Suerte, Fortuna, Glück

Well, hello there. The New Year hasn't quite opened up to us yet, but it is already looking like a vast improvement over the previous one for me. There are many times in my life when I have felt unbelievably lucky; where things just gracefully and effortlessly slid into place like they were simply meant to be. Such is the case at this moment. I have been in pretty dire straits financially for a while, mostly due to the fact that I have been living alone in an apartment too expensive for me. I had put off looking for a roommate because I simply wasn't ready. Four previous leads, friends of friends who were looking for new surroundings, just didn't work out. I was extremely averse to placing an ad for a total stranger to come live in my home with me--I had never had to do this before, and it seemed full of mysterious dangers to me. Finally, with my funds dwindling to alarmingly low levels, I placed an ad in craigslist. I received only two responses.

One of the women who responded seemed decent enough until I phoned her yesterday and had a totally bizarre conversation with her, full of pauses and odd giggles and gasps on her end, and which ended very abruptly. I swear she was either being tickled or having sex while she was talking to me. This did not make me feel good about the whole ad thing. The other person who responded to my ad was someone I was already predisposed to like--she has an anthropology degree, and even more exciting, her first name is featured in the title of one of my favorite movies from the seventies. What's not to like? Go ahead, try to figure out what her name is!

So, L came over to my place last night, and we ended up talking for about an hour and a half. I knew she was a good person the minute I saw her walk up the steps. I have always put great stock in my intuitive impressions about people, and she has a very comfortable, friendly, and honest character, and it was obvious immediately. My spastic hyperkitty even took to her right away--Sylvie warmed up to her more quickly than usual and even climbed up in her lap minutes after she sat down.

I am led to reflect on the different lucks in my life. I am thinking of a time earlier this year, when a friend of mine remarked that I had had a stream of really bad luck for a while. It truly surprised me to hear him say that, because I had never thought of it that way. I pondered it for quite a while. I realized, that yes, in most people's eyes, I have been through quite a collection of unlucky circumstances. My life in general has been burdened with a fair share of adversity and obstacles, and the past two years in particular I have endured heartbreaking and disturbing events in nearly every major aspect of my life. But I just haven't ever considered myself unlucky. Not for a minute. Luck is what you make of it, I suppose--you know, that tired old phrase about lemons and lemonade. As prosaic as it is, there is truth in that statement. I wouldn't trade any of the hardships of my life for one second. They have made me the person that I am and I like who I have grown to be. I truly believe that having experienced more intense suffering than some people has also gifted me with the ability to experience more joy. I have somehow miraculously escaped what I consider to be true horrors and hardships--never truly, really, and completely suffered. Every time I felt that things were just not going to work out, that this was the end of my fortune, something happened to turn it around. I have never lost my home and had to live in my car, I still have all my limbs, I have a huge base of supportive friends and family...there are an endless list of things we could all write about to take stock of the goodness in our lives. I think we all should do so every once in a while--writing it down makes it miraculous and real.

And somehow, in ways I cannot fathom, I feel that I must be doing something right, because of these occasional shining effortless moments when exactly what I need falls right out of the sky and lands on my doorstep.
Happy New Year, my dear friends.

Goodbye, Mr. Brown

I just found out that James Brown died early Christmas morning. This fills me with melancholy. While it is true that I never owned any of his music, there are numerous other musical legends whose music I love, yet do not own. I don't feel that this diminishes my love for his music. Besides, at one time I shared my home with a teenage stepson who discovered soul, R & B, and funk at the age of 17 and regularly played James Brown and Al Green at floor-shaking and joyful volumes. James Brown's jumped-up singing always filled me with an itch to move and dance, and planted a big happy smile on my face. Now I almost feel as if I've done James wrong by not listening to his music more often, and by my own volition. I'm also reminded of the bitter fact that he performed here this past fall, and that I had seriously considered going to the concert, but didn't. The tickets were expensive, and although I kept telling myself that this could be my last chance to see him, and I should just go, I did not. It's disconcerting to be correct about something like that. I'd much rather have been wrong. I'm not going to launch into a long treatise of how influential a man he was in both music and the civil rights movement--there are hundreds of others doing that across the country right now. Go find one of their articles and read it. He was a fascinating man, and his energy was boundless and inspiring.

On a weirder note, I am really upset that once again, the demise of an ex-president has overshadowed the death of a pivotal black musician. Please recall that in 2004, Reagan's death predated that of Ray Charles by 6 days and completely obliterated much of the attention and accolades that I felt Ray deserved. I was particularly angry about the situation because I felt that Reagan had done a lot of harm to the world, whereas Mr. Charles had done much to relieve it. It just wasn't fair. And now, although I bear no grudges toward Mr. Ford, his death the day after James Brown's has again stolen the spotlight. I beg all surviving presidents to stop dying before they kill off all of our talented soul and blues singers!

Here are some ominous facts that I discovered: Both Ray Charles and James Brown were 73 years old at the time of their deaths. Reagan and Ford were both 93 when they died. Eerie. I think we can remedy this morbid phenomenon by making sure that the three living ex-presidents are kept scrupulously healthy during their 92nd and 93rd years--maybe if we keep them alive til they are 94 no more 73 year-old musicians will die. Let us hope.

Goodbye, James Brown. You are missed.

Christmas and Beer Guts and Shawls, Oh MY!

Sadly, my gleeful Christmas spirit appears to have suddenly ossified and fallen down from around my shoulders, landing on the wooden floor with a loud thud. I miss it so! I’m not quite sure what to attribute this sudden weather change to (grammar mangling alert). Is it because I had to go back to work today? Because there are so many people in my life this holiday season that I am missing? Because there are too many horrible drivers on the road, even on Christmas? I wish I knew. I have been cranky in a dazzling kind of way all day long. Cranky and whiny, although the whining (and even most of the crankiness) was exclusively internal, so nobody else suffered, that I’m aware of.

Well, with that introduction, let me tell you about a few moderately disturbing things I encountered on the way home from my very short stint at work today. Things weren’t too bad (not counting aforementioned horrible drivers) until I was only a few blocks from home. Then, all of a sudden, without any warning whatsoever, and in plain daylight, my eyes were assaulted in a most unkind fashion. There, on the corner of Adams Avenue and 32nd Street, was a man waiting to cross the street–with a HUGE beer belly and wearing a tight white t-shirt. Tucked in. He was not an all-around fat guy; he just had an enormous gut. It was a truly distressing sight–it looked like the distended belly of a drowned and bloated animal. Enough said. I’m sorry if this is upsetting you, but you know, it's just not fair that I should be the only one with this horrible vision emblazoned onto the backs of my eyelids.

The other thing wasn’t a visual disturbance, but just an incredible example of genes that won’t last long in the pool. A mere half block from my house, just as I was about to get into the left turn lane, this guy zooms out of nowhere and cuts off the car in front of me. Really fast. On a motorcycle. A death wish? So soon after Christmas? Granted, the people he pulled in front of were the old folks whom I had been following at a glacial pace for many blocks, and who couldn’t maintain a high enough speed to do any harm whatsoever to any living thing should they actually manage to run into it. Still, he pulled right in front of them. That’s just not nice to do to old people.

Oh, heck, I suppose there are more things that were unpleasant today, but why go over them all? Lane change! Nice things happened to me once I got home. First of all, my lovely Christmas lights were on and waiting for me, all purple and white and sparkly and cheery. I just put them up this morning; I hadn’t felt well enough to deal with them sooner and then I was gone the last two days. It’s all right that they missed Christmas Day–I’m planning on leaving them up until at least May or so. They really are very pretty-the purple ones are those new extra-intense LED lights, and they are a lovely compliment to the sparkly clear ones.

And then I had to go out to my car to get something, and two of my next door neighbors were talking at the foot of my steps. Kerry and Carolyn were admiring Carolyn's new shawl, and then Kerry said she had one for me, too, and she ran upstairs and brought me this gorgeous silk and pashmina wool shawl! It’s beautiful. It's incredibly warm and lightweight and soft, and makes me look a lot more elegant than I really am. She had one for each of the three of us who happened to be wandering through the courtyard tonight. She had put a lot of thought into it--each one was a different color scheme, and she knew which colors we each preferred or wore a lot. I have such wonderful neighbors! This is why I never want to move out of this complex. We give each other presents and fudge and cookies. We have long impromptu talks in the courtyard. We all know each others’ cats’ names. We help each other carry heavy things upstairs. We go out to get coffee or carouse in bars together. The best thing is simply that almost every single person in this complex is generous and friendly and a pleasure to live near. I am so lucky! Hey, I think my Christmas spirit just came back to life and is giving me a big goofy hug.

