Midriff Muse

I know it has been a while, which is why I will speak to the second topic first. I’ve not had any energy to speak of these recent weeks – not depression, although not having any energy can get me down a bit – just an indescribable level of fatigue/exhaustion that I haven’t been able to completely lift out of. When I have had a pick up, the focus goes to those few things that I can do for my family in the way of support and I just haven’t been able to climb all the way out of the valley before the next wave hits. I’ve had to forego a couple of events that I was looking forward to. I have had nothing left over to give in the way of writing or reading and commenting on any of the other blogs that I like to follow. So there you have it.

And theeennnn… and this is one of the happy news – we added a puppy to the family a week ago Sunday. It is Joe’s puppy actually, but I am the chief assistant care giver. It is like having a new baby, more or less. I nap when he naps and when he’s not napping, much vigilance is required. Joe named him Cody. He is supposedly half black lab and half white shepherd, but nearly everyone who sees him thinks that there is some Border Collie in the mix and I agree. He’s adorable; we’re all in love with him. I only have a few early pictures to share here, the most recent and cuter ones are on Shannon’s camera in Naperville, Illinois, which leads me to the fact that Shannon was home on Saturday to see Joe off to prom (once again the pictures recording the occasion are in the same state of being as the latest puppy pictures, but even if they weren’t, Joe would probably not grant me publication rights to include them here.) After viewing the prom’s Grand March together, Shannon took me out to dinner at “La Estacion” for Mother’s Day. Sunday morning she presented me with a gift card for a massage from her, Katie and Joe before departing once again to Naperville where she is finishing her senior year at North Central College.

Katie arrived home Sunday night in order to have her first teaching job interview in Milwaukee on Monday. It was sometime Sunday that the ‘roid rage began to hit – the pain-in-the-ass kind, not the illegal substance kind. I sit here now ensconced on a donut pillow trying to produce this brief update before Cody wakes up again. I am not a pretty picture, I must tell you and enough said about all of that.

Katie returned to Madison last night, reasonably happy with her first interview. She will graduate from the University of Wisconsin, Madison this Saturday with a History Education and English majors. We will be there, Hawk and I, with Shannon and Joe, just bustin’ our buttons! Although technically finished with her studies, Katie will have to finish her student teaching through June 12^th.

My stepson, Brian, celebrates his 30^th birthday on Sunday, May 17^th.

Shannon’s graduation from North Central, with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, will follow in a month. That will be on Saturday, June 13^th. The majority of my energy in these coming weeks will go to putting together an open house to celebrate for both of them on Sunday, June 14^th. Brian hopes to join us. All of this is complicated by the “happy, but things-are-happening-too fast news” that Shannon was accepted into the graduate studies program for Marriage and Family Therapy at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, which is only about an hour from Brian and Kelly in Stamford. The thing is that Shannon must begin some pre-course work June 1^st in Connecticut while finishing her bachelor’s in Illinois, so she has a complicated web of commuting/packing/saying good-byes for 2 weeks and will have to leave for Connecticut immediately after the party June 14^th. So it will be “Congratulations and Bon Voyage!” for Shannon and “Congratulations and return to Madison to start training Monday morning for summer job with Madison Public Schools while continuing search for full time teaching position!” for Katie.

And so, this is my brief update/not-intended-to-be-a-literary-effort attempt to keep all my breathless readers informed. Please feel free to join us on Sunday, June 14^th if you’re in the neighborhood!

May 12th, 2009 | Tags: Add new tag, college graduation, Fibromyalgia Days, new puppy | Category: Family, Fibromyalgia Days | Comments (4)

Katie Mahoney is 23 years old today. She’s not happy about that, the number 23 that is. It’s a prime number. She doesn’t like them; she thinks that they’re uninteresting and difficult to work with. (God, whose daughter is she? That would be me, the one with the whimsy that finds personification in everything.)

This April day is not unlike the April 7^th of twenty-three tears ago. The kind that look like they should be warm because the sun is higher in the sky and the day is bright and clear, but there is a biting April wind that demands or at least strongly urges a heavy sweater or a well-lined overcoat.

She was born about 2:10 pm, seven days past her due date. I had been working on it since about 4:00 am that morning. A few weeks earlier I had expressed my concern to my Mom that I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to tell if I was really in labor or not and would be one of those who would get to the hospital only to be told she was having “false labor” and be sent back home – rookie! My Mom was soothing. “Oh you’ll know, honey” she calmed. “They (the contractions) will feel different from anything else and they’ll keep on coming back.” My Mom, having safely delivered eleven into this life, knows something about these things. And sure enough, the first pain woke me from a dead and restful sleep in the wee hours. A “what the holy hell was that?”, startled wide- awake, sensation, followed by a similar pang six or seven minutes later and then a third and a fourth. I woke my husband. Some time between 5 and 6 it seems, we were driving into the sunrise on Cleveland Avenue in the blue Volare wood-paneled station wagon, my seat in the fully reclined position. I remember looking into the orange-pink glow along the edge of the horizon. I am one of those who falls into what they call a “twilight sleep” in between contractions, a strange, helpless, semi-consciousness, a natural state, masterfully designed to conserve strength until the next contraction lurches you into fully conscious and on deck once again. The thing about labor is that you are in it until the end. You can’t change your mind; you can’t decide you’d like to wait another day or two. The world is going on with all its business, but you are singularly engaged. You are ensconced in a bubble until you are done, all your compasses in a circle and pointing to your true North. There is but one direction to go.

As length of labor times go, nine to ten hours is not bad for the first one, but there are a million moments of eternity and forever encased in the duration. Another contraction heaves in and you have no choice, sitting upright again, trying to let the waves roll through until they are mere ripples once more and you can flop back. I know that I had at least one “I can’t do this anymore!” moment. This happened after I had been laboring in what I thought was getting to be the “hard labor” for an hour and a half. The nurse came in to check my cervix, which was dilated to 3 centimeters the previous check. I figured I must have gotten to around 6 and must be near the home stretch (10 is the magic number). The nurse stood up and cheerfully said that I was up to 3.5 – No! No! No! An hour and a half for just a half a centimeter? No way could I last! This was impossible! But my husband was really happy for me. He said: “You’re doing really great, Hon!” and he meant it because when my stepson Brian was coming into the world, his mother had been in labor for 18 plus hours. They kept giving her more petocin to try and get the labor to progress, but she never got past 3 centimeters and was exhausted. They finally realized that Brian was breach and called the doctor to come in and do a C-section. So because of this experience, my husband was sincerely excited and happy for me that I was dilated all the way to 3.5. He really did think that I was doing just great and that probably meant something to me. About three hours later I was at 10 and pushing. He saw her first; I had flopped back down after the final push.

