Loyalty

As rare as a cat disregarding a mouse.

Why?

“Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.”

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

Last night I couldn’t remember the maiden name of the grandmother who I’m named after. I had to look it up today. As the two oldest sisters, I grew up with my sister M (heh) in a big house with lots of siblings, sharing a room with Grandma.

My first memory of Grandma was when she fell down the basement stairs when I was a toddler. I remember this not because she broke her hip but because she allegedly tripped on a toy fire truck my big brother had left on the stairs. Even as a toddler I thought this strange because the truck wasn’t one of those matchbox toys. It was as big as a shoe box. So it got me wondering why she wasn’t looking where she was going.

It got me wondering way back when she fell because I remember standing at the top of the stairs. She must have made a bit of noise going down and landing. I must have been toddler, so in fairness to Grandma, I was closer to the ground standing up.

Whether she fell or was pushed will remain one of life’s mysteries, like why another of my sisters, M (heh), likes socks so much.

Congratulations, Graduates!

"Get up get up get up

No time to rest or run for cover

Get up get up get up

Before the road pulls you under

Sleeping on embers breathing in rivers

Waking up shivering on summer’s hottest night

Salt crusted sweat dries dust deep in white lines

Dreaming that you’ll find it in the nick of time

…

Took a long way to come here

Got a long way

Get up"

 - Caitlin Canty, Get Up 

This is the time of year to read clever and original graduation speeches given by politicians, academics, celebrities, unlikely quirky war and/or other gritty heroes.  We share links on FB to nuggets of wisdom for the graduate that strike the right note between opportunity and terror. Between naïve hope and cynical despair. A good graduation speech is destined to be a TED Talk

My sound bite is this: Take good notes. Your real education is about to begin.

Also: You have until August to start repaying your student loans.

Onslaught At The Gym

“Onslaught's attempts at narrative (cyborg insects emerge from a downed research ship!) and emotional dialogue between anonymous, look-a-like armored soldiers are best ignored, as the game’s strengths lie solely in the appeal of blasting hordes of goo-splattering creatures. Whether it's packs of sluggish caterpillars or flying bugs that explode when shot, you'll find plenty of fodder with which to decorate the walls of the bland caverns and valleys you'll traverse.”

 - Gamesradar.com, Review of “Onslaught”

http://www.gamesradar.com/onslaught-review/

Disclosure: the above quote is not related to the post below in any way that I know of. I just found the quote a tiny bit mind blowing because it is a message from an alternative universe that apparently I have inhabit with a species of homo gamer evolved beside me a while back.

I’ve been gymming lately. I can’t do cardio, so I can’t lose weight, but I’m able to squat like a teenager and my knees don’t crinkle when I move. I spend a mile or two strolling on the treadmill, often between guys on either side of me who speak Arabic over me like I wasn’t there. One day, I sensed they were talking about me and I glared at the one who was smiling and burned a microscopic hole in the back of his skull and said “La, habbibi” and they both shut the fuck up. So pretty sure I was right. Smug kids with their incline about 90 degrees. Time’s a bitch, baby.

Before I walk I stretch and do some pathetic weight lifting lunges with the cute little pink 2.5 lb barbells that nobody else touches. There is a long row of padded floor adjacent to the free weights and whatever those straps are that people hold onto when they do pushups without getting on the floor. I spend a half hour there; mostly stretching and I even use the straps enough to actually break a sweat. The baggy flab under my upper arm is still there but no longer loose and heavy enough for me to swing and hit you upside the head.

The other day, I asked the young hunky guy stretching next to me if I could admire his tattoo sleeve. It included a peacock, but it was somehow not girly and looked like the dark and richly colored kind of peacock you wouldn’t want to meet wandering through the palace gardens. I told him it was adorable. He winced. Then, I remembered my nephew’s admonition that you never call a guy’s ink “adorable” and I apologized and said it was a seriously bad-ass bird and I was rewarded with a sweet smile. I’m sure he went home and told his girlfriend that an old lady hit on him in the gym. He was adorable.

This has become increasingly important to me because I no longer have roommates or even somebody to have the mostly incoherent and occasionally hilarious text conversations with. So most of my conversations these days are all inside my head, except when I’m talking to my cat bobbing gently around in my increasingly sluggish stream of consciousness.

Sometimes, covens of two or more SAHMs warm up on the pads together while waiting for their Zumba class to begin. These cougars annoy the fuck out of me – something always does of course – because they spend as much time talking and taking up too much room as they do touching the toes of their $300 designer shoes. But when I can score an adjacent spot to do my warm up, I am often rewarded with tidbits of conversation worth hearing.

The SAHMs usually say words like farm to table and local and organic - incorrectly. These ladies are, as, Terry Hatchet said, a species of “urban humans whose only connection with the cycles of nature is that their Volvo once ran over a sheep.” Entertaining, but nothing to blog about. Today there were three of them. Today, it was more disturbing.

SAHM 1:  … so I told him that wasn’t happening and we didn’t speak for the rest of the evening.

SAHM 2:  A bonus.

SAHM 3 (texting) What the fuck was he thinking? (There is a rule that at least one of a group of men or women chatting must also be texting or otherwise using their phone.)

