cats. i'm being nibbled to death by cats.

this is henry as i see him in the morning: up close and quite personal. usually he's chewing on my hair.

and just because she would despise being left out, here's shiva koja.

i'm posting them because last night before i went to bed, i took a variety of pictures of dan for his blog--and at one point he joked that we should use henry instead of posting dan's own pic of himself. it looks like he's had it doctored some by maggs, but it's a good pic of him. the boy's always moving so we had good pictures in which he was actually minutely leaning back as i clicked...and therefore looked like he was rendered by an impressionist painter.

which i never mind, but he wanted something more clear. fine, sit still, man! (;

I'm supposed to be upstairs showering right now but had to come and check out his pic, and then decided that it'd been a while since i posted kitties...and now it's twenty after 7 and i'm going to be quite late, but i just don't care.

there's been a lot on my mind this week--this weekend we see dan's parents for the first time since last year, grandma's passing, the cookie exchange at work (about which i will post eventually, if for no other reason than to show you the first batch of disastrous bars), shopping for the holidays, work, etc. it goes on and on.

the thing i keep coming back to is serena. it's the holidays, her birthday was back at the beginning of december, and she had the courage to email me in november. i didn't actually check that email account until about two weeks after she first emailed. her first letter was apologetic and reminded me of the first few weeks and months of this ordeal--shaking when i thought about it, talked about it, so on and so forth. course, i've talked about it a lot at this point, with whoever i choose. it didn't sound as though serena had. i am hopeful that she will be able to approach our mutual friend, teresa, or if nothing else, go to a professional and find respite there.

anyway, i emailed her back and said, go for it--no harm, no foul. she emailed back and said that she knew i would have questions and that she was afraid her answers would sound like lame excuses--which they might. hell, dan's did too, but he just stuck to his guns and answered, and i had something on which to chew.

i emailed back with a few questions. that was on december 5th. i've heard nothing since.

i understand that she was back in st cloud recently, for her brother's graduation. and last saturday, as close as uncle hugo's in minneapolis. it made me wonder if she thought about stopping by, or if she thought of me or dan at all.

in conversation, my cari said that i was one of those people who would give cookies to their enemy. that same night, we watched a family guy in which quagmire cheats on cleveland with cleveland's wife, loretta. at the end of the show, cleveland has the opportunity to beat quagmire up with a baseball bat--which he declines, saying: "i just can't cause harm to anyone, even if they've caused harm to me."

which is the truth. i'm angry, yeah. but i don't want to maim serena. it just doesn't seem like it's worth the effort. it's frustrating, because for me, i've found a reason for this to have happened--honesty between friends and family, seeing a therapist for my depression and ADD, being aware of my own limits and learning how to work within and without them, and the gift of truth from dan.

i'd like there to be some reason for this for serena, too. people go through these things for reasons, i think. there were of course many many ways in which this could have played out--but between the three of us, we chose messy over honest and ordered. i feel like dan and i have been working on the mess, working on re-organizing and re-figuring.

i'd like to be able to do the same with serena, but the ball's in her court. i have trouble remembering that. and i keep shoulding myself--i shouldn't have asked her questions, i shouldn't have said anything, i should have just allowed things to go back to normal.

but realisitically, i cannot. in the books about affairs that i read, the prevailing idea i took was that questions need to be asked. which means that my asking the questions was fine. besides the fact i don't think i did so maliciously or with anything other than polite intent.

the first beast at the top of my post is currently playing with the key hooks. and the second one is staring at me in the hopes that i will give her the morning canned food, and soon. i do need to go to work, at some point, as well. so i suppose i should cut this short and feed the felines before they just join forces and chew off my ankles. (;

icicles

i know that our townhome's not adequately insulated because:

1. the furnace runs all the time.
2. it's still chilly in the house.
3. and there's icicles that sice of nuclear carrots hanging off our patio-side roof, which means that heat is leaking through the ceiling and melting ice, and voila!

not that i mind the chill. it's winter, it's supposed to be chilly. no, what i mind is the gas bill. and seeing those icicles reminds me that when i open it up next time, it's going to be fifteen shades of lovely. (;

yesteday we spend the day moving things around upstairs, in an effort to see what we could do with the rooms we have. we put all the bookshelves, including the new one, in the smaller room, which now looks much bigger because there's floorspace. dan even hung up his dartboard, although i'm no good without just one beer to take my Must Toss Perfectly Right edge off. without beer, he hits near center, and i'm off along the edges. *sigh* i suppose with practice, all things are possible. correct? i certainly hope so.

he also put together this contraption i had my heart set on--a peice of exercise equipment i bought at *shudder* wal-mart. it was cheap, but i need some way to exercise in my home during the week, and i'm not getting nearly enough right now. so i paid like 94 clamshells, dragged the box home, and dan looked at the instructions and set it up. there was a ton of cursing involved due to the fact that the instructions and the actual contraption were two different birds--but it's up and running now, and kudos to dan over and over for battling with it. i just hope we both get to use it now! (:

meanwhile in the kitchen...tossed meatballs and sauce in the crockpot. my sister and brother in law came down for dinner and a movie. they brought their dog, who is about 7 months old. the cats were quite insulted, and maura's still a puppy enough to not recognize that they're ticked; she just keeps barking and treeing them in various areas of the house. we ended up watching from hell, and by the end of it i realized what bothered me about that movie:

1. heather graham sucks.
2. heather graham's dye job is atrocious.
3. it doesn't have a happy ending.

the rest of the movie i like--ian holm is good, johnny depp is easy on the eyes, and there's lots of fake blood. mmm, minty fresh!

today must be the day for lists. i have a great deal to accomplish--need to run a quick errand, and then drop back home to see if dan's up for lunch, and then bake 90 cookies. yes, 90. i signed up for the cookie exchange with nary a thought of how many other people were going to. last year i only had to bake like 40 or something. i've got all my ingredients out, but i want to run my errand before i begin. in the end, it's only 4 pans of bars, provided i slice each pan into 24 squares. so we'll see.

dan's still sleeping and it's noon, so i'm assuming that he was up fairly late blogging and playing wow (which is quite addictive, but eventually i do get bored. go figure...) i often wish that dan wasn't such a night owl. i used to be, but as i get older, it's more and more difficult to sleep past 730. this morning was an exception, as i had a glass of wine last night after dinner and then took a sleeping pill about six hours later because i just couldn't fall asleep. i slept very well, but much longer than i normally do, and woke up feeling like i'd slept in the same position all night.

which i think i did...oops. but the idea is that i actually slept, which was a problem on friday night when i only got 4 hours of sleep. functioned fine yesterday, but i always doubt my reflexes when i haven't gotten much rest.

so it's off to the races for day two of Kimmy Does Domestic Duties. (;

the pits of despair

dan was talking on his blog about how he felt like sometimes people take glee in hurting others, and referenced the prisons in which saddam hussein's sons and "minions" (so to speak) happily tortured their neighbors. he spoke of how the fingers were not simply amputated, but were actually mangled.

i really took that as a symbol--the mangled fingers--and have been sitting here applying them to what i learn slowly about cognitive behavior and the writings of epictetus--then i am the one mangling my own fingers.

i think back to when i was a kid, teased relentlessly and bullied. my dad had a series of things he'd say that would make me feel like i should be able to cope with the teasing and hitting, etc: "Like water off a duck's back." "Sticks and stones, Kim--words can't hurt you." "Why are you crying? I'll give you something to cry about." (which he never actually did...)

do i torment myself, in a prison of my own making? have i mangled my own feelings, using the words and actions of others as the tool to inflict wounds? yes sirree, i have and i do.

can someone hurt me? yes. but in the end, i get to choose the degree to which i'm hurt.

the question becomes, now that i know what makes me stay in my internal drama pit, torturing my self until i'm too broken to breathe, is whether i want to stay here.

i think of epictetus and of what i've learned from the book "how to keep people from pushing your buttons." it's not something instantaneous. the answers don't come in a flash of insight. they come slowly, painfully sometimes. like pulling slivers out of your fingers--hurts like a sonofabitch, but when it's out, you can heal and not avoid touching everything.

in the book, they talk about the 4 ways you can think--awfulizing/catastrophizing, should-ing, and rationalizing are the bad ones. the good way is realistically thinking--something that is difficult to focus on, when you're depressed.

when you're in this dark pit, there are a whole series of ropes waiting to haul you out. (at least that's how my pit looks.) sometimes i yank on one i think is solid and going to "save" me, and it just dumps water on my head. or rocks.

realistic thinking, in the pit, is this tiny thread of thought, totally obscured by the other, thicker, flawed thought processes that are all much more familiar to me.

if i think catastrophically about what's going on in my head, it goes a little bit like this:

"what if my letter to serena was too mean? that would be horrible! what if dan never is able to heal? that would be awful! what if i am never able to heal, what if i'm always depressed? that would be terrible!"

(and it does sound horrible...and more horrible...)

if i should myself:

"i should be happier. i shouldn't be so depressed all the time. i should have asked no questions of serena. i should have been more polite. i should exercise tonight instead of going shopping. i should go home so i can make sure dan's okay. i should go shopping for the ingredients for the bars i have to bake on sunday, not for bras."

