I Tell You Love, Sister. It's Just a Kiss Away

Here is a snowy, slippery, spiral fire escape.

I read Slaughterhouse 5 while I was giving plasma today. I got to the part that said:

Billy answered. There was a drunk on the other end. Billy could almost smell his breath - mustard gas and roses. It was a wrong number. Billy hung up.

That whole answering a wrong number thing, reminded me of a story an old lover told me about his parents. His mother met his father when she answered a party line back in the day. He originally called for someone else, but quickly forgot about her after talking to his mom. She was a beautiful Swedish woman who had had many suitors at the time. His dad was a short Chinese man studying engineering.

My ex said that his mother chose his father over all the other men because she knew exactly how her life would pan out with the other men, but had no idea where she would end up with his dad.

After many moves and degrees and advanced degrees and a marriage and two children who she loved and fretted over, a divorce after she found her husband having an affair with their close friend's daughter, starting a gallery with money from said divorce and ultimately retiring to Mexico; I would love to ask her if the gamble on the unknown had been worth it to her. Of course, we all know that the "safe" choices that she rejected in those other men, could have turned into something completely different than she imagined too. I doubt there are any really safe major life choices out there. Shit comes at us out of nowhere and all we can do is brace ourselves and wait for it to hit or be aggressive and meet that shit head-on. So it goes.

My Luck's Like a Button, I Can't Stop Pushing It

Here is a skeleton on a fence.

Please see the post below for the back story and Part one before reading this. Here is the second part:

"Get her a bag," the big nurse says to a nursing assistant who is just checking to see what's causing the raised voices.

"What?" the nursing assistant asks.

"A bag. A paper bag. She's starting to hyperventilate!" the nurse says with some urgency. By the time the nursing assistant comes back, it's too late. I'm shaking, but not just trembling. I can't control it and my whole body is spastic. Heather says she thinks I'm having a seizure. The nurse holds the bag over my nose and mouth. My arms are shaking so badly that I can't swat her away. I want to, though. The bag isn't giving me enough oxygen and I know I'll suffocate.

"Breathe, honey," Heather says. She is rubbing my back. "Coadster is fine. They think she broke both her legs, but baby's bones heal really fast. They said you saved her life. You protected her head so she didn't hit it. It was just her little legs dangling down when you hit the ground. So, you need to breathe in here and relax. As soon as you calm down, we can go see Coadster. Okay?"

I nod my head to show that I understand. I've stopped shaking and can now hold the bag by myself. Heather keeps her hand close in case I start spazzing again. The big nurse leaves and the nursing assistant takes care of my paperwork. She makes me sit a little longer until my blood pressure goes down.

When I'm finally calm enough, they let me leave the ER. On the way out, we almost run into the nurse who has been attending to me. If I were a more gracious person, I would stop and say thanks for all of her help, but I'm not. I can only feel embarrassed. I look away and Heather pushes me past her. I just hope the nurse doesn't ever come into the business office with questions about her bills.

I Got Bruises on My Memory

Here is a barn and and a camper and some outbuildings.

So, this frantic house hunting is taking up all of my time and energy. I looked at some houses today, and hopefully, I'll look at more tomorrow. I can't really write about it right now, because I haven't had time to process it. Instead, I will post my next story installment that began last week. Here it is:

The racetrack is made for adults. The fence that separates us from where the horses run is too high for me and Bill to see over. When the grownups get excited during a race, we stand up on the chairs to try to see, but the old men in the back seats get mad. "Sit down, you goddamn hippie kids!" One of them yells and then they throw their racing forms and plastic cups that used to hold beer at us and we have to step down.

We start doing this thing we do when we get bored at the track. Me and my brother wrap the bottom of our t-shirts around our arms to make a bag. We walk around the seats and pick up the stubs to the racing tickets and put them in the bags we made. When our bags get too full we take our arms out of our t-shirts and stretch the bottoms really tight. The stubs go flying into the air and we start again. Sometimes this is fun and sometimes it isn't, but we do it anyway. It's like the way I touch the cup of skin between my nose and lip. When I start, it helps me helps me feel better, then after a while my finger gets tired but it's hard to stop. That's what picking up the stubs is like and we keep at it until my Uncle Jack sees us.

"You guys are still here?" He asks and we don't say anything back. Instead we look down because we know we're not supposed to be here. "Maybe you should tell your dad to meet me in my office in ten minutes and we'll go to Riata Pass to eat." He's trying to sound cheerful, but I can tell by the way his jaw is stiff that he's mad.

My brother is going to tell our father we should go. I would, but I don't want him to be mad at me and my brother doesn't care.

"Hey, Dad," my brother says, but he's too quiet. He clears his throat and tries again. "Dad. Hey, Dad!" He almost yells and my father doesn't move. He just stares out at the racetrack even though there aren't any horses running.

Bill tries once more and my dad doesn't move and I get scared and I'm crying. I yell, "Daddy!" My father doesn't stop staring, but he raises his hand and shoos us away. Now we have to go back to our uncle's office and he will go get our father. We walk slowly, because we're embarrassed. Once I heard my aunt telling my grandma about how she saw my dad staring for hours and the way she said it let me know that he shouldn't do that. On the way to Uncle Jack's office, I ask my brother, "Why does he do that? What's wrong with him?"