SAHM 2:   It’s not like he can afford child support.

SAHM 1:  Let alone spousal support.

I forget who said what next but the next line was something about the investment in her lawyer for the prenup is gonna pay off like a win for the hare. There was something about whether a bear that shits in the woods uses toilet paper, only more succinct.

What happened next inside my head wasn’t an articulate paragraph of words about the first world problems I am blissfully spared. It was more like a small mushroom cloud of wordless gratitude at this lesson in comparative despair. 

And then, in a moment of sublime clarity, I realized they were talking about anal sex. (There is some serious body language to read on people almost correctly doing yoga poses.) Then, I thought who puts an anal sex clause involving a big payoff in a prenuptial agreement? These women have no souls.

My mind exploded and covered these women with the metaphorical gooey splatter of exploded flying bugs. First its the gamers. Now another life form now inhabits the universe I thought I knew. 

Have these Others always been here? Suddenly, everywhere I look I’m finding how pervasively hilariously pathetic all our lives are. I had thought it was just people I conversed with.  Now I see it’s everywhere. It's the human feckn' condition. Homo sapiens is the only species who employ so much of our time hiring assholes, marrying assholes, thinking and arguing about assholes and generally being assholes. What other god known monstrous goo spattering species surround me?

And just like that, I had my joy back. I no longer need to have internal dialogue editorializing on asshole theme in all their allegorical, Freudian, and mutually passive aggressive grandeur. 

My joy is from my gratitude that I don’t have to suffer assholes any more.   

Then I thought about renewing my attorney license. Imagine the conversations I could have in my head with assholes. I guess I kinda miss it.

Fear Old People and Garbage Trucks

“His age was indeterminate. But in cynicism and general world weariness, which is a sort of carbon dating of the personality, he was about seven thousand years old."

 - Terry Pratchett, "Guards! Guards!”

I am in that middle stage of life where I’m young enough that old people bother me and I’m not yet old enough to not notice whether I bother younger people.

Just getting into the parking lot at the doctor’s office this morning was an exercise in a slow motion demolition derby where the drivers don’t want to hit anything but they have the reaction time of a turtle with narcolepsy, the situational awareness of a small hill and a complete failure to understand how rearview mirrors work. And they drive like slow shit. Then, there’s the people with walkers, people trying to help people in walkers who are exhibiting significant senile agitation; and those who can’t read the sign that says which line to queue in at the lab. There was a long line to check in, but the waiting room itself was empty. Never a good sign. I always bring a book. The single receptionist seemed to be taking a long time checking in patients. I read a chapter and finally made it to the desk.

Receptionist at lab:  Have you been to Africa recently?

Me: Nope.

Receptionist: Have you been around anybody who has recently been to Africa?

WISIMH:  Possibly Nana in the walker painted like an American flag, who feinted left directly into me as I was trying to pass her at the exact moment she decided to detour to the ladies room. Now that I think of it though, that was in the hallway and I’ve been waiting in line for the 21 day Ebola incubation period, so I’m good.

Me: Nope.

Receptionist: Well, let’s see if we can find a sticker with your primary care doctor’s name and phone number that I can paste on your plastic ID card. (She’s fumbling in a large envelope of tiny stickers with different doctor names and numbers. Spoiler alert: never found it.)

WISIMH: I’ve been covered by Kaiser for about 40 years and have never had my doctor’s name sticker on my card. I’ve lived to tell the tale. And there are 15 people in the waiting line and now I see why it’s taking so long.

Me:  I was hoping to get my lab tests done before dinner. I’m fasting so I’m a tad grumpy. No caffeine and that.

Receptionist: Isn’t that the worst? Especially when the lines are so long and blah blah blah.

What I was Getting Ready to Say in My Head: No, sweetie. The worst is an idiot receptionist who is so scatterbrained she makes a rutted gravel road look like it has its act together.

Lady Too Good to Wait in Line:  Excuse me, I have an appointment. Do I have to wait in line?

Me: Or, you could read the sign and wait in the appointment line instead of the line where the common people wait.

Receptionist: (Using way too many words to interpret the sign that says “Appointments” and “No Appointments” with arrows pointing respectively left and right of the post with the straps to corral waiting patients.)

Me:  Excuse ME. I’m being served now. Perhaps you could wait until I check in and interrupt the next patient if you’re too important to read the sign.

I should note that while I may not be old enough not to notice when I bother people, I’m old enough to let rude people know when they bother me.

Receptionist: (Regaining consciousness, or whatever it is she uses in lieu of consciousness) Have you been to Africa recently?

WISIMH:  Yes actually, the waiting line extends to Sierra Leone.

Me: Nope.

Once checked in, there was zero wait time to get into the lab. The phlebotomist noticed the scratch scabs on my arms and the Band-Aids covering even worse and still bloody scratch scabs.

Phlebotomist:  Do you have a cat who jumps off your lap?

Me:  Yes, and I have an INR that makes my blood so thin I bleed when I sneeze.

WISIMH: Hence today’s lab test to confirm that so they can adjust my Coumadin to a level that makes my eyes not bleed when I encounter annoying people at the lab.