Glitter in the Boys' Room

I forgot all about writing about our visit to the drag show last week! It was my good friend Kiki's (the bearer of soup and other good things) birthday, and I wanted to do something special for her. So we took her to Lips, the local transvestite dinner theater. What a hoot! Although not for the prudish--as the emcee so sagely offered, "There's a church just across the street; you can drop your family off there before the show." Way too many jokes about so-and-so being a dark-chocolate-with-nuts number. Or Tootie, the emcee, who is part Hawaiian, referring to him(her)self as a "wahine with a weenie!" I actually like that one, kind of has a lilting poetry to it, doncha think? And then there was Ms. Tootie's affectionate habit of calling the audience bitches at regular 40-second intervals. The audience was about 90 percent female, which led our table into a thoughtful discussion of why that is so. We couldn't come up with any good answers, but wondered afresh about the irrefutable attraction between straight women and gay men. Someone made the point that there is also no male equivalent to drag shows: no men watching women parade around in guys' clothes, or men watching lesbians pretending to be men lip-synching to Abba songs...

At any rate, it was quite entertaining. Although we still can't quite figure out how these guys so effectively hide their, um, packages! Seriously, a few of them were wearing very tight pants that showed everything (or lack thereof) and there wasn't even a hint of a bulge. We were discussing this a few days later I said that, well, you know, that's pretty malleable flesh we're talking about. Kiki's husband piped in that it's only "malleable up to a POINT." I used to know a few guys who were into cross-dressing, so I know a few hints about how to produce cleavage on a male chest (lots of tape!), but I don't remember if anyone ever told me how to successfully smoosh your genitalia into apparent invisibility. Anybody have any pointers?

The show itself was a combination of stand-up comedy and lip-synching routines, where the performers typically left the stage to wander around the audience and gyrate on customers' laps and in their faces. I have to say, the few straight men in attendance were very good sports. Just be warned, if you go there for your birthday, or any other special occasion, and they KNOW about it (we allowed Kiki to remain shrouded in anonymity--she's not an attention hog like me), they will haul you up on stage and possibly even make fun of you. They will definitely call you a bitch. But you get a crown and a free dessert! And I’m not going to tell you what they make you do when you blow out the candle...

One of the numerous highlights of the evening, apart from the sexy Asian guy that really looked like a pretty girl until you got close to him, was when Kiki’s husband came back from the restroom. He was laughing as he told us that the men’s room floor is littered with feathers, glitter, and sequins. The women’s bathroom was quite bare. The night's only detraction, I suppose, was that one of the singers had rather prominent biceps, which really clashed with her halter top and spangly skirt. At least her makeup covered up her stubble.

Two beautiful things

Okay, three! THREE beautiful things! One, I am starting to feel truly better for the first time today. I even did my laundry--although I still didn't eat much more than toast. The second beautiful thing is my downstairs neighbor. We have been sharing shipments of organic vegetables from our local CSA program, and I recently told her to take all the veggies as I was too sick to want to deal with them--I haven't been cooking and couldn't stand to waste all the good food. So tonight, there is a sudden knock on my door and it is Carolyn with a hot bowl of soup that she just made. I have somehow managed to fill my life with beautiful, warm-hearted people who bring me soup. The soup itself is a thing of beauty (okay, FOUR, four beautiful things...) and filled with colors--glowing oranges from the little moons of carrots, golden iridescent shimmers from the squash, deep earthy green in the chard, and shiny luminescent droplets of olive oil shooting off tiny lights like little gems tumbling on the surface. The photo just doesn't capture it very well, particularly the little tiny lights shooting off the oil drops (you just see the lights from the flash):
And now we arrive at the third (fifth? What are we up to now?) beautiful thing:This is the tiniest tea set ever. The lids really come off, and the spout on the teapot works. To give you a sense of scale, that white thing the pitcher is sitting on? Yeah, the cute little pedestal? It's a sugar cube. Oh my.

Party Under the Fridge

Yesterday, my very dear friend Kiki (not her real name--don't forget that sushi!) came over and brought me a giant bowl of homemade soup. It's the soup her mom always made when she and her sister were sick. Kiki is just about the most generous and big-hearted human being you will ever meet. She is totally neato. And the soup was extra yummy, in addition to being good for me. Kiki knew that I wasn't eating well because I don't feel up to cooking anything more complicated than a piece of toast; even that's pushing it--I have to get out the butter, too, AND a knife! Jeez. So anyway, Kiki and her daughter came over and I got fed, and my cat got a little extra play time.

Kiki's kids had brought Sylvie a toy as a present one of the last times they were here. I told little Miss S that Sylvie had adored that toy, so much so that she played with it for two days straight without resting and then promptly lost it. I told Miss S (pictured at right in horrid sunglasses of mine) that the toy was "probably under the fridge or something." That was all she needed to hear! She immediately zoomed into the kitchen and got down to peer into the dark under the fridge. "I see it, I see it!" came the excited cry only seconds later. Kiki and I, being responsible, mature adults, were instantly skeptical and did pretty much nothing to encourage her. I didn't have anything at the time with which to fish stuff out from dusty dark scary places (this is my paltry justification). Well, little Miss S showed us what was up--she marched back into the living room in about 20 more seconds with a sparkly orange toy squeezed in her little hand. Take that, you mature, responsible grown-up people!

Since yesterday, Sylvie has rekindled her affair with the sparkly orange toy (with the red fringies on top) and has been batting it around maniacally, yanking out electrical cords and tipping over furniture in her wake. That is, until she swatted it into the kitchen and under the fridge again. Oh woe. I decided to take a peek under there armed with a newly discovered yard stick and an LED flashlight. Holy crap! There was a whole population of abandoned kitty entertainment whooping it up under there! I believe they were only minutes away from founding a system of government and delegating authority. I found no fewer than FOUR Guatemalan cloth catnip mice, her favorite skunk beanie toy, two practice golf balls, several twisty ties, an empty pill bottle, and a whole herd of dust-ridden packing peanuts. Sylvie had been busy.

I diligently hoisted them out before they could further their incipient civilization, with absolutely no help at all from the cat, who kept trying to play with each item as it came out into the light. As I cleaned each one of clinging dust bunnies, I threw it into the living room, hoping to distract her. This ploy worked for approximately 1.3 nanoseconds each time, with decreasing returns as I recovered each toy. She was much more interested in the action and all the gunk stubbornly adorning her liberated toy arsenal.

Now, they are finally all clean and Sylvie is continuing her frenzied reacquaintance with her long-lost friends, sounding like a whole pride of tiny lions as she thumples across the hardwood floor, slides and then crashes into the bookcase; ricochets off the futon and flings the carpet up against the piano bench as she launches off it... Then a sudden and dangerous foray into the kitchen. Thank goodness I managed to put up a quick cardboard barrier on the bottom of the fridge before she scooted any toys back in that direction. No more secret parties or budding cat toy municipalities under my kitchen appliances!

One thought

Contemplating a return to the quiet, the visual, the godlike. What the eye catches it doesn't typically hold long enough. There IS a universe in a grain of sand. Each one, each its own separate and unique amalgam of squirming life, explosions, tiny beaks spiking their way through broken shells, death, uproar, lovemaking, trees sweeping the air with their arms, and water in all its sinuous glory. Rivers, oceans, streams, springs welling up between rocks layered with decay; rain weeping its way along a downturned leaf.

Sesquipedalian

This photo has nothing at all to do with this post. But I get complaints if there aren't pictures–so here you go, a giant chicken serving beer:
I'm getting stupider. It's true. I've heard this happens as you get older, but I thought I had a good 10-15 years ahead of me before the confusion fog set in (Confusion Fog, incidentally, is also the name of a Meat Puppets song. Huh. I didn't remember that until after I wrote it. This is getting awfully long and full of punctuation for a parenthetical phrase. Dontcha think?). I spent some of my day today re-reading old poetry and my *cough* writing project that I started 2 years ago. Here's the distressing part: There were numerous words in there that I don't know the meanings of anymore. See? I'm getting stupider. Or at least my vocabulary is shrinking alarmingly. So, in an effort to quell the ravages of memory loss and evil word-snitching poltergeists, I am going to begin assaulting you with big words, as I had threatened to do when I first began this blog. The hamsters have come back to roost, buddy! Or some such thing.

