Mid-trip Musings

I wasn't going to do a trip retrospective until I got home, counting on having the 800 miles back to digest the visits, the insights and whatever profundities made themselves known to me.
But I find myself at the computer on this morning at Ron & Kendra's house, reaching for the blog, as the swirl of people and places has started getting crowded in my head.

It's been great to see our old friends--everyone looks great and we fall into instant familiarity and laughter. To see myself reflected in the eyes of people I have known for so many years, gives me a new perspective on the events of last year. They really do see me as unchanged. I am whole to them, undamaged, and they are so happy to have me here and well.

Living in my isolated world of my own "me-me-me" trauma, this is the confirmation that I have been missing--that I am indeed still the same person at core, that whatever was done to me has not stolen my spirit, changed my essential persona, or damaged my appeal. They still like me.

I know it sounds somewhat ridiculous. I don't know what I feared, and I surely didn't expect rejection from the people I love, but to be enveloped in love reflected back and sincere exhortations of how I am the same to them brings a powerful sense of relief. I really am OK. I will bounce back, I have bounced quite a bit already, and I emerge from my own little nightmare experience unscathed, as far as they are concerned.

It occurred to me last night, while talking about what everyone has gone through, and is currently dealing with in their lives, that maybe none of us gets through life with all our original parts. For some the scars are physical, for some it's psychological or mental, but none of us get out of here untouched. What stays constant is love and loyalty.

And maybe, that is indeed enough.

On the road again...

Our drive to Charlottesville was familiar and uneventful. For those of you new to the blog, this route has been previously documented here, a driving tour of I-81.

Today we will head north into Pennsylvania, probably swinging east into the Poconos and driving up the Delaware River Gap. From there we are planning on going up the Hudson River, possibly stopping at West Point or Hyde Park, both of which we never visited when we lived in NY.

Tuesday, we will be staying with our friends in Peru, NY and visit Ausable Chasm, another venue we always meant to travel to, and never got to. Thursday, we will be in Corinth.

It's hard to think that we moved almost 3 years ago, so much has happened since then. It will be fun to reconnect with old friends and see new sights too!

Houston, we have a ... BERET!

Knitting class follies continue, and I'm pleased to report that I have an almost-finished first beret. It actually bears some relation to my head circumference, and while I'm a little taken aback at it's voluminous poofiness, I think this is a good first effort:



Alert readers have asked, "what are those dorky-looking rings doing in your hat? Are you attempting to receive signals from outer space?"


I'm so glad you asked (we hobbyists just LOVE answering questions that we ourselves had two weeks ago). They are "markers," little plastic signals to tell me exactly which stitches to decrease to make the top of the hat narrow down and eventually close up. And, we close it so the rain does not fall on my head through the center of the beret, and my head doesn't poke through, making me look like a total idiot.


Oh. You already knew that part. Never mind.


Soon, very soon, I will switch the whole project off the circular needles and over to the Dreaded Double-Pointed Needles, and the markers will go back in my bag, to roll around on the bottom, getting lost (I had to unpack my entire bag last night looking for the darned things--that's where they were, on the bottom and hiding in the corners). I need a better storage system, that's clear.

But today I must pack for our trip and clean the house and remember to empty the garbage and cull out the refrigerator so we don't come home to the smell of something that died while we were away. (When I left last summer for two months on the West Coast, I forgot the coffee sitting in the pot on the countertop. I came home in September to a fascinating science project perking away in the carafe, something I would like to avoid this time).


So, the beret may have to wait until my house-wifely chores are done today. With 16+ hours of driving ahead of us, I expect I will have plenty of time to knit on the road.


Major confession time: I am a terrible automobile passenger. I suspect it has something to do with control issues (Ya think)? Without something to occupy my attention, I sit in the right-hand seat, gasping at brake lights, bracing myself for imminent imagined collisions, throwing my arms over my head and cringing into a fetal position with my feet up on the dashboard. Sometimes I actually whimper and keen. It drives Bill absolutely nuts to have Panic-Pam paying minute attention to his driving--my normally calm husband usually ends up yelling at me, "I SEE IT, [insert expletive here], I SEE IT!" Since I have taken up knitting (and since I'm still so very bad at it, requiring ALL of my visual and mental focus), our car trips have been mercifully peaceful. I drive, he sleeps. He drives, I knit. See, even old married people can learn new tricks! Thank you knitting--another added benefit!