(and then i feel overwhelmed and guilty because i know i'm not going to be able to do all that tonight and i should be a better person.)

if i rationalize:

"i don't care about how dan's doing, it's up to him anyway. i don't care about why serena hasn't written back, it's up to her. i don't care about how i'm doing, because i'm not worth a whole lot. and i don't care when i bake those godforsaken bars, they're just bars anyway, so who cares if they taste like ass?"

(i don't want to eat ass-bars. do you?)

so on and so forth. it's a whole ton of ropes hanging down that look like they're my salvation. but i keep ending up on my ass at the bottom of my pit again. over and over.

is it because someone threw rocks at me? nope. what about the water? nope, not that either.

it's all about my reaction to being hit by the rocks. and my first reaction is guilt: what did i do that made them throw rocks at me?

realistic thinking goes something like this:

"i'm hurt by the fact that serena has not written back to me yet, but if i don't hear from her, i'm not going to perish. i'm hurt that dan's depressed, but i am doing all i can to be of assistance. i care about dan enough to be concerned, and caring is okay. are there parts that are is it awful, horrible and terrible? some parts. but i can feel this way and not allow it to dictate my behavior. if i don't buy the ingredients for the bars tonight, that is okay. i have more time than i am allowing myself. and my boobs deserve some flashy support."

it's just hard to do that all at the same time--recognize what you're doing, and curb it in a healthy way. especially when the fog rolls down into the valley and you're just reaching out and grasping for help by touch. you can't even see what you're reaching for--so when the snake bites you instead of the helpful rope, all you can think of is how much that hurt and why the snake was there. you're not even considering the idea that there is another rope, or that if you climb out of your pit, there's ever going to be another one.

rome wasn't built in a day.

not everything slides off a duck's back. sometimes the duck just has to avoid the rocks. or go sit somewhere and heal before the next truckload of rocks gets dumped.

before i get further into metaphor-hood than i'm qualified for, i'm going bra shopping.

unhinged

i've been
unhinged
i've wandered the dim hallways of my own
skull
pondering existence
and worrying about centipedes
i am that woman
laughing alone loudly
in the movie theater
when all of you are silent, incomprehensive
of the comedy onscreen
i've been out past dusk
stumbling through the woods
little red riding hood
without directions to grandma's
i've quaked in my boots
i've shuddered to think
i've run from
myself
for a while

does it make a difference
now
that someone else
with a degree in gray matter
points it out?

*********************

i've been thinking a great deal about the shooting in miami this week. it's hard to keep your mind off it when you live with someone who's bipolar, and moreso, you're considered mentally infirm yourself.

if no one had known, there would be no attachments made, no lines drawn. it would have been "man shouts bomb on plane."

i've got a big, big problem with drawing lines. it defines something that, to me, remains indefinable: the human capacity for change.

even if that nice gentleman who is now mourned by his family was on meds, would that have made a difference? if he hadn't been diagnosed, there of course would be speculation by the media of his being mentally unstable. i'm sure that his family has survived episodes and occurances on a daily basis for years; they're aware of an instability.

my largest issue with this has absolutely NOTHING to do with the fact that the victim was bipolar. it has to do with the fact that when it comes down to brass tacks, the man was a human being.

was it based on his mental illness? how the hell do i know. i can't do much but speculate. but i live with a bipolar fellow. i can tell you that sometimes, yeah, it gets bad. sometimes you're the line between sanity and insanity.

but i can only be that line so much of the time. some of the time, he has to be his own line. i'm not his keeper. goddess or god, The Someone Upstairs--that is his keeper. and if the flint strikes stone and he makes a decision, i cannot always be there to prevent it leading him down some dark road that skewed judgment tells him is bright.

one of the things i'm trying to do is let go of the idea that i can be responsible for his actions. he knows he is not responsible for mine. i've just got a dependency problem that spills over and makes *me* feel responsible when there's no way i could be.

this dead man's wife probably is thinking about what she could have done differently--could she have yelled more loudly, could she have tackled an air marshal--what could she have done, just by herself, to save the life of the man she called husband?

the answer, folks, is nothing.

and it sucks to think that is the answer.

i read on another blog that someone heard, amidst a group of bp people, that perhaps they should start wearing jackets that said "BIPOLAR" across the back, much as marshals wear coats that state their occupation.

people wear identification to show what they're doing--you recognize a police officer, a doctor, and so on, by their clothing.

you can't see someone who's mentally ill. you can't see someone who has a new heart. you can't pick out of a lineup someone who has syphilis.

i have a problem with this because if you define your self and your group so boldly, people will start to make value judgements--they can't help it. if you see a doctor strolling through the mall on his lunch break, and someone falls over in a seizure, you'll probably wonder why the doctor just keeps walking. he's a doctor, right? he's supposed to save lives? you get the idea.

let's say i wear my jacket to the mall. my jacket's going to say: DEPRESSED AND ADHD WITH ANXIETY DISORDERS. first of all, that's kind of long. so let's shorten it, shall we? we'll just say ADHD. i go into a store. do i suddenly get preferential treatment? i'm wearing a jacket that states that i'll probably either buy a lot of shiny, glittery objects, and get directed to said area, or will i be ignored because there'll be too much to choose from and i probably won't buy anything?

yeah, it's simple, but i'm a shopper, so keep it simple.

push it a step further. leave DEPRESSED on the back of my jacket. does this mean i can't go to the top of the empire state building now, because i've been labeled as a possible jumper?

wearing a jacket that said bipolar wouldn't have changed anything any more than the man's wife yelling it at the top of her lungs changed anything. anyone could have a jacket that says "bipolar" across the back in big yellow eye-catching letters--does that make that person exempt from having the knowledge and wherewithal to create a bomb and detonate it on an airplane?

as dan pointed out in his blog--he got scared, because he does know how to put together a weapon of quite destructive capabilities. other bipolar people got scared. i can understand their fear--they don't want to be the one shot at an airport, at least not at the moment.

but then again, who the hell does? i sure don't.

in these days of heightened security everywhere--i'm waiting to be frisked at the grocery store, it'll come--anyway, i think the idea is that you can't be too careful. i ADORE the idea of law enforcement carrying tasers and such, something non-lethal, in order to preserve the life of a perceived wrong doer. or nets that just stop the fleeing suspect. that'd be super. that'd be humane.

something else that i took umbrage to, while reading the same jacket-idea blog, was that this was the first victim of the War on Terror.

again, erase some lines. there've probably BEEN other people who are bipolar gunned down, beaten, etc. since the war on terror began. they just didn't have a doctor's note saying they were bipolar.

i could start taking offense to every depressed person eliminated since the war on terror started; but that would take a long, long time, and be totally counterproductive to mourning the loss of just plain all humans whose lives have been cut short.

again, lines are being drawn that i just don't think you can draw. having high blood pressure, being diabetic--it certainly can affect your thinking, but that doesn't define the fact that you're going to be the one shot in an airport.

what defines that is YOU. it's like adding things to cookie dough. you've got your basic dough--mental instability--and you can add to it a variety of things. all of them will not give you chocolate chip cookies unless you add chocolate chips.

ie, just because you're depressed doesn't mean you're going to jump off the empire state building.

i'm certainly not trying to hide what i am. i know the cliffs of insanity that my brain hits. i know their shape and their size. it doesn't mean that someday while shopping i'm not going to be seized by cells, and overtaken with the desire to just pick up the giant, shiny, glittery christmas tree in the mall and run out the door with it.

i fully expect to be halted.

she laughs at the days to come

it was a completely and utterly lovely day outside, yesterday. i took the opportunity to tromp around in the woods, camera in tow. i felt kind of alone; dan had gone up to visit friends and see a movie. but in the end, it was exactly the balm i needed--being alone in the snow.

The Wake

thursday was the wake. as usual, technojoy overtook my uncles and they had photos on stands, as well as TWO slide projectors of old pictures. it was entertaining to see how my brother looks like my dad, when dad was young. in fact at one point i had to ask someone for claification because i thought, what the hell is david doing in that picture?

there were a lot of pics of grandma, fishing. and the one of her giving me a ride on her schoolbus, which she drove for 14 years. i doubt i was 3 at the time. i remember that after i had my ride, grandma gave me the pick of the lost and found and unclaimed--i got a few brushes and combs that i think are still in my mother's drawers at home. mom was suitably appalled and all utensils were soaked in some kind of disinfectant before i got to keep them.

my uncles thought that perhaps they would have time for a few prayers, but everyone was laughing and commenting and having such a good time that they never interrupted or bothered. it's interesting how your perception of a person can be changed, based on the views of others. i always thought my grandma was kind of cold, and that booze was a substitute for love. but the people giggling over pictures did not share that sentiment.

i was fine the whole evening, until i saw my uncle paul. my uncle paul is actually my grandfather's brother; they look enough alike that, although my grandpa's been gone for well over a decade, when i saw my uncle paul, my whole chest clenched. he and his wife, vernie, are both getting up there in years. they were never able to have children, so i think my uncle dan, who was my grandma's keeper, is also keeping an eye on them. paul still drives, and is quite capable of cooking and everything, but vernie's blind. apparently she relates the recipes from memory and paul just follows direction.

paul got a bit overtaken when he realized that him, vernie and another sister-in-law, florence, were all that was left of his generation of family. he counted them off on his fingers--all his brothers and sisters and in laws, gone. a tear rolled down under his glasses. my sister and i exchanged glances; she asked what pies they had recently baked, as they still do a lot of baking.

we did some mingling and re-meeting, reminiscing. at around 730 the receptionist gently kicked us all out; she wanted to go home and of course we were running late. had some ice cream at my sister's, watched a biking dvd that had footage of my brother, and turned in for the night.