Without further ado, here's a tasty lexical tidbit for ya, taken directly from a piece that I wrote about my aged kitty, Keats (rest his fuzzy little soul) many months ago: senectitude. As in, "He is the ruling poster cat of feline senectitude." This one is pretty easy to figure out contextually, especially if you had had the occasion to meet this geriatric kitty in his later years. Senectitude comes from the Latin root senectus, meaning old age, or senex, just meaning old. There you go. I found the word a while ago when I was looking up senescence (biology: loss of the power of cell division) in the dictionary, which I had seen while reading an awesome book about the human genome. Senectitude is just a cool word. It has so much more dignity and grace than “decrepitude” or “infirmity.” And Keats was, occasionally, a bit dignified, even though it was probably due to his waning energy more than any true sophistication on his part.

My other word of the day is dilatory. It just sounds lazy, doesn't it? Lollygagging, laybaout-ing, lackadaisical, leisurely, late all the time, laggard. That's pretty much it. For those of you who want the official version, the OED says that dilatory means: "1. Tending to cause delay; having the purpose of gaining time. 2. Given to or characterized by delay; slow, tardy." I think I really just wanted to highlight this word so that I could tell you that the word immediately following it in the dictionary is "dildo." Dilbert just hasn't made it in there yet; you'll have to keep petitioning...

Oh, and I'm not going to tell you what sesquipedalian means. Those of you who are good friends probably already know because I like it so much, although I don't get much conversational use out of it other than telling people what a cool word it is. Look it up! It's sort of a small joke, really. Ironic, I mean. The first person to correctly identify the meaning of this word (I won't even make you use it in a sentence) gets a little star and a lollipop in the mail. Provided I have your address, of course.

Jordanian Window

Hey Kids! A friend of mine has been living in Jordan since September. She is there for a year, gathering research for her Ph.D. dissertation. Some of you may know of whom I am speaking, but I can't say her name here for mysterious non-disclosable reasons. Her online name is Frances Goodman--I can't reveal her true identity at the peril of being forced to eat uranium sushi. At any rate, she has a blog that I read diligently, and which is chock full of stuff you need to know. Check it out for a good daily dose of cultural education. Some of the posts are from her husband, K, who is still here in the states, so don't get too confused when you see posts about California.

Driving in Jordan

There is also a permanent link to her blog on the right in that big linky mess over there. I believe it's under the title "Jordan and Knitting." I haven't seen a post about her knitting projects in a while; I presume that she's too busy with her studies and her trips to Syria and Egypt. As an aside, the window in the photo is not Jordanian, it's Syrian. But it IS a window, and it is pretty and fits rather nicely with the title I chose for this post.

Ad Nauseum

My lungs have turned against me once again. I think I will make the most of my time stuck here at home and do some really relentless blogging. As soon as I find a good topic. In the meantime, I will brush up on my waning geography knowledge. You should, too! Here is a fun site to help you test yourself on your geographical prowess:

Geoquiz

If you are a good red-blooded American educated by the public school system (like myself), your understanding of the world is probably in need of a serious kick in the ass. I said ASS! Boy, I am feeling a bit punchy. It's all that medicine I just sucked into my lungs via nebulizer--it makes me pretty wired. BLEAHGHEHHHGH!

And in a totally unrelated, clumsy, blunt-nosed segue, here's a picture of my cat! It's been a while since I subjected you to one. But it's in the blog title up there at the top of the page, so you can't ethically complain. You were duly warned.


OOOHHH! Here are some more! Attacking door kitty! Arrrrr!!



















Does that even make it a segue if it's unrelated? I may have abused the term. Please don't tell the semantic police.

Happy Christmas Fairy, or How I was De-Scrooged

Some years, the beloved Christmas Spirit pays me a gentle visit; others, I’m as grinchy as can be and go around growling at cheerful people at regular intervals. Grinchalicious, I like to call it. Ahem. This year, I was not feeling very optimistic about the chances of the Happy Good Cheer Fairy tapping me on the head with her sparkly red wand of joy, but she came along anyway and gave me a good wallop. In the form of stuff. Stuff! And a fair amount of good luck to top it all off. It’s just plain weird: two days of green traffic lights, consistently guessing the perfect routes to avoid huge messes of backed up traffic, parking spaces instantly opening up for me in malls crowded with rabid Christmas shoppers, and unintentionally taking routes through town that took me right by the places where I needed to run errands that I had previously completely forgotten about. Hmmm. All my luck appears to be traffic related. I have been blessed by the Automotive Fairy! If only she would fix my worn-out brakes now. Maybe I should take them off of my car and leave them under my pillow tonight...

On to the stuff and happy holidayness! One of the big bonuses to having two jobs, I discovered, is that I got to go to two holiday parties. Two parties with free food and a chance to dress up and wear fancy uncomfortable shoes that looked absolutely stunning. Joy! Both parties were this past weekend, on my first two days off in a row in over a month. More joy! The first one was for RECON, the environmental company I’ve been working for most of this year since April. It was at the Hilton on Harbor Island. Schmancy! My hot date and I arrived late due mostly to my multiple wardrobe issues. I had to sew straps on my dress to keep it from falling down, and I was having a horrendous time trying to force my hair to do something attractive. It didn’t work, and we arrived at the party an hour late but just in time for dinner. One unexpected benefit of our lateness was that we ended up at a table in the corner, and there were only four of us there. Most of the other tables were full, and had about 10-11 people around them. Having only four of us was a good thing because we played a game of “hot potato” with a gold pine cone and whoever ended up holding the pine cone when the music stopped got one of three prizes sitting on the table. Remember, there were only four of us. What a deal! Everybody won! Technically speaking, one person didn’t, but since that person was a half of a couple, they got to share. See below for an illustration of Who-ville style celebrating and sharing around the Christmas tree!

And here is where my joyful receiving of stuff begins. I won a $50 gift card for Crate and Barrel! The really serendipitous thing is about this is that I suddenly don’t have much silverware anymore, and I’ve been really needing to buy some, but I just don’t have the money. Well, tonight after work (after taking the much less traffic-jammy 163 instead of 15), I ended up near the mall where Crate and Barrel is. How fortuitous! Now I have a whole set of spiffy new heavy silvery objects with which to eat my food and stir things. But it doesn’t end there! Oh no. Last night I went to the big fat party at Stone Brewing Company. It was fabulous. Truly! And not just because I won more stuff. But here’s how the stuff came about: every year a raffle is held, and you get tickets based upon attendance (those are the easy ones), early arrival, and if you bring a white elephant gift to share. I arrived with my dear brother, and we looked smashing, I must say. We were informally voted best-dressed couple by several attendees. Never mind that we’re not a couple, California being one of those uppity states where it’s illegal to marry your siblings. But I would have liked a tiara....I digress...


Anyhow, they raffle off a HUGE amount of stuff. And I’m not kidding. The stuffness was overwhelming--a surfboard, a beach cruiser, THREE handmade guitars, lots of clothes and leisure packages... They use a really great system: each package has a small box in front of it, and you only put your tickets in the boxes for things that you were truly interested in winning. No waste! One of the things I wanted didn't have many tickets in it, so I put four in the box--and I won!!!! Holy crap! I got a Mission Playground jacket, a pair of expensive sunglasses, and VIP tickets to a few SD Rep shows of my choice. Hot damn! The sunglasses were humungous, and according to one co-worker, made me look like an alien. I’m not surprised--I knew they wouldn’t work the moment I took them out of the box. I have a very tiny face, and these things were truly gigantic. We ended up passing them around for folks to try on and laughing at their absurdity, but then they really looked good on this one young woman. So I gave them to her. It’s Christmas! It’s fun to give stuff to people. And I also got the very very fine present that my brother brought to the party, which was a coveted bottle of Stonewall Ale and a tape of “Little Tookie Sings” -- a collection of holiday tunes sung by my wacky sibling, complete with scary gremlin voices and drum machine riffs. Even more coveted! I could tell that several people wanted my Stonewall beer and tape, but since I’m a girl they didn’t have the heart to steal it from me. Yay for being a girl!