“It’s Katie, Hon.”

Katie seemed reluctant to nurse initially and with the first one when you’re not sure how it’s supposed to go and what it’s supposed to feel like, you just don’t know if you’re missing a step or something. My baby would suckle for a couple of seconds and then drop back to sleep. She seemed okay; she looked okay – I mean she was gorgeous! – and apparently satiated in some way. But all through the next day when my daughter, by this time a ripe 18-24 hours old, continued her briefest of suckle and nod routine, the nurses and NA’s seemed to think I needed to force feed her somehow…

“Stroke her cheeks to stimulate her so she stays awake!”

“Try splashing a few drops of cold water on her face.”

One nurse told me that I needed to be more assertive with her and then literally proceeded to try and screw her little head onto my nipple.

Finally the doctor looked in and pronounced everything fine. She said one of her own babies was the exact same way. “She’s just tired from the birth and once she’s rested, she’ll feel hungry and eat!” And so she did. They brought her in squawking at 3:00 am the following morning and when her little mouth found my nipple, I experienced that “latched on” feeling. It’s like your nipple is loaded with little shreds of iron and the inside of their mouth is a magnet; the suck, pull, and attach is an absolute lock. With one eye hidden behind my breast and the other trained on my face, she downed her first meal. That whole taking her time to get started thing, that “I’ll do things in my own fucking time thank you very much” – she gets that from her Dad, and the other branch of the same tree – that “my top speed is amble even if I’m supposed to be running to first base” – she gets that from her Dad too, but I digress a little here.

In the days and months to follow, the hours of breastfeeding were and still are the most Godlike thing that I have ever known. With all three of my babies, it was nothing for me to sit and continue holding them for another couple of hours, asleep in my arms after they finished nursing. If someone were to ask me to name some of the finest moments of my life, nursing my babies would be quick to come to mind. I’ll never forget the first time that Katie raised her little arm and rested her hand on my breast while she nursed. I have total recall of that moment and its sensation. I may not remember a given word or name when I want to; I may loose a phone number between the time I look it up and begin to dial it (yes, I am of the generation that still listens to albums, not CD’s and when I call someone, I dial the number), I may forget why I turned around and walked back to my dresser to get something after I was already half way down the hall, but I have instant and total visceral recall of that teeny little soft pad of pressure against my engorged breast.

As usual with my writing, I have traveled a circuitous route and missed many of the stops I thought were essential at the outset. This was supposed to be about Katie. I assume that most mothers mentally rebirth their children on the anniversary of the day they were born, but I don’t know that for sure. For me, on my children’s birthdays, I am walking around in a state of consciousness with the events and experiences of the day they were born replaying on a continual loop. So I dump that all out here and most of what I’ve managed to include about Katie herself makes her sound like she is slow and stubborn and intolerant of prime numbers. These are only partial truths.

Katie does have a persevering stubbornness that serves her well 99.9 percent of the time. She is not particularly quick of movement but she has tremendous speed at jigsaw puzzles, and it is not so much that she is intolerant of prime numbers as she finds them boring. She possesses some sort of innate responsible, organizational, skill set that must have come from a strand of DNA blowing in the wind the day she was conceived because neither her father nor I possess anything like that. Throughout grade school and high school, she always had a jumpstart on any long term homework projects without any prompting from either of us and to this day still gets things done while traveling in the car or on the bus. She has always loved to wear hats. “My haet-ta!” she used to say, pronouncing the T hard and adding the second syllable in her breathy toddler voice. She now collects vintage hats. When she was not even 2, I sat her in the high chair one day with a plastic bin of crayon nubs accumulated over time by her older brother, Brian, (my stepson.) On a piece of blank paper, I showed her how to make a circle. She got it and sat there happily occupied for some time until she had filled the whole page with little multi-colored circles. “I make-a cay-culs!” she proudly proclaimed (I don’t know where the fake Italian accent came from.) This became a ritualized activity in which she would line an array of different colored crayons side by side along the top of her high chair tray, pick them up one at a time, “make-a cay-cul,” going around it 2 or 3 times so that it actually formed a little coil, until the page was full of different colored cay-culs. The great thing about this was that she was safe and occupied and I could usually get some housework accomplished. Somewhere around this house is a box with about five or six spiral notebooks filled end to end with pages and pages of little cay-culs edge to edge, top to bottom.

Katie will graduate this May from UW-Madison with a degree in History Education and English Literature. She studied one semester in Quito, Ecuador and another in Galway, Ireland. She has taught classed of ESL (English as Second Language) students during her practice and student teaching assignments. She would like to continue to do so when she gets a teaching job, but that requires (at least in the state of Wisconsin) a separate certification. I am impressed by her creativity and artfulness in her lesson planning. She is not afraid to don a costume for visual emphasis. She once had an ESL student remark that we didn’t seem to have any women in our U.S. History so in her next Power Point presentation she included a picture of her sister with a cartoon bubble above her head saying: “Where are all the women?” Katie’s level of conscientiousness is of the same intensity that once filled every space on a page with different colored little “cay-culs.” Katie is going to be a wonderful teacher and I am immensely proud to be her mother.

Happy Birthday Katie Mahoney Girl! May your cay-culs forever be unbroken!