The Funeral

friday morning i got up and according to my dad's direction, left the house at 9 so i could be at the church by 10, for the funeral at 11. i figured with traffic, i'd make it around 10 but not before.

silly me.

i got there around 940, grabbed some caribou coffee (caramel high rise, so delicious!) and headed into the church. uncles dan and tim were there, as well as tim's wife and my two cousins. eventually we tracked down the gal in charge of the service, a petite, soft-spoken, lavender-suited woman named jerry. she went over when to come up for the readings (which my cousins did) and the intercessions (which i did). then we just stood around talking for an hour and meeting relatives and friends who'd come for the occasion, some from quite a distance.

my dad's brother bob was still in hospital; he had his other hip replaced dec 1st, so missed wake and funeral. and my other uncle, jed, is still in palm springs, rehab-ing from strokes. tim and anita and their kids and dan sat in the front row. mom and dad sat in the second row. my cousins therese and her husband sat in the third row. fourth was empty, fifth was my grandma's side of the family, and sixth row was my family's children.

(we'd gotten a bit confused; sara and i had to get up and do things during the service, and wanted to sit on the edge. but dad was also supposed to do things, and would be exiting the pew...so we sat separately. halfway through mass, i made the executive decision that after communion our row would decamp and move to their row...which we did. it was kind of a feeling of solidarity.)

the first reading was the one that made me think, i haven't read the bible in years. (which i did do, at one point. i think i skipped kings or leviticus...can't remember. the one about how to build the tent that housed the ark. and i don't remember reading revelations...) anyway, there was a line in the reading that is my title today--i liked it so much. it really summed up for me who my grandmother was--the parts of her i knew, and the parts i did not. she laughs at the days to come--even in her dementia, when she felt abandoned and betrayed by her own memory, she kept her humor and spirit.

as most of you know, i'm nowhere near a practicing christian. i'm mainly pagan, with a dash of wisdom from philosophy and other religions tossed in for flavor. the church of kim, is what i usually call it. it's kind of a hotdish version of all these things assembled and baked for 30 years, with cornflakes to top.

some things in the christian doctrine still speak to me, mainly because they're so close to being pagan. for example, the priest smudged the altar with incences about fifteen times during mass. bells ring while he's performing different sections, which usually is done to scare of evil spirits. the whole time, i could see the circle being drawn around the altar, and it reminded me that although it felt foreign--as though i'd returned home after an extensive stay overseas--it was still familiar and i could be comfortable here.

do as you will, an it harm none. love thy neighbor. where's the difference? i'm not going to waste time drawing thick, black lines to separate myself from all the things i have added to my hot dish. that was my mass distraction.

at the end of mass, when i could feel my throat tighten and the tears building, the choir came from their perch and gathered around grandma's urn, and sang acapella. there were about 10 white-haired church mavens, all who'd given up their day to sing my grandma to heaven. it was probably the most spiritual part of mass, in my opinion.

i felt like i was going to sob, but just before i could do so, i noticed the flower display to the left of the urn swaying, and the annoyed and somewhat embarassed face of one of the singers, as she realized that she'd knocked it. and all the feelings of sadness i had--all the fears for my parents, and the grief--it all got up and walked away, and i smiled.

i wasn't even able to cry when my dad picked up the urn and walked grandma out--the oldest son, carrying her away.

they had a meal afterwards, cold salads and some warm chicken stuff that tasted like stroganoff, but no one could figure out if it actually was stroganoff. kibbutzed with my family, met one of my dad's second cousins who we found out had brothers playing in pro hockey, and watched my dad's first cousins hold up a picture of my grandma when she was sixteen or so next to my sister, beth, and comment on how similar they looked. they were right; she does share many of the same characteristics.

the picture had been at the wake too, an 8x11 of grandma looking younger than imaginable, and glowing. in the bottom right corner there was a note, penned in her hand: to my loving mother, from your loving daughter.

i wept on the way home. later, friends gathered to play some spygame until late, and collapsed.

Saturday

when i woke up, it was snowing. soft, fresh snow. we were scheduled for a few inches, maybe 2, but in the end i think we got about 4 or so. i was feeling for beef stew, so after my walk i hazarded into target and grabbed some items, and came home and put the stew together. made 3 loaves of banana bread that substitutes tofu for eggs. watched the bbc version of pride and prejudice.

i was going to take the short route through the woods. tired, my nose was colder than i remembered it being, and it was slippery under the fluffy snow, mainly because of all the cross country ski tracks. i was enjoying the waves i created, the snow riffling out front of me. flakes were falling thick and fast, and i was having trouble seeing, even more trouble taking pictures.

halfway through, a skinny girl skiied towards me. she didn't have any poles, just her arms moving. i was reminded of my cousins, who race cross country in the winter, who'd just read at grandma's funeral. as she came up she skiied to a stop. how do you get to the hockey rink, she asked, cheeks flushed. i pointed behind me: take a right at the bench. she started to ski and then said, if you turn left up ahead, you'll see a spot of snow cleared out; i lost my mom's watch, i think it was my grandma's watch.

then i noticed the tear on her face, just one. how her cheeks were blotchy, not in the pattern of exertion, but in the pattern of distress. i'd just seen a church of this, the day before. i said i'd check, and if i found it, i'd leave it at the hockey rink.

left at the next intersection. i started to think that perhaps her idea of a large spot where the snow had been trampled was a smaller spot than my imagination was searching for. after a good twenty minutes, i was ready to give up. i stood at the top of a small rise, looking for the wide, triangle shaped marks that would mean someone had recently climbed up a hill. there weren't any. i thought perhaps i should head back, that perhaps i'd missed it. nah, why not keep walking. as i went down the hill i could see what she had done--instead of the bird-shaped marks, she'd removed one ski and just pushed herself up the hill on the other one. smart girl.

at the bottom of the hill, i found the area--a big spot. you could see where she'd realized she'd lost it, and then the backtracking. i looked around, i swept gently with a stick.

i remembered when i was in high school. i'd borrowed a ring from my mother, dark coiled wire, one she'd brought back from italy. it fell off as i walked, and i was in near hysterics because i knew where the ring had originated. i cried for a while on the shoulders of friends, and then later in the day, when i figured i was going to have to find a good story to tell my mom, the ring turned up.

i remembered that feeling, searching for something my teenage mentality told me was going to ruin my relationship with my mother forever. who knew what how she was going to react?

that story ends happily. i don't know how mom would have reacted. when i got home, i told her the truth--that i'd lost the ring, but that it had been found. my mom laughed and said that the ring was a trinket from italy, not something on which she spent a lot of money.

i didn't find the watch. it'll probably turn up come spring, when things melt. or even next week, if temps rise. or someone else will find it, and it will become a memory in their minds, some other person's keepsake. i don't know the girl's name, or how to find her. i don't know how her mother will feel, or how old that watch was, or what memories were attached to it.

in fifty years, that watch will be forgotten. that daughter won't care about that watch; she'll care about her mother, and her father, in a different way, one that reminded me that the grief my uncle paul felt, and the grief that stained my father's cheeks, is a grief best kept for losing a person, and not a piece of jewelry.

Sunday

the sun is out. i've got beef stew bubbling in the kitchen, and banana bread with cinnamon on the counter. homemade pepper biscuits will be made soon to accompany the stew. whatever happens in the next days, i must remember to do just one thing, something i have done but often forget: laugh at the days to come.

somnia

Word: somnia
Part of Speech: n.
Other Forms: somniac
Etymology: Logical opposite of insomnia.
Definition: The ability to fall asleep.

that's the part i don't have trouble with. the part i have trouble with is this:

insomnia: inability to sleep or to remain asleep throughout the night.

usually my target is 6 hours. after about 5, i think my brain gives up and gets restless. i read a theory that the reason people are insomniacs is that they're hyperaroused--and not in a sexy, i'm-wearing-lingerie type of aroused. it makes me wonder if other ADHD people have the same problem. ie, our brains get bored with sleeping patterns so we wake up and search for bright, shiny objects.

which reminds me of my favorite ADD joke:

q: how many ADD kids does it take to change a light bulb?
a: let's ride bikes!

last night my mind was wandering. dan and i were cuddling; he was thinking in a wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more direction, i was thinking in the same direction except i was cold. as i laid there in the circle of his arms, my mind relaxed, my body warm and comfortable...even if i didn't think it, i was probably bored. wandering mind. dan got up and said, "your mind isn't even in the room."

oh, but it was. i was thinking about the dresser and how old it was. thinking about my lanterns, and how the little star shapes don't make big star shapes on the ceiling and walls when the lanterns are lit. thinking about the sound of cat feet, padding quietly into the room. thinking about when i was going to be able to neuter said animal. thinking about the breathing of the person with whom i was cuddling. then i heard these three little beeps--not from my cell phone or a fire detector. me hearing the beeps indicates, to me, that they have to be loud, because usually i can't hear a thing. dan didn't hear them and felt that it was a symbol of our larger relationship issues that i'm never paying full attention to him.

