1914. It was years before I was able to learn from alt.languages.slavic (or somesuch) that it meant "war relic". My engagement ring was a Hungarian WWI memento. It was too large, and I wrapped masking tape around it so that it wouldn't fall off my finger. I have been too large to wear it for years, even without the tape.

We went looking for rings on our New Year vacation with my father-in-law. I was able to realize that the thing I really liked about the vintage rings I was seeing was the gold, rose gold. To me it suggests history, times past.

We went to a vintage ring store in the City. While looking in the cases, a woman entered. Have you ever had someone make you so uncomfortable that you simply fled the scene? That was this woman. She started asking intrusive questions of the salesperson, such as what her ethnicity was. And you know how sometimes in jewelry stores they'd put other kinds of flashy objects in the display cases? In this case they were crystal animals "Are those pigs Baccarat?" she asked, loudly. Months later we ate at a local restaurant. Shortly after the waiter started taking our order, the woman with the unmistakable voice began berating him for some imagined misstep. It was her restaurant, and the situation was mortifying. Food was good, though. This woman intrudes on my thoughts sometimes when I think about my ring. Maybe she couldn't help herself.

I found my wedding band shortly after the first of the year, in the window of a jewelry store. It is a plain band that can be modified to place teeny pave diamonds. They had it in rose gold. I went in. I didn't have money for stones, but they let me try some by putting tiny daubs of wax on the band and then placing tiny sapphires on it as it began to cool. I loved it. I excitedly told my mom about the ring and the sapphires. Shortly after, my dad told me that I could use the tiny diamonds from a pin of my grandmother's. I was so happy. My sister, who was getting married the same year, really needed a large mineral tribute. I did not, since my hands were covered in pancake batter all day at work. It is the perfect ring for me. Mrguy paid for the ring, and the diamond placement. The white against the rose gold reminds me of the bubbles in a glass of pink champagne. 

After the wedding, mrguy went on tour. I accepted an invitation to sail with a friend and his dad. The short story is that as the waves crashed over the sailboat and I realized that things were not in control and noticed that my friend's dad's life jacket did not fully close around him and as I learned that the radio had no batteries and as I saw waterlogged vanilla cream sandwich cookies disintegrating in the hold while I said a Hail Mary, my hands shrank from freezing water and wind. I moved my wedding ring onto my thumb and curled it tight. I thought about how ironic it was that I would be losing my ring and perhaps my life during the week after my wedding.

My mom became prideful about the gift of the tiny diamonds over the years. As her dementia took hold she began to finger the ring when we were together and to ask me if I still liked my ring. More recently, before I stopped visiting her, she would often add that she didn't know why she had given them to me and she should ask for them back. I would reply that I am now so fat that I can't remove the ring, so that's too bad. By saying this, I am striking out in two ways, by saying no to her, and by telling her that she is the mother of a fat daughter, a fate worse than death.

In her safe deposit box are items of her mother's that are too vulgar for her to wear. Among them is a pretty sizable pear shaped diamond ring, given to my grandmother by her second husband, the dread McToad. I've taken to wearing this ring. Not around my mom, because she'd have an episode, but around the house and at work. Preferably with dungarees of some sort. I am trying to earn the ring through all of the many thousands of dollars worth of Depends and butt creams and such that I have purchased for her over the last ten years. Also sweat equity and shame.

My mom could never get away with wearing the ring (due to her being so classy and all) but I can.

However now that I wear the thing on a regular basis I don't really feel the need to. Its work is becoming complete. 

In the meantime am working to reinstall the proper associations with my own ring. It was given with love. It represents my love for my husband and creation of our own family and joining his, not duty to the one that brought me to that moment.

The 1991 Fire

It's fire season. I'm really concerned, since the recent heat wave crisped all of the vegetation on the hills and slopes that surround our house. And it's the anniversary of the big fire. I can't see that I've written about it, but pardon me if I have.