However, my luck did run out just around the time when I was eating dinner tonight and an obnoxious Christmas song inexplicably popped into my head and settled there for a long while. Yes, you cynics out there, there ARE some non-obnoxious Christmas songs. It was that horrible whiny tune about “Do you hear what I hear (do you hear what I hear? Huh? DO YOU?)” and then that bit about “A star, a star, oh blah blah blah blah blah, with a tail as big as a kite...with a tail as big as a KIIIIIIIITE!” You know, even as a child, I hated that song. Somehow the melody is a limping wounded thing and that kite bit is simply a wretched choice of simile. A kite? A kite just isn’t that big. Or poetic. It doesn’t instill me with a sense of majesty and awe, which is what I think they must have been aiming for...after all, this is Jesus’ special star. Didn’t they intend it to be majestic and awesome? And big? They may as well have said “with a tail as big as a fire hydrant“ for all the beauty and wonder that it stirs up in my mind. Yeesh.

But I have new silverware and a cool jacket made out of organic cotton and recycled plastic bottles, and beer, and theater tickets and a warm fuzzy feeling. The best thing of all is that I am truly blessed with the best brother any living human has ever had, and a host of amazingly generous and kind-hearted wonderful friends. Now THAT is a rare gift indeed.

Jed Reformed

My luck seems to be holding fast. What on earth did I do to deserve this? I can’t think of a thing, but I am going to savor this small spate of good fortune while it lasts. Well, I had another trip out to Santee and the dentist today. More fillings! Today was a bright shiny new day in the land of big trucks--either somebody in the office has been reading my blog or people there are just tired of magazines about celebrities and cars and hunting. Today the racks sported copies of Time, Newsweek, and US News. A veritable smorgasbord of information! And on the way home, my spirits were uplifted by a car that was plastered with Navy stickers, but after it passed me, I also saw a MoveOn “Defend America-Defeat Bush!” sticker on the back bumper. That will teach me to subscribe to stereotypes. I have seen the light, and it is pretty!

Here’s where my luck changed from being strictly automotive and traffic-related: I had to get two more fillings today (not too lucky there) and was noticing that he did much less drilling. That made me happy, and much more comfy, too. I thought that these must have been much more shallow cavities than my previous ones. However, when I went to pay, she said, “Okay, so for two white fillings, that’s 90 bucks!” What? I told her that I had thought I was getting the silver ones, because I had asked for them (way cheaper, you know), and she went to check out the situation. She came back, saying that yes, indeed, I did now have two white fillings, but since I had requested silver, that was all she would charge me for. Which came to a grand total of 15 dollars. Hallelujah! So now I have some spiffy new fillings that are much much more comfortable than those nasty silver ones, and for hardly any money at all. Hooray for office confusion!

My dental tip for the day: in case you ever have to get fillings, I highly suggest that you get the white ones if you can afford it--and not for cosmetic reasons. What they didn’t tell me in the beginning is that for white fillings they drill much less of your tooth out, since the white stuff is kind of sticky and adheres to the tooth all by itself. It's good to keep as much of your teeth as possible! Plus, the white stuff doesn’t conduct heat and cold so you won’t have to deal with nasty shocks for months afterward like you do with the silver ones. Hooray for white fillings! Hooray for the good luck fairy! And to further extend my blissfest, my disgustingly cute cat is lying across my shoulders as I type this, stretching her paws down in front of my face and purring loudly in my ear.

Therapeutic Dirt Washing

Hey Kids! I've been at the office for a several days washing dirt. Yep. I've achieved a zenlike state, watching the water slurp and bubble down through the gravel in the screens and swirl in lazy circles in the sunlight. It's mesmerizing. What I'm doing is actually scientific, although it really doesn't look or sound like it. I am taking large bags of dirt from a previous excavation and washing them in two different sizes of screen. This way all of the gravel (and hopefully artifacts as well) are left behind for me to sort through later. Also, I'm scooping off the floaty bits on top of the water with a very fine screen to be ostensibly used later for analysis--to discern what kinds of flora were there in the archaeological record. We'll see.

I am basically using a large purple plastic tub filled with about 6 inches of water and placing two square wooden-framed screens of different sizes into it and dumping dirt onto the screens. Then I push the dirt through and collect what's left behind in large paper-towel lined screens to dry--I'm reusing the towels every day, don't worry! It's fun when the wind isn't blowing things everywhere. I've noticed several interesting phenomena as I do this over the past few days. I've been wearing orange rubber gloves (they look lovely against the purple) to keep my skin from completely freaking out, and when I put my hands underwater the pressure makes them shrink up against my hands. It's truly a bizarre and weirdly pleasant sensation. If I put my hands all the way down against the bottom, the pressure is really strong and it feels as if the gloves are trying to suffocate me. It's remarkable just how much the pressure increases with only a few inches of water. It makes me wonder about animals that live in the deepest part of the ocean--how on earth did they ever even get the chance to adapt to that kind of crushing pressure? Biology is amazing.

I've also been scooping out the mud at the bottom of the tub when I'm done with each bag and dumping it into a bucket to be disposed of later. By someone else. I was originally told to dump the dirt into the planters outside the building, but that's just plain crazy. I started out doing that, but quickly realized that there wouldn't be any room left after only a few more bagfuls of dirt. When I scoop the mud out of the big tub, I let it sit in a smaller one to separate the water out before I put it in the bucket. Here's the amazing and fun part: as the water is percolating out of the dirt, it makes little volcano-like spouts in the mud. It's really cool! If you've ever been at the beach and seen the clams' and other sea creatures' bubbles in the wet sand as the waves recede, you'll know roughly what it looks like. Again, it's mesmerizing. I think I spent a little more time than I needed to letting the water separate because it was so hypnotic to watch.

The best thing, though, was the patterns left in the dirty water when I put the screens back in. After the first washing, there was always a light layer of foam on the water's surface. When I put the larger-sized screen back in the tub, it made little square patterns in the white. The amazing part is that the foam bits would stay in little squares for a long while, even if they moved. The little pieces of foam would rotate and drift, and even change places with one another, but still retain their basic geometry. It looked like an earth-toned mosaic, undulating on the surface of the water.

Ahhhhh, dirt. I've always loved dirt. Now that I've seen its artistic side, and spent time meditating on its myriad permutations, I'm even more smitten. Om.

Technical Difficulty

Hey Kids! I've been wanting to post for a few days, but my internet connection has been down for nearly a week--I haven't had time (or enough energy) to deal with tech support and clear it up. I have two posts sitting at home waiting for me to put them up here for your reading enjoyment, but we'll just have to wait til it's all fixed. I am currently writing this from work--I am not working. I am putting off the two projects I could be working on becuase the dry weather from the cursed (pronounced like a Shakespearen curse-ED!) Santa Ana winds are making me miserable. I'm only going to stay here long enough to justify having driven here in the first place and then I will go home. I apologize profusely for the brevity and banality of this post. Flying monkeys! Snozzberries! Much better...

Workplace du Jour

Hey kids! I got a respite from my freaky gas mask today and got to work right next to the ocean. A very nice change. Yes, there was a chain link and barbed-wire fence between us and the beach, but it was still much more fun than working on a bleak construction site full of loud and noxious machinery. This time I have my lungs to thank for this fortuitous change of affairs. The diesel and billowing dust clouds of the monitoring job are getting to me, despite my mask. Although, I was rather justly scolded today by a coworker who somehow found out that I wasn't wearing it the entire time on the monitoring job. That is true. But I challenge you to wear one of those things when climbing up a steep hill or jogging to avoid impending doom in the form of 200,000 pounds of cold yellow metal. It can't be done! I would have liked to wear the mask all day (well, no, that's a lie. I don't like that thing! But I like having my lungs healthy) but it was simply much too hard to breathe through those filters any time I moved at more than a slow ambling walk. I'm afraid it's just not practical for me out there. Without the mask, I suck in lots of deadly fumes that my body can't get rid of, and then I'm not able to breathe. With the mask, I can't get enough air when I exert myself, and then I can't breathe. There's my justification for taking the darn thing off. At any rate, that's why I'm temporarily off the job!!