April 7th, 2009 | Tags: labor, labor pains, mother and daughter, vintage hats | Category: Family | Comments (9)

(Written March 31st)

Yesterday I cleaned my sectional sofa, known to some as the “man-eating couch”. We splurged on it the first year that I was home. It is a soft butter yellow colored, microfiber, overstuffed, L-shaped, huge thing with a chaise on one end, a recliner on the other, another recliner in the middle, a corner section and two other plain seats. The year that we got it, our two daughters were in their junior and senior year of high school and our son in sixth grade. I loved the idea that all five of us could lay or lounge in some fashion all at once and watch TV or a movie together, although that rarely happened. It is a symbol of all that I expected to be as a mother, wife and provider and a reminder of all that I am not and now most certainly can never be. I spent the day cleaning it, hauling out the Kirby and all its attachments – an investment made in the days of the girls toddlerhood - separating each piece of the sofa, one at a time to the other side of the room, vacuuming the carpet underneath and in between, sponging clean all the spots with a damp cloth – spots of coffee, soda, milk, meals and snacks. The chaise and the recliner next to it, the two pieces most frequently occupied, I wiped the length and width of with the damp cloth again and again, loosening up the layers of life and dirt ground in by the weight of its occupants. I vacuumed with the crevice tool, all the tucks and folds, valleys and canyons, holding the crumbs of chips, cookies, popcorn, leaves, Christmas confetti, hairpins, coins, Kleenexes, shedding threads from the throw pillows and all other manner of whatnots. And then I used the upholstery tool that sounds and functions much like the dentist drill that cleans the teeth, going over every inch of acreage, renewing, revitalizing, lifting the nap of the material, polishing to a glow. In my thoroughness, I wiped down, vacuumed and dusted the coffee table, end table, knick knacks and pictures on the counter separating the living room from the foyer. Throughout my endeavors I was grateful that I invested another $60 in the Kirby ensemble a couple of years ago to purchase a 20 foot length attachment hose that now comes standard with the newer models. There is wisdom in certain extravagances. The triangle of the living room where the sofa resides is now completely spring cleaned. The air is better there, the aura is clearer, the quality of life superior.

Today I will devote myself to a pace that allows me to recover from my efforts, spending most of my day in bed, writing this piece and perhaps going through the shoebox full of unpaid medical bills, organizing them by date on a spreadsheet.

I haven’t been able to write.

When I went to New Orleans, my fibromyalgia went with me. I had expected a break of some sort, anticipating warm and easy weather in the South. There was much of that. There were also grey and overcast days, with hours of drenching rains. There were also tree pollens. March has always been bad for me, this year worse so than the last few, I think. It may be due to some combination of weather, the anniversary of my crash in March of 2003, and the continued grief over the death of my brother this past December; it may be simply the sheer whimsy of fibromyalgia itself. For the most part it seems best to let such flares run their course without trying to figure out too much about the causes and conditions. The bottom line is that it has been a rough go for some weeks now.

The war was on in the days before I left, immobilized by dysthymia, scratching out pockets of energy to pack, to leave the home and its affairs in relative order, resting in between. I pushed through with the expectation that I would feel better in a milder climate.

Once in Louisiana, I enjoyed numerous meals at my sister’s table. We visited some of her friends and neighbors. My sister and her husband treated me to fabulous meals out. We watched three movies and American Idol together. My sister and I went and got a mani and a pedi. We did the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. We went to the old part of New Orleans for an afternoon. We went to the Ninth Ward and took pictures of the new homes built by Brad Pitt’s “Make it Right” foundation. We drove around and took pictures of things that haven’t yet been made right. I wrote and posted two blog pieces. We lunched at Lea’s Restaurant in Alexandria. We cruised St. Charles Avenue on a balmy Friday evening and strolled in and out of the bar and restaurant of one of the high end Bed and Breakfasts.

I also spent significant time in my pj’s, too weak to leave her couch. I went through two boxes of Kleenex, my throat and ears sore. Pain in my joints made it difficult to sleep.

There were obvious things that contributed to the discomfort: 5 hours of travel time, the first leg in small crowded aircraft, opting for a clumsy backpack sans wheels as carry-on luggage, mid-trip plane change requiring a schlep with the backpack to the distant terminal. Again I pushed through, confident that some down time on the other side would revive me. And that is the thing with fibromyalgia: constantly anticipating and negotiating the tradeoffs, weighing the risks of the smackdowns against the payoff of participating at some level in real life and being present in lives of those that matter for the things that matter, because fibromyalgia will smack you down if you forget to pace yourself.

When I arrived back at the Milwaukee airport, my daughter met me at the gate, she and her Dad having arranged a wheel chair for my transport through the airport. I collapsed in her arms crying, grateful to relinquish the pretext of being able to hold myself up any longer. The drama probably only really makes sense to those who live with it. I don’t know; I’m saying it for what it’s worth.

Over the 10 days since I’ve been home, the energy and focus required to write and edit a piece has just not been there. The fact that I pressured myself to write and post two pieces while I was in Louisiana had an effect. It takes me nearly a full day and that is about all I can do. I had this goal of doing a sort of travelogue series. The last piece, still unwritten, was to be about the continued aftermath of Katrina accompanied by pictures of some of the conditions. It’s a story I want to tell, but I gave myself permission not to try and write anything. I gave myself permission to try and get back in balance.

Since being home, I have watched my son’s band compete in a “Battle of the Bands”. I’ve caught up some laundry. I made two grocery shopping trips to stock up the household– one to the regular store, one to the locally owned version of a whole foods. These trips were accomplished with the aid of my daughter Shannon driving and doing the loading and unloading. She was home for her spring break. There are times when I should not be behind the wheel of a vehicle, often my family sees that before I can. My girls, especially, tend to keep an eye on that when they are home. So with Shannon as my chauffer, we got some groceries on hand. I made a good meal – beef stew and dumplings. I helped Shannon with some student loan paperwork. Shannon and I made a trip to Elkhorn and visited with family for an evening. I helped my husband finish up the taxes. I made a trip with my husband to Madison to deliver Katie’s bike to her and took her grocery shopping. She negotiates the city of Madison by bus, walking or weather permitting, biking; a grocery store run with a vehicle is a helpful thing.

The point of my listing of activities is to say that I know it looks unremarkable. I know most people do those things and work fulltime as well and much more. It’s the unseen. It’s the times in between, the down time, the recovery time, the hours of total uselessness, unseen by the rest of the world. I spend a great deal of time in overstuffed reclining furniture. I need the padding, I need to be able to have my legs elevated, I need to be semi-reclined and I need to be able to shift positions a lot. I also need to nap frequently. Some days Sudoku puzzles or crosswords keep my brain exercised for hours on end when I don’t have the need to sleep but don’t have the energy to do anything else. I try to do something for my household or family everyday – clean something, do a load of laundry, handle some aspect of the finances or paperwork or make a meal. If I want to look nice for an occasion, I shower and style my hair the day before. I have to have a hairstyle that can last several days without the need to rewash and style, so only a “maintenance” shower is required before I go out. When I am out it looks normal; the balancing act to get there is invisible.