dan felt a bit slighted because i was worried about the beeps, which was probably something from the neighbors' townhome, and not concerned about him.

i tried to explain, i think successfully, that i wasn't rejecting him. my mind is ALWAYS in fifteen places at once. and the only way it's not going to be, the only way to curtail it, is for someone to say something so that i'm not thinking about finding the water bottle to spray the cat who's terrorizing my curtains. i'll probably still want to do two things at once--it's in my nature--but the only way that i can break the habit of focusing like a microscopic kaleidescope is to be called on the carpet when i do it.

this led to a discussion, fairly heated, about what i felt was important and what dan felt was important, and how he was feeling rejected and how i wasn't meaning to reject him. my whole point centered around trying to get him to understand that i wasn't. it felt like losing battle, because all the evidence points to me not paying attention, and my family at large is the same way. it has to feel like you're being neglected, when in reality, you're not--we're not ignoring, we're not rejecting, we're simply distracted. there's just too much world that falls into the openings on our heads--too many sights, sounds, tastes. the thoughts run wild, a ferris wheel with no stops.

i used to chew my nails all the time when i was a kid. one lent, instead of giving up chocolate the way that i usually did, i decided to give up nail biting. it was difficult because as a worrier, i need some way to work off nervous energy. after four weeks, i did it. i had no desire to put my fingertips in my mouth and worry the nails shorter. to this day, i don't nibble. but now i chew gum.

lesser of two evils? who the hell knows. it looks nicer to chew gum quietly than it does to chew on your own poor flesh, but in the same sentence, it's just a replacement.

i probably could pare down my brain in the same way. but this is coming from a girl who has trouble developing the habit of brushing her teeth every night. they say after 21 days, you can develop a habit, good or bad. i tried taking vitamins at one point during college, convinced i needed the nutrients and crap. i took them at the same time, every day. after two months i ran out. i didn't feel an urge to get another bottle. i didn't feel sad about missing my daily dose of Centrum. i just stopped.

good habits or bad. my good habit of late is comminicating--i'm wanting to dissect and discuss things that previously i didn't want to consider. but i want to make sure that we're doing it in a more open manner--i feel i had to dig to get to the bottom of why dan was feeling rejected. perhaps i should have just known...but if i had known, i never would have done it. does that follow?

my bad habit of late is coffee, and lack of exercise, and stress. probably what's curtailing my sleeping habits. if i stopped with the coffee after say, two in the afternoon, and maybe started walking after work, i might be in a better place. but i get bored with walking. i feel like i need the coffee to stay afloat. it does clear my brain some, to drink it. it clears my brain to walk. i could probably try replacing coffee with walking. it'd be healthier. it'd be safer for my blood pressure. i could try walking the cats, because that would never get boring... (;

whenever i don't get enough sleep, i feel like i'm an accident waiting to happen. and i know that the next week is going to be a busy one, filled with all kinds of ups and downs--picking little sara up at the airport on tuesday around 5 am. the memorial service thursday, funeral friday. hopefully some spygame on friday night. i feel like this was the weekend during which i was supposed to bank up my sleep, so that i felt rested later.

the snow is melting outside. i can see big chunks of ice forming on the patio, where i walked on friday to fill the birdfeeder, aka kitty cable. the cats are sleeping at exact opposite ends of the couch; shiva, who stared me into wakefulness this morning, is keeping one eye on henry, who doesn't seem to care and is sprawled out, eyes half-shut. i wonder if cats ever feel they've slept enough.

the last day of margaret k.

they say your hearing is the last thing to go.

on tuesday at 3:27 pm the girl on the other side of the wall said something about her nails--which reminded me that i was going to see grandma that night and file her nails, maybe even buff them if she was open to that and not agitated. silence fell in my corner of the office. the coworker behind me was taking a payroll, and in the silence, she pretty much shouted to the person on the phone: MARGARET.

and i had this weird feeling--like either i was hearing my grandma's name to remind me that she was needing my thoughts, or i was hearing my grandma's name because someone was calling her into the house for dinner.

i tried to leave work early, but i just couldn't seem to get out. at 520, on my way out the door, i checked my cell, and found the message: grandma had passed earlier, around 3:30.

it's strange the way these things happen. i'm glad she's gone because i know what kind of agony she was in, trying to get away from her own body, trying to escape from the pain, and finding no safe corners. i know what agony my father and his brothers were in, watching her suffer and trying to plan a funeral for someone who was still struggling for breath.

monday and tuesday she was calm. the hospice staff stopped moving her to her side, which made her more and more agitated despite any morphine she was administered. it was as if she knew, and just settled down to wait for the right train to come on by.

i'm sad she's gone because she is my grandma. sad to see my family standing in that small room, weeping silently.

i drove up there anyway, on tuesday. cried a little on the way there. found a box of kleenex in the car. when i got to the room everyone was very grateful for the kleenex because the stuff in the room was, as my uncle tim put it, like a fine grade of sandpaper. the home had put out coffee, pink lemonade that was like liquid sugar, and some cider that was a step down from the lemonade. they had a plate of cookies that i figured no one would touch, but eventually people ate a little off the plate. it was around 615 or so and i'm sure no one had eaten dinner.

her body was in the bed; a lot less of her body than she used to command. legs thinner than my wrist, her mouth open and empty without dentures. when she first went from the assisted living facility to the hospice, my parents searched her room for her cane and her lower denture set, to no avail. the staff searched a few other rooms that grandma frequented, but they had no luck either.

without life in her face, her wrinkles were gone. she looked like a young child, head full of hair, sleeping with her mouth hanging open. the covers were pulled up to her chin, white sheets and cornflower-blue blanket. across the pillow on one side of her head, someone had laid a blue rosary. she looked so peaceful. i commented that this was the most peaceful i had ever seen her. the perpetual furrow in her brow--the one that she got when she was annoyed, which lately had been often--was smoothed out by some great hand.

it reminded me of making the bed, and smoothing the sheets so the comforter lies flat.

everyone was weeping when i walked in; tim's family had just arrived, and my uncle bob and aunt, roz. it was like a strange reception line, walking around in my bulky navy pea-coat, holding my gray box of tissues and trying to hug people with both arms. i put the tissues down, shed layers, found a seat. there were a total of this many people in the room: dad, bob and roz, tim and anita and their girls, kelsey and ericka, myself, my sister sara, my uncle dan. eventually my mother arrived, but that was not for a while as she had a longer drive.

the room got quiet. and then in the manner of my family, we chatted about things remembered, and the laughter was contagious. i doubt grandma could have asked for a better tribute than that--tears followed by giggles and guffaws, remembering her when she was vibrant and alive. one of their favorites was how she didn't always know who was visiting her, but she could sing along with any old song on the radio. the boys remembered her writing down songs to sing around the campfire, asking my grandpa if he could play it on his harmonica. grandpa used to say, "let me see if i can find it, margo."

the one they laughed about was "heart of my heart," which grandma had accidentally penned, "heart of my deart." the boys, being contrary, sang it as she wrote it: "heart of my deeeee-rt."

after a few hours, the crowd dispersed. the call was made to come and take her body away. she's going to be cremated, which is kind of against the "rules" in catholocism. but grandpa was cremated too; they were just such practical people that i doubt they'd want to take up more space than needed.

they talked about her obituary, what it should say. grandma's middle name wasn't katherine or kate or anything--it is just "k". they had to discuss how her father's name, hugh, was spelled. still unsettling when tim sent out the email of the obit on friday.

uncle dan found a red oak urn for her ashes--fitting, as my grandfather's nickname was the Red Oak. tomorrow we clean out her room; they've gone through it already, a few times, since she was moved. apparently the facility will do a silent auction on items in her room, instead of the family lugging it all out, and her clothing can be donated. dad said that we should stop and see if there is anything we would like.

the only thing i want is that perfume bottle, empty or full. that is all.

i drove home; had to stop to pick up a perscription on the way. when i came out of the store, it was snowing--light and airy snow, silver in the streetlight. i stood there for a minute before getting into my car, feeling like a benediction had been passed on my self, that my grandma was now saying good bye, in a way i would comprehend. none of those flakes stayed on the ground. and in the end, i'm sure i'm reading into some natural phenomenon and giving it personality when i needed it, and that the falling snow was not really a gift from grandma.

then again, i'm not sure i could call myself a poet if i didn't read emotions and signs everywhere i turned. (;

next thursday is the family memorial service. friday is the actual funeral, at which i'll be reading the intercessions.

yesterday we drove up to my sister's house, to have birthday gathering for my mom, who turned 62. today we meet again at her house for thanksgiving dinner. i have food to prepare--green bean casserole, banana cream pie, stuffing. this year will be disjointed, because of the new setting and the empty chair.

but i have so very much for which to be thankful that the darker aspects of this year should be in shadow.

i'm thankful for my relationship with dan, who i thought i had lost.
i'm thankful for the opportunity to find myself in therapy--who knew i was missing? (;
i'm thankful for having known the woman i called grandma, thankful for the lessons she taught me and the time i spent with her, and thankful that her passing was peaceful.
i'm thankful for my uncle, jed, because he has taught me that when the odds are against you, you can still smile and persevere and keep going.
i'm thankful that my parents are retired.
i'm thankful that i have this opportunity to write, in the warmth of my own home, from under a green fleece blanket, with two cats curled up in my living room.
i'm thankful that the sky is peerless blue, and the sun is rising, and it's windy and chilly outside.