So there we were at Silver Strand Beach, on military land south of Coronado Island. Lovely. Iceplant is typically a type of flora that I am not fond of; however, it is squishy and fun to walk on and makes a good cushion when you're sitting down doing paperwork. And in several spots, it was thickly overgrown where we needed to dig our units, so we got down and ripped it up with our hands. It was quite therapeutic--grabbing fistfuls of plant and roots and pulling with all my strength 'til big clumps came off and I could toss them over my shoulder--fun times! A few times it resisted so strongly that I had to pull with my full weight against it and then when the roots suddenly gave way I fell squarely on my butt. It just made me laugh. For those of you who think it's hypocritical of me to be gleefully tearing up plants left and right: iceplant grows like wildfire, takes over other vegetation if given the slightest chance, and doesn't even belong here. Take that, iceplant!
I know working at the beach all day seems like a dream, especially to you poor freezing east coast folk, but if it's any consolation, it was pretty cold in the early morning with all the fog. We also tend to not notice the lovely surroundings as much as you would think--we're too busy digging, screening, bagging artifacts, measuring...But the few times I paused and looked up I was extremely gratified and amazed at how gorgeous it was. Such a beautiful clear day! Not too hot or cold, the water was a flashing greeny-blue, pelicans were occasionally winging overhead, and a curious but aloof ruby-throated hummingbird guarded the periphery all morning. AAhhhhhhhhh, this is why I do what I do! I'll take my $30 less per hour to enjoy these shining saturated moments. Peace. Sunshine. Salt breeze. Bliss.

Things that made me happy today

When I went to pick up my prescription, I found a really good hardback book that I've been wanting and it was only $2.50. On my way out of the drugstore a homeless guy kissed me on the forehead after I gave him a dollar. Driving home I saw a toy poodle hanging out a car window wearing a purple harness and pink bows behind its ears. I counted all the different types of palm trees I could see on my way home--did you know that on Adams Avenue there are at least 6 kinds? I never knew. And I noticed that they just put up the Christmas lights on the Adams Ave. bridge over the 805. Pretty! And then at my apartment, I discovered that the bread slots in my toaster have grooves that look like little smiley faces.

I would like to add that that homeless guy was very nice. Honestly. Don't worry yourself at all about me being kissed by strangers asking me for my money. Just like people within any large group, some are nice and some aren't. His name is Billy, and he shook my hand (after kissing my forehead) and said he'd see me around. I hope I do! I have discovered that I am a philanthropist in the most literal sense of the word: I truly do love people. They make me happy. So do dogs, ladybugs at construction sites, smiley faces in kitchen appliances, the brilliant jewel-red of fizzy pomegranate juice glinting in a glass bottle in the sunlight as I drink it, warm fuzzy socks in Dr. Seuss stripes when it’s cold, and Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies. Bunnies!

Giant Scary Machines

Hey kids! Since it's most likely that only my archaeologist friends have ever worked on a construction site, I thought I'd share a day in the life with you. Imagine the biggest tire you've ever seen. Now double it, and you have a tire that costs $8,000, is about 7 or 8 feet tall, can kill people if it bursts anywhere in their vicinity, and belongs to a large yellow monstrosity called a belly scraper. Um, they're big. Here are some other exciting scraper facts: A new one will cost you at least one million dollars--closer to 1.5 million according to the paleontology guy. They weigh 150 thousand pounds (that's 75 tons, kiddos, or about 25-30 really big pickup trucks). They typically carry a load of dirt weighing about 100 thousand pounds, making a fully loaded scraper weigh in at 250,000 pounds, or 125 tons. And I got to stand next to them while they chewed up huge swaths of earth just a few feet from me.

Actually, I'm very afraid of these things, which is healthy. I try to stand at least a scraper-width away from them so in the off chance that one tips over next to me, I won't get squashed. I also always make sure that I have an exit path--at one point today I was standing on a wedge of higher soil watching the scrapers make a cut right in front of me. There are also several dozers out there, too; these are especially big ones, and some of them have a giant toothy-rake thing on the back that looks sinister and lethal, like a grotesque mutant wasp with three giant metal stingers. They use these kind of like a plow, dragging them behind them to break up soil to make it easier to scrape up. So anyhow, I suddenly notice that one of these was driving up behind me, and not only that, if he had decided not to notice me I would have been sandwiched between the scrapers and him. I got the hell out of there first chance.

Here's what the scrapers do, so you can get a picture of it: they drive around in really big loosely circular runs, scraping up huge loads of dirt and redepositing them wherever they need more fill. In this way, they can totally rearrange the topography in a matter of days; leveling off hillsides and filling up low spots. It's crazy. Awe-inspiring and tragic all at once. Scrapers have two main parts, the cab/engine up front, which can swivel a full 180 degrees from the body, and the body/trailer part. This part is especially cool looking--I find myself frequently in the conundrum of being horrified by the destruction being wrought by these things while at the same time admiring the techy-gadgety amazingness of them: like Tonka trucks grown up. The back end contains a large empty trailer that can be hydraulically raised and lowered, with the wheels on the very back end behind it. It also has a shovel-shaped bottom edge, and a large "door" that can move up and down on the front of it. When they are scraping, they lower the trailer bed part down to ground level and lift up the door, so it can scrape up all the dirt while they drive. When the trailer is full, they lower the door, lift up the trailer, and drive off to wherever they're dumping it, where they lift up the door again but without lowering the body, so the dirt falls out on the ground as they drive over it.

The ones out here are making fairly deep cuts, about a one- to two-foot cut at each pass. Because they're scooping up so much soil, they often need help, so they work in pairs. Their back ends have a huge trailer hitch-y thing above a large square plate, and the front ends have a humungous U-shaped bar that they can lower down, and a big metal plate on a spring, which is a sort of shock-absorber. The one in back lowers the bar down over the front one’s trailer hitch and scoots up real close until the metal plates bump together. It’s like some alien machine mating ritual. I wonder if the construction guys have ever thought about how sexual it all is, and if they have, do they suppress it because that’s just homo? Hmph! Now they’re all hooked up so that while the front one is scooping up dirt, the back one can help push--they would just bog down in the dirt otherwise. When the front one is full, he raises his trailer and pulls the back one as he loads up on dirt. It's like ballet! Only really stinky and noisy and without the tights and good-looking guys with huge leg muscles.

I really wanted to touch on some other things, but I’d like to end this on a somewhat positive note rather than go into all the death and destruction being caused out there by all this. I saved two snails today. I’ve got to save something! Just think about the stinky homo-machine dirt ballet. Tee hee!

Alien Freak Gas Mask

Hey kids! Since you did as requested and asked about the gas mask, I am obliged to reply. As most of you know, my lungs are just not up to par. Many of you also know that I am an archaeologist, at least for now, until I can find something more rewarding to do. At any rate, one of the less-fun things that we archaeologists get to do is chase around large earth-moving equipment to monitor them in case they start digging up and destroying cultural materials. Bleah. Said earth-moving equipment runs on diesel, and they put out a staggering amount of fumes. Not to mention lots of dust. As you may imagine, it is just not a good thing for me to be doing (or anyone else who wants to stay healthy, for that matter). Up 'til now, I simply told employers that I was unable to monitor. I had tried it a few times just to see, but it made my lungs hurt for three full days afterward, which I took as a subtle sign that I should avoid the whole deal.

Well! I have been rather direly in need of money, and the company with whom I've been working for most of the past 7 months was badly in need of help with monitoring. We discussed the possiblilities, and decided to try sending me out into the field with a high-quality respirator to fend of the menacing diesel and dust clouds. Which they paid for, thankfully. Now, I'm all about protecting my lungs and my health, but I have to admit that I was seriously considering telling them no, that I couldn't do it--because I just couldn't bear the thought of going out in public looking like a freak from World War I. I did some hard thinking about this. Honestly, I was pretty surprised at the intensity of my emotions about it. I was almost in tears thinking of having to go out amongst all those swaggering construction guys wearing my sissy invalid getup. It took me a full day to even work up the nerve to call the safety supply company.

After much pondering, I realized that what was going on in my head was something I'd encountered before when I've had to do home IV therapy for several weeks at a time. I always ended up wearing long-sleeved shirts (even in summer) or covering up the IV site with a sweat band or something. I simply am quite embarrassed to LOOK like I have a medical condition. That's the one thing that I think I am thankful for with my goofed-up cilia: most of the time, I look just like everybody else and you would never know. Now, when you see me wandering around a construction site with my giant face mask with its two purple cylinders sticking way out to the side like some freakish alien reptile from another planet, yeah, I look different! Top that off with a hard hat and an orange safety vest and I'm ready for a night on the town. Yeeha!

In all seriousness, it was a lot for me to overcome. I wrestled with it for a full week. Finally, my desperate need to pay ALL of my rent forced me to swallow my pride and put the thing on out in the field. It was a humbling experience, and I still grimace when I think about it, but it allows me to do my work. Those filters really work--I couldn't even smell the diesel at all when I was wearing it. Hooray for alien freak gas masks!

