I used to hate mornings. "I'm not a morning person," I'd moan into my palms, as if rearranging my cheeks would help me wake up.
On the other hand, I'm not an afternoon person (hunger, boredom, self-flagellation for not accomplishing more this morning) nor an evening person either (fear at the close of the day, heavy eyes, lassitude -- or the feeling that somewhere there's person who looks just like me wearing a dress with a splash of sequins at the shoulder stepping into a red-boothed cocktail lounge from some 1950's movie who's about to enjoy a smart cocktail and witty conversation and she's not me but I was her or she could have been me and I'll bet her couch doesn't have this weird musty smell).
I've learned over the years to like mornings. The only person in the barn, no music yet, just hay sifting and pellets crunching and the sweep of a broom, cold damp air, and birds. Once the horses were all fed, retiring to my kitchen, making my own cup of coffee and sitting at my funky table that never met up with the wall. Sipping that coffee. Cold feet, stained hands, warm throat. Best part of the day.
Now that I don't have infants my mornings are back.
Hobbes wakes me up at either five or six in the morning. He doesn't even consider going to Dear Butcher's side of the bed. He stands next to me in the pale dark wagging his tail so that it slaps my bookcase. Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk. He's not anxious or annoyingly eager or begging. Just steady. Slow. "Hey Lady." Thunk, thunk. "Sun's up." Thunk, thunk. "It's time." Thunk, thunk. Doesn't that hurt, Hobbes?
It's cold in the kitchen. It's a stupid kitchen. Lots of windows that don't open and drafts that come through them anyway. The guinea pigs rattle their water bottles at me as I walk past. Tikk-a. Morning, lady. Tikk-a. Mr. Herriman, my aged neutered boar, often chews on the bars in the morning. Odddly, he doesn't "WHEEP! WHEEP!" like the girls. His wheeper seems to be broken. He wheezes faint puffs of air instead, like an old man stepping down out of a bus. I think he took up bar-chewing in the mornings the way an elderly bus rider might take up rattling his cane.
Dog goes out, gets hopelessly lost in the back yard and needs me to leap-limp out there to rescue him. He's blind -- sometimes he finds something in his vision, like today with the quilt thrown over the chair, targets it, and snakes towards it with desperate authority. Head down, front paws taking huge high steps, straight body lancing right towards the edge of the cliff. "I have no idea what this big white object is," his body says. "But it must be important if I can see it."
"No! No!" I'm calling out to him. "Here." His body stops, his head lifts to catch the breeze, as if he can smell my voice. And he decides the white thing must be the house and starts churning again. "No, Hobbes. Over here." And I have to tiptoe out the door, stepping over globs of dried mud on the patio, prickers everywhere, shards of wood my son has left in the aftermath of some experiment involving a hammer. Lay my hand on Hobbes' neck and talk him home. Always an adventure, dude. Can't wait until it starts raining again.
Dog can't be fed until 7. So that's an hour for me. He flings himself to the ground by the front door, bones clattering on the wood floor. The cat's gone out now with all the fluttering around the back door. The guinea pigs have rediscovered last night's hay and are burbling to themselves. The backyard birds are chuttering.
Blissfully, the chickens are still asleep. I don't mind the chickens too much during the day, but we've got one who Announces Her Movements with hugely loud cackles once or twice a day. If I could identify her when she's silent, I'd gladly remove her from the premises. As it is, I'm left with pelting her with wood shards and globs of dried mud once she gets going. That doesn't stop her, and it only makes me feel guilty, so now I just imagine her cartoon self exploding once I hear the first of fifty -three or more "ca-CAW!"s. Sometimes a random thought goes through her Jurassic head and that sets off a long string of ca-CAW! ca-CAW! ca-CAW! comments on how the world ca-CAW! ca-CAW! ca-CAW! needs to listen to the birthers ca-CAW! ca-CAW! ca-CAW! and Fox News and ca-CAW! ca-CAW! ca-CAW! show more respect for Sarah Palin. I hate that bird. But thankfully she's still asleep.
I need to make coffee. Problem is that running the water in the kitchen sink seems to make the guinea pigs think that a commuter train somewhere is going to leave without them. Many zoomies and laps around the cage. Where are my keys? Rosa, where did you put my briefcase? Get OUT of my way! Well, I was just sitting here eating breakfast, what's your problem? Hey! What? Hey! Did you see the time? Where are the keys? Lettuce orgies, festivals of veggies calm them down, but I was hoping to just make myself a pot of coffee without having to -- OK fine. Have some lettuce. And radishes. And tomatoes. Do you want some cucumber? Gosh, you guys are cute.
By then the coffee's done, the sun is up. There's some time to sit on my oddly musty couch (I must clean this thing. Maybe this afternoon. Stop kidding yourself.), inhale coffee steam, warm my hands and breathe.
The animals and me and warm hands. I think I am a morning person.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
"How the hell are you?" she wrote.
"Miss you," another wrote.
"Why don't you ever update?" my daughter asked.
"Are you OK?" someone else asked.
I dunno. I should have an answer. But I don't.