right now, after this year of unexpected doors closing, i am thankful for the ones that have opened. i know that the things for which i am thankful are all things that have caused me grief--if i did not know my grandmother, i would not grieve. etc.

henry is looking for leaves outside the patio door. they've been swirling around dry for the past few days. last week, he kept butting his head up against the glass. this week he just sits and watches leaves and sparrows swirl in and out, like breath.

colors

yesterday was a gray sky day--cloudy and overcast. that always changes the colors of the world--the lighting, i mean. if it's sunny, the grass is a brilliant green and the sky, a bottomless blue.

on overcast days, it seems as if everything takes on a layer of fog, mutes the bright hues.

the annointing was moved to saturday at 1130, as the priest had prior engagements on friday evening. dan and i met my parents for breakfast a few blocks from the homes in which grandma presently resides. sara and her husband, brett, met us there as well. and for any of you out there who are familiar with my late habits, i got there before my sister. (;

the perkins was the same perkins where, when i was about 10 or so, we had breakfast...and came out to our suburban and found that everything in it had been stolen. at the time we lived 8 hours away from the Cities, and we'd stayed for a week at my aunt's house. with four kids and holiday pictures looming, mom had packed everything--all our good clothes, etc. all the luggage was gone, with the exception of a blue hardcase of our play dolls. the area behind the restaurant used to be a junkyard of some kind. now it's an industrial park, complete with parking lots and brick buildings. i remember dad wanted to walk through the junkyard, to see if he could see anyone or any thing, and mom didn't want him to go through it. she kept saying that it was something the police would handle.

the kids--my siblings and cousins, all under the age of 10--were convinced that the brightly colored birthday clown inside the restaurant had been in on the luggage-napping.

after breakfast, always fun with my family, we drove over to presbyterian homes, where grandma is staying until she passes. no one has any idea of when that might be. her lungs are clearer now, but they can't reinsert the IV because whenever they do, her lungs fill up. she's on morphine for pain, another drug to calm her, and another drug to help dry up the fluid left over. when she breathes, she sounds like an old coffee percolater--gurgling, rasping, wheezing. she's too weak to cough at all.

her skin, which two or three weeks ago was pale but rosy, has morphed to that pallor that people get when they're at That Point before Death--fleshy yellow, nearly jaundiced, stretched thin across her poor head. she just grew most of her hair back, and it's thick, dark gray and white curls topping her head, her last bodily luxury.

we took turns at first rubbing her arms--she does not like to have her legs or feet touched, which is a pity because her feet and calves are so dry. i can't imagine she's aware of this; her internal agonies have got to override the rest of the external distress, and i'm sure the morphine takes the edge off of dry skin. i talked to her nurse, mohammed, and he found some unscented lotion that i was able to massage into her right arm--that's the one without the fifteen medical bracelets--and both hands. her skin is like frail parchment, the epidermis so thinned that it's like looking into the ocean with jacques cousteau--clear, you can see sand and fish darting and orange anemones, opening and closing, beneath the surface.

but it was painful to watch her, agitated and trying to talk, mouth moving like a baby bird, grasping at air and words. her apnea has gotten worse; she stops breathing sometimes for more than 22 seconds at a time, but her clinging spirit nags lungs into action.

she kept trying to put her feet on the floor. mostly, she'd get her heels to the edge and then her legs would just slide off the bed.

simultaneous to watching my grandmother suffer is the more active suffering of my father and his brothers. it's watching them suffer her pain that hurts me ever so much more than my grandmother's pain.

there are so many things that run through your head, seeing this all happening. i think of coming into the house in winter, shutting the door behind you, being enveloped in the warmth of the house. you shut the door to keep the cold at bay. i think of death in the same way--you're slipping into the Whatever that happens after your spirit leaves, and you hurry into the heat of Beyond, shutting the door behind you.

that is a quick death--that is a hurried, unknown death.

my grandmother's death is a slow death. unhurried. it reminds me of being warm in summer, the heat clinging to your skin. the slow settle of dusk outside, and then the windows dropping, slowly, slowly, in autumn, until your house is warm for gusty snow.

your spirit is still sneaking away. it's still closing the door on this life, and scurrying into the next. but this death, it's leisurely. it allows you to say goodbye--sometimes on numerous occasions. it's the minnesota good-bye of dying.

the spirit lingers. grandma is trying to go somewhere, with her feeble legs. she's trying to get up and leave. it feels like she has to realize somewhere in her head that she needs to leave her body behind. that after eighty-some years of being constricted to moving in a heavy coat of bone and blood, she's going to get up and walk into the house, and shut the windows, in time for winter.

***

i think too of the tarot card for death. about how you explain it not by saying that physical death is imminent, but that it is a change.

death is not the end of being. it's not the end of existence, not to my mind. the spirit weighs something; your body is lighter when the colors have deserted the shell. where does that invisible soul go? it has to find somewhere. it's displacement--you get in the tub and the water spills over the sides.

it's change for my grandmother--she's not going to wink at me any more, or ask for another glass of watery black label whiskey. she's moving out and moving on. she's changing the nature of her relationship with the planet.

the change is for us, as well. the chapter in which we can have question and answer sessions with her is ending. the next chapter is a mystery to me; her path leads off into the woods. in anne of green gables, the chapter in which anne's foster father dies is called "the bend in the road." you can't see around that corner; it's a blind spot until you reach it yourself.

i was doing okay yesterday. through the service, mumbling the Our Father. family gathered, piled on top of one another in the small room. even while i rubbed white lotion into her skin, i did not weep. a few tears crept in, but that was at the end of the service, when i came to the realization that the priest was putting as much feeling as he could into the service, but for him, the book has been read many times; he is familiar with this chapter, as familiar as i am to putting on a jacket or washing my hair. it's rote. he wasn't inhuman, he was just doing the service as required.

i have a hard time crying or showing emotion in front of other people, even people i hold as dear as my friends and family. at home with dan i just sobbed. i don't want to lose my parents some day. i don't want to see them, colorless on the palette of death. i want to understand why we're put here, if it's just to die eventually.

i know that my grandma's life had meaning; if the only meaning that exists in it was raising my father, that is enough for me. i know for my parents the greatest meaning they can have is in raising their own children.

the thought of being this side of soil without my parents is just plain painful, even if i am not yet experiencing it.

we sat up talking for a while, until i wasn't incoherent anymore. dan said that you'd think after being here for as long as humans have, we'd have figured it all out--life, death, the time between, the destination after life. humanity figured out a gasoline powered automobile, we've conceived of and achieved flight, skipped on the moon and found it inedible puce rock--but we haven't quite got this life-business all figured out. do we die just because that's the way nature is? are we recycled, like my empty plastic milk jug, or my sister's compost pile?

yesterday, he was wearing an old white t-shirt as an undershirt, frayed and rubbed thin in dime-size holes. it's been washed so many times that the colors are not their vibrant store-bought brilliance any more, but i remember when it was new.

the advertising on the shirt is from an old television commercial, in which a Barbie doll ditches her molded boyfriend, Ken, to run off with a GI Joe figure; the three characters are on the back of the shirt. On the front of the shirt, up on the left where perhaps Hanes would apply a pocket, is a little logo. Barbie and GI Joe are in some kind of red convertible, and below them is a little saying that was just too close to the truth of yesterday:

Life is a journey.
Enjoy the ride.

that is all there is to it. at least, that's my truth for today.

last rites

tomorrow night they're performing the Annointing of the Sick, one of the seven catholic sacraments, on my grandma. it used to be known by a much longer name: Last Rites of Extreme Unction. sounds nasty, but it's just a way to say a spiritual farewell. it's something that is done not just for the old, either, but for the very ill, both mentally and physically.

in grandma's case, time has crept into her body.

i was telling dan today in email about how it felt like suddenly my dad's side of the family was going to be rudderless--the matriarch, soon gone. saturating all my memories of grandma is that smell, her parfum of choice. it's going to drift off into the air, smudged free of its rootless bonds.

and yet i think of a family tree--the lines remain, even if the person is no longer there.

i'm tired of this waiting line in which i have queued my life. wait for a job. wait until i feel ready to move. wait until i feel ready to marry. wait, wait, wait. i waited to get to know my own grandparents, waited to open myself up to them, until it was far, far too late. i honestly can say that by the time i was ready to know my grandmothers, by the time their wisdom and tales became something for which i could no longer wait, they were done waiting for me.

am i just waiting to be annointed one last time?

i will stand in a room tomorrow and say good bye again to my grandmother, before she "gives herself permission to die," as my uncle put it. the last time i remember actually visiting with the woman i consider my grandmother--feisty, whiskey-drinking, opinionated--was more than 10 years ago, when my family lived in hermantown. ten years later, she is a woman whose acquaintance i make anew every time we meet.

tomorrow i'll meet her again. i'll be another person in the room, another body praying, another spirit wishing hers well on its journey.