A Day

Whew. I'm pooped out.

I got up early this morning, and tackled the weediness of Ray's yard. Three hours later, I had hacked at the wisteria vines threatening to bring down his wooden porch, snipped at the insidious rose bushes, ripped out miles of creeping, invasive vines, and decided to go home and regroup.

After a shower, Ray's chimney inspector came up to our house and gave us the good-bad news that we are used to hearing when it comes to this wreck of a house. The chimney is unsafe, has been unsafe since the day the house was built. But the inspector was very knowledgeable, gave Bill some ideas of what could be done in the future. I took a shower, dressed up like a respectable person, and went off to Kingsport to talk to my lawyer.

It seems that we have once again caught my medical professionals in a baldfaced lie. The trick is to continue to trap them into more "gotchas." My case is tenuous, weak and thoroughly in the right (but that doesn't really matter in the law). Our only hope is to catch the culprits lying and trying to cover up their lies. Whether or not we will prevail is uncertain. But at least I feel that I am trying to do something to hold the people accountable for their poor judgment, mistakes and downright negligence. They didn't give me cancer, but they sure did deny me the benefits of early detection (which is really the only defense we have against the disease). I did the mammograms, I followed up with annual checks, but by not notifying me when something was actually wrong, they postponed my diagnosis for 14 months. Whether or not a jury will believe me is another story all together. The law is a game, not an exercise in what is right or just. All we can do is try. At least I have a lawyer who is willing to try.

Home for dinner for the boys and early bedtime. It's amazing how a busy day still just wipes me out.

More Hat Follies! Green Beans!

After about two days on a new hat project (the coveted beret), I had to face the fact that this hat was too large for polite company. I followed the directions (cast on 52, k1, p1 for 1 inch, then increase to 78 stitches and knit, knit, knit), but ended up with half a hat, fit only for a head the size of Andre the Giant's. And he's dead. So that's not going to work.

It may have something to do with the super-bulky chenille yarn I'm using, or I might have mistakenly been following the directions for Queen Latifah's Tube Top, instead of Aunt Purl's Beret? Time to rip it out and start over, chastened but not defeated. Yet. Next time, I'm thinking of starting with 36 stitches--something that will actually have some relationship to my head circumference. For awhile there, I thought I was knitting a neck-warmer for an elephant.

In a more successful hobby, I harvested our first beans yesterday!

For just four 8-foot rows of beans tucked into a corner of the front yard, I sure do have a lot of beans. They hide. I have to sit in the straw and look carefully underneath each plant. And still, I miss some of them and have to go back and do it again. But to get about a pound of beans on the first pick is a treasure!

Feeling Lucky

I've been feeling pretty darn optimistic for the past few days. Pondering everything that has happened, I'm starting to believe it, internalize it. How incredibly lucky I am to have plodded through without the chemo, without the radiation, without having to make the difficult risk vs. benefits choices that so many patients have to submit to in addition to their surgeries. All of a sudden, I'm starting to feel a bit of the humble thankfulness that I've been pretty much faking, but still striving for.

Yes, I'm still "tight as a drum," still go through every day with pain and constriction as a constant companion, still shrink with something akin to revulsion and horror when I catch sight of myself in a mirror, and still leak tears when I'm feeling all sorry for my sorry self. But really, I think I'm starting to get a grip. I got off easy. I really have little cause to rant or sing the blues, even if my reality seems to trump other peoples' trials, by the singular fact that it happen to me.

Concentrating on one's blessings rather than one's misfortunes is a constant struggle for me. It doesn't really make me feel better to know that other people have bigger obstacles to overcome, harder lives, or more devastating losses. In fact, the opposite has been true: I've felt guilty because other people have handled their challenges with so much more cheerfulness and aplomb.
(And here I sit, with the boo-boo face on, when I suffered so minutely in comparison).

But I've decided that comparing your own experience to someone else's, while living your own trials day-by-day, is a losing game. There's always someone worse off than me. Does that diminish whatever negatives I am feeling, simply by knowing that somewhere, another person is suffering worse? Of course not. We can imagine what it would be like to live someone else's trauma, but we cannot identify with it on the same personal level that we monitor our own experience.

Strangely, there seems to be a hierarchy in the world of cancer, just like there is in every other facet of life. I am guilty of it too. When I was first diagnosed, I noticed a temptation in myself to dismiss people who had lesser forms; in other words, I had little to no sympathy for women who had a Stage 0 lumpectomy, when I had to have a bilateral mastectomy! Then when I cruised the blogs (looking for hope, I think), I found stories that wrenched my soul, and made me cry with relief that all I had was my paltry little surgery. I'd tell myself, "at least I didn't have to spend six months throwing up," or "thank heavens I have insurance," or "how can she go on, when it's metastasized to her lungs and brain?" So, briefly, I was grateful. And then my own reality would grab back on and send me into fear of the future, rather than comfort me in the now.

I don't like the idea of taking comfort in my own situation by comparing it to someone who is worse off, or feeling somehow more smug, more put upon, more challenged than someone who got off even easier than I did. Everyone--yes, even the Stage 0--has had to deal with same emotional roller-coaster and some form of gross physical assault that this disease brings.

It is what it is, for everyone touched by it. Everyone's reality is different, yet we all share a commonality of experience. The disease intruded on our lives, and I don't think it matters how much, only that it rocked our individual worlds and changed everything forever. So I've given up on comparisons. They just don't work.

I really do feel lucky to be alive, and to have such a good prognosis. I think about that everyday. How could I feel anything but sincerely thankful?

Grad Pix!

Brother J sent Graduation Day photos of Bonnie & family. Congratulations Bonnie!



Cousins Alex, Bonnie & Juli:

Juli, Kellie, Aileen & Cathryn

Bonnie, Cathryn, Kellie & Angela

Tempis Fugit. Where DOES the time go?

Being Careful What I Wish For...

We got the rain yesterday. Deluge time. Driveway gravel-washout rain. Enough to raise the pond a few inches and turn the creeks into roaring torrents. This is good.

But in the South, after the rain, the sun comes out and the world just STEAMS! And a whole new batch of buggies spring forth, as if by magic. Bill and Ray were convinced last night that they had acquired chiggers during their outdoor projects, so they spent the evening coating their lower limbs in olive oil. I am not convinced it is chiggers. I'm not sure I would know a chigger if it bit me. I daubed my bites with vinegar.

When you get all of us together in a room, we smell like a salad.

Hat! Cherries! Rain!

Never a dull moment around here. I spent the morning in knitting class learning what to do with the beginnings of my first hat:

And I spent the afternoon dealing with 6 quarts of cherries picked yesterday from Ray's tree:

I made Billy Boy his obligatory Cherry Pie ("Watch out for the pits I missed!"), and fussed after supper with the scary and dreaded "Double-Pointed Knitting Needles" for narrowing and finishing the hat. With eleventy-billion stitches to go, I finally gave up and went to bed, thoroughly exhausted from the day's excitement. What a wimp.

MaryAnn has graciously started a blog, with live-action photos, for our knitting group at http://www.knittingsoulstogether.blogspot.com/ . See the Amazing Casting On! See the Incredible Dropped Stitch! Don't miss the Fantastic Dishcloth Marathon! I know. We are just too much.

And blessings from above: it just started to rain as I typed this! Yeah! Come on rain!

Well, that was interesting!

I had my quarterly oncology check-up with Dr. DaSilva yesterday. I am still "clean." I finally said "enough!" with the wacko blood pressure readings I've been getting on my legs since the surgeries, and braved having it taken on my arm. Voila! It's normal! Hooray! No more speculation about whether I have coincidentally developed high blood pressure along with breast cancer, it's been human or machine error all along. I don't think I'll make it a habit (I am still inordinately terrified of lymphedema in the arms as a result of the harvesting of axillary lymph nodes), but it was nice to know that I am indeed not crazy, at least in the matter of blood pressure readings.

I then spent two hours with the genetics counselor, Debbie, who painstakingly walked me through the minefield of BRCA 1 & 2 testing implications. Everyone in the medical community is so darned pussy-footy about this subject, and I lose patience. I either have the mutation or I don't, and it seems to me that knowing which, is critical to my own peace of mind--not to mention protecting my children and nieces with that foreknowledge. But apparently, some people really don't want to know. Or, feel guilty if they have the gene mutation (what is the point of that)? And there are many legal implications, and papers to be signed, and butts to be covered. Sigh. Take the blood already. Send it off. Let's get this show on the road.

In more important news, I started knitting my first hat! Working on circular needles was scary at first, but it is starting to look like a real piece of headgear! Today at class, I will find out how to end it (it has to narrow down at the top so it doesn't look like total dork-wear), and I want to make sure I'm doing that right, but I am thrilled to break out of my rectangular knitting habit and tackle a new challenge. I will post pix later.

And, our friend Ray arrived late last night on his cross-country drive from Northern California. I was deep in the arms of Morpheus, so I didn't hear him come in...he made the drive in a record 3 days. He and I will be painting his newly acquired rental house this week and next.

It's all good.

Remembering Dad

Today is the 12th anniversary of my father's death.

Here is the obituary I wrote honoring my father, and printed by the San Pedro News-Pilot and the Los Angeles Times, June 21, 1996:

Private services are planned for Glenn T. Sink, a 39-year resident of San Pedro, who died of pancreatic cancer June 12, 1996. Mr. Sink, 68, was an aircraft engineer and an international expert on metal corrosion. He lectured and presented technical papers around the world on his research in hydrogen embrittlement failure. He produced the bulk of his professional contributions during a 31-year career with the Douglas Aircraft Co., garnering several patents on chemical processes.

After retiring in 1983, he traveled and worked overseas, sharing his experience and research with other scientists and engineers. In 1987, he travelled to Shanghai to help the Chinese build nose sections of commercial aircraft, and in 1990-91, served as a resident manufacturing consultant in Chengdu, in Western China.

While at Douglas, he was instrumental in founding the Airlines Plating Forum, an international association of aircraft manufacturers and commercial airline companies dedicated to sharing technical information. His other affiliations included the National Association of Corrosion Engineers [Note: Dad always called them The Corroded Engineers], the American Chemical Society and the Metall-Oberflachen Gesellschaft, a European electroplaters consortium.

An accomplished musician since childhood, Mr. Sink was hired by a music studio to teach boogie-woogie piano at the age of 14. He switched to performing in dance bands during World War II, played jazz in the 1950s and then in 1975, began learning and mastering ragtime music.

He spoke three languages fluently and traveled extensively, visiting every continent except Antarctica and every state but North Dakota. He began flying lessons at age 49, and flew small airplanes in the western states, Alaska, Mexico and Europe. He was also an avid sailor, crewing occasionally on races to Ensenada, and more relaxed weekly sailing in the Catalina Channel.

Mr. Sink is survived by his wife of 45 years, Aileen M. of San Pedro, who taught choral music at both Dodson Junior High and Narbonne High schools; a son, Air Force Lt. Col. Jerry T. Sink, a 1972 graduate of San Pedro High School; a daughter, Pam Sink-Plemitscher, a 1970 San Pedro High graduate; and four grandchildren: Juliana, Alex, Bonnie and Angela.

Family services will be at sea, with ragtime music playing in the background.

*****

(Dear Dad: Love you always, still miss you like crazy...Love, Pam)

*****

Also notable today: My niece, Bonnie, graduates from Timberline High School in Olympia, WA tonight. Her cousins, Juli & Alex are taking the train down from Seattle; her paternal grandmother (my mom), flew up from L.A. yesterday, and I'm sending my best wishes from hot-hot TN! Congratulations, beautiful & bright Bonnie!

Mother Worries

I've been fretting about my grown children lately.

Juli is currently not answering her phone or emails, not returning messages. She's gone "dark," in other words. I worry when she gets like this. She's usually torturing herself with imagined guilt, or sleeping too much because she's depressed, or just cocooning because she's Juli, and that's what she's always done.

Alex is outwardly communicative, but guarded and not giving anything away emotionally.

When they get like this, I dream at night of mega-disasters. Mount Rainer blowing up and raining down volcanic ash. Apartment fires. Inner city unrest. Bus hijackings. Irrational Mother Worry to the nth degree.

Yesterday, I wrote them both an email asking them to go buy a rope and fashion a makeshift fire escape from their 3rd-floor apartment window, since they have only the one entrance/exit to the interior hallway of their building.

Sometimes, I think I'm just certifiably crazy. As long as they call me weekly, I'm fine. When they drop off the face of the communications grid, my subconscious takes over and runs amok.

Still hot, still no rain...

We're on water rationing now. The well water is getting salty, the pond is dropping and we're flushing judiciously, not profligately. Summer in TN.

We heard rumbles of thunder at dinnertime last night, but rain did not fall. We have drought, while the Midwest floods. It makes me glad I don't make my living farming--that must be a life lived with constant worry.

Soon, I'll be trudging down to the laundromat to do clothes washing, because I won't want to waste our precious and diminishing water on laundry. Paper plates, though they create trash in a landfill, are a better solution to our problem than washing dishes. Last year, I just left town for two months and avoided using any water at all!

That's not an option this year (though we'll be leaving for NY in about 2 weeks). We'll just have to dress up in feathers and skins and start doing chants in the driveway if this hot-and-dry-spell doesn't abate soon.

Jousting!

I have never seen live jousting until yesterday, here in our little town, at our modest Renaissance Faire. It was amazing!

The War Horses were a black Percheron, and a reddish-colored Clydesdale, big draft horses in our modern world, but astonishingly agile, despite carrying 500 lbs. of man & armor and running flat out in the blazing heat.

I was very happy to be able to get these photos, as everything happened SO fast. Their run was only about 200 feet (Bill noted that the Clydesdale mare seemed to get up to speed faster than the Percheron), and the CLASH! as they met in the middle was in the blink of an eye.

I can't help but think The Lords of Chivalry (as they call themselves) must be insane to do this! They travel around the country in a big trailer and put on jousting demos for the amusement and education of the peoples. What a way to make a living!

I love our annual Renaissance Faire. Nestled in the shady hollow of Crockett Springs Park (named for Davey Crockett's grandparents, who are buried there in the family plot!), it features belly dancers, fire manipulators, fairies, pirates, vendors and demonstrators. Here are a few heat-infused scenes:

We spent some time talking with Charles, an Iconographer, (where we learned more about egg tempura painting and the symbolism of the process of creating traditional icons than we ever needed to know), and Cora Lynn McKelvy, who demonstrated spinning yarn out of angora rabbit fur (she grabbed the rabbit out of the cage, pulled out its fur and spun the yarn, all in one swoop--it made us wonder if you could just hold the rabbit in your lap and spin directly off the bunny)!

There were skits, music and shows all over the park--The Nickel Shakespeare Girls, Johnny Phoenix (whom we saw last year--he cautioned children to study hard or they'd end up with a job like his, doing a fireshow in 100 degree heat, with the audience sitting on bales of flammable straw), and the Washer Women, a bawdy sort of medieval wet T-shirt contest with some very ample women:

After the joust, we wandered a bit more and finally decided we had sweated enough. Time to go home to the modern-day blessing of A/C!

Renaissance Faire Today

When Bill and I went out to dinner last night, the parking lot was full of other-county license plates and cars with bumper stickers such as "I Brake for Dragons." The Renaissance Fair is in town! We're going to go over and check it out this morning.

It was so hot yesterday, it was suffocating. We went over to Ray's new house and picked pie cherries, chatted with the neighbors and explored the house and overgrown gardens. What a lot of house (and what a lot of clean up he has to do). It's a real fixer-upper, but has a fantastic view and enough fruit coming on that I know what I'm going to be doing come late summer and fall. Ray is arriving later this week, to spend some time getting it painted, repaired and ready to rent. I hope he's planning on spending at least a month, because I think that's what it is going to take!