I haven't been writing because any time I pull up the blog I see that I haven't written since February and I don't know how to fill in that gap without writing a novel. I'm not sure I want to relive parts of it either.
I'm suffering from having people read my blog too. It's better and easier to write when it's confessional, but then people in my family read it and I want to curl into a ball. There are mutterings in the back of my head that are better left undisturbed -- or rather, they don't mind coming out into the light to play, but I can't quite handle the reactions they bring up in people I share my house with.
Simple updates are these:
Hobbes, my diabetic dog. He's lost a lot of weight and developed cataracts from the high glucose levels. It took him all of four days to go completely blind from the onset of his first cataract. He's also had neuropathy in his face which caused half of his face to go slack. He's a mess. He makes me cry in frustration because I cannot get his elbow callouses to bleed on cue when it's time to run another blood glucose curve. For dog his size he should be on 8.5 units of insulin twice a day (17 units total). Currently he's on 20 units of insulin twice a day (40 units total) and he still has never registered a single blood glucose test in the normal range. (Yes, my meter works just fine.) He clearly has no pancreas at all. I was getting ready to euthanize him in June, when he suddenly rallied and started eating and putting on weight. (He likes Dear Butcher's ground mixed meat on top of his kibble with a heaping handful of baby carrots on the side.) He crashes into walls in the house, falls off the bed from time to time, and sleeps a lot, but when he's awake he's happy and playful and we'll keep looking after him until he stops eating again.
Bagheera, my lovely black cat. Bagheera was a Christmas present from Dear Butcher a few Christmases ago. He got into cat fight about two months back -- cost me $300 I didn't have at the emergency vet. Sigh. But he healed up fine. Took him to my regular vet for his yearly shots and a check up. Now I've just discovered a growth at the site of his rabies injection. Vet is very careful not to mention the word sarcoma, but I know about rabies injections in cats. I'm supposed to report back to her in two weeks as to whether it's growing. Sigh. Hopefully it's something else. Hopefully there won't be any advancement in diameter.
Neo, my eldest daughter. What an artist. We finished up her year of homeschooling and now she's all set to start up at the public high school in the fall. She went to classes this summer at California College of the Arts where she blew them out of the water. This fall I'll be taking her down to CCA every Saturday where she'll participate in a figure drawing class for high school students. She's a good kid still. Very proud of her.
Saul, you all know Saul. Saul is doing great, fantastic, wonderful, and well. He's still at Cornerstone, the program run by the county that works for him. He's got a good therapist there and is working through a lot of his anxieties. We had an IEP in April that was borderline awful -- my district wants him to come back to the Middle School here and there's no room for him in the Cornerstone Middle School program. But, we actually came away with a good solution. He's being retained next year so he can continue with his therapist, so he's repeat fifth grade. However, once a week he is going to try coming up to his home district's middle school so he can start transitioning into classes. I don't think the Friday thing is going to work AT ALL, but I'm willing to try it if only to say, "Look. Now we have proof that he's not ready to go into large classes."
Phebe, my youngest daughter, went away for a month-long sleep-away camp. She loved it. *Loved* it. She rode horses and swam in a lake and made me a lovely little ceramic pot and slept in a cabin in the woods with no electricity and wants to go back next year.
Me, the blogger. I dunno how I'm doing. Once I got Saul established, I basically fell apart. Right now I'm working on putting all the pieces back together, although I'm finding that some of them don't fit quite right. There's a lot of bruising and rough edges. I went to Kaiser for a check-up and told my doctor that I wanted to see someone in mental health -- I can't sleep and my mind keeps racing. I'm going to this decent enough guy, nothing special, but decent. Every time you go, they have you fill out a magazine survey: Give yourself three points if you've been sad more than five days out of the last week, one point if you've been sad any day during the last week.
I'm sitting in his office last time, saying that I broke out of some of my paralysis and attacked the house. Threw out bag after bag of garbage and sorted through every room. Took me about a month to pull the whole thing together, and I'm still no quite done. He looks at his computer screen. "Yes. I was going to comment that you are different this time. You've gone from a 21 to a 7."
"What?"
"Your score. Last time you were an 'over twenty', now you're a seven!"
Oh good lord. Stop looking at the computer screen and Look At The Patient. I fucking hate Kaiser.
----------
In other news, I got an email last night from a friend asking me if I'd run for school board. I only have a few more days to "pull papers" to get my name on the ballot. Yeah, with California's budget the way it is? With the HUGE cuts that are coming down the pike for public education AND public mental health (Saul's program) AND county services (Saul's program), now is the time for me to sit on the school board? Oh, I think not. I'd either be throwing things from the podium or sobbing into my shirt at every meeting. Would make for good cable access television, but it's not for me.
"Miss you," another wrote.
"Why don't you ever update?" my daughter asked.
"Are you OK?" someone else asked.
I dunno. I should have an answer. But I don't.
I haven't been writing because any time I pull up the blog I see that I haven't written since February and I don't know how to fill in that gap without writing a novel. I'm not sure I want to relive parts of it either.