this has been a difficult year for my dad's family. my uncle, jed, is still in rehab for a massive stroke. no one knows what the outcome of that will be. he's got a strong spirit, a positive outlook despite all that life has dealt him. he will not be able to come back from the west coast and say good bye to his mother--i remember when he was back last summer, he hugged us before he left. it almost felt as if i said good bye to him then, too.

i feel as though i am waiting for the phone to ring, and tell me she is gone. i don't want to hear that. i don't want to see it in an email. i'm waiting in a line in which i never want to wait.

all of my body is tense--my neck and shoulders are the worst. my eyes feel as though they are waiting, too, for the tears to come free. i feel like i don't want to cry too much, and i feel like i'm going to cry a lot.

i crave dan right now, crave being held, the touch of another person's flesh on mine. it reassures me that i am here, now. that i can still care--that i don't have to give in to my overwhelming desire to fall into apathy. i can feel myself trying hard to push the emotions away, when in reality i should be working through them--finding ways to understand and comprehend them.

i find myself tallying up the number of things that have gone on this year, find myself numbering and listing. this mental list is all made up of bodies--my uncle, made physically infirm. losing serena. finding dan, whose body is as familiar to me as mine, but whose soul i had to locate among the midden of our long relationship. my father's surgery, cleaning out the detrius of my grandparents' house, the frayed edges of my own unknown body finally pointed out by doctors. and now my grandma, who is ready to leave this adam-and-eve house.

how dear others' bodies are to us, how dear their spirit. my grandma margaret always smells elegant and lovely, elizabeth claiborne's red door perfume. on grandma's skin it becomes something ephemeral.

i think of this in terms of the blessed oil that will be dipped onto her head tomorrow by a stranger's fingers. i think of my grandmother, turning the bottle of champagne-colored water on her wrist, rubbing parchment thin skin together, dabbing it onto her slender neck.

all these memories coalesce like dusk. just as she annointed herself for years with that perfume, so i annoint myself and bless myself with memory.

it's been a long week.

and it's only the end of monday.

this morning started early, long before the sun was up, and prior to lights being turned on in the office. busy day, which is nice because it goes quickly.

got word from my dad that my mom put in notice at work today. talked to her tonight and she said she felt she'd been pushed to this. she worked at a small company, at which the husband and wife fought on a regular basis. mom was accused by boss' wife on friday of having alzheimer's, after missing a few notes for her boss IN NINE YEARS. nine years? a few notes? good gravy. i miss a few notes every day. she was also accused of not doing her job--a difficult task when your job involves a system out of which your boss' wife has locked you. mom didn't know that she'd been locked out so she spoke to her boss, who called the computer folks, who came in and asked her boss' wife if she knew that she'd locked my mom out of the system. the boss' wife said, yes, i locked her out.

what a bunch of honky. so mom did something she has never done: put in two weeks' notice because she was so fed up.

that was the first weird part of the day.

the second occurred about three hours later, give or take. dad emailed a deer hunting forward about one of his friends from high school who was a founding member of the minnesota deer hunter's association, and was featured in a newspaper from somewhere up north. five minutes after that he sent an update on my grandma, his mom, who's been hospitalized since friday.

(my uncle took her to the dr on friday because she was weak. he found that she was malnourished and dehydrated due to her own decision not to eat, and that she had a bladder infection.)

today the dr said she had fluid in her lungs, and they took some for a sample. the dr determined that grandma will probably be discharged soon, into a different nursing facility. they won't force her to eat, and grandma does not want a food shunt. if they keep her on the iv, her lungs will fill with more fluid.

so at this point it's a matter of days, or weeks, depending on my grandma.

as stabbing westward says, i'm feeling the weight of the world/and it's crushing me.

this has been a long year. samhain came and went, the celtic new year. i felt refreshed the other day, limitless future, learning material in my past. i feel i am learning every day--how to be, how to cope, how to heal, how to live. perhaps i simply was not aware, before this year. perhaps i was, and just lived in denial of reality.

perhaps this is the year my eyes are opened.

in the bible, jesus spits in mud and the blind see.

in the endless cauldron, cerwidden renews her warriors.

rebirth. being recycled--being renewed. i think of the babylon 5 quote, about how pain sometimes comes, because that is the process of constantly being born.

i don't want to cause pain. eero is in dilemma right now--he feels he needs to make a decision about with whom he is friends.

do as thou wilt, an it harm none. this includes your self. this includes your belongings. this includes your friends, your family. there is only one decision in life--the other has been predetermined. death is the constant. life is the chaos.

the only decision i have had to make this year is this: to live. the only decision i have to make in reference to that decision is HOW to live. i've only got a limited amount of time left on the planet. that's been shown to me this year. how i spend that time is up to me, and none other.

yeah, it's been a long week.

i am a cauliflower racist.

i don't like cauliflower unless you add stuff to it.

you know, you have one of those foods too. mine is cauliflower. if it's breaded and deep fried, yum. if it's smothered in cheese, yum. plain cooked or raw cauliflower = disgusting.

i'll admit, i've been kind of angry lately. apologies if i've been short with anyone. sometimes things you're dragging around behind you creep up when you least expect it, tap on your shoulder, and elbow you in the face.

kind of reminds me of those beer cans people tie onto cars after weddings and crap--they're banging around behind the car but woe to the driver who brakes quickly.

anyway, i have a ton of good friends on the planet who support me and are there for me, regardless of my attitudes towards naked cauliflower, cooked celery, and overripe bananas. i guess in retrospect i've been a bit of a hypocrite in comprehending dan's problems with "letting go" of serena.

i'm tooling along, quiet as can be, fairly content with the vehicle i'm in. there's my usual fog of apathy roaming about, but i'm moving in some direction. at least it feels like i am. and then, out of the blue, BOOM crash bang--there's those fucking cans fastened to the bumper.

it's been there behind me, all along: anger.

i forgave dan and serena for what happened back in may. i'm not so angry with dan anymore, because he's been here and been willing to work through issues, answer questions, understand why i'm angry, and be my friend again.

it's much more difficult with serena. for someone who professed to consider me a sister, her current actions are saying that she really never gave a damn.

for a long time, my apathetic fog allowed her some wiggle room. her parents' admonishment to allow her breathing space allowed me to hope that perhaps we'd be able to work through this, that perhaps she'd be willing to work through this with dan, too. i thought that we were valuable enough friends for her to consider it.

as time passes and the fog clears, so too does any hope i had that we can move beyond childish actions and into the realm of adults, working and ironing out an issue.

and that, my friends, pisses me off.

it's deflating to think that someone you valued doesn't give a shit about you.

more specifically, that if serena really, honestly cared about any relationship she had with me, she'd be willing to work through it.

i almost wish that when i'd emailed her parents, concerned after a few weeks of her silence and no answers from mutual friends, that they'd all told me to give up.

it's exhausting, holding out hope.

hell, i give everything a second chance. look at cauliflower. just because i hate the taste of it on a regular basis, i always feel that perhaps, somehow, some way, it'll be better. it can be palatable. i can like cauliflower, with some addendums to its flavor.

is that making it into something it really isn't? to me: nope. it's improving what already exists.

the cliff notes version is this: i thought serena cared. i thought dan cared. serena is showing me she didn't care. dan's showing me he does. i've been willing to give them both the benefit of the doubt because if i can deep fry cauliflower and call it tasty, then i can be adaptable to what goes on with people i hold dear.

i'm angry because someone i held dear apparently doesn't care about me. i'm angry because coworkers ask, all the time: "how's serena doing?" and i have no freaking clue what the hell to say. i have some options, though:

a) am i abrasively honest: "well, after she admitted to an affair with my boyfriend, i forgave her and she ran away anyhow, apparently i don't exist in her world anymore."

b) am i elusive: "not sure. we haven't talked in a while."

c) am i confused, version 1: "serena? i don't know who that is."

d) am i confused, version 2: "she talks to friends she always said she wasn't sure she liked, but she won't talk to me anymore."

usually i go with option b, and then have to field the follow-up question:

"i thought you two were such good friends. what happened?"

to which i don't have any answers at all.

deep down, i'd like answers. i forgave her behavior in reference to may. i forgave her lack of honesty at the time. but what i'm having trouble forgiving is the deception in her actions now. if she really, really wanted to be my friend--if she really ever was my friend--do i hold onto the hope that at her core, she is a good person? that she is still redeemable, in my eyes? that there is friendship worth saving?

or that the person i thought existed, under all my apparently illusory cheese, is not there?

if the first value is true, then by all means, continue being her friend. support her for all she's worth.

if the second value is true, if she was my friend and is now choosing to expose herself as a fake--beware, others who call her friend. at any time, you may fall into a hole and be abandoned for her better self interests.

do i really believe that's possible? back in july, i would have said no. i would have said that serena was one of my friends. i would have said that she was a good friend to those around her.

months down the line, as the beer cans hit me in the proverbial ass, i am coming to realize that perhaps it is possible. perhaps i was just so fucking naive that i allowed myself to be snowballed into thinking that she was my friend, when in reality she wasn't.

the point of this whole monologue is that i really wanted to believe in friendship. dan's held up his end of the bargain; slowly, we're building something all over again. the fact that i can build it again with dan fostered hope that i could build again with serena, too.

but she doesn't want to build anything. as dan said earlier today, it's like she took her blocks and went home.