It was the sled!!

So I think it's time to just post a plain old update. Here 'tis: I am now working 7 days a week in order to mend my current situation of having to pay my rent in increments. At least I have two different jobs, which breaks things up and fends off monotony--although my life is anything but monotonous at the moment. A good heavy dose of personal tribulations, being at some job or other every single day, finishing up my fundraiser, keeping up with my dance troupe, trying not to ignore my friends and attend about a zillion impending holiday festivities is proving to be quite a full plate. Yow. And then there is my cat, ricocheting off of the back of the couch and scooting butter boxes around on the floor with her nose. I suppose things could be worse.

I definitely need to follow up on my PCD Spooky Walk. For those of you who participated, I can't thank you enough! It was a huge success; much more than I imagined it would be. I had begun to get very discouraged about two weeks prior to the walk itself--I was missing work and spending every moment of my conscious life planning for it, but truly didn't think we were going to get much response. Well, people came through in spades. I am so humbly grateful for everyone's help and their dedication to the cause. For those who didn't get my email with the latest total, here's the scoop: with more money on its way, we currently have $4,199 in funds raised from the walk!!! I get so overwhelmed with joy thinking about this you would think the money was all for me! I suppose that in a way it is. My brother and I, as well as a thousand other patients nationwide, will all benefit from the PCD Foundation being able to operate for yet another year, promoting awareness and research for this truly bizarre medical phenomenon we have to contend with.

In other news, I am working weekends at Stone Brewing Company, and boy howdy is it getting fun! The restaurant is open, and it is a wonder to behold. Truly. It is a surreal landscape filled with warm wood tones, polished granite, stands of bamboo, concrete, towering asymmetrical rock walls, fountains, trees, a rock spouting leaping flames over a pool of glassy water...it is magical at night! And of course, there is fine beer, wine, and munchables. I'm not advertising, I'm just telling you that it's dang cool. The only thing I have to complain about is that it is much too much fun to hang out there and I tend to spend many hours after work lounging in the sybaritic atmosphere. Quite a few of my fellow employees are having the same trouble as me--we just can't leave!

I also want to draw your attention to my newly updated profile. Just so's you know, I find it rather tedious and un-entertaining to leave my occupation the same week after week. So I change it. Telling the truth is really boring, too. So if you need an extra four seconds of amusement in your life, make sure to check my profile out periodically. I try to update my occupation and my question/response thingy about once a week. Yes, I am that out of touch with what my priorities ought to be! And that easily amused.

I will have to further this update later because I am just now noticing that it is nearly 1 a.m. What in the world am I thinking? Remind me to tell you about my new gas mask next time...

Gleeful Shrub Countdown

Check out that countdown timer! We are at fewer than 800 days left. Oh, melodious arrangement of digits! Oh joyous day! What sweet nectar from yon computer screen flows, perchance a liberal to sip!

All right, all right, so I'm no Shakespeare. I never claimed I was, so you really can't fault me. At any rate, I do love seeing that number dwindle in its unceasing and tireless way. I'm hoping that perhaps now with a less elephant-laden congress that we may even finally have some legislators with the guts to oust this tyrranyical regime for good. Let's shoot for 150 days left! What the heck! Only problem is, you'd really have to impeach just about everybody to effect any real change. That may prove difficult, but I remain steadfastly optimistic that an increasing majority of people in our country are coming to their senses at last--including those most conveniently placed in a position to really do something about it.

ps: In case you are new to my blog and haven't scrolled around much and are currently in a complete state of bewilderment as to the subject of this post--check out those moving numbers (over there on the right up closer to the top) counting down the time we have left to endure Bush and his cronies in office.

Politics as usual

Holy cow. Holy Toledo. Holy CRAP! It looks like our beloved state of California has lost its collective mind. Again. As of 10:15 p.m. tonight, it looks very likely that we will have another term of the Governator in office. I am really quite astonished and embarrassed by this. Do we have no pride? He is winning by a whopping 60% to 35% of the votes so far, and even with only 31% of all votes counted, I don't think Angelides is going to be able to pull off a late-night turnaround. Argh. The ONLY county in CA to vote for Angelides at all was San Francisco. Oh my stars. And Colusa county REALLY likes having Conan the Barbarian for governor--77.7% of those people there voted for him! I'm not sure where Colusa is, but I'm pretty pleased that I don't live there. I'm disheartened by our gubernatorial race, but the fact that the Republicans have decisively lost their throttle on the House makes me feel that maybe our federal government has a chance to do some good for a change. I remain hopeful. I have to. Things have to get better, don't they?

This just in: Proposition 85 is losing. This is a very good thing. This proposition, if passed and ok'd by the legislature, would force young pregnant teens to notify their parents before being allowed to have an abortion. You might think, "Well, isn't it better for her if she has parental guidance through such a tough time?" Of course it is! IF she is lucky enough to have been born into a family with nurturing, caring, and involved parents. But I am not ignorant enough to believe that this is the case for all young pregnant girls. The last thing a troubled, abused, pregnant teenager needs is to be forced to tell people who may harm her that she needs and abortion. That could send her straight toward some friend with a coat hanger, or worse. I really just can't imagine. Things could go very, very badly for many young women if that Prop. passes. Let us hope and pray that it doesn't! Right now it is losing, but by a narrow margin. Please think good thoughts!

I just happened to be wearing my "We Will Not Be Silent" shirt to the voting booths tonight (it has Arabic script on it in big letters). Nobody kicked me out or tried to take my vote from me. I guess it's acceptable to speak Arabic, or wear Arabic in public, as long as you don't actually look Arabic. I feel very guilty at times for having had the dumb luck to be born with white skin. We get off the hook very easily sometimes, don't we? And after reading the harrowing adventures of a good friend of mine in Egypt (while in the company of a Jordanian young man) I am very very glad that I do live in a country where, at least for now, I can wear a shirt with Arabic on it and not be beaten up, or arrested, or maligned in any way. That's why I speak out so vociferously about the current regime's trends--the abridgement of our rights, the criminal deception, the flagrant disregard for the environment, the squelching of union voices and fair worker treatment, denial of universal access to medical care...damn, this is a long list. At any rate, my point is this: I DO love this country. I DO feel very very fortunate, damn lucky, and privileged to have been born here, because even though things are getting nasty, they are still about a zillion times better than living in 85% of the rest of the world. And that's precisely why I fight so hard against the people trying to f*** it up. That's why I sound like an "America hater' to the uninformed. If you love your country, too, don't just sit there getting angry. Write to your congress people, make your friends care, make phone calls, protest, DO SOMETHING! Nothing changes unless you do.

Inbred Jed and the Dentist, part three

It was the worst of beginnings, it was the best of endings. Waking up early in the morning to go get your teeth drilled is unpleasant enough, but a string of even unpleasanter things befell me before I had even been awake for an hour. First, I could NOT make myself get out of bed on time, due to some really nasty bouts of insomnia that have been plaguing me lately, of which last night's was particularly unrestful. Okay, so I'm running a bit late. I walk out the door after pocketing a key and then realize that I don't have my usual keyring. I'm locked out! And I don't have my car keys. Fortunately, after a minute of stewing and panicking on the front landing, I think hard about which key I DO have in my pocket. It is the spare front door key given to me by my neighbor so I can have a copy made. Saved!

So I let myself in, retrieve my real keys, and off I go, in slightly more of a hurry than when I left the first time. On the freeway, I very nearly rear-end someone while going 55 miles per hour. Holy crap! And it would have been all my fault, too. I was on the onramp to the 8 freeway, which is about 1/2 - 3/4 mile long before you hit actual freeway. I kept trying to get into the leftmost of the two lanes to facilitate merging onto the 8, and then all of a sudden the car in front of me SLAMS on the brakes because the cars in the right lane are pretty much stopped, as they are not trying to get on the freeway but rather to another street that exits off to the right. I brake so hard that my tires screech and my car wobbles. Thank god that I wasn't checking over my left shoulder again at that particular moment. So now my heart is beating at about 200 beats per minute, and I am feeling even less relaxed about my impending drilling session.