I'm suffering from having people read my blog too. It's better and easier to write when it's confessional, but then people in my family read it and I want to curl into a ball. There are mutterings in the back of my head that are better left undisturbed -- or rather, they don't mind coming out into the light to play, but I can't quite handle the reactions they bring up in people I share my house with.
Simple updates are these:
Hobbes, my diabetic dog. He's lost a lot of weight and developed cataracts from the high glucose levels. It took him all of four days to go completely blind from the onset of his first cataract. He's also had neuropathy in his face which caused half of his face to go slack. He's a mess. He makes me cry in frustration because I cannot get his elbow callouses to bleed on cue when it's time to run another blood glucose curve. For dog his size he should be on 8.5 units of insulin twice a day (17 units total). Currently he's on 20 units of insulin twice a day (40 units total) and he still has never registered a single blood glucose test in the normal range. (Yes, my meter works just fine.) He clearly has no pancreas at all. I was getting ready to euthanize him in June, when he suddenly rallied and started eating and putting on weight. (He likes Dear Butcher's ground mixed meat on top of his kibble with a heaping handful of baby carrots on the side.) He crashes into walls in the house, falls off the bed from time to time, and sleeps a lot, but when he's awake he's happy and playful and we'll keep looking after him until he stops eating again.
Bagheera, my lovely black cat. Bagheera was a Christmas present from Dear Butcher a few Christmases ago. He got into cat fight about two months back -- cost me $300 I didn't have at the emergency vet. Sigh. But he healed up fine. Took him to my regular vet for his yearly shots and a check up. Now I've just discovered a growth at the site of his rabies injection. Vet is very careful not to mention the word sarcoma, but I know about rabies injections in cats. I'm supposed to report back to her in two weeks as to whether it's growing. Sigh. Hopefully it's something else. Hopefully there won't be any advancement in diameter.
Neo, my eldest daughter. What an artist. We finished up her year of homeschooling and now she's all set to start up at the public high school in the fall. She went to classes this summer at California College of the Arts where she blew them out of the water. This fall I'll be taking her down to CCA every Saturday where she'll participate in a figure drawing class for high school students. She's a good kid still. Very proud of her.
Saul, you all know Saul. Saul is doing great, fantastic, wonderful, and well. He's still at Cornerstone, the program run by the county that works for him. He's got a good therapist there and is working through a lot of his anxieties. We had an IEP in April that was borderline awful -- my district wants him to come back to the Middle School here and there's no room for him in the Cornerstone Middle School program. But, we actually came away with a good solution. He's being retained next year so he can continue with his therapist, so he's repeat fifth grade. However, once a week he is going to try coming up to his home district's middle school so he can start transitioning into classes. I don't think the Friday thing is going to work AT ALL, but I'm willing to try it if only to say, "Look. Now we have proof that he's not ready to go into large classes."
Phebe, my youngest daughter, went away for a month-long sleep-away camp. She loved it. *Loved* it. She rode horses and swam in a lake and made me a lovely little ceramic pot and slept in a cabin in the woods with no electricity and wants to go back next year.
Me, the blogger. I dunno how I'm doing. Once I got Saul established, I basically fell apart. Right now I'm working on putting all the pieces back together, although I'm finding that some of them don't fit quite right. There's a lot of bruising and rough edges. I went to Kaiser for a check-up and told my doctor that I wanted to see someone in mental health -- I can't sleep and my mind keeps racing. I'm going to this decent enough guy, nothing special, but decent. Every time you go, they have you fill out a magazine survey: Give yourself three points if you've been sad more than five days out of the last week, one point if you've been sad any day during the last week.
I'm sitting in his office last time, saying that I broke out of some of my paralysis and attacked the house. Threw out bag after bag of garbage and sorted through every room. Took me about a month to pull the whole thing together, and I'm still no quite done. He looks at his computer screen. "Yes. I was going to comment that you are different this time. You've gone from a 21 to a 7."
"What?"
"Your score. Last time you were an 'over twenty', now you're a seven!"
Oh good lord. Stop looking at the computer screen and Look At The Patient. I fucking hate Kaiser.
----------
In other news, I got an email last night from a friend asking me if I'd run for school board. I only have a few more days to "pull papers" to get my name on the ballot. Yeah, with California's budget the way it is? With the HUGE cuts that are coming down the pike for public education AND public mental health (Saul's program) AND county services (Saul's program), now is the time for me to sit on the school board? Oh, I think not. I'd either be throwing things from the podium or sobbing into my shirt at every meeting. Would make for good cable access television, but it's not for me.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Whoa. What a letter.
I was web surfing this morning and came across a blog that looks intriguing.
I just read the following post, and I have no words. I did in fact start hyperventilating while reading it, leaned back in my chair with my hand over my chest and just started muttering, "Whoa. Whoa. Whoa!" over and over and over.
A sample from Psychotic Letters from Men
That's like looking into the jaws of death, right there. Yikes.
I just read the following post, and I have no words. I did in fact start hyperventilating while reading it, leaned back in my chair with my hand over my chest and just started muttering, "Whoa. Whoa. Whoa!" over and over and over.
A sample from Psychotic Letters from Men
That's like looking into the jaws of death, right there. Yikes.
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