sure, that works.

if you're eight years old.

want to be an adult? i'll give you a crash course: you don't get to take your blocks and go home. you shared them; that means you have some of mine, and i have some of yours.

the cauliflower version of life works up until you share the cauliflower. someone goes home with the cheese, and you're fucked.

and there you have it. perhaps that's not the intellectual version of things as i see them, but that's the view from my plate.

short

i'm average in height, not short, per se.

but this post has to be short.

first things first: i'm awol this weekend. driving to my grandma's house four hours north to help out my mom and aunt with the estate sale. no, grandma's still kicking, but she doesn't remember she has kids or a house, and the nice folks at the assisted living facility are helping her out now...so the house is kind of extra.

i just know it's going to be difficult for my mom and aunt, saying goodbye to a house that they grew up in. it will stay in the family; from what i hear, my cousin is buying it.

that house is infused with my grandma's spirit--or perhaps it's my memories of her. perhaps that is what we think is spirit--that which is immortal, our memories. i give spirit to the house by remembering family meals there, remembering squeezing in at the table, remembering grandpa slipping me marshmallow pinwheel cookies under the table at breakfast.

i have to meet my mom and sister, so again, why am i blogging?

because my friend dilshad lost her father today, and i need to get this off my chest before i get in the car and drive somewhere.

i know it's samhain, i know that the veil is thin. it's closing--like a curtain at the end of a play, it's closing. but it's slow. the person operating the drapery pulls in the otherworld is taking their own sweet time.

there are so many things that are dying. so many.

i keep the picture in my head of yellowstone, after the fires: ashy stumps, blackened ground, and the green shoots, poking through. i understand the concept of life giving back to death and death nourishing life. but it's difficult to watch it happen.

there are so many things being born--multitudes.

the balance between everything is kept by some objective accountant, with worldly pencil in hand. it's getting close to tax time--the endof the year--and i'm picturing some god showing up to audit your life.

what have you done, who have you influenced, what good do you have to show of your hands? i'm a child, caught playing in the dirt: show me your hands, kim, you've got dirt under your nails. and me, denying i know that dirt exists.

perhaps it's that childlike denial of death that makes it all the more difficult to understand. i feel pride that i have a plant that is ten years old. it just keeps growing. i've killed off others--or perhaps donated them to time is a nicer way of putting it!--but this one plant continues.

however, the only reason it continues is because i prune it back. i transplant it. i take half away and repot strands, give them to friends. peices of this plant are all over--in dirt up north, in dirt here, you name it. my plant has gone and done things that a short, season-lived plant from outside the patio door would never consider.

but only because it survives change, even if it's an unwilling accessory.

whenever someone dies i feel like i do a minute inventory of my own life. small, short. i keep my list tiny, and then i lose the list again until i am faced with the inevitability of living: dying.

and taxes.

i work in payroll...tax season IS just around the corner. check your moneymaking papers. make sure you're in order. you never know when april 15th will crop up.

off to the races, folks. have a good weekend.

***

for dil, even tho she doesn't know this blog exists:

from Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet

Then a woman said, "Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow."
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.

When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

mental health meme

got this meme from broke, who got it from joel (http://paxnortona.notfrisco2.com/) :

For the mentally ill

What is your diagnosis?

so far, my dg is ADHD with dysthymia and some kind of anxiety disorder yet to be determined.

When were you diagnosed?

ADHD about three weeks ago, dysthymic depression...last week.

How long do you believe you have suffered from mental illness?

i cannot remember a time that i wasn't displaying one or another of the symptoms of ADHD, but depression did not set in until i was in my teens. it's been with me ever since.

What medications are you taking for your disorder?

so far, none. my t-doc is creating a report to give to my general doc, who will actually write the perscription.

Tell us about an episode.

well, i'm always ADHD, and i'm always living in a gray world. sometimes the gray of dysthymia is punctuated by a major depression, which is what i'm feeling i'm in right now. i can't sleep for more than a few hours, i don't care to eat, i just don't care.

as for ADHD, that feels like looking into a kaleidoscope. you're trying to see the pattern but all you can do is be wrapped up in the beauty--you're looking into a small canister and seeing this whole other universe. it feels the same way with focusing on the world at large: i can see the beauty and the horror, but i am so distracted by those things that i cannot see the pattern.

Do you feel ashamed about suffering from a brain disorder?

sometimes.

the foundation of a disease is that it causes the carrier dis-ease. you're not comfortable in your own skin. you're not comfortable in the skin of the world. you're not at ease; you're on edge. it doesn't feel like i should be ashamed so much as it feels that i should find some way to be "normal"--even if that is only a setting on your washing machine.

i am ashamed of my behavior when it causes me distress at work or with friends and family. i'm ashamed that it's taken me so long to seek help. i'm ashamed that i cannot control it myself, the way that i can try to control my blood pressure by eating less salt and walking more. i wish that there was some way to "fix" me without having to take another pill.

What advice do you have for other sufferers?

keep going. find something to care about that has no one else to care about it--i have cats, and one plant; if i'm not paying attention, one of the two brings me back to reality quite forcefully. (;

try to have good humor; it helps when the lights go out to not mind if you cannot locate the candles straight off.

What advice do you have for those who don’t suffer from your condition?

be gentle. be considerate. be kind. don't judge.

Is there anything you want to say to Tom Cruise?

my mother raised me to this standard: if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. minnesotan? yes. inflammatory? nope. if i'm allowed to live in my own little niche of the world, then tom can go live in his. quietly. (;

this next part is for the "unafflicted" but i'm going to answer anyway because at one point or another in my life, i used to be undiagnosed, which isn't unafflicted...but carries with it a different stigma.

For the unafflicted

Do you believe in mental illness?

i have always believed in mental illness. it's not just an idea; it's chemical.

Are there any mentally ill persons in your family? What is their disorder? Are they compliant with taking their medication or resisting?

i have aunts and uncles who suffer from severe to moderate depression. i'm sure most of my siblings are ADHD, just undiagnosed. my uncle who suffers from depression takes his meds regularly. many of my family are alcoholics or recovering alcoholics. i have cousins who believe they're jesus, but that's neither here nor there. (;

Are you afraid of the mentally ill?

i think when i was a kid, i used to be. i was always petrified of waking up one day and being schizophrenic. i guess i was scared of other people being mentally ill but in the same way i was afraid of my grandpa (who didn't have teeth and was difficult to understand).

lists and lists and lists, oh my!

i have this list of things to do on my vacation (that's this week, mind you) and i've not had the motivation to do much at all.

i know part of my problem is that i'm ruminating--and trying to break that cycle is often difficult. the train of thought just keeps rolling and rolling, despite the fact that there's no hill to keep it going. i'm sitting here, rolling it with my own hand, a child with a pink and white hula-hoop.

i'm watching my new kitten, henry, choose a peice of kibble. he's quite picky, in spite of being a little hoover when it comes to other foods that hit the floor. has to find the right kibble peice for the right mouthful at the right time.

on monday i saw my t-doc again, and we went over the MMPI 2. for anyone who hasn't taken this test, it's a series of true-false questions that allow the dr to see where you're at as far as depression, paranoia, etc. measures a ton of stuff. the questions seem, after a while, to be the same thing, over and over, tossed in with random crap: "I love my mother" (true or false) and then "I'd like to be a racecar driver" (true or false) and then "I don't like walking into dark rooms" (true or false). so on and so forth. it took me about an hour a week ago to complete this, filling in all the little circles. i did not miss one question--answered all 567 of them.

and yeah, my hand hurt from the coloring. i don't think i've done that much coloring since i was in kindergarten.

anyway, we went over the test and helene said, "this was interesting. you are a lot more depressed than i thought you were. you don't present yourself as depressed." we kind of agreed that it was something that had been going on for so long that i have glossed it over and am able to function within the bounds of it, but that it's still crippling me something fierce.

we talked about anxiety issues i have, and paranoia, and how mainly, my form of depression is that a ton of the time, i have a difficult time understanding where my emotions are coming from, and actually caring about things that are happening in my life.

i keep thinking of dragging my emptiness around behind me, like a giant cement mixer truck, spinning and spinning.

i'm tired of having feelings that all feel like bulldozers. there's nothing that sneaks up and taps me on the shoulder--no feeling of sadness creeping in like rain, no feeling of joy pressing along my spine like massaging fingers.

it all feels like being ambushed.

if i get sad, it's sudden. if i'm happy, it's quick. it reminds me of thunderstorms in early summer--you can see the clouds, it rains, it rumbles, it flashes--and then it's gone. hard to make it last.

it's exhausting. i'd like to be able to slow down and process some of this, comprehend it. it's hard to learn how.

i've got 29 years of bad behavior, or bad habits--your choice--under my belt. you could call me an expert at one thing--avoidance. (or two. i certainly know how to clean things...)

i know that i try to avoid things; my own pet peeve is that i avoid confrontation. i keep thinking of that line from "serenity", the smugglers talking to mal: you fight when you oughta hide, and you stand when you oughta run.

i know i do that--i can look back at the map of my life thus far and SEE the line of my crossing--jagged, erratic. avoiding that which might cause me to hurt--and also that which might cause me to grow.

i never saw my parents fight. they were quiet, don't yell at each other in front of the kids, type of parents. i don't know that they fought elsewhere, either. it's hard to say. all i know is that dad would come home from work carrying a chip the size of jupiter on his shoulder--work, vietnam, the burden of supporting a family. you name it. he'd come home and just be angry--his face, his shoulders, the tread of his shoes.

it makes me cringe, just to think of it. my father never hit any of us, never hurt my mother. never spoke loudly. but the very prescence of fury being restrained in a house is enough to make me want to hide.

i have a hard time remembering times when his forehead was not creased, eyebrows tucking into each other. impending doom--that is what i felt.

i think that the younger kids didn't feel it as much. my middle sister remembers it, but the twins--they don't. over the years, dad's gotten treatment for high blood pressure, and had bypass surgery, and he is a very, very different man. he's always liked hugs, but now he actually cherishes the hugs, and he doesn't have this perpetually frustrated look on his face.

i think that my trust in men has been undermined since day one. i could not trust that my father would be happy to see me, until i put on a song and dance that made him realize he was home, and could enjoy his family. it was something that i think we all learned, as kids. "look over here, it's the bird of joy! yes, yes, you can be happy to be home!"

i love my father. i do. he's a gentle man, a loving man. i can see echoes of him in my actions, in my behavior. but more than anything, i can see how, as a child, i was sublimely influenced by his behavior.

i think about the trust issues i am having with dan--how hard it is for me to trust men. i think about that and i cringe away from it. i don't want to confront that feeling, because i love these people. i love dan, i love dad, i know many, many men who are cut from a mold of honor, justice and all those things that make people, as a whole, good.

the test i took also showed that i have a high sense of naivete--not that i'm not aware of the world and how i operate in it, but that i expect that everyone is going to treat me well, that no one will hurt me. part of my issue with the entire situation right now is that i place implicit trust in women. my mother has never given me any reason not to trust her; neither have my sisters, or any of my female friends. to be honest, most of my guy friends have not, either. but it's difficult for me to place them in the same bin--part of me keeps them separated, for whatever reason.

what it comes to is that i trusted serena implicitly to be honest with me; i think part of me did not want to confront the fact that perhaps there was something more going on than i thought, and i could not believe when the truth came out that anyone i held dear could treat me that way.

dan apologized; dan's been willing to work. we've been making steps in repairing things, using glue and duct tape and threat, to put things back together, to change the way we react and act towards each other. slowly, i am rebuilding trust. the problem with trusting dan is that i think i'm holding back all the trust i have held since i was young--trust was contingent on moods, on how well i did at disarming that mood. i'm not only rebuilding the trust i had in him; i'm rebuilding ALL my trust, and taking down the vaudeville act that pokes its head out now and again, trying to defuse the angry bomb.

performing allows me to hide from my own fears; it allows me to just "ignore the man behind the curtain" ala the wizard of oz. if i'm distracted by averting another persons' mood, then i can distract myself and avoid my own, as well. difficult to fold up the costume, however.

the women friends i have are my backbone; i have allowed them to be my backbone, since i trust them so easily and have had no reason to do otherwise. i'm pulling back into my turtle shell of avoidance, when i am with my girlfriends, because even though none of them has wronged me and i'm not hurt by them, the hurt of having dishonesty visited upon me by one woman has left a bad taste in my mouth for others.

but i know that if i fall backwards, there are a million arms to catch me. i trust in that, because over the last few months, that is what has kept me afloat--knowing that everyone is there, knowing that i have only to ask.

my avoidance comes in the asking. my avoidance comes in the telling. because by doing either, i feel as if i am confronting something that i don't want to confront.

i have two boxes in my garage. they're save-it boxes, from when i was a kid. they've got baby books, math books, turkeys i colored in first grade, you name it. my list of things to do this vacation included opening them and going through them. it's something that should be easy for me to do--confronting childhood and giving away barbie dolls. but in doing so, i'm cut by the edge of being nearly thirty--looking in those boxes will remind me of my own longevity, and i'm not sure i can confront that, either.

it's much easier to hide, to work on things like cleaning the bathroom, and finishing my witch's weeds, and take the cat to the vet for shots, than face the monsters that lurk under my bed.

hellspawn, the lover, the goddess and the king

ie, my cats.

just wanted to post a picture of my kitties for anyone. it's my first adventure into actually putting pictures in my blog so bear with me. this could get ugly. but the cuteness level of the kitties will save the post, i hope. LOL

my first kitty ever is wylie irene. she was a very cute, very vocal, sometimes demonically posessed little tortiseshell with white whiskers. during the move from bemidji to the cities, she needed a place to stay, and moved in with dan's parents. this was supposed to be a short term stay; however, by the time i was ready to have a kitty in our new place, they'd gotten quite attached, and she got along well with their other two cats and dog...so instead of uprooting her, she remained, and is doing just fiesty-fine. (; what i don't have is a good picture i can put up of her...but i'll keep looking.

i do have good pictures of my quinn, my next cat. however, they're all prints, and i don't have a scanner...so this is a picture of a picture, but it'll do.

d and cathy brought her to us from a farm, where the cats were known to be quite friendly, and quinn was my little lover. the first time she got in trouble and was sprayed with water, she sat looking up for a good five minutes, convinced as only a farm cat can be that it was raining. (; the vet guessed she was about 7 months old, give or take.

when i brought her in to have her spayed, she was diagnosed with feline leukemia. i've got a post somewhere in the dungeons of my blog about quinn. she was just so friendly. the spot between her shoulder blades smelled like honey.

the vet had an experimental program of diluted meds to be squirted in her mouth every night (diluted meds that in humans are used to combat AIDs). giving cats meds is always an iffy business--hold cat, apply force, use the jaws of life to open them up and force the meds down their throats. quinn, however, was such an easygoing cat that she just didn't seem to mind. in fact, if you were in the door and not at the fridge prepping things immediately, she was right there reminding you of the fact.

we had her for a good 8 months or so before she started to get anemic, and it was about a month after she first displayed symptoms that we had her put to sleep. the picture above was taken the day before she died. i'd been taking her out on a lead to lay in the sun, and a year ago on july 4th weekend, it was beautiful outside.

*insert a moment of silence for my dear girl (; *

so then we were kitty-less.

about two months before she died, my friend cari needed a home for her kitty, shiva koja. a year before, her mom had passed, and she ended up with her mom's dog, kc. kc and shiva did NOT get along, and the cat had been living mainly in the basement since kc arrived. cari's three other dogs were fine with shiva; it was just a difference of feline and pug opinion. (; so the eater of worlds and vomiter of hairballs came to live with us.

i've got a better pic of shiva somewhere but have yet to upload it. so here she is, in all her glory. she's a small cat, about 7 pounds or so. her fur makes her look fat and fluffy, but i'm horrified to think of shaving that girl.

shiva is the oldest kitty in the house at 11 years old, and she is VERY opinionated. her little meow leaves a bit to be desired, however. she sounds like a cross between a cat and a sheep, i kid you not. when i get a chance i'll find the other pic i have of her--she's got a little gray hitler-type mustache under her nose that makes her look a bit like said dictator...and her take-charge attitude belies a cuddle-me, i-purr-like-a-harley, demeanor. i think she knows she's a goddess. dang it all. (;

lately she's seemed quite clingy. my friend rene just bought a home (yay rene!) and inherited a dog with the house. her older cats got along fine with him, and so did her youngest cat, spanky george, but three cats and a dog and a six-year-old in one house has got to be enough to drive you batty. she'd looked for a home for spanky george half-heartedly, and i finally said we'd take him. (no, rene did not name the cat...her daughter did. go figure.)

i couldn't see having a cat named spanky george, so went through my normal day of trying to see what the cat was going to tell me about his own name. i had it narrowed down to dan's choice, otto, and my choice, henry. henry just stuck.

the first day or so he was here, henry followed shiva around, trying to be friends. shiva played the prototypical old lady and was pissy with him, but they've settled down a great deal and i think may actually get along fine and dandy once shiva remembers that he's not going to ambush her, just eat all her food.

henry the red is quite the talker--i often think at 3 am that perhaps pavoratti would have been a better name, because he has got a Very Good Set of Lungs. he talks to us when he's anywhere. speaking of henry, i need to make the appointment to get him...fixed. shh, don't tell him. (;

the other upside is that having tiny shaped kitten food in the house has been easier for shiva to eat (she's got bad teeth) and she's actually put on a good pound since we got it. cari said she's always been just a teeny tiny slender little cat, but i think that it isn't going to hurt her to add a little bit to her frame. maybe it's my inner italian speaking, but she looks healthier, in my opinion.

so those are my babies, past and present. and my first upload! yay for me!

watch out...more pics forthcoming. (; you might want to invest in a good pair of goggles.

stares

she stares
at the nearly empty birdfeeder
mind occupied by how bright
the grass is
despite clouds.

it seems as if
someone
is trying to make up
for the sun's obscurity
by creating a light
so stunning
that the red leaf on lawn
glows

she stares
and it all becomes
pictures
paintings
epic in scope,
the blades of grass an army so large,
so vast--

the whole, fading into crimson leaf
it isn't just "outdoors" any longer
it's a portal to a place
she cannot go

if the birdfeeder is full
the photo
changes
to its core.