The day of the fire I was working at the restaurant. It was warm, with a wind that kept blowing leaves inside the restaurant. We kept chasing them out. We heard there was a fire in the hills. After a few hours, a regular customer came running in, asking to use our phone. Her house had just gone up in flames.

We kept serving pancakes.

Eventually our power went out. We kept working and I don't feel as if our boss had a plan to let us go home. The fire continued to advance toward us, but we couldn't see how close it was was because of the big hotel across the street that blocked our view of the hill behind it. When the fire trucks wanted to use our street as parking I ran.

The sky was orange. The fire was not that close as I left, but it still felt scary. I remember seeing the reflection of a big red sun in the chrome bumper of the car in front of me. I drove across the bay to the safety of our apartment. At a bbq on our side of the bay, I heard that pages of the telephone book from the firestorm floated down on our friends. At mrguy's recording studio, as well.

People I knew lost everything. One customer attending a convention on the other coast, watched the news from afar. She'd taken her favorite jewelry with her. Her husband thrived, in a way. He was able to design them a new home, and felt unburdened by the loss of "things".

Another couple couldn't get back across the bay in time. They called their neighbor and asked him to break in and get their dog. They, also, did well -- confessing that when they had the keys to their rebuilt house they had sex in every room.

There were customers who we never saw again. I still think of them. And others that trauma turned into complete monsters. They wanted special treatment, discounts, and brought up the kinds of conflict that I don't deal with well and wasn't authorized to address.

It's been thirty years. This is the story I always tell. Many people dressed as the Firestorm for Halloween that year.

Egg Protest

I made some hard boiled eggs yesterday. As readers of mrsguy are aware, my mom used to put a little mark in pencil on the hard boiled eggs to differentiate them from the raw. And during the pandemic and whatnot I took to writing actual things on them, because you have to crack the shells in order to eat the eggs. And I live to make mrguy laugh.

Here are some highlights from previous years.

Yesterday I felt the need to return to the egg tradition as the leadup to the election shortens.

And here you go. Marjorie Taylor Green, J.D. Vance, Steven Miller, Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation. 

I smash you!

In the meantime, I am encrusted with cat as I write this. The inky ingot is laying across my chest with his back paws on my sternum, his left front on my arm and his chin resting on my arm. This is both delightful and a little painful. My guy is long in the toof, and when I moved his head a moment ago we saw the impression of one of his fangs in my arm.

It's worth it, though. A sweet morning with my men.

We Left The Home

We actually got out of the house yesterday. I don't think that mrguy enjoyed it as much as I did, but I needed it. The morning started with the big inky boy purring and clawing into my bare shoulders and neck while quacking like a duck and drooling on me. The fact that he's discovered me over the last few months is both a joy and a pain in the neck. How, after 14 years, is he somehow obsessed with me?

Then it was a delightful 2 hours with the local Irish genealogy club. The topic was cemeteries, gravestones, traditions, cemetery records.

Then we had a nosh and went out to a favorite spot. It was completely foggy, which was lovely. It smelled like low tide, and there was a lovely garden in the parking lot that had so many gorgeous things that attracted happy, supping hummingbirds. There were also children chasing each other and screaming about nuclear waste.

We sat on a bench beyond the parking lot. A little walk was good for mrguy.

It felt cold quickly, so we went home after a little bit. Mrguy took a nap and started feeling the effects of our Covid and flu shot the day before. Fed him some chicken soup and we turned in early.

One More Day -- Heat Wave 2024

From Sunday, written while sitting on a chair with my legs dangling in the dog pool:

We're gonna need a bigger thermometer.

Big boy cat is sleeping on the kitchen counter. Big mister chonk kitten is downstairs in the lady room hanging off of the bookcase with his legs dangling like a very well fed panther. Me? I feel warm but pretty darned calm.

I don't know what it is. Lack of calendar items for the past few days, perhaps. I should not be calm at all. It's been around 90-95 in the house for that last few days. The deadline passing on our family business is a relief of sorts (until it isn't -- but a consultant says that the only thing keeping us from thriving is fear).