"Who cares. He's dumb. Why do you even care?" My brother is flicking his middle finger against thumb the way he does when he hates my dad, so I don't say anything else.

Ain't It Hard When You Discover That He Really Wasn't Where It's At

Here is a picture of my brother when he was very young. One of these days I'll actually take some pics, so I don't have to keep recycling these old ones.

So, remember how I posted part of that story I entitled 1969? Well, since I'm reworking the whole thing, I thought I'd get all crazy and start posting it from the beginning. Chronological order. Weird. I'll try to post it every week as I work on it. Just a reminder, it's mostly fiction with some fact or someone's memories thrown in for fun. Here we go:

I am eight years old today. My mom had to work, so we will have my party tomorrow. My dad was supposed to get my cake and decorations but he wanted to stop at the track for just a minute and now I think he forgot. Bill says not to worry about it. Our mom will take care of it later. She will be mad, but she'll get everything I need for my party. Now, Bill says we should go watch the races for a while and I can have my birthday tomorrow.

We go to tell my dad that we are going up front to see better. He is watching the horses. The old men at the track call them ponies. When there is a race going, he won't look anywhere else until the last horse crosses in front of him. Sometimes he won't look up then. He will just stare and stare. He won't look up even if I stand in front of him and scream right in his face. I know because I did it once and he didn't blink. He doesn't do anything when we say where we're going, so we know we can do whatever we want now.

My father used to work at the racetrack taking pictures of the winning horses. I don't know why he doesn't anymore, but my uncle still does and that's why we get to sit in the VIP section. VIP doesn't mean vice president. When I tell my brother that's what I think it means, he calls me stupid and now I don't think that anymore.

"It means very important people," Bill says and laughs the way he does when he hates my father. I know better to ask why it's funny that we sit in the very important people section.


That's probably more than enough for now. Tune in next week when our heroine braves even more family dysfunction at the racetrack...

Is This the Prize for Having Learned How Not to Cry?

I don't have any photos of me actually working at the clinic, but this recycled photo was taken at that same time.

I've been on kind of a roll with the writing lately. I was dormant with it for so long, that now I feel very much awake and full of ideas. I work them out a lot when I'm running or riding my bike. I seem to think better when I'm moving. So, I'll be posting bits and pieces of some of the new stuff I'm working on and the old stuff I'm reworking.

I wrote a little about Stinky's illness yesterday. I worked at the clinic at the same time and many nights I slept at the hospital, woke up, and walked down the hall to work at the clinic all day. So, I started working on a piece about advocating for patients and then suddenly being on the other end of that. Some of it is fiction and some isn't. Here's a bit of it:

My primary doctor told me that my main job was to make "nicey nice" with the patients. That doctor was an incredible gynecologist and surgeon, but not much of a people person. I was actually, surprisingly really good at making "nicey nice". I was never disingenuous or condescending. The tough part was distancing myself enough so that I didn't absorb every heartbreaking situation I experienced, or I'd end up in the fetal postion sucking my thumb at the end of eash day. It was a line I found myself crossing over way too often. Usually, I just tried to find out a little bit about the patient and help them the best I could. So, when my doctor would leave a room and say, "Hey, can you help me out? I've just explained her limited options to her about a hundred times and she doesn't seem to get it. Can you go in there and help her understand and come up with a plan? Thanks. Oh, and we need that room, so do you think you could do all of that as quickly as possible?" I would do just that.

Making "nicey nice" included many different scenarios. Once on the way to entering a room for an older woman's appointment, her daughter-in-law stopped me and said,"Hi. I'm sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to fill you in. She just spent all of last year fighting cancer, and she has reached her saturation point with being poked and prodded. If there is any way you can help her calm down for this, I'd really appreciate it." I got lucky with that one. When I checked out her chart, I recognized her last name. Both of her sons were lawyers in town and hung out at the coffee shop where I used to work. While my doctor poked and prodded her, I asked her if she wanted to hold my hand (which she definitely did) and then said,

"So, lets talk about how great your boys are..." That took her mind off of everything else and she handled the procedure really well.

Since I could speak Spanish and there were only two interpreters in the whole hospital, sometimes I would get yanked out of procedures in order to translate. It could get tricky, especially when someone pulled me out of a room and sent me down to the infertility clinic to talk to an EXTREMELY traditional Mexican couple about how to prepare for a semen analysis. For the life of me, I couldn't remember the Spanish word for mastur*bate* right off the top of my head.

Sometimes making "nicey nice", was really more like making "meany mean". I was doing a blood draw on a pregnant prisoner and before I even put my gloves on she said, "Just so you know, you'll never find a working vein. I've been slamming crank for so many years, I bet I've blown every one I had." I resisted the urge to put 12 gloves on each hand and started checking her arms. I found one on her left arm. It was just a little deeper under the skin than I normally had to go. As she watched me stick the needle in and fill the tubes, she suddenly got way too excited. "Wait! Where the hell did you find that!?"