Phlebotomist:  My cat is afraid of the garbage truck. She runs away from the window when it comes.

Me:  Well, you have to admit garbage trucks are pretty scary.

Phlebotomist: Strangely, I was afraid of garbage trucks when I was a kid.

Me: Do you still run away when they come?

Phlebotomist: (Giving me a mildly confused look because apparently to her sarcasm is just a seven-letter word beginning with s.) No.

Me:  Well, I hope your cat will outgrow it too.

Recessive Jean

"For nearing its desired end, out intellect sinks into an abyss so deep that memory fails to follow it."

Dante, Divine Comedy

DOB fell. The nursing facility called. I told them I don’t care. I asked them to take me off their call list. They won’t. This is to déjà vu what being tapped on the shoulder is to being hit by a train.

Then DOS called to tell me DOB fell. Oh dear I exclaimed. Drama ensued as the details were related. Details included another move to another room precipitated by another fight between demented other roommates that apparently disrupt the more subdued residents. More time passed. It turned out she was not only fine, but by dinner had no recollection she had fallen at lunch. I think this may have happened before, but to say I no longer have the fucks to remember is like saying I have elevated cholesterol. Last time I bothered to check the overall number was >300.

To say I have zero fucks to give on this matter is to understate the degree to which this latest downfall depressed me. The German word I just made up for this post is unterfockingstadmunt. We’re into negative numbers trying to compute the fucks I give about DOB. Talking to people with these recessive genes on the phone is like entering a denser Higgs field where the drag on every particle of my body increases.

I mean it depressed me. I read an article this morning by somebody who suffers from depression schooling well-meaning people who say the wrong thing to them. It apparently didn’t occur to the author who listed the symptoms of the disease called depression by way of distinguishing it from say, a bad mood, that she missed one. Depressed people believe non-depressed people don’t get them. In her case she mistook my lack of fucks to give for lack of understanding.

I get it. You’re sick. Like cancer. It hurts. Like cancer. It even kills. Like… If I said I feel sorry for you, you’d be pissed. If I said I’d pray for you you certainly should be pissed. If I said I hope you feel better... If I said pretty much anything you’d be pissed. Why? Because you’re fucking depressed. So, since you’re going to blame me for making things worse by trying to make things better, I’ll just say I don’t care. Which is ok by the way, because I’m pissed about being depressed too. So I can use those words and merely sad people can’t.

But look on the bright side. Here’s some cold comfort. I don’t care about DOB slightly more than I don’t care for misunderstood depressives. I care slightly more that a person with depression might be pissed at me for not caring than I care about the depressing fact that while that my link to my dysfunctional in-laws is gone… They. Are. Still. Here.

Apparently, they don’t get me. How depressing.

Go Away

“’Tell me this,’ he said at last. ‘Have you a desideratum*?’

This queer question was unexpected but I answered it quickly enough. I said I had.

‘What desideratum?’

‘To find what I am looking form.’

‘That is a handsome desideratum,’ said Martin Finnucane. ‘What way will you bring it about or mature its mutandum* and bring it ultimately to passable factivity?’”

*desideratum: something that is wanted

* mutandum: something that is to be changed

 - Flann O’Brien, The Third Policeman

I spoke to my sisters-in-law recently. Apart from other explicit pearls of wisdom that drip off them like drool from the chin of a teething infant, I learned I have some problems with boundaries. Mine, that is.

I don’t want to talk to anyone except the pizza delivery guy. And that’s only because he’s moderately cute. Not like my imaginary friend, Paulo-the-Pool-Boy cute. But the best part of my day is closing the door behind Pizza boy and Paulo, second (or third?) only to hanging up the phone after a check-in call from DOS. I managed to get through the obligatory birthday call (on the wrong day, natch) like a laxative through DOB who is 4’10” and about as wide.

They may be perfectly nice people. Their brother loved them to the extent he loved anything that somebody graciously handed him for free. Their mother loves them to the extent that she remembers which end of the telephone received to put to her ear and also remembers who they are. They may love their mother to the extent that I did every fucking thing to assure her twilight years wouldn’t be spent on alone under a bridge drinking her dinner from a bottle in a paper bag while they asked me for free legal advice about their respective train-wreck lives.

I don’t want to be estranged from these in-laws. Estranged connotes confrontational partings, disputes about mutual relatives - now gone in body and/or in spirit, angry arguments or overt outbursts of passive aggressiveness. Contesting wills and arguing about large amounts of money. It implies some emotional bonds that have been emotionally broken.

Yeah, no. I just don’t want to maintain the travesty of the mockery of the sham that we were ever friends. So, while I don’t want to fight with them or tell them to get lost, I would appreciate it if they would just leave me alone.

AT$T recently did me a favor by disconnecting my cellphone over a bill dispute. It was satisfactorily resolved after about a week - and with minimal glitter. I may have forgotten to tell DOS that my cell now works again. It is a possible activity that I got the point across - like a circus elephant jumping a tiny bicycle over the Grand Canyon.

Mutandumed halfway to my desideratum. They still have my home phone number.

Photo Credit: Okamoto-Kiichi, from 50 Watts