Worry about the cats has waned now that little girl's suffering is over. Sweet friends sent us flowers in the color of her fur. Everybody thought that the one who died was the big boy. He is doing well.

Mrguy is too hot. I think he's doing well but is taxed by the heat.

I filled up the dog pool in the back yard. Friends came over and put their legs in. I invited clam, but she was busy with family stuff so I came back to the dog pool myself and watched the light fade while doing a meditation focus exercise. Close your eyes and spend half a minute thinking about each sense, one sense at a time. What do you hear? What do you smell? What do you taste? What do you feel? It was lovely. I could feel the cool water on my legs and the sweat on my forearms. I could hear the whoosh of traffic on the freeway. I could smell the (few) blossoms on the lime tree. Taste is always a challenge, but I realized I could still taste 4 o'clock's popsicle. Centered, I opened my eyes and watched the water on the bay and thought about the joy of having the only dog pool in town with a 3 bridge view. 

It was several days before it cooled down. And today I used a blanket on the sofa for the first time in a month.

An Hawaiian Happening

They have the Hall and Oates Channel on softly in the background while I wait for the results of my latest Mohs surgery. I don't require that much Hall and Oates in my life, and need to drown it out. I figured out very happily that I have Iwalani Kahalewai's An Hawaiian Happening on my phone. Unlike most humans I don't have a lot of music on my phone at the moment. I love George Chun's arrangements. Sometimes sassy, and sometimes molasses slow, with some piano and noodle-y wandering guitar. Go find it here.

On my way over here to get my face rearranged I was listening to Sally Field's autobiography. The first few chapters were a little challenging -- I had a hard time remembering who was who (and this is where a visual learner has trouble with audiobooks) but I came to like it. It's kinda harrowing at times, and then there is some familiarity. Like the argument with her stepfather where he tries to control her by threat. I don't think that I ever shared this, but while visiting my mom one day last year I wasn't doing what my mom wanted. As usual. So she started threatening me -- you like your job, right? If you don't do (whatever it is she wanted me to do) I'll tell them about you.

Thanks, Mom!

I told her it was too late. They already know. They don't care.

My doctor makes really fine stitches.

Oh The Week

It's been a full week:

• Sunday: fantastic lunch and full museum visit with a friend.
• Monday: Coffee with a friend, followed by skin cancer surgery. No big whoop, but it smarts and my under eye area is a bit puffy and green. It's 122 in the sunroom. 
• Tuesday: Mrguy's birthday, celebrated by his having chemo. Major milestone in family business strikes at midnight. 122 in the sunroom. VP debate :(...
• Wednesday: we said goodbye to our baby girl cat. So sad. Work, Alzheimer's caregiver group. Thankfully Season 7 of Love is Blind drops
• Thursday: Work was great. Temperature slightly less. 
• Friday: Boy cats are sleepy from the heat. So is mrguy. His tumor markers are good. I am ready for the weekend!

Tiger Spirit Is A Big Army

We had a celebration the other day at work for people considered unsung heroes. I took some audio from the occasion, plopped it into transcription software and the resulting transcription was completely unintelligible. Here's a Friday poem, with the only rules being 1) it had to be comprised of complete existing sentences or standalone phrases in the transcription and 2) they had to be presented in the order that the software provided. 

Tiger Spirit is a Big Army

redacted by mrsguy

---

Fishing community.

And then an easy adult male.

Tiger spirit is a big army.

Criminals as works of art.

But perhaps the most humble, under-the-radar virgin that you can imagine.

And I 1,000% every congratulations on getting.

Granted, it's not something in the Constitution yet.

Fiction.

All of our heroes.

Progress!

We are nearing the end of Project Storage Space.

1) Numbering the un-numbered items at my house and review

2) Going through all of the boxes at the storage space and deciding what is for the dump and what is to donate

3) Friends who are outfitting their apartment come by to take what they like / donate and dump run

3) Moving all of the items from my house to storage space

4) Rellie visit 1 -- one elevator worth of stuff moves out

5) Rellie visit 2 -- another elevator worth of stuff moves out

6) Friends come by to take my childhood dresser

I have put several items on the virtual free table at work and have shouted out about the availability of the last bureau on Facebook.