"Are you kidding me? I'm not telling you. It's one thing to screw yourself up with that crap. I'm not going to help you poison your poor baby."

Okay. That was just a VERY rough draft of a part of the story I'm working on. I'm sure it will change and morph a hundred times and hopefully, it might even be readable after a while.

Here's a Little Ghost for the Offering

Here are some pretty flowers that have nothing to do with my post. What else is new?

Okay, I went back to my old short story vault and pulled out part of a different story than last week. I posted this a couple of years ago too. So, I apologize to any of you people who have been reading my blog for the last three years or so...Actually, I should probably apologize to you every day, huh? Anyway, this is pretty much pure fiction. I'm too young to remember the moon landing. (believe it or not) and so I made up a bunch of shit around it. Too bad I forgot I wrote this. It would have been perfect during the anniversary in July. Here goes:


1969

Tonight is a big deal. My dad keeps telling us, “Kids, remember this. This is a very big deal.” My brother rolls his eyes and walks into his room. I stay in the living room so I can be where everyone else is. I’m afraid to miss it. It is a very big deal.

My mom has set up the card table so she can put all the food she made on it. My grandma and my Uncle Jack and my Aunt Lee are coming over. My Aunt Lee is divorced and everyone says it in a whisper like it’s secret and we can’t say it around her because it might make her feel bad. Her daughter is a year older than my brother. She will never play with me. After they get here, my cousin goes off with my brother and they shoot things with their slingshots. I don’t even try to tag along because I know they will start shooting at me.

My mom touches or winks at me every time she comes out of the kitchen with potato salad, or Jello or bread or deviled eggs. My dad likes very dark bread and brown mustard, so we always have to have it, but my mom doesn’t make me eat it or I’ll throw up. He also eats peanuts in the shell and all of our ashtrays are full of empty shells. There’s almost no room for cigarettes or ashes.

Once the whole family arrives, my dad and my Uncle Jack talk about politics and everyone tries to get them to change the subject because they don’t agree. There is so much cigarette smoke everywhere that my eyes burn.

Nobody is walking on the moon yet. They are all just watching the news, which I’m not allowed to see because when they have the war on the news, I get scared. I once heard a ticking clock and thought it was a bomb and ran out of my parent’s room screaming. So, I’m not allowed to watch the news.

I finally get so bored, that I go into my bedroom and play with my wedding paper dolls. There is a bride and a groom and you can change their outfits for the wedding and later for the honeymoon. I hear a thunk. I know that my brother and my cousin have hit my window with a rock. I think I might tell on them, but the grown-ups are loud and drinking beer and I don’t like the way they act.

My mother comes in my room to wake me up. I fell asleep and now the groom’s tuxedo wedding outfit is stuck to my face. She picks me up and carries me into the living room. I sit on her lap to watch the man walk on the moon. Everyone is quiet and serious, but I watch my dad instead of the guy on the screen because I’ve never seen him like that before. He is staring like he usually does, but this time he seems happy – like he’s far away from our cramped and smoky living room.

Okay, that was another snippet of a story I need to rework. I think I'll keep this in the first person though.

I'm Wide Awake on Memories

So, tonight was a night for great and terrible stories. First I met the supper club people at Shakespeare's and one of the guys there was training to be an over-the-road trucker. He was telling us about this old trucker who was his trainer and the stories were not pretty at all, but so amusing. The worst part was that the old school trucker guy never wanted to stop and kept a garbage can with baggies full of his urine and feces in it and traveled around like that. Yeah, I promise I won't go into any more detail, but just know there were a whole lot of people saying, "Ew" over and over again during the telling.

Then I grabbed the Coadster and we headed to Van Allen Hall for the John Irving reading. Like many people my age, I fell in love with his work after reading The World According to Garp in high school. It was so dirty and quirky and there was so much mention of Iowa, that I wanted to live in that twisted world as long as I could. Then in 1985 when I lived in the redwoods and we had to drive all the way to Eureka to buy art supplies, music and books, I was starving for anything decent to read. My brother sent me the hard copy of The Cider House Rules for my birthday that Summer and I spent an entire weekend, lying on my favorite rock on the Eel River reading that book and pissing off my favorite river otter who really didn't want me hanging out on his turf. So, I was so excited to not only hear him read, but share it with the Coadster. She loved the movie Simon Birch when she was a kid, and was really interested in his work.

The hall was packed. So packed, in fact, that Lan Samantha Chang had to get up and tell us that we were officially a fire code violation and all had to move to a bigger lecture hall in the business building. It was kind of funny to watch so many people elbowing and running over to the new venue to get a decent seat. Once we were there Samantha Chang said that it was great to see 500 people all walking down the street for something other than a Hawkeye football game.

Irving was an excellent reader. He chose a chapter from his soon to be released novel that took place in Iowa City in 1967. Coadster has always loved reading about the 1960's, so she was really intrigued. Then toward the end of the chapter, he described the block on Iowa Avenue right where we lived until Coadster was seven. She knew every place he described. It was fun to see her get so excited about a reading. The best part came when Coadster said, "This was really awesome. We should go to some more readings together." Oh yeah, I done bred myself a little nerd girl child, just like me.