I have battled with my depression. When I say that, a scene from some History Channel show comes to mind in which the ancient Celts and Goths are locked against the Romans, leagues of men on the field, shields crashing, swords and battle axes rendering blood and severed bodies, screams of death throes. That is how it feels.

I didn’t intend for this to be a piece about my life with fibromyalgia. The fact is, there isn’t a single piece I write that ever turns out to be the piece I thought I was going to write at the outset. I just wanted to give an accounting about where and how I’ve been since the last posting. The depression has been a more of a prominent force than I can remember for some time. Maybe it always is in March – due to it being the anniversary month or perhaps it is due to March always being one of the hardest months in terms of my cycles with this condition. Today is the last day of March. What will that bring about?

I wrestled so hard with my depression the other night that I wrote by candlelight. I’m not sure it is a piece fit to be published since it is so internal and may be frightening to family and friends. At the same time, I want to name the perpetrator. I don’t want to keep its secret. I am okay. I will stay with you. I just want you to know the details of the fight.

Today’s Thought

I decided not to publish the poem written in darkness of mind and moment but will share it with anyone wishing to read it.  Today has been spent as I mentioned at the beginning: in bed opening and organizing bills and paperwork.

April 1st, 2009 | Tags: depression, fibromyalgia, New Orleans, spring cleaning | Category: Fibromyalgia Days | Comments (6)

My sister Mary called me in mid-January with the news that there were some great airfares available into New Orleans. She was excited that I might be able to come during Mardi Gras and do some parades with her. She especially wanted me to see “Muse, The Shoe Parade” which she says is done by all women and is the best one by far. However, certain other commitments and concerns ruled out that timing so we settled on dates that would permit me to partake of the Metairie St. Patrick’s Day Parade on March 15th.

At first blush on Sunday, it didn’t look like we’d make the parade. It had rained all day Saturday. My sister’s husband had been called into work at noon and worked late into the night and had to be back in at 6 a.m. Sunday morning. We got up to more overcast skies and rain and the idea that we would have to sit two hours in the rain while waiting for the parade to start after securing our viewing site would be a risky choice, given my fibromyalgia. On top of that, Mary’s husband is a native of the city and much more familiar with the best routes to avoid traffic getting to and from the parade and he was stuck at work, but by late morning the rain had let up and the skies, while not sunny, had a certain cooperative appearance about them. We chanced it.

Here, in New Orleans, they do parade-gating much like we in Wisconsin do our tailgating for Brewer’s and Packer’s games. Get your parking space along the parade route, set up the chairs and the coolers and fire the grill. My sister and her husband have a particular corner gas station spot they have used for several years. The owner charges ten bucks; you get a permanent marker X on the back of your hand which grants you access to the porta-potties without having to pay the $1.00 fee and a front row curbside seat along the route. Once seating is established, there is the aforementioned wait for the parade to begin. Our seating at the gas station is in a residential area and a little strip mall nearby which also has vendors grilling and even a girl scout troop selling cookies. So the opening act is watching the crowds assemble, obvious family and friends arriving at the homes surrounding us, backyard grills, hugs and greetings, parents occupying impatient kids with various games of catch. It is a buzzing, friendly, festival atmosphere. Groups break up the time and stretch their legs by ambling up and down the street, kibitzing and conversing, the tweeners and early teeners trolling, trying out their public look, checking each other out, smells of burgers and Grandma’s potato salad mixing it up with beer and hard lemonades. It is a party, no doubt about it and anyone is invited and the sun even showed up.

When the parade finally arrives, it is the “walkers” leading the pageant. These people are members of clubs that exist, as near as I can tell, solely for the purpose of walking in parades. All but two of them were all male groups. Each group is preceded by a truck or lawn tractor or such that bears their banner, the beverages, and is broadcasting the accompanying walking music, be it Irish reels, Country Western or Rock, to which the paraders dance according to their whim. The Walking Clubs, as they are formally called, have variations of uniform dress (i.e. kilts and white shirts, black tuxes with green cummerbunds or green shirts with khaki shorts etc.) They are all bearing necklaces and/or walking sticks with columns of Styrofoam attached which are filled with silk flowers stuck in them to be handed out to the ladies. You have to walk out into the midst of the paraders and give a kiss to get a flower. I did… A couple of times.

This is all very raucous, but once the floats come, it kicks up even a few more notches and the reason that everyone arrives at the outset with shopping bags becomes apparent. Most of the floats are two levels high with all manner of people tossing out not only more beaded necklaces and promotional items, but heads of cabbage, potatoes, carrots, and onions to be used for the traditional St. Patrick’s Day boiled dinner by the households of the recipients.

Now there has to be a little give for the get in the form of begging. The idea is to coax as many varieties of necklaces, novelties and produce into your bag as possible. I am happy to say that I secured a good size bag full of necklaces that included one with a rubber duckie dangling from it for my daughter, Shannon, who collects them, and also a necklace with green hats hanging around it for my daughter Katie who collects hats. I spotted a particularly pretty pink necklace going by and sidled up to the float to beg for it.

I’d like the one with the pretty pink beads please.

The man leaned over the side of the float and said:

They have peenusus. Do you still want one?

What? (Bear in mind that the floats are moving while all this takes place.)

They have peenusus. (Holds one up in his hand to show.)

Oh. No, I guess not.

I don’t know why I got suddenly skittish; I had after all been kissing strange and drunk men. As I turned to walk back to my chair, my sister pshawed me and took up the reins, securing the necklace, and reminding me that the whole point, after all, is to acquire a variety.

Today when I told my sister that I needed to take a picture of the penis necklace for my blog, she insisted that it was not a penis but a weenie. “Neeee-oooooooooooh”, I told her “I heard the man say pee-nus-sus!” We parried that back and forth. I will ultimately let the reader decide for themselves which it is, but here is my case.

If you look at the pictures below, you will see a weenie wearing a cowboy hat with a holster on its hip, so to speak, and with a nub on top of its head that could arguably be a severed link to another weenie, but if you look at the second picture where I am lifting the holster away from the body, it reveals a wide rolled lip that could arguably be a condom along the edge of an unattached anatomy. Furthermore, if it was a weenie, wouldn’t it have another rounded edge at the bottom with a nub that could arguable be a severed link to the weenie to follow? Lastly, and this is my strongest point, I did not back away from the potential bestower for naught, for even in my semi-risqué mood, it is still a shock to my sensibilities to hear the word penis uttered to me by a strange man in a public setting. Hence my recoil. That is my story and I stand by it!

March 18th, 2009 | Tags: boiled dinner, humor, Metairie St. Patrick's Day Parade, midlife humor, Midlife Musings, necklace, New Orleans, New Orleans Parade | Category: Family, Travel | Comments (8)

March 13th

I am here. The funk has lifted. It is warm. It is a little humid. If feels good to be in lighter clothing. It feels good to have a cup of morning coffee on the front porch swing.

March 14^th

This morning the site of my reflection in the blank screen of my laptop as I start it up reveals a third chin, and my hair, clipped in a barrette on top of my head, looks like Pebbles Flintstone.

Today is my Dad’s birthday. He would be 79. He died at 60, lung cancer. It has been my tradition to perk a pot of coffee first thing in the morning and drink a cup from his china cup and saucer, as I sit on my sun porch. I do the same thing on April 14^th which is the day he died, 30 days after celebrating his 60th birthday. He had lived for 5 years with lung cancer. Lest you get the impression by my mention of his china cup and saucer, that my father was a refined man, he was not. He was an Archie Bunker. When “All in the Family” showed up on TV my senior year in high school, I was glad that somebody was finally telling the truth about my father. My mother’s name is Edna, not Edith, but it worked the same way.

Ednaaah! Coffee!

Ednaaah! Where’s my toast?

From the living room, he held court on his couch (he taking up the whole couch, propped up on the end facing the TV, any other chairs available being occupied by the biggest or the quickest, a sort of musical chairs ensued whenever such seats were vacated and while being little and quick might win you a spot it did nothing to prevent a bigger, stronger sibling from deposing you and placing you back amongst the peanut gallery sitting on the floor. Everyone was always on call to my Dad’s beck.

_________ (fill in name) get up and change the channel!

_________ go fetch me a new one (holding out to you the cloth diaper he had used as a hankie and filled with various emissions).

_________ I need another pillow.

_________ Go tell your mother I ain’t got my cup of coffee yet.

In the Big Book of alcoholics Anonymous, the mindset and the emotional maturity of the active alcoholic is described as “King Baby” – “I want what I want when I want it and I want it now.”

As we achieved adulthood and brother-in-laws entered the scene (There are seven sisters; brother-in-laws are prevalent.), my Dad’s unchallenged tyranny took on a certain epic charm. It was by this time tempered with some sobriety.

My sister Mary had the first grandbaby in July 1976, a girl. My Dad was newly sober and remained so for the last 13 ½ years of his life.” The last six years, he served as his city’s alderman for four and the remaining 2 as mayor, running for that office when he already knew that he was dying. He hoped he could leave some evidence for the grandchildren and the ones surely yet to come that he had been around. And he did. There is a plaque on the wall in the Elkhorn Library addition that bears his name. There is an O’Connor Drive in the industrial park honoring the fact that during his tenure he upgraded the electrical grid and acquired additional land for the park. There is a small nature preserve that he had a hand in – working with the garden club to get it seeded with native plants and working on someone to donate the land. It is named after the donor. No evidence of my Dad’s efforts unless it is in your mind because you heard had him talk about it.

The truth of the matter is that of the 14 grandchildren born before he died, most were too young to have retained any visceral memory of him. It bothers me somehow that the grandchildren (25 in all) know of our family only without him whose good, bad and ugly shaped all that we are.

Getting back to the China cup and saucer: in the food and beverage category excluding alcohol, my Dad drank coffee morning to night and only freshly perked no reheated stuff. He flavored most foods with liberal of amounts of butter (I purposely refrain from saying real butter because it pisses me off that that would need to be explained to generations who think margarine and butter are synonymous), Skippy Peanut Butter or Hershey’s syrup. (You might not think that a cheese burger in between two slices of toast slathered in butter and Skippy’s peanut butter that melts and drips from the heat of a fat, fried, burger and makes a unique dipping sauce of the grease and melted peanut butter and cheese would taste all that good and I haven’t craved one for years, but would devour it easily if put in front of me today - you might not think that it would taste all that good, but you might want to try one for yourself sometime. Make sure that you make the burger really fat, and salt and pepper it good, and fry it in a frying pan on a fairly high heat.)

As for china dishes, we never had anything but pink and yellow melmac dishes when I was growing up. I know there were years in between the time I left at 19 and started hanging around again in my late 20’s that there were other varieties of everyday dishes but because my childhood was during the melmac years, it is what is etched in my brain. Sometime in my adult years when my Mom started hosting Thanksgiving Dinner for all of us, she started collecting a set of grocery store china which she still has. It is white with blue roses.

I have always preferred to drink coffee and tea from a china cup. I think it tastes better.

In the last years of his life, as my Dad’s cancer progressed, he had less tolerance for things, food and otherwise and while he had always taken his coffee in a mug, in these declining years, he found himself converted to a china cup.

When my Dad’s 60^th birthday was approaching, it was pretty clear he was on the home stretch. He never stopped being a kid when it came to his birthday. He wanted everyone to come to see him and he wanted presents. “Where are my prizes?” he’d say. What to get him for a gift in this final year posed a dilemma for me. There were a couple of fallback presents that always worked for my Dad: velour pullover sweaters or books about World War II or the Korean War, but he was beyond such things at this point, rarely out of bed and rarely dressed and he didn’t have the strength to hold onto a book and read it. The kind of electronic technology that might hold his attention and help pass the time today wasn’t available yet. He was still having a cup of hot coffee brought to him – in one of the china cups and he could tolerate a few sips. It just looked so incongruous, him sipping out of the flowery, dainty cup. I was hit with the inspiration to go to a department store and purchase a single china cup and saucer from a pattern that had a more masculine look to it. I found one that had a black edge with gold trim, a gold border under the black edge and some dots of red. The idea that I could get him something that he could actually still use yet on a day-to-day basis pleased me. I felt like I was giving him one last “real” present.

This is the cup and saucer that I drink from when I spend the time to be with my Dad in spirit on his birthday. He was a good man with demons. I honor and love the person he was capable of being and forgive the times that he was less.

Since I am in New Orleans and cannot have a cup of coffee on my Dad’s birthday from his china cup, my sister and I are going to make a nod to it by going for a café au lait and beignets at Café du Monde. Dad would have liked those hot deep fried powder sugared square donuts. My sister and I disagree about whether or not he would have eaten them as served or insisted on some butter and Skippy’s to spread in chunks on the corner.

March 16th, 2009 | Tags: Add new tag, Cafe Du Monde, coffee, family, healing, midlife humor, New Orleans, sister | Category: Family | Comments (7)

Sometimes I like to daydream about what amenities I would bring into my life if money were not an object. I’m not talking about a “if I won the lottery, I would create a charity, pay off my friends’ mortgages, build a hotel just for homeless people, take my entire extended family to Disney World, buy a new car for ten random families who can’t afford one, and go see a Broadway show in new York City, type of list. Of course I would do all those things. But this is not about that. It also is not a “top ten list” because, even though I have written some pieces that were lists of top ten, last fall I read an article in a writer’s magazine that listed the top ten marks of an amateur writer and lists of top ten was one of them. No, this is simply an unordered list of some amenities that I would bring into my day to day life if money were not an object. Bear in mind that this list is very much colored by my fibromyalgia which manifests certain chronic discomforts and intestinal difficulties. This is basically just a personal indulgence that amuses me at certain times.

So here is my wish list:

• A really, really awesome, total package, home theater with a snack bar, rest room, and over stuffed reclining seats that are heated. I love to watch movies on a big screen. I need to sit with heating pads much of the time. This seems like a great marriage.
• A whirlpool tub with all the bells and whistles – a spa tub for two because I like to share. I don’t know yet if it would be a regular whirlpool with the jet sprays or one of those new kind that shoots the air out of all these tiny little holes. I watch a lot of home decorating shows and that is where I heard about the air bubble kind. Supposedly they are quieter and because there are no jets to clog, you can use bath oils and salts and they also come with these cool light therapy options and body molded seating with neck pillows. Although I have read some online reviews complaining that the water doesn’t stay hot very long and there are some saying that the air bubbles are not strong enough to have an impact; there are others that say that the air bubbles are better because they surround the whole body whereas the traditional air jet whirlpool is too concentrated. I assume that if money were no object that I would be able to go to some of the high end hotels recommended by the manufacturer’s website and test out a few models for myself before having to decide.
• A Migun Massage bed. My sister Mary(see this post) has one of these. (I am going to visit her next Thursday (March 12^th). We are going to do the St.Patrick’s Day Parade in new Orleans. I expect to post some travelogue pieces, so more about that another time.) When I visited my sister 2 years ago, she introduced me to it. I don’t know exactly how this beds works, but it felt like it had all these rollers that moved up and down the body while at the same time arching and stretching it at various points. I think that it would be a good thing if I could do that every day. I think that it would be a good thing for my whole family if there was one in the house for all of us.
• One of those services that deliver 3 already prepared healthy, organic meals to the home every day.
• A weekly cleaning service.
• An annual winter vacation to the Pacific Coast of Mexico. I have been once in my lifetime. My husband and I went in debt 4 years ago for 7 days at an all inclusive and it was a dream. All the fresh guacamole I could eat with still warm from the fryer tortilla chips, which I liberally salted and squirted with lime juice, ocean side massage, humidity so balanced I never used a moisturizer (not even for a couple of weeks after I got home) and the water and the waves and the water and the waves and the water and the waves. I let my body be tossed and propelled to shore over and over again like a little kid. I think that I could do that forever.
• A person who would come over once a week and keep my paperwork organized.
• A bidet toilet – yes, that is what I said – a bidet toilet. I have my reasons.

March 6th, 2009 | Tags: amateur writer, fibromyalgia, midlife humor, Midlife Musings, Migun Massage Bed, money is no object, sisters, top ten list, winning the lottery, wish list | Category: Midlife Musings, Movies | Comments (7)

   You probably expected to see this post early Monday morning, as I also fully expected to have it completed.  This year’s Oscar celebration had a lot of elements that were rushed, but by 9pm Sunday all the rush was gone out of me and as of today, Wednesday afternoon, I still have a tender tummy and buzzing headache due to some sort of little bug that has taken up residence in my anatomy.  I do, however, have enough focus and concentration to bring to you an accounting of our annual dress-up and food fest gathering to view the Oscars.

The rushed nature of this year’s events had to do with the fact that Shannon is nearing the completion of her 10th and final season of cheerleading.  Her squad was performing in a competition in Wisconsin Dells (2 hours drive from here) on Sunday at 12:20 and 4:20.  I drove to Madison Sunday morning, picked up Katie and the two of us traveled on to see the 12:20 performance, have lunch with Shannon and head back to Waukesha.  Shannon is normally the chief engineer of the hand-dipped in chocolate strawberries feature of the festivities and Katie and I were determined not to let the ball drop on that one.  We got home around 4:00 with our hair and make up still to be done and managed to keep chocolate melting in the double boiler pot and tag teamed the dipping while the other worked on becoming camera ready.

Our table was completed with efforts by our cohorts. Amongst the offerings: a sweet potato roulade prepared by Megan Watling (seen in the pictures wearing her gorgeous green vintage prom dress and speaking of vintage, that is a vintage hat my daughter Katie is wearing from her collection).  My dear friend Peggy Bull contributed some “sensible”protein with tuna and egg salads with crackers and a beef stew topped with dumplings.  Debra (Megan’s mom) took care of the flowers, sparklin juice, salad and some frozen miniature creme puffs and eau clairs for back up sweets.

….. I am feeling under the weather again, so I am just going to load up the rest of the pictures, we always take one of just the Moms and just the daughters and then the mother/daughter combos.  Shannon was not able to join us until later in the evening due to her competition (Thanks to her Dad who was returning from up north and able to make it to her 4:20 performance and bring her home.)  She opted, understandably, this year to remain ungowned, but still looked elegant in her competition hair bow and championship sweatshirt.

Okay so just the Moms:

Just the daughters (actually, Leigh, second from left is the guest of Carrie Bull, second from right):

Mom Peggy Bull, daughter, Carrie and friend Leigh:

Mom Debra Watling and daughter Megan:

Me and Katie and later, me and Katie and Shannon

Lastly just my gals:

Love to you all!

February 25th, 2009 | Tags: Add new tag, chocolate dipped strawberries, Mothers and Daughters, Oscar Party, Vintage dress, Vintage hat | Category: Family, Movies, Uncategorized | Comments (3)

This was actually written in July of 06.  Recent events have brought it to mind so I have decided to share this previously unpublished musing.

When I run, I get flushed. When a toilet gets flushed, it is not supposed to run. It is supposed to fall silent, after a brief interval: there should be no ripples in its little body of water. I make these statements as a backdrop to what I am about to relate.

We live in a modest three bedroom ranch, built in 1953. It is a comfortable home with amenities that were considered “deluxe model” extras at the time. The “master bedroom” boasts his and her side by side closets and a ¾ bath. When we decided to purchase the home, I was in great anticipation of the joy of having a toilet not more than four steps from my side of the bed, as the progress of my pregnancy was making ever more frequent and urgent demands on my bladder throughout the night. Our (then) current residence required that I roll out of bed, walk diagonally across the space of a fair sized kitchen, and then the length of the living room bearing slightly eastward, make a sharp left turn into the bathroom, a sharp right turn towards the toilet and then several more steps to reach the actual destination, in order to relieve said bladder. To acquire a home outfitted with a “master bath” that would permit me to remain in a relatively somnambulant state, stumble to the facility, accomplish relief, fall back into bed and back to deep sleep; seemed a luxury indeed.

In order to accurately relate this tale, I must explain that our “master bathroom” is really a mere “water closet” in the truest sense of the term. The floor space is about 4 feet by 4 feet, the entry - a miniature-sized door which opens to the inside and exposes the commode; so that, as I lay on my side facing outside the bed, I am having a staring contest with the toilet – which the toilet usually wins.

The toilet, being original to the house, has a tank the size of a small steamer trunk. Consequently, the length of time it takes to fill after a flush is relative to the time it takes to listen to an LP (CD, of course, I just thought that LP had a more poetic rhythm to it). So when it first began to “stick”; it could be some amount of time before the realization set in that the toilet was still running after several hours duration and someone would have to go and apply the universal response technique - jiggling the handle – in order to end the singing of the toilet. What is at first a mild annoyance, increasingly becomes a major pain, when one is comfortably back asleep and is awakened by a brusque nudge and the mumbled message “it’s not shutting off” or one has just returned from doing laundry in the basement, sitting down and relaxing for a bit of TV only to have the hissing urgency running through the pipes permeate one’s consciousness.

The time comes when the beast will not be quieted by the mere jiggling of the handle – it wants more quality time and attention – demanding that everything be removed from atop the tank, the lid lifted, and the lucky responder to immerse their hands in the muck to caress and cajole the inner workings by untangling the chain or replacing the paper clip, safety pin or whatever previous repair mechanism sufficed at one time, in order to restore silence once again. And there are those times when no such efforts will satisfy; the porcelain lid must remain on the bathroom floor, each use of the facility requiring a manual lift and replacement of the plunger; until such time as the resident master tradesman can devise yet another gerrymander to restore function. And yet for every successful restoration of the last decade and one half; there is also the inevitable moment when that boastful toilet resumes the singing of its own little aria – much like the story of the little Gingerbread boy who sings “Run, run as fast as you can. You can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!” Of course we all know that the gingerbread boy eventually arrives at a body of water and hops on the back of a fox who agrees to take him across only to trick him into sitting on his nose whereby the fox chomps down on the little gingerbread boy. Similarly, we all know that we will eventually prevail and silence the arrogant amenity. The annoyance, however, after so many years of repeating the cycle, is hardly worth the conquest.

As of this writing, we are experiencing yet another round of the singing toilet. Realizing that we have inhabited this house for over fifteens years now, I find myself wondering, what is it that makes certain breakdowns demand immediate replacement while others are relegated to the “we can fix it enough to live with it” category? As I find myself once again, getting out of bed when I don’t really want to, or worse yet, standing over the toilet in the middle of the night to make sure that it shuts off after refilling the tank so I don’t have to get out of bed when I don’t want to, or interrupting my task at one end of the house to jiggle the handle at the other end of the house – I am thinking – that for over 15 years this toilet has been running enough for at least 16 Boston Marathons and – I am thinking - that it is time to bring its career to an end.

(To be continued……)

Footnote: tonight we travel to Naperville to see Shannon cheerleading for one of the final games of her ten year participation in the sport.  It is an athletic endeavor that is often dismissed as fluff, but she has had the broken bones, black eyes, sprains and bruises to attest otherwise.  It is a combination of balance, strength and stamina that looks much more effortless than it appears – for starters – try standing in one place for three plus hours keeping your arms at chest height with a happy face!  The fact is that Shannon is a “good sport” about most anything that gets thrown her way.  We will miss enjoying her bright presence on the field or the gym and we are deeply proud of her dedicated spirit in all that she does.

Love you Sha-Sha!

February 18th, 2009 | Tags: cheerleader, cheerleading, Daughter, home remodel, Home Repair, humor, leaky toilet, midlife humor, plumbing problems, ranch home | Category: Family, Home Repair, Midlife Musings | Comments (5)

My friend, Jean, and I got together for a movie this past Thursday. This was good for several of reasons: we haven’t seen each other since before Christmas, we would be able to get one of the Oscar nominees knocked off our list, and we would be able to have coffee and catch up afterwards. As an added bonus, the movie we wanted to see was showing at the dinner theater at 11:55 a.m.

I have been dying to try out this whole “dinner theater” experience. Seems like a fun little indulgence – having a meal during the movie, someone else does all the cooking and puts it in front of you while you are watching. I like being waited on. I can’t help it. My husband has not been enthused by the idea, but Jean, on more than one occasion, has indicated her willingness to take a test drive with me.

I had speculated to Jean that the one drawback of our choice of movie time might be that we would be sharing the theater with a lot of “blue hairs”. The midday, weekday, matinee is apparently a very convenient hour for them. Which certainly makes sense and I don’t begrudge them that, but I have had previous experience sharing a theater with a gaggle of blue hairs and it is worse than a bunch of little kids. They talk all through the movie. I am not into ageism, I’m really not, but this is just what happens. And I do not use the term “blue hairs” to be mean or derogatory, it just works for this and you all know what I mean. I love the blue hairs! I am related to some!  Despite the fact that I can still get away with coloring my hair a relatively natural color, I am practically one of them myself, fibromyalgia often causing me to have many of the characteristics, mannerisms and lifestyle approaches of a blue hair, which is also the primary reason that I am available to see a movie in the middle of the day and week.

Sure enough as we entered the theater, it was heavily populated by the aforementioned demographic, fussing to settle into their seats. The dinner theater is a little like a UN meeting room – you have these tiered rows of desk-like tables with little running lights with individual chairs on wheels, minus the nameplates and personal microphones. There is a wait person who inconspicuously sidles up to you in the darkness to take your order, deliver it and periodically checks back to see if you want anything more.

I was frankly surprised at the sizeable number of fellow patrons, a bigger crowd than anticipated and occupying all of my customary seating areas. After scanning the premises, we settled on a row about halfway up to the top. We did not have the whole row to ourselves, which is my number one preference; there were parties to both our left and right, but since we were situated right in the middle of the row (prime viewing in my book) and the space between the seats relatively generous and there were several seats between us and the neighboring parties on either side, I thought we’d do just fine. In hindsight, we might have fared better had we gone nearer to the top and behind all other patrons. Looking back now, I think Jean was indicating such and I missed the memo. I tend to be a “seats closer to the front” chooser, so once we started climbing, I was ready to settle for any row that didn’t seem too crowded. Sorry Jean! – You get the call on the next one!

The party to our left, the troublemaking party as it would eventually turn out, was having their order taken as we moved to our seats. The waiter told us he would return shortly to get ours. We perused our options; Jean settling on Caesar Salad and diet soda, myself on a parmesan mozzarella chicken tender sandwich with an O’Doul’s, a regrettable choice I am now convinced.

It has been my observation that the more advanced in age one gets, the less one is able to whisper effectively. The previews were underway when the food and beverage arrived for the troublemakers (let’s call them Dolly and Myrtle.) Right away it got started.

Myrtle: “Oh look now! They send a whole pot of coffee, instead of just a single cup. Isn’t that nice?”

Dolly was apparently too busy surveying her own banquet to respond. Jean and I exchanged benevolent, bemused smiles. Hopefully this would settle down once the movie started.

Dolly: “This is a lot of food.”

It didn’t settle down. At every significant mark in the story graph, one of them had to explain/predict/question out loud what was happening.

Myrtle: “She’s getting sick.”

Dolly: “She drank too much.”

Dolly: “He shouldn’t have said that.”

Myrtle: “He won’t want to go now.”

Myrtle: “Now he’s already taken that job and didn’t tell her.”

Dolly: “She still thinks that they should go to Paris.”

Dolly: “Now she’s going to fall in the woods and lose the baby.”

I am really big on watching a movie in totally engrossed silence, even at home. I don’t like it when somebody breaks the spell. I hate it when a person swirls or shakes their popcorn in the container to mix up the salt and butter in between handfuls. In spite of all this, I thought that given Dolly and Myrtle’s cute old lady, oblivious to the reactions of others, state of being, I would be able to suffer it through the movie out of kindness and deference, but the level of their discourse made me whip my head around. And I wasn’t the only one affected. Jean and I frequently turned to each other with raised eyebrows and there were cluckings of disapproval behind us and to the side and front.

About three quarters through the movie, after a particularly involuntary head whipping, I emitted a long “Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh” before I could catch it. Dolly and Myrtle were unfazed, didn’t even turn to look at me. Sensing the support of those around me, I slid my chair closer and leaned towards them with another “Shhhhh”; still nothing. I left my chair and crouched over to Myrtle and whispered: “You ladies need to talk a little quieter.” Myrtle turned to me uncomprehendingly, apparently not speaking the language of Whisper. I crouched back to my seat hoping I conveyed a message. I want to emphasize here that I did not use harsh, hissing Shhhhs and when I spoke directly to Myrtle, my eyes held warmth, sweetness and understanding – nothing but “Can’t we all just get along” goodwill.

…….. A few minutes later,

Myrtle: “Where are the children?”

Dolly: “Where are the children?”

Myrtle: “Somebody must be taking care of them for awhile.”

Dolly: “They must have kept them overnight for her.”

Throughout the movie, I had my own little subplot going on with the Dinner Theater experience. What is the point of a sandwich if it is so big you can’t bite into it? I have never been a good multi-tasker, not even a good bi-tasker. So having a full-fledged messy sandwich with a pile of fries requiring administration of salt and ketchup on a plate in front of me in a darkened theater wasn’t nearly as serendipitous as I thought it was going to be, but thanks to the power of suggestion ala Dolly and Myrtle, I later motioned to the waiter with my ketchup coated fingers and ordered one of those little pots of coffee and a box of Junior Mints for dessert.

Jean and I stayed seated a while after the movie finished, letting the crowd get out ahead of us and yet when we got into the restroom, there were Dolly and Myrtle. They hadn’t even gotten into their stalls yet. I went into my own stall on the side farthest away from them, determined not to come out until they left. This took awhile. They were talking haircuts.

The upside of all this is that Jean and I had some good laughs and a nice long visit after the movie and now I have the whole dinner theater thing out of my system. I’ll have to remind my husband to send a Thank You note to Jean.

While revisiting all of this as I wrote, I was reminded of the days when as a kid I routinely watched the TV show “Gunsmoke” with my Grandma and Aunt Florence. Every time Sheriff Matt Dillon bellied up to the bar at the Longbranch Saloon and proprietor Miss Kitty said: “What’ll it be, Matt?” Grandma and Aunt Flo had their own exchange.

“He’s kind of sweet on her isn’t he?”

“Well she’s crazy about him too, but neither one will ever show it.”

“Well no because then somebody would come after her to get back at him.”

“She’s crazy about him, though”

“And he’s pretty sweet on her too.”

January 31st, 2009 | Tags: Add new tag, blue hairs, dinner theater, fibromyalgia, friendship, humor, matinee, midlife humor, movie review, Revolutionary Road, senior moment | Category: Friends, Midlife Musings, Movies | Comments (9)