One woman at work is going to take my mom's bureau and my grandmother's "three dollar table"

Another woman is going to take a tiny chair

And a friend of a friend might take the last bureau.

All I will have left is chairs and one box of things that nobody wants.

Start

Yesterday (note that the boxes on the left came home to be given away to people in the family who like jade fruit)

Friday Joy (Sunday Edition)

For 24 years my morning commute has taken me past a racetrack. Occasionally, peeking over the freeway, I could see the horses on the track, or catch a delicious whiff of horse while sitting in otherwise urban traffic and listening to NPR.

Recently the track shut down, which is ok because I like horses more than racing. I embraced the end of an era by looking at the auction of racetrack assets, and surprised myself by not needing anything from it. I have wondered if there was anything to replace the track's impact. What sensory interruption would waken me during my drive? Fate has provided me a new joy -- a communal kitchen has popped up along the freeway. Several times a week, on that same drive, I now smell crisping garlic, even with my car windows closed.

That is my Friday joy.

Victor Vasarely and Gordon Onslow Ford

I was going to say that they made too much art, but they both lived to be 90, bless them.

Oleander

The prompt was to choose a piece of art and write about what it evokes. It was accompanied by the painting Oleander, by Vincent Van Gogh.

A woman in a tightly cinched shirtwaist dress prepares a martini for her husband at a campsite. With the shiny Airstream behind her and martini shaker in the foreground, she is somehow steady-footed in her kitten heels. She takes an oleander leaf, breaks it in half, and adds it to the ingredients. 

The husband dies.

Oleanders mainly evoke long car trips with my parents in the navy blue 1965 Oldsmobile Cutlass. No air conditioning, windows opening, listening to the baseball broadcast on the radio and wondering why the oleanders in the median, pink, white and red, have no rhythm to the planting pattern. I’ve come to appreciate them over the years and would like some of my own to plant in the barren island that divides us from the neighbors. Plumbago has largely taken over the role of oleander these days, brightening with a slightly dusty blue and thrusting itself unreservedly up hillsides along the freeway. It is no oleander.

Vincent Van Gogh’s Oleanders is a rare painting of his that I like. The composition is delicious, accentuating the counterpoint of the flower to the leaf, using the leaves separately to direct the eye and give shape. It is not this way in nature. In this way it is two works of art, the arrangement and the painting itself.

Update: Oleander in the wild (or at least in the back of the storage facility).

PS

My three favorite parts of the Van Gogh Museum:

1) The artist’s paints and palettes

2) An exhibit dedicated to his use of new pigments to achieve certain looks (and how those pigments have faded)

3) A gallery that showed the works of his schoolmates

PPS I lost the name of the movie where the woman kills her husband...

Storage Peace

As opposed to Storage Wars.

Oldest nephew and I have been tackling the job of emptying my mom's storage space and trying to get other people to take things. It's a nice excuse to hang out and I could not do this without him. It has to be done.

Storage spaces are a rip. I know that many of the items in the space are valuable, but I estimate that we have spent 7 grand on the space since we moved mom two years ago. That's real money. And by now those items, even if sold, could not make up for it. Plus I'd have to do the work. No way, man.

So far we have met once at the house to look at items and add numbers to the boxes and boxes to the spreadsheet. We met twice to look into every box and add numbers to boxes that didn't have them. And yesterday we met to go over the last boxes and take stuff to Goodwill and the dump. The taking and dumping is being done by my nephew, not me.

Everything on the left and the right in this photo is now permanently dealt with. 

And as luck would have it, friends from work are outfitting their rental and need some house stuff. They were able to come take a look at everything. In the photo above, they're walking in with my nephew. Why? Because I got distracted while looking for photos on my laptop and noticed that I'd entered my mom's name incorrectly in her cremation order (which she still does not need) and I was correcting that mistake on the phone while waiting for our friends to get there, so neph went downstairs to retrieve them. Note that I decided to remove the people in this photo without reading the instructions on how to use Photoshop's content-aware tool. 