Poor Echo was really suffering yesterday after her mid-day walk, so I ran a lukewarm bath and we washed the dog (and cooled her off). She seemed actually grateful instead of her usual grumpiness after a bath. She curled her damp self up under the fan and snoozed the afternoon away. The heat is supposed to break by Tuesday, and we'll just hang on until then.

Today, I will make a plan for our anticipated trip up to NY and Massachusetts at the end of June. Once Bill approves the plan, I will write letters to those friends who still refuse to use email and let them know we are coming to town for a short visit. We haven't been up there since we moved, almost 3 years ago. I am looking forward to seeing people. I think Bill is going to see if he still misses it as much as he thinks he does.

Knit, Knit, Knit

Well, that was some fun at knitting class yesterday. I learned some new tricks, got cured of some bad, self-taught habits and met some nice people as well. This will give my week a bit of structure, and get me out of Bill's hair at least once a week for the summer.

Hot, it's been beastly hot and worrisomely dry. We need relief, preferably in the form of a week-long rain, to refill the creek and pond, and cool things off. Still, I'd rather have 2 months of unbearable heat instead of 7 months of interminable winter up north.

I've decided to make optimism my default position. Call it Scarlett O'Hara Syndrome, but I'm just going to think about everything "tomorrow" when I get grumpy or distraught. That will be my personal anti-depressant.

The New Me Blues

I'm off for another round of "Shirts Off" Follies today, over to Kingsport to see Dr. H and his merry minions in the bizarre world of plastic surgery. Lord, I am so tired of this.

I know. Whaah, whaah, whaah. "Does she ever stop with the moaning and groaning? Be GRATEFUL, [deleted expletive]!"

I try to be peacefully thankful each and every day, and yet, it is still such a chore. It requires constant effort and unremitting denial of a life's habit of complaining. I'm bored with my own negativity, but I'm also monumentally bored with trying to be cheerfully plucky about everything that's happened. Yes, I'm grateful, and yes, it still sucks.

The fact is that I'm just slogging through the days, waiting for things to "get better," whatever that means. I woke up this morning (at 3, at 4, at 5, etc.) thinking about how it took a full three years to recover from my neck surgery in 2001. I am a little more than six months out from the mastectomy, and impatient as all get out, just for this to be over. I think I've finally hit the far end of the grief cycle, depression. Big sighs, all around.

So this is progress, right? Having battled my way through Denial, Anger, & Bargaining, I'm left at the end of our program, holding the proverbial dead fish. (Okay, I can see that there's still a fair amount of Anger left hanging around for the big finale).

Dr. DaSilva, my oncologist, tried pushing Effexor (an anti-depressant) on me three months ago and I initially balked. "Depression? We don't have no stinking Depression!" was my first thought. Now, I'm not so sure. After checking out this drug on www.rxlist.com , I found myself even more convinced that I didn't want to get involved in the cycle of taking one drug (Effexor) to counter the side-effects of the first drug (Tamoxifen), then another, and then another. The Road to Perdition. I would also have to stop drinking any alcohol and taking any ibuprofen, and that seemed like a major deal-breaker, what with my fondness for the fermented grape products and my pretty constant back pain. (Another disturbing thought: Does my reluctance to give up wine and NSAIDs mean I need to start attending meetings)?

But the night sweats and daytime hot flashes are really kicking me around and messing with my biggest real pleasure in life, sleep (at least for half of each month), and I'm not liking my regular daily internal dialogue with myself lately. Perhaps the idea of anti-depressants needs to be revisited. Wouldn't it be great if there was an anti-depressant you didn't have to take all the time, you could just pop one when you were feeling a little blue? Instant happiness? (Boy, does this ever sound like a good-bad idea)!

I think we have to acquire the ability to give ourselves the metaphorical "happy-pill," when we need it. I distrust the chemical route instinctively, and truly don't want to be on another long-term medication. I only take the tamoxifen out of fear and statistical fact--you just can't argue with a 41% decrease in cancer recurrence. So, I've talked myself out of it, once again.

In the meantime, my only defense against the Depression-monster will have to be busy-ness. More physical activity. More mental stimulation. Less dwelling. Less whining. Maybe by continuing to act as if I am learning to accept this, I will in fact eventually accept it. Objective reality. What is, IS. Get over it, already.

Errands

Our life here in the mountains is so simple, I chafe at the smallest things. Today, I need to go to Morristown to Fedex, go to the bank and check the box at the post office, pick up milk and get gas. When I think of what my life was like in "the busy years," it doesn't seem like much at all. Yet, part of me whines internally and wishes I could just stay home today in my jammies, or just take Echo on a long walk, or just stand by the pond feeding the fish all day.

I don't miss the bustle of the city at all. I don't miss the culture, or the good restaurants, or the traffic and constant press of people. I think that time for me is past. My kids revel in being in the heart of Seattle, with all the vibrant goings-on and concerts, street fairs, museums and happenings. I am content to stay on my mountaintop, listen to the birds and watch nature take its course around me.

But we're out of milk, and so, I go.

Happy Birthday, Bill!

Beloved husband Bill is 50 today. My goodness, what a milestone, half-a-century and all that jazz. He carries it so well, I forget that he's getting older too, just like me!

A few facts about the boy: He was born in Springfield, Illinois, 50 years ago today. He never went to Kindergarten. He was a bright, unmotivated student. He was a National Merit Scholarship Semi-Finalist in high school, but enlisted in the United States Marine Corps a few months before he graduated. He didn't even see an ocean until he was 18 years old. He began California Maritime in 1984, when he was 25 years old, and graduated Summa Cum Laude in 1988, a month before he turned 30. He holds a Chief Engineer's USCG license for steam vessels of unlimited tonnage, and a 1st Assistant Engineer's license for motor vessels (diesel). He likes working on ships, but likes being home on vacation better. He knows more about guns and history than anyone on the History Channel (he argues with the TV). He can't bear to throw anything away. He eats all the chocolate in the house, and then goes and buys more and eats that too. He is patient with children, kind to dogs and old people, and he makes me laugh everyday. He is a better person than I am, and I'm happy about that--it gives me something to strive for.

Happy birthday, Bill! Glad you're here.

Another Busy Monday

While the rest of the world is cranking about the price of going anywhere in the car, my immediate concern is stopping. So, I'm off to go get new brakes all around on the vehicle this morning.

With the "mountainous" terrain here in Appalachia, good brakes are a necessity--and they don't last long. I feel fortunate to have gotten 45,000 miles out of the last brake job. But it still hurts financially, and it means spending my Monday in a greasy, bad smelling, auto repair facility, marking time and waiting.

I'm the kind of person who believes you should be able to buy a car, put gas in it, change the oil every 5,000 miles, and that should be the extent of it. Tires? Brakes? Struts? It's all just a big pain in the patoot, if you ask me. Strangely, the hardest part for me is dealing with the men in the auto parts stores. They are so painfully condescending. They can barely contain their contempt. They try to show off and tell you how much they know, and how pitifully little you know about cars. It's like being back in high school and having to pretend to be interested in this stuff. Am I reading too much into this?

This time, refreshingly, Bob at Auto Zone managed to get through the business of ordering pads, shoes, drums, and rotors without smirking or telling me that no, what I really wanted was something other than what I told him I wanted. I had the vocabulary, and I had da skills. And Bob didn't give me any trouble or attitude. Thanks Bob, you made the sale!

I'll go pick up the parts and then take them to Dan, who will install everything for a mere $75.
What a deal! All it takes from then on is time and patience.

There's my metaphor.

Clean-Up Day

I shall just have to face the fact that it is time to do laundry.

The house is filled with my discarded blouses (cast away, in the literal heat-of-the-moment), orphan shoes and sandals, piles of thoughtless drop-and-walk-away garments. When Bill and I are on our own, we are lazy.

Without houseguests on the horizon, we cocoon in our own little world of slobbiness, each waiting for the other to take the initiative to declutter and clean. Then it becomes a power-struggle of house maintenance, a test of independence and self-determination.

And then someone runs out of underwear.

At that point, there's simply nothing left to do but gather up the detritus, and get on with it. And that's the way it is, here on my first day of June...