Onward I go! However, my mind is in some other place due to the distress I've already encountered thus far in my morning, and I don't notice the exit I'm supposed to be taking until I'm passing it from 3 lanes over. Holy crap!! So I take the next exit, El Cajon Boulevard. They are resurfacing the road there, so there is only one very crowded lane exiting, and I can't turn around to get back on the freeway for 3 whole intersections. And in the early morning, everyone in the world and their brother is trying to get on the 8 east and it is quite crowded, to put it very very mildly. I had glanced at my clock when I got off the freeway, and by the time I get back ON it, it has taken me 15 minutes. Oh my oh my.

Then something happened that made me feel a lot better. A man was waiting next to the crowded onramp with a sign asking for help. I had a dollar. I gave it to him. That made me feel really good. Helping another human being is the best cure for feeling lousy, it truly is. And please don't tell me about how all those homeless folks really aren't homeless and they are just going to use it all for drugs or booze and they make a hundred bucks a day begging. Even if all of those things are true, I really don't care. The act of giving makes me feel good. Even if he is making a fair amount of money per day doing this, he is spending a lot of time near the freeway encountering lots of carcinogenic emissions and unkind stares from drivers. No matter what kind of life he's living, I can guarantee you that the bottom line is that my life is much more comfortable than his, and therefore I feel good about sharing some of my good fortune with him if I can.

Wow. Now I feel much calmer and ready to face my three fillings head-on. Plus, I just called the dentist and they said that the person with the next appointment canceled, so even if I was much much later, it would still be all right. Relief! On the way, driving through Santee (see part 1 for a detailed description) I am sitting at a stop light and I can see out of the corner of my eye that the guy in the large, raised pickup truck next to me is checking me out. A lot. This does not flatter me. It frightens me. I don't dare turn my head for fear that in Santee, making eye contact with a man in a big-ass truck constitutes a civil marriage ceremony or something horrendous like that. Don't look don't look don't look!

I arrive at the dentist safe and unmarried to any local hick-types. Right next to their office is an empty suite with a sign saying, "So-and-so Day Spa Comming soon." Comming? As in dot-comming? Are they opening an online business? Argh! The spelling and grammar nazi in me rears to life. These situations always make me wonder what happened here. Did the people who ordered the sign do so under a "no returns or refunds even if we make horrid spelling errors on your sign" policy and didn't want to spend the extra money on a new one when they noticed the mistake? Or did they send the order to the sign-makers that way and the people making the sign thought, "Well, that's what they ordered. They must want it spelled like that for a reason!" Or did neither party notice the error at all? Hmmmmm. I am very curious, indeed.

Now I am home and the entire left side of my face is numb and drooly. I had to make some business calls about the fundraiser this morning, but put them off until I could speak with relatively little word-slurring so that they wouldn't retract their donations because they thought I was drunk at 9:30 a.m. I am not an animal!!! (movie reference alert) Walking up the steps I noticed a HUGE beautiful type of green spider that I've never seen before clinging to a leaf right next to my staircase. It was gorgeous and amazing and alien-looking. I took a zillion photos which I will post on Flickr as soon as I get more uploading space. Green is my favorite color, and spiders are good luck, didn't you know?

Inscrutable

Actually, there's nothing remotely mysterious or difficult to understand about this post. I just really wanted to call it Inscrutable because it sounded neat. So, because I haven't yet figured out how to upload photos to my blog without crashing my browser, I have added some new photos to Flickr. Yep! Go check 'em out, kids! There are a few lovely photos of my antic-prone feline and some nifty ones of my recent trip to Albuquerque. I'll elaborate a little more later when I'm not so tired. The Flickr badge is a little ways down on the right side: click on it and away you go.

By the way, have you donated to the fundraiser yet? Hmmmmmm? Read the post for 10-05 and you can learn ALL about it! Don't be the last kid on your block to try it!

ps: Did you notice the mysterious alignment of the repeated word "photos" in the first paragraph? Now, that's spooky! NOW we're getting inscrutable...

Inbred Jed and the Dentist, part two

Ah yes, today was the day--root canal day! I'm glad I got it over with first thing in the morning. My trip into Santee was fairly uneventful--in fact, parts of it were really beautiful. We are having a Santa Ana condition in the San Diego area today, which means that the wind that usually blows in from the cool, wet, ocean, is instead blowing in from over the desert in the east. Meaning that everything is dry and hot, your hair gets all staticky, you shock your cats when you pet them, and this is when things usually start catching on fire. Fortunately, we had some real rain immediately preceding the Santa Anas, so hopefully the brush fires will not get a chance to start burning things yet.

The pretty part of the Santa Anas is that the sky is unbelievably clear--cloudless and cold hard blue. When I first drove north toward Santee today, the early morning sun made deep shadows in the folds of the hills, and everything was draped in a beautiful green-gold light. The leaves on the trees even looked particularly brilliant green and translucent, glowing and flickering in the mild breeze. Lovely!

I did not, however, arrive at my destination without incident. I was nearly run down by a young man in a Giant Expensive Shiny Black Truck. I had just turned a corner to the right, and saw a line of stopped cars in front of me. Naturally, I slowed down. Mr. GESBT Man however, thought that having a green right-turn arrow meant that he shouldn't have to stop for nobody! He's not going to let a line of immobile one-ton metal objects get in his way, no sirree Bob! Ram 'em! At least, he nearly rammed me. I glanced in my rear view mirror as I finished the turn and saw nothing but huge shiny chrome radiator grill. Yikes! I think he felt immediately contrite, because he backed off right away. Or maybe he was just feeling around on the floor for his gun...yeeha!

On to the dentist's office! I regret to inform you that they no longer have "Trailer Life" in their magazine racks. As a consolation, though, they do have Field and Stream, bearing this headline: Best of the Rut! Seven Dates you Must Hunt This Fall! And then: A Million Ducks on the Cheap. Boy, that wildlife out there doesn't stand a chance. Why is Field and Stream called that? Shouldn't it be called Hunt and Kill Every Living Creature? To me, "Field and Stream" implies a sense of appreciation, if not reverence, for natural waterways and landforms and the animals who inhabit them. Just a thought.

The root canal wasn't as bad as all my nervousness promised. They really do try to make you more comfortable these days. They had a television monitor in the ceiling, which at first I was a bit unimpressed by, but then I realized it would be a nice distraction from all of the uncomfortable sensations and noises taking place in my mouth. At least they weren't playing some nasty daytime talk show or infomercial--it was an old black and white movie with lots of misty close-ups of the young actress, tears glimmering from her lower eyelids as she searched her lover's face imploringly. Oh, the drama! Excellent distraction, too. I did actually ask the dentist for a narration of what the heck they were doing to me. What they did is drill a hole into the back of my tooth, and then rout out the place where my tooth nerve was supposed to be, and then extract the dead nerve. Well, since my tooth injury happened such a long time ago, my tooth nerve had receded about halfway up the tooth, and left a path of calcified material in its wake. Apparently, it does this to protect itself; it kind of seals itself up from possible decay in the empty space by filling it up with calcium deposits. Interesting! But that did mean they had to do a lot of extra drilling to get to where the nerve was, dangit. I had to start closing my eyes when they drilled because while it didn't hurt, the vibrations were awful and it was actually making my vision blurry. The doe-eyed actress was looking especially tremulous and upset, and I was feeling a bit queasy watching the room shiver and jiggle like that.

All in all, it was not too bad. I may even decide to get that tooth bleached after all. I've been noticing in recent photos that it's really getting yellower as the years go on. I think it makes all of my other teeth look dingier by comparison. I’ve got a few weeks to contemplate it, at any rate. In the meantime, I need to find work and spend all of my spare time (which I have more of than I'd like right now) making phone calls and trying to raise money. That said, have you checked out my fundraiser yet? Read the previous post, please! I’m not above a little begging. We need money in a most desperate way. That’s right folks. Give us your money or we’ll all stand around you in a circle and threaten to cough phlegm in your general direction. Don’t think we wouldn’t!

Raise Them Funds!

Well, I am sick now, thanks to the ever-slacking cilia in my lungs. It may have started as a cold; I'm really not sure, since it is so hard for me to tell when I actually have one of those due to the fact that it's like having a permanent head and chest cold anyway when your cilia are on a lifelong hiatus. Yeesh! At any rate, I am down for the count, bundling up in sweats now that fall has suddenly pounced upon San Diego, sipping medicinal teas from giant ceramic mugs and spending quality time with my spazzy but affectionate cat. And being sick also provides me with this lovely segue into a plea for donations:

That's right, kids! I really need your help. The PCD Foundation really needs your help. Hundreds of families in the U.S. with sick kids need your help. Truly. Many of you have already received an email about the fundraiser from me, but I humbly ask you to read this post, too.