I was left with something more like Nudes Descending a Staircase With Disembodied Arm Held Aloft in Greeting. I kinda like it.

The friends walked out with a bunch of kitchen stuff, a vintage hamper, my grandmother's art deco stew pot, a big old television -- and let me know that they have people who will take the linens if we need someone to. Muuuch appreciated.

Several big loads down the quirky elevator later, the neph's enormous Honda Pilot was filled with boxes. Only one thing was rejected by the dump -- his stepdad's desktop copy machine. Considering, this is fabulous. Things are seeming so much more manageable, and it's only the 8th of September. Other relatives are planning a pilgrimage for later in the month in which they will come take what they like.

The Cat Report

The big boy is sleeping with his head on my shoulder and purring. He has not bitten his paw since we let him out of the cone. He is impossibly soft and not smelly. All systems go.

He is paying an inordinate amount of attention to me. This is new. And when we are not together he often sleeps on the arm of the sofa where I usually sit. This is where I found him when I returned from the movies last night.

So good.

Friday Joy On Sunday

I am in a fb group where we share a Friday joy. There are some joys that I can't share there because I don't think that people would like my version of joy. So here are some of the week's joys:

-- A guy at work wanted to know whether the archives wanted his old arm cast that had some significant signatures and scrawling on it. I thought it was hilarious. Brought the idea to the team (we were in the middle of mediating a water issue that had happened over the weekend) and they were all super grossed out. It would be inappropriate to bring it into the archives because casts are filled with skin cells and those, in turn, draw insects. I know this, but would have figured out a display container that would have worked.

Anyhoo the responses from my colleagues were so specific to each of them that it filled me with joy, even as they rejected the possibility that this was a cool item. And then we shared gross out stories. My idea of a good time.

Did I ever tell the story of how I lost my eyebrow? I got smacked in the face with a baseball while we were playing "pickle" in the middle of the street. Two weeks later I was scratching my itchy eyebrow while watching The Brady Bunch and I lifted its crispy corner. Then I loosened the whole thing and it was a little blonde caterpillar in the palm of my hand. I ran to my sister's room and asked her to tell me it was going to be ok. She put some Vaseline on my bald face and promised / lied that it was going to grow back. I put the eyebrow in my special box of keepsakes and it would still be there if she didn't make me throw it away.

Other Friday joys? Our yellow ginger is blooming and it smells just like the the perfume at the ABC Store.

And I have recently noticed and have appreciated the phrase "And you as well". You wish someone a nice weekend, and in response they say "And you as well." I like this, and have noticed the young people using it around me. Perhaps I will incorporate it into my daily speech.

Developing.

Also, the big black cat would like you to know that I am a jerk. He has been wearing the cone for months now, as we battled his paw cancer, or whatever it was. His paw is healed now, and he was so dirty and unable to properly wash his parts, and he did a sit-and-spin in the cat box this morning. I already washed his bottom after that, so when mrguy and I came home from his and hers mani-pedis (for real!) I prepared a nice warm kitchen sink for him. He has not savaged his right paw, and I think we're going to give it a try without the cone. So far he's being a very good boy. Washing himself in a patch of sun and using his right paw as a paw, not a meal.

Good News, Bad News

So the good news is still good, but today when I asked the doctor what he meant by "complete remission" he said that mrguy was on the *way* to complete remission. I pressed him on this, since three weeks ago he said mrguy was in complete remission and that it was a miracle (while also saying that we were going to keep doing the same chemo) and he kinda backpedaled. Boo.

Also, mrguy's one tumor marker which was its lowest last week (28, with under 35 being normal), ticked up to 30, which is the first rise we've had.

Those numbers came in *after* our visit was over, so I can't ask about that. Again, boo. He hasn't had oxaliplatin for two cycles, so maybe he needs it. Again, it is still in the normal range, so I'm not going to sweat it.

All the news that's fit to print. Today we met the doctor for the first time in person. But it also meant that today's chemo took all day. We left the house around 9:30 and got back around 7:30. I did a bunch of genealogy sleuthing during the waiting time, and have found a new book, about food, that I have absolutely no recollection of downloading. It helped the almost two hour drive home go a little more smoothly.

Now we're home, the cats are fed, the cans are out at the curb and I have the yelling people (CNN) on the tv. I do not know why there are any republican strategists of color. 

Good night!

Joy. More Joy. Gotta Have It.

It's important to find the joy. In tough times, I have my question mark pendant to remind me not to catastrophize.

For today's happiness we have:

• The DNC convention, which was full of optimism
• Watching an indie film by a guy who I follow on fb. A film about the incarceration of Japanese Americans during the war. Clam accompanied.
• Mrguy's tumor marker numbers went down again!
• Mrguy South bought us tickets to see Souled American in Chicago in October
• The eye surgeon is very pleased with the reduction in mrguy's optic nerve swelling post-op
• Big boy cat's sniffles seem to be under control
• I bought a new painting that is beautiful
• In honor of my 24th anniversary at the forklift factory my coworker made my selfie into a Slack emoji for "Wooooo!" which became my celebratory cry for all of the accomplishments big and small that my teammates made during the pandemic and beyond.
• I got the lady room window open (it is perpetually stuck)
• Hearing mrguy say "It's straight up raining, yo!" and having it be true. Love some rain in August
• Precious nephew is coming over today and we are going to brainstorm clearing out my mom's storage unit
• Finding that I have two copies of my favorite Juan Guzman card. The one on the left was in my 2000 day at a glance. The one on the right was in my stash, and I put it in a new sleeve

Mr Medical Mystery Cat

I took the sweet boy cat to his regular vet on Tuesday and the oncologist yesterday.

The regular vet is treating his sinus infection, which is still ongoing. He has been having these insane sneezes that are more like sneezures. They sound as if theres a deflated balloon up there. The doctor knocked him out last week and rootled around up there and she said it looks inflamed but nothing worrisome. 

Then he came home and slept in the cat box for a week. Also -- back to litter made out of paper pellets.

We tried a different antibiotic this week, which may be helping and, oh, he developed an abscess in his paw, so I'm soaking it twice a day. It has now cleaned up.

I expected that we were going to start chemo yesterday, when I took the boy to the oncologist. Instead she said that he's doing really well, is such a nice boy, and she checked him out up and down and can find nothing worrisome. He seems fine, and she'll see us in two months unless something worries us.

So where's the lymphoma? We do not know. He has had lymph issues for most of his life, so this may be unknowable, but in a good way.

Also she asked about mrguy and when I told her he is in remission the shock was so great that she jumped. Of course she's an *oncologist* so she thought that was super fantastic.

And so do we. 

Garden News

Who knew that a new garden hose nozzle could offer so much joy? I bought a new nozzle that was dead cheap and has a whole bunch of settings. I can make it rain. I can blast the leaf litter out of the cordelyne. It is so satisfying. In general, I am making myself go out into the garden and water because it is good for me. And I've been rewarded with news of the plant world.

A few weeks ago I swapped some geraniums from the aku room, these flaming pink guys that I've propagated from cuttings, into the prime position on the porch. You will notice one lemon on the blue chair. This is the basket for the neighborhood, for whom we are the lemon dispensary.

The allspice "tree" that I've been growing for several years is still making leaves, which is all I need. It's in the center of this photo. All I need in order to make the best applesauce ever is two of those leaves, so I am golden!

I keep harvesting lemons for the neighbors, but if you enlarge this photo you can see that the lemon tree is pumping out fruit that will be ready in January. Wooo!!

I *just* noticed the other day that the ginger / awapuhi is starting to put out some flowers. I am soooo excited!!

And over here you can see the forest that has become our green hedge with our next door neighbor. The the middleground are the cordelyne, which are insanely tall now. Right behind it is one of our many Japanese maples that line the street, and the oak tree behind it.

It is a happy day in the garden.

In Praise of: The 2024 Election Cycle

I'm mostly waxing long here so that I remember how batshit crazy this election cycle is, because we will all forget some day...

NeverTrumpers and others have been pointing out the obvious for many years, now, and it has not mattered. Trump's racism, sexism, xenophobia, lack of empathy and unreliability are blatantly obvious. His bullying behavior is despicable. He sucks up to Christians and they don't seem to care that he's a vulgar untrustworthy heathen who has paid for abortions. Somehow people love him even though he does not love back. What is it? I still don't get it. In June, after the debate, another Trump administration looked inevitable, like it was time to just lay down and think of England.

Nothing touches Trump. Except his own tiny pink hands.

RFK Jr.

In 1980 I thought that guy was the hottest thing on the face of the earth. I heard he was going to speak on behalf of his Uncle Ted, who was then running for president, so I went to the event at nearby suburb. I was 17, but was super interested in the election. I wore a powder blue cowl-neck angora sweater, and I ordered myself a gin and tonic. I may or may not have talked an older man into buying it for me (before he realized how young I was). I looked into those amazing blue RFK Jr. eyes and was mesmerized. That's all I remember. And I ended up thinking he was pretty ok over the years until the Vanity Fair expose about how he treated his wife.

Just another Kennedy, it turns out.

But wait. It can't get weirder than it is now. He looks like he bathes himself in iodine. He's an anti-vaxxer. He claims that a worm ate half his brain. And that he dropped a dead bear cub in Central Park and tried to make it look like a bike accident. If someone tried to write that last part they couldn't because his description of the bear thing it starts with "falconing", involves roadkill-napping, followed by dinner and a forgotten appointment to fly somewhere, with a detour for a "prank" requiring a dead bear *and* a bicycle.

At no point did he think to, maybe, leave a dead bear alone. Or call Fish & Game. Or maybe leave the bear on the side of a *different* road once the bear became inconvenient or, or, or maybe keep that the bear story secret until after asking the American Public to also vote for him for president. We all want to vote for you because your judgment is soooooo awesome.

Dude.

After revealing this whole mishegoss to Roseanne Barr, of all people, he still had the guts to call Kamala and ask for a job. She did not pick up.

The Convention

Earlier in our program, the GOP convention brought back all of the people who were brave enough to say, earlier, that they would never support Trump. These folks were using tactics popularized by Susan Collins (R) and Joe Manchin (D, now I), smart enough to know that they could get a little frisson of attention for their individuality, while then coming back into the fold when necessary to get the benefit of being on a winning side. Ewww. Nikki Haley you are so gross.

The Running Mate

That guy, JD Vance, is a bad person with bad thoughts. He seems to hate women. They are here to serve him, his children, and definitely not his cat. Even when you hear him talk about multigenerational families you expect him to tell you that Grandma should live with you so that you can take care of her. No, Grandma should live with you so she can continue to take care of *you*. Oh! I get it. Lucky Grandma. 

The Debate

After the super sad debate where a good president wasn't up for it and we couldn't un-see that fact, people like me were ready to turn off the tv and make our peace with the obvious outcome of the election. That the president was later convinced to relinquish the candidacy to Kamala is a miracle. 

I Am Loving This

Suddenly Trump is the old guy (which he already was). Suddenly Trump is infirm (which we've been telling you for years is the case). Suddenly his shit stinks. At last. I don't know how his force field was suddenly pierced but it seems, from where I'm sitting, that his own party is even trying to get him to change course and he's not having it. The schadenfreude is real, people. And now the thing that can't be unseen is Trump. He is who he is. He isn't going to change. And Nikki Haley has already scuttled away, claiming her own glory by publicly telling him not to whine, signaling her own desire to be president.

Time for some popcorn and an Abba-Zabba. It is going down, and I am here for it.