Here's the scoop: I have PCD (primary ciliary dyskinesia: primary=genetic, ciliary=cilia, dyskinesia=they don't move correctly, if at all), and so does my brother Ken. What this means is that due to some faulty genes, our cilia are malformed and don't work. This is bad because cilia are the body's main defense against airborne crap and other malevolent forces . Meaning that when they work, they move all the nasty inhaled bacteria, dirt, dust, smoke, perfume, etc. out of your lungs and nose. When they don't work, all that stuff just sits in the sinuses and lungs and causes multiple infections and scarring. Every single adult patient I know over the age of 50 is on the list for a lung transplant or has already gotten one. Yeah, that's bad. Cilia are also present in your ears and brain case and in the fallopian tubes. Much havoc ensues. Please PLEASE go to the PCD Foundation link and read more about this!! The link is on the right, and it's also right here:

PCD Foundation: PLEASE READ!

Now, here's what you really need to know: the PCD Foundation (PCDF here on out) is a VERY small nationwide organization, and our goal is to help families of patients with this disorder, to garner research funds, and to increase awareness within the medical community. This is a very rare condition, so hardly anything concrete is known about it. Many families with young just-diagnosed children feel completely lost, and they turn to us for help. PCDF has a patient education weekend once a year, where physicians and researchers donate their time to give talks on what we have discovered about the disease thus far. It is extraordinarily helpful to patients, and provides a meeting place for interested medical personnel as well.

The PCDF lost its only corporate sponsor a while ago, and the only way we currently have to generate funds is through small fundraisers put on by individuals around the country. We need to raise $30,000 this year in order to be able to survive as an organization. I am putting on a fundraising walk in San Diego and my goal is to raise $4,000. This is a lot! And I absolutely CANNOT do it without the help of you fine folks. Everybody I have spoken to lately is willing to donate, and that is wonderful. But I can't raise $4000 on my own from donations. Only TWO people have promised to walk with me for the fundraiser. This is just not enough! What I really need for you to do if you live in the San Diego area, is to commit to attending the PCD Spooky walk as a registered walker. As such, you will get to walk around beautiful Lake Miramar on October 29th and show off your Halloween costume AND get people to pledge to give you money for the PCDF. All you need to do is to email me at pcdwalk2006 @ earthlink.net (take the spaces out; I put those there to deter spam harvester thingies). I will email you everything you need to know about how to walk and get pledges from folks. It's really a lot easier than you think! If you ask 5 people for only $10 each, then you'll generate $50 for the PCDF! Easy! You have 5 friends and relatives, I'm sure.

If you live outside the area, you can still help. You can donate online! How easy is that? Go to the PCDF website and click on the "Donate Now" link on the left side of the page. We have a paypal account. If you don't have one, fear not--you can use a credit card. Please put (this is important) "San Diego Walk" in the comment box so we know that's where to credit the funds. Please donate as much as you can and as much as will make you feel good.

I know you are all busy people. I know that everybody else wants your money, too. But we are a struggling organization in desperate need of your help. Even if you can only give $5, that helps! Five bucks! That's $5 more than nothing. No donation is too small to be appreciated.

And remember, if you live here, please get some pledges and come walk with me! I really need the support. Did I mention that there will be free beer? Yeah, BEER! pcdwalk2006 @ earthlink.net (again, take out those spaces)

Thanks so much for your valuable time and attention, my friends. I really appreciate it. It means a lot to me on a very personal level when people help us out.

Inbred Jed and the Dentist, part one

I went to the dentist today. What an adventure! First, you should know that the dentist I see now is located in Santee, which those of you who live in the San Diego area know is a real hotspot for ignorance, racism, and low literacy rates. A real hoot! I am afraid to drive my anti-Bush-bumpersticker-bearing car into that area sometimes for fear of being run out of town on a rail. Here are a few of my favorite sightings from today: a nice new pickup truck with a stenciled overlay on the upper brake light (the one on the back of the cab) so that when he puts on the brakes it flashes “JESUS” at you in big glowing red letters; on the way home I was stopped at a light next to an beat-up mini-El Camino looking thing in spotty mustard yellow paint with fake wood paneling stickers on the side. The driver was a weather-beaten man of indeterminate age with a tangly grey ponytail, a shirt you wouldn’t be able to give to a thrift store, and a cigarette hanging from his fingers out the window. I was intrigued not only by the color and model of his car, but especially his face. Lots of lines and an inscrutable expression that made me want to take a photo. What makes a face like that?

The real coup-de-grace, however, is the waiting room in the dentist’s office (he really is a superb dentist; that’s why I subject myself to this occasional immersion in hickness and slovenly paint jobs). No National Geo or Time magazines. Nope. However, if you are employed as an auto mechanic or have a couple of old cars on cement blocks in your yard, this is the place for you! Auto magazines galore. And (drum roll please) they even carry “Trailer Life.” I kid you not. Upon closer inspection, though, it was not a housekeeping mag for the mobile-home crowd, but a treatise on towing trailers--you know, for your quads, dirt bikes, and motorboats and such. Almost as good.

I am now finished maligning the good folk of Santee. There are some of those, you know. I actually saw a guy driving a car with one of those purple “Family” bumperstickers on it and was amazed that a gay man would be brave enough to venture into the area without a full escort of bodygaurds. But now that I think of it, maybe he was a straight guy with kids who thought it was a sticker espousing the much touted “family values” that actually promote hating homosexuals because they are evil and want to eat your children. That would actually be incredibly funny. I do love irony! Particularly when executed by the ignorant.

Okay okay, really. I’m done. I apologize for the unfriendly and cynical tone of this post. On to the root canals! Yep, I need one of those. It turns out that that slightly yellow front tooth I have is dead--no nerve action whatsoever. This is bad because it is slowly decaying from the inside and if I don’t do anything about it it will eventually fall out and I will become Kathryn the hillbilly gap-toothed wonder. Then I’d have to move to Santee. Eesh! I originally bashed that tooth in when I was in 3rd grade in terrible playground mishap. I was sitting on this giant 4-way seesaw thing which I’m sure has since been outlawed due to the number of young children being seriously maimed and disfigured while playing on them. As I was saying, I was sitting there pondering the mysteries of life when a snotty girl I didn’t like very much (evidently the feeling was quite mutual) came up behind me and pushed down really hard on my seat. I was instantly launched and flew through the air in a graceful arc, flying, flying, flying, and then I landed face-first on the metal dome in the middle. I lost a baby tooth, chipped my permanent front tooth, and had a mouthful of blood that I tried not to spill all over myself on the way to the nurse’s office while crying hysterically. And that, my friends, is why I have a yellow front tooth.

So they can do a very simple test to discover whether or not your tooth nerve is still alive and kicking. All they do is dip a q-tip in something like liquid nitrogen or some other such freezing cold substance and hold it against your tooth. Easy. The dentist held it onto my dead tooth and said, “Feel anything?” Nope. He continued holding it there-- “Nothing?” He looked slightly amazed. No really, not a thing. The instant diagnosis: dead tooth. He asked me if I wanted to try it on a live tooth for comparison, and I was about to say, no really, that’s not necessary, I trust your medically trained opinion, but he was already leaning toward me with the dreaded q-tip. Holy mother of god!!!!! I can’t even describe the feeling--ice applied directly to a cavity times 10? I swear I could feel it all the way up into my forehead. I can still feel it if I think about it. So, don’t ever do that, all right? The moral of this story is: don’t whack your teeth on playground equipment and you’ll never have liquid nitrogen applied to your teeth and you won’t need a root canal and you won’t end up losing a tooth and having to move to Santee.

On the way home I saw two hawks, one circling silently above the freeway, the other sitting tall on a lamppost on the freeway overpass, sharply eyeing the mist-covered landscape. Even Santee can be beautiful in the morning.

More Things, Please!

Here's how lucky I am: in the past week, I received in the mail a new phone (with new cell service through Working Assets--people who do GOOD with their money), a spiffy red and black vegetarian wallet, lots of shoes, a "Cultivate Peace" luggage tag, some presents for my mom and brother, and my new "We Will Not Be Silent" shirt (see post on war and racism for details).

Yay for stuff! I'm a good American!

WOOOOooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAHH!