Anyone Got a Spare Week?

I'm a bit self-centered. I suppose we're all a bit self-centered but my case of narcissistic behavior tends to crop up at times that make me look like an exceptional shit.

And here's today's example:

B's uncle, Gerald, has colon cancer. He was diagnosed in September and it's pretty bad. It's spread, the tumors can't be removed and he's undergoing chemotherapy every couple weeks in an effort to extend his life at least some. It's awful to see how cancer has ravaged him and all the while he's trying to be as upbeat as he can. Gerald truly is a calm, thoughtful man. He loves his books, he loves to listen to opera and symphonies and he likes his quiet life. So one would think that those of us who care about him would put him first, right?

I've failed that test.

Remember how a couple weeks ago I mentioned that I'm trying to knit a cowl for Gabi for Christmas? I've made some headway on it but I changed the pattern and as the cowl grows I can see it's likely going to be too...I dunno...ribby...to be a good cowl. It's a basketweave pattern that tends to draw in the fabric. It's hard to stay interested in a project that's probably not going to be completed so I've put it aside. In the meantime I've joined a knit-along group to make an advent calendar scarf. Instead of each day opening each little door of an advent calendar I will instead get a piece of the pattern for a lace scarf and by Christmas morning I should have a completed scarf. Actually what I will have is a lump of knitting that resembles a pile of limp noodles until I take the time to block it but that's beside the point. The point of the project is to knit the same thing each day that knitters all around the world are knitting, share our experience with it and take time out during the busy holiday season to be restful and still and creative. I figure that to keep up with the project it'll take me somewhere between two and three hours of knitting each day, which is pushing it for me finding free time.

I decided that I really want to work on this advent scarf and then search for a different lace cowl for Gabi and do it for her birthday in January. So that I'd be ready for the first part of the pattern to be given on December 1st I've found the proper needles in my gawdawful nest of circular needles, bought new yarn and have been giving myself a bit of a pep talk each day to convince myself that I can really get this project done by Christmas. I normally have to take long breaks during lace projects because of the frustration that can go along with a lace project. This time I want to plow through it without a pause.

Here's where my character flaw comes in.

Back on the day Gabi was dropping hints about me knitting a cowl for her she also thought that a pair of hand knit socks was just what Gerald needed. I agreed that he could definitely benefit from a pair, what with him losing weight like mad and him being unable to keep himself warm, and while I didn't promise anything, I decided that I'd knit him a pair. A few days later I remembered that I had a pair of socks already finished that should fit him (and Darling Mollie, we maybe need to discuss how I gave away your socks before I could make them to you). Gerald got the socks, they fit, he loves them and I understand he has trouble letting them go long enough for them to be washed.

Tonight Gabi called and again raved about how Gerald loves the socks I knit. They're just the right weight, they're warm, they're comfortable and so on. I love that Gerald loves his socks. It makes me happy that he's got something going right for him during these weeks of a shitload of things going wrong. And if I'd been even sort of perceptive I'd have known that he'd want another pair of socks and I'd have already started them.

I'm not that perceptive.

Gabi has begged for another pair of socks for Gerald. And there's no question that I'll knit them for him. But December 1st - the date my knit along starts - is a week away and under normal circumstances I can only get one sock knit in one week. The selfish side of me is hollering loudly that it's not fair that I have to crank out a pair of socks before I can finally knit something for me. The sane side of me is saying "Shut up. Do you have cancer? No? Then shut up. Just be sweet for someone who's suffering".

If I don't have the socks finished by December 1st I have a few choices. A. I can knit both the socks and each day's piece of the scarf all at the same time and likely become a snarling bitch or B. I can finish the socks and then start the scarf late and perhaps knit two days worth of pattern pieces each day until I'm caught up or C. skip days of the scarf pattern...it's supposed to be possible that a day's pattern can be easily left out or D. knit like a house a-fire and get these socks finished by December 1st.

I think option D has potential. The socks are simple - it's just straight stockinette stitch. No cables, no lace, no textured pattern. I can give up some spare-time activities like reading and knit every spare moment I have until they're finished. I'm a pretty slow knitter and so getting a pair of socks finished in a week will be one of the biggest knitting challenges I've given myself but maybe a good challenge is what I need.

So how about y'all cheering me on? I'll knit these socks, give y'all updates here and if I'm lagging you can give me a virtual nudge forward. Anything will help. The real advantage is that the sooner they're finished the sooner Gerald can have them because let's face it - he needs all the things he can enjoy that he can get. And I need all the lessons in putting others first that I can get.

Friday Shuffle - Honesty Can Be Brutal Edition

One of the best things about a friendship is that you build a bond of trust. When you feel close with someone you feel as if you can trust them with a very important question: "Do you like it?". Your friend can mean "Do you like this dress?" or "Do you like this wine?" or "Do you like my new haircut?" or "Do you like this cake?". I'd like to believe that for the most part our friends give us an honest answer when we ask that question. They'll let us know if the cut of that dress doesn't flatter our figure but sometimes they won't. Sometimes they just don't have the heart to say your new haircut makes you look like a yeti or that the maple walnut cake you baked tastes like something you scraped off your shoe.

Now one would think that when it comes to family one would have even more freedom to be absolutely honest because, after all, they're family and you're stuck with each other but that's not always the case. Sometimes you can't find it in your heart to say to your sibling or your mother that what they like is, to you, a complete horror and that's when you've got to start getting creative. Or start lying like a rug.

This is the new wallpaper my MIL has put up in her livingroom:



Yeah, I know it's got fold lines in it. She had brought over this sample last weekend and it had been folded up in her purse. Still, I don't believe the fold lines detract from the shiny, peachy-colored background and the raised, poop brown pattern. My MIL brought it over last weekend so she could show it to B and she said "Do you like it?". I kept saying "Oh! Wow!". B was more non-committal and would only grunt "Hmmm!". My MIL didn't seem to really notice our lack of enthusiasm but did say that I would need to get a picture of it the next time I was over at her place so B could see the full effect on the walls.

I did have to go over there the other day to fetch something and unfortunately I forgot my camera so I can't show you the aforementioned "full effect" but let me just say this. Ho-lee-shit. I can't begin to describe what a horror this wallpaper is. First, my MIL's living room is fairly small and it is stuffed full of furniture. A huge cabinet that covers an entire sixteen foot long wall save for about six inches on each side. A three seater sofa and two large upholstered chairs. An enormous aquarium. A sideboard that covers most of an four foot long wall. I reckon my MIL and Gerd (and I'm blaming this all on him) didn't feel hemmed in enough and thought that slapping up that wallpaper would give visitors a more cozy feeling - that is if being in an MRI machine is your idea of cozy. I've been in that room a jillion times but this time it felt like the walls were going to move in and squeeze me to death before the visit was over.

And naturally my MIL wanted to know how I liked it. Being completely honest and saying "Are you kidding? It's awful! Tackiest thing I've ever seen. This room looks like a combination of a tunnel and the waiting area in a bordello!" was out of the question but saying "Ohhh! Nice! Very nice!" was equally out of the question so it was time to get creative. At first I said "Wow! It's something, isn't it? Very impressive!" and then when she kept on about how nice this wallpaper was I switched to saying "It's certainly unique!" and finally had to start giving the truth a beating by saying "It really is elegant!"

My claustrophobia was starting to kick in so I grabbed what I came to get in the first place and got out of there before I had to start complimenting the great job Gerd did with hanging the wallpaper. He didn't. He left the old wallpaper up - textured wall paper - and you can see the texture through the new stuff. Any non-offensive comments I might make about his handiwork would be out-and-out lies. I gotta draw the line somewhere.

Time to shuffle.

1. Oh No - Andrew Bird
2. Problems - Alter Me
3. My Way - The Sex Pistols
4. My Girls - Animal Collective
5. Standing On The Moon - Grateful Dead (Can we just pause here a moment to marvel at the fact that a Grateful Dead song is on my iPod?! I have three of them now, as a matter of fact. The impossible may not be impossible after all!)
6. Books From Boxes - Maximo Park
7. That Certain Party - Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis
8. Itchycoo Park - The Small Faces
9. Dance With Somebody - Mando Diao
10. Goodnight (I'm So Sorry) - Christopher Jak
    

Friday Shuffle - Panic Button Edition

My oldest brother is a smart man. Well educated. He has a master's degree from Duke University and has a PhD from USC. He teaches children with learning disabilities. So can someone tell me why he can't seem to get that California and Germany are in different time zones? Vastly different time zones? That there is a nine hour time difference between them?

I was deeply asleep and in the midst of a dream involving my sister, buying a car and a soccer game when the phone rang. Two of them actually - the extension that sits in the hallway by the front door and shrieks as loud as a tea kettle and the one in the living room which ain't no slouch either when it comes to waking one from a dead sleep. My legs were wound up in the duvet so by the time I untangled them and had dashed into the living room, the fourth ring was starting up and then abruptly stopped before I could snatch up the receiver.

It's been my general experience that anyone who calls at 3:30am isn't calling to chat. They're calling because they're in trouble or because they have bad news to report. Being awakened by the phone ringing had stirred me up quite well but when adding in that it was the middle of the night and that whoever it was hung up before I could reach it had me on the verge of a shit hemorrhage panic.

Our cordless phone has a feature that shows the number of who is calling so I checked to see if it stored the number of my phantom caller. Unfortunately I can't remember which direction you press the scroll button to start at the last call so I couldn't tell if the caller was our friend, Kirsten, or my brother, Bill. The likelihood of it being Kirsten seemed pretty remote - even if someone had died I couldn't imagine Kirsten calling before morning. Now it would be possible, I suppose, for my brother to call with bad news but it seemed more likely that he would call my sister first and then she would be the bearer of bad tidings.

By now I was wide awake and my nerves were jangling from the fright so I called my sister. You may wonder why I didn't just call my brother back and the reason for that seemed very logical to me at the time. I was pretty sure that the number recorded on my phone was Bill's but I wasn't completely sure. Bill moved from Los Angeles to Berkeley a few months ago but the phone number had an 818 area code - an area code in the LA area. It could have been the phone number for his cell phone that didn't get changed but then again maybe it was someone else who lives in LA who has my phone number but was calling from 818. I don't know anyone else in the LA area who lives in 818 but at the time my though processes were a bit hampered. I also wanted to speak with my sister because if Bill had bad new for me, I would rather hear it from her than from him and I know for a fact that if there was tragic news, he would have called her before calling me. In our family, extended family included, if there's bad news to be told, the first person you tell is my sister.

So I called my sister and when she answered there was an enormous amount of static on the line so I only had time to say "It's me. This line is bad. Hang up and I'll call you back". Of course I wasn't thinking of the effect my calling at that time of night would have on her. I rang her back immediately and her first question after answering was "What is it? What's happened?". I'm sure she was expected terrible, tragic news and was likely a bit surprised when I answered "Is Bill's cell phone number 818-blah-blahblah?". She told me she would have to look it up in her cell phone to check (and by the way, I could have looked it up on my cell phone had I even a glimmer of a logical thought in my head) and while she looked she said "What is going on anyway? Why are you calling in the middle of the night? You've scared the hell out of me!". I went on to explain about the phone ringing and me not catching it in time and me seeing what was perhaps Bill's cell phone number on my phone and me wanting any sort of bad news from her and not him and by the was nothing was wrong, was there? Sister replied that everything was fine as far as she knew and she couldn't imagine Bill calling me with bad news before calling her and yes, that number is Bill's cell phone number and you know Bill. He probably got the notion to call you and didn't even think about there being a nine hour time difference until the phone rang and then he hurried up and hung up not thinking that a call like that in the middle of the night was bound to scare the shit out of you.

Now that both of us were nervous wrecks we said goodnight to each other and I told her I'd call her over the weekend and at a normal hour. I reassured B that everything was fine and crawled back into bed, completely wound up and completely unable to fall asleep. In order to get my mind off my fright and off of wanting to brain my brother for scaring me and, in turn, scaring my sister, I grabbed Fletcher the iPod and listened to a couple podcasts from HowStuffWorks.com. I'm a little sleep deprived but am more knowledgeable about vikings and comas than I was before I went to bed.

Time to shuffle.

1. Rain - The Beatles
2. Seminole Wind - James Taylor
3. Hey Now - Tenfold Loadstar
4. No Myth - Michael Penn
5. Far Behind - Candlebox
6. Chinese Dogs - Dirty Pretty Things
7. Je Cherche Un Homme - Eartha Kitt
8. Tonight - Shooting Star
9. In The Heartland - Michael Stanley Band
10. Passionate Kisses - Mary-Chapin Carpenter
    

All Grown Now

Twenty-five years ago today my brother's oldest son was born. I remember my mother calling me at work to say that he'd been born just a few minutes before and that after supper we'd troop down to the hospital to see him for the first time. I was so excited to finally have a little nephew and I spoiled him as much as my brother would allow.

John was an adorable baby. Fun to play with and such a sweet natured little guy. My father, who was not always the most emotionally available guy in the world, was crazy for him. He was crazy for his other two grandsons who were born when he was still alive, but the relationship he had with John was special. The worst punishment that John could get was for my father to be cross with him for any reason. Having his granddad disappointed in him for any reason upset him no end.

John is the reason I believe that our behavior and mannerisms are more directed by genetics than by environment - at least in his case - because John acts just like my father in so many ways. He was only eight years old when my father passed away and still he has so many of his traits. John is quiet and reserved and has an air of determination about him. Not a bit idle or flighty or vague in his intentions. His mannerisms and way of speaking are just like my daddy's. He's very devoted to his family. Honor and integrity mean a great deal to him and like his grandfather John joined the US Navy. While my father went into engineering and worked on submarines for most of his career, John is a corpsman and is attached to a Marine platoon. And just like his grandfather, John's service to his country is important to him and he does his duty unfailingly, espeically when his skills were put to the test while he was on a tour in Iraq. And he's so handsome. That sort of handsome that makes women turn their heads when he walks by but like his grandfather, he doesn't pay it a bit of attention.

There's a lot of things about the relationship I had with my dad that I wish I could have changed. There were things about my dad that I wish were different. I hated the way he was sometimes and I wish I could have expressed to him how much I wanted to understand him better. But no matter how much my relationship with him was a failure in some ways - failures that were both my fault and his - I'm so grateful that he had a great relationship with John. I think those early years of John's life was spent with my dad when he was, well, perhaps not his best but at a time when his worst years were behind him have helped make John a wonderful young man.

Happy birthday, John. Your Auntie Baba is very proud of you.

Not That I'm Obsessed

I first read it 1975 but I don't really remember my initial reaction to it except to say that I liked it. Then in 1978 I read it again and loved it. I wasn't like the main character but I understood him. His sarcasm, his wit and even his feelings of disconnect resonated with me. I was a bit unfocused myself at that age, easily frustrated and easily bored in school.

The next year I read it again. And the following year as well. After that it became a tradition for me. When the Christmas season would roll around - that time of year chosen because it's the time of year in the book - I would pick that novel up once more and read it.

This year will mark the thirtieth year in a row that I've read The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger. The book I have now is not the same copy I originally read, but it's about twenty years old and is well worn. The cover is cracked and has a water ring on it from a glass having been set on it and the pages are yellow and threaten to fall out at any time.





Yeah, I know I should fix the photos and make it fit all tidy but laziness will win out.

Now it takes me not more than a day to read. Holden's sarcasm and goofy observations still make me laugh. The things that drive him crazy tend to be things that drive me crazy. And I can still remember what it was like to be his age and feel like everything around me was pointless bullshit and the world was crawling with phonies.

I think the reason why I first loved it and why I still loved it is because I first discovered it as a teenager. I believe it's probably rare for an adult to read it for the first time and find Holden to be anything else but irritating. But I still see him as I did when I was a teenager and maybe the reason I re-read his tale every year is to remember how I was back then. To remember how I was and in what ways I've changed. And in what ways I haven't. I know that some of my ways of speaking come from Holden.

My sixteen year old nephew, Sam, called me a few weeks ago to tell me that this quarter one of the books he had to read was The Catcher in the Rye. Sam's known for years that one of his Auntie Baba's quirks (I am never called Aunt Kim or Aunt Dixie - always Auntie Baba) is to read that book each year and he was anxious to tell me that he'd finally read it himself. I was gratified to know that he liked the same parts I like and laughed at the same spots that I do but I wasn't surprised. My sister always says that he takes after me so much that it's like having me around all the time.

Best Two Out of Three

B needs a new push wheelchair. He's got one but it's ancient. I've lived here for nearly eleven years and it had a couple years age on it when I moved here. And B hates it. He's very tall - nearly 6'4" and there's an extended part on the back to make it taller. Unfortunately it also digs into his shoulder blades and he can't sit in the chair for more than a half hour.

Most of the time he doesn't use a push chair - he's got a big electric monstrosity but since it's a big electric monstrosity it doesn't go into tight places with any ease so having a smaller push chair for those times would be nice.

A guy from the medical supply place came by to talk with us and measure B and find out what he needs in a push chair. And there was a very nice one - it's all padded nicely and it would fit his long frame and there's a headrest for him (B's neck muscles are very weak and he has a hard time holding his head upright without support) and it looked very good until the guy told us it's not collapsible. Well crap. It's a nice chair but it would take up a lot of room in our small apartment if I can't collapse it. It may fit in our basement storage area but that's not likely. My basement storage isn't full but putting the wheelchair in it would make it very full and leave me no other storage.

There was another chair that B could fit in but it's not much different than what he's got now which rather defeats the purpose. The guy left and said he'd do more research in his office to see if anything else that would suit would be available and he'd give us a call. In the meantime we have to discuss whether he would even use this chair enough to offset its inconvenient storage or if we could even come up with a suitable storage area. And if he probably wouldn't use it all that much, why go to all the trouble of making place for it? Then again, if it were very comfortable and easy to use then perhaps he'd use it more and it would make the storage problem worthwhile.

Unfortunately if you have a handicapped loved one who needs special equipment you're not always left with a lot of choices. Equipment for use by the handicapped is a specialized thing. It's geared towards a group with not all that many people in it so it doesn't make good business sense to make a huge variety of things that only a small population will use. And if you've got a double concern like B does - quadriplegic and very tall - you've got even less choices.

We'll talk about it over the weekend and see if we can come up with a solution to the storage problem or just take the chance that the other wheelchair that's collapsible won't be such a literal pain in the neck to use. When all is said and done we may just have to employ our emergency decision making system: flipping a coin. We'll decide on which wheelchair my husband will use by relying on the same method of making up our minds that we use when we can't decide whether to order Chinese or Italian food for delivery.

Coming Full Circle

I have a headache. I'm seriously about to throw up. It's almost exactly like the feeling I get when I contemplate the universe and how vast it is and how we're just an insignificant speck compared to the enormity of it all. My tiny brain can barely grasp how far I've reached back and it fairly nauseates me.

Yesterday I was poking around online and found myself on a genealogy website. When my father was living he worked on some genealogy stuff tracing his roots through his...wait...let me think about this. His father's father's mother's father - who, incidentally, is buried in the same cemetery as my father. It was interesting. I found a census from 1850 showing Levi W. Beene and his first wife, Rachael Walden. They had a daughter named Martha Elizabeth who was my father's grandmother. It was things I'd already heard from my father's research into the Beene line of the family but seeing it again in print impressed me all over again.

I then noticed that one can look at family trees that people have already been working on and I took the chance that one of my cousins had started one. Now let me say that I barely know my first cousins on my father's side and know their children and grandchildren...well...not at all. My poor grandmother started having kids (at least according to the census forms I saw!) when she was 17 and she had her last child when she was 41 and she died in the process. Anyway, my father was way, way younger than his older siblings and so many of my first cousins are as old or are older than my own parents and so I very, very seldom ever saw them - and even then I was very young. I don't know these people from Adam's off ox but evidently some distant cousin made this family tree tracing back from one of my father's sisters.

This guy evidently did a lot of work on it because, going through that Beene limb of the tree I could trace back to ancestors living in Virginia in the early 1700s. Then I looked at my grandmother's side of the family and traced through her father. I had no idea it would go on and on and on the way it did. I could trace back through my grandmother's maiden name of Gann five generations until the information ran out but then I could go on further picking up with the woman, Amelia - born in 1729, who married Johannes Gann (who was born in France in 1696). I could go back through Amelia's father a couple generations and then when it ran out, I could pick up with her grandmother who was born in 1669. And it still kept going. Generation after generation rolled by until it finally reached the last name - Hennectin Kressetman born in 1384.

And where were all these generations living? All these distant ancestors of mine? Pfungstadt, Germany.

Holy smokes! I'm not just German in name only after all!

I have no idea if this information is correct. I have no idea how the information was gathered and I can't tell if it's accurate or not. But it's still fascinating to me. To see name after name roll by me. Seeing when they were born and in some cases, what year they died. And to think that in some tiny way, I am part of them. Or they are part of me. Nearly 600 years separates my birth from Hennectin Kressetman's and yet, if this family tree is correct, we're still bonded by the thinnest line.

And here I am - back in Germany. It's like returning to the mother ship.

Sharing the Good Stuff

Many Southern women claim that they learned to cook at the feet of their mothers and grandmothers. In a sense that's true for me as well - my mother taught me a great deal about cooking - but her knowledge did not come from her own mother. In a round about way it came from my paternal grandmother - the one who died in 1931 a few months before my mother was born.

My maternal grandmother was not a great cook. She wasn't terrible but cooking wasn't one of her talents. My mother readily attests to this. I remember her being pretty good with baking pies and cakes and she was pretty good with canning but as for regular meals, she just didn't have it. I haven't eaten anything cooked by my grandmother since - well, probably since I was in college - and I remember her cooking always being sort of mushy and somehow never tasting quite right. When we visited my grandparents I mostly remember my grandmother doing prep work but the real cooking was done by my mother and her sisters. At the time I'm sure I thought it was just them pitching in to help but now I think it was their way of making sure my grandmother didn't make anything funky tasting. It's not her fault though. My grandmother was six years old when her mother died and she evidently just didn't have anyone to really show her the Southern cooking ropes.

When my mother married my father she wasn't much of a cook either and so she ended up learning to cook from one of my father's much-older sisters, Irene. My paternal grandmother died when she gave birth to my Aunt Cora and since Irene was nearly grown she and one of the other older sisters helped raise both my father and Aunt Cora. Aunt Irene claimed that my grandmother was a fabulous cook and she learned from her and then passed it on to my mother and Aunt Cora and Aunt Irene's daughter, Wanda. It's no wonder that to me their cooking tasted an awful lot alike, although I have to say Aunt Cora could always beat my mother at baking biscuits.

What I love about families is the tradition of teaching younger generations how to cook and sharing recipes. Some of my favorite recipes are ones that came from my mother or my aunts or cousins. I learned some of my Southern cooking skills from Southern Living and church cookbooks but the best ones are the ones passed down to me from my kin and now I'll pass one on to you. This is the recipe for my cousin Wanda's chocolate meringue pie. Everyone in my family loves Wanda's chocolate pie. We all love her chocolate pie so much that when we speak of her we always say "She made the best chocolate pie!".

Ingredients:

2 cups milk
3 eggs, separated
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter

Warm milk in a saucepan. Combine dry ingredients in bowl. Add enough of the warm milk to the dry ingredients to moisten them and pour all back into saucepan with rest of milk and stir well (I like to use a wire whisk). Heat mixture until begins to thicken. Add some of the hot mixture to egg yolks and stir well. Pour yolk mixture into saucepan mixture and cook until becomes a pudding consistency. Add butter and vanilla and stir. Pour into a browned pie shell and cover with meringue (Click here if you need to know how to make meringue) . Bake at 400°F until meringue is golden. Let cool completely before serving.

As much as our family loves Wanda's chocolate pie, this pie has been the cause of some family strife. Once my sister made a chocolate pie and she, my BIL and my nephew ate about half of it. The next day she had a horrible day at work and she couldn't wait to get home because she knew a piece of Wanda's glorious chocolate pie would improve her dark mood. Sister arrived home to see my BIL eating the last piece of the chocolate pie. My brother had come by earlier and ate about half of the leftovers and my BIL went ahead and polished off the rest. Bad move because a cranky woman cheated out of chocolate pie is a formidable foe. She freaked out for hours over it. About six months later when my sister and BIL were in Germany visiting me my BIL inadvertently mentioned the chocolate pie incident and she went into orbit all over again as if it has just happened. But it's cured my BIL for good. If it were to save his life, he still wouldn't take the last piece of chocolate pie without express permission from Sister.

Enjoy. And share the last piece with your family.

Another Sleepy, Dusty Delta Day

I'm not in the Mississippi Delta but I can pretty well guarantee as a Mississippian that if it's the third of June, it's probably sleepy and dusty there.

And even though I'm not in the Delta it's pretty dusty here as well. And sleepy. Sleepy because it's so damn hot here that I have to sleep with the windows open or else melt into a puddle of goo (Today's trivia: My husband hates the word "goo".) and that means being awakened before dawn by the loudest songbirds in creation and every jackass who thinks that it's still okay to drive by apartment buildings and honk his car horn at 4:30am, not to mention the all the delivery trucks unloading to the stores that sit in front of my building. I'm guessing that me screaming down from my open window "Shut the hell up - I'm sleeping!!" will not work on any of my little noisemakers.

So anyway it's been hot here - my thermometer told me it was 91°F on my balcony this afternoon - and that's been keeping me off the computer. It's simply too hot to use it. My wrists get all hot and hot wrists on a hot day make for one cranky peach. I should go down to the basement and get my fan out of the storage area but, frankly, the basement freaks me out a little and I don't like to go down there alone. It's clean and I've never seen a spider or mouse or anything else creepy down there but it's like a maze of hallways and I'm always half afraid that when I turn a corner I'm going to see some grisly image, a la the chopped up twins in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Therefore, instead of seeking out some relief from sweating, I've been spending my days remaining in the shade as much as possible, drinking copious amounts of water (Note to German readers: hohes C Naturelle in the Apfel-Zitrone flavor is so tasty and refreshing and at 23 calories per 100ml, you'll be as big as a house if you drink a lot of it all summer), and getting caught up on my knitting. I finished these bad boys over the weekend:



and started these as well, after spending about two hours picking apart the tangles I managed to get in the hank winding the yarn into two as-near-as-possible equal-sized balls.



Knitting pattern and particulars in case an actual knitter comes by to read (the rest of you may skip on to the next section):

First pair -
Pattern: Scrolls by Charlene Schurch from the book More Sensational Knitted Socks
Yarn: Schachenmayr nomotta Bambino

Second pair -
Pattern: Froot Loop by Kristi Geraci
Yarn: Dyeabolical Yarns Alter Ego Merino Sock Yarn (fab yarn...and it was a gift from Robin!)

Else things have been rather run-of-the-mill around here. My cell phone (who I have now named Babette) got better. I got in touch with Amazon.de, where I bought the phone, to say that the battery won't stay charged for more than about twenty hours and they emailed me back to get some information from me and I'm waiting to hear back if they want me to send the phone back to them or if they're just going to send me a battery. Evidently though the idea of leaving me scared the hell out of Babette and after giving her one last chance to hold a charge she's been working like a champ. I'm about thirty-six hours into a charge and she's still about 3/4 full. Now I'm afraid that Amazon is going to tell me to send back my phone for repair and I'm going to have to say "Oh...well...she got better.". And then I'm going to have to explain why I refer to her as a her.

I got a very amusing card from my younger niece to thank me for the present I sent her for her sixteenth birthday and when I told my brother that she sent me a card (purposely done to let him know his daughter does have some manners) and to say how much I adore her he told me that out of all the people in the world, she reminds him most of me. I take that as a compliment because my niece is not only smart and sweet but is really adorable but then I stop myself. I personally think I'm turning into my mother and I want to say to my niece "You know how you act like me? I'm starting to act like Granny. Save yourself while you can.".

Time for another glass of water.

The All-Purpose Yes

B wanted a piece of chocolate sour cream cake.

"You want milk with that, right?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, you want a small glass or a big glass?"

"Oh you asked me if I wanted milk!"

"Uhhhh...yeah. What did you think I said?"

"I had no idea what you said."

"Then why did you answer 'yes' if you didn't know what I asked?"

"I didn't know what you said but it sounded like something I should say 'yes' to."

"Why didn't you just ask me to repeat what I said?"

"Honey, sometimes it's just easier to say 'yes' and not worry about details. It's hard to make a mistake with you if I just answer 'yes'."

I don't know whether to be overjoyed ("Sweetie, can we buy a new car?" "Yes!") or annoyed that sometimes, to him, I'm no more than running my mouth to hear my lips flap.

The Good Doctor

Our family doctor makes house calls. In fact she makes a house call to us every four or five weeks because B has to be routinely seen and have prescriptions written for his anti-spasm medication and his physical therapy. She's even made a house call to us on a Sunday that was also a holiday when she had a house full of guests because B was so sick with pneumonia. So having a doctor who is so dedicated to our care should mean I should let the following slide.

Dr. K came over today for her regular visit. She always comes over on Thursday afternoons and she always takes a break with us to have coffee and cake. While she's here she checks over B, does anything with me that needs to be done (I'm diabetic so her treating me at home means I skip going into her office) and also checks over my MIL. Three patients with one house call! Efficiency!

Today Dr. K breezed in and said "I'm all messed up today. I left the office without your patient cards!".

Messed up indeed. That meant no prescriptions could be written. And the stuff she needs to take my blood for it's quarterly check was with my card so that got left behind as well. Today's visit pretty much consisted of giving B a look-see, taking our blood pressure and sitting down for a cup of coffee and a piece of my MIL's homemade plum cake.

Now I wasn't mad about this even though this means my MIL needs to go by her office to pick up our prescriptions and I have to get up early, early, early one day next week to go in to her office to have my blood taken before the lab comes by for its pick-up. I was going to have to go by her office anyway because I need a flu shot before I leave for the US. I'm not getting on any plane without first having a flu shot. I wasn't mad or irritated - I was actually sort of...sad. That sad feeling you get when someone forgets you. And it was silly to feel that way because I know how crazy busy Dr. K is. She has a huge practice with lots and lots of old patients and she sees dozens upon dozens upon dozens of patients a day. It's one of the reasons we always serve her coffee and cake when she's here - it's one of the only breaks she gets. Her forgetting to pack our patient cards is completely understandable. But it still bummed me out a little. I seem to have left-out-and-forgotten issues.

During our coffee and cake Dr. K was telling us about how over the past weekend she went through her patient files and purged files for patients who had moved or died or hadn't been in to see her in ten years. She said she had a ton of files and it felt good to purge herself of all those files that were only taking up space. That is until she came across the patient file for B's father. B's dad passed away twelve years ago so he would definitely fall into the category of patients who should be purged. But when she found the file she couldn't do it. She just tucked him back in the drawer next to B and his mom and me. She said she just couldn't take him away from us and wanted to keep something of his by which to remember him.

I stopped feeling left out and forgotten.

Just Watch It, Fella

Let me start off by saying that I'm sure I'm making too much of this and I'm likely reading more into the situation than it warrants. But you know if I'm going to get carried away I may as well go for a long ride.

I'm starting to get to the point where I'm getting anxious about my trip and it's more than just the latest thwarted terror activity. I'm at the point where I get concerned about how B will be taken care of while I'm gone.

I've said before that I'm quite territorial and that territory extends to B's care. I'm in charge of it, I do virtually all of it and I take full responsibility for any good or bad results. Since I took over his care he's been very sick a couple times but the last time was six years ago and he hasn't had a pressure sore in nearly ten years. I do a very good job, if I do say so myself.

While I'm gone my MIL will take care of B. She was the one who cared for B before I ever came along but she also had the help of B's dad, who has since passed away, and she hasn't had to do it full time since the last time I went home for a visit three years ago. She's also getting older and that plays a part since taking care of B can be physically demanding. However Gerd, her gentleman friend, will be around to help her out. And luckily Gerd has care giving experience. His late wife had Parkinson's and later due to a Parkinson's induced fall she was a quadriplegic. And while everyone with a spinal cord injury is different it should all be at least somewhat familiar to him. I'm sure he's going to be a great help to my MIL while she takes care of B and this should all give me some peace of mind.

But there's one little niggling thing.

Tonight B's mom called us to check in and chat and she was talking about some mutual friends who came to visit her and Gerd and have supper tonight. She made a variety of salads and cheese soup for supper. In the background we could hear Gerd going on about how great this soup is and how much B would enjoy it, blah, blah, blah. Okay - except for the fact that B doesn't like cheese soups or sauces. He won't eat cream sauces. I couldn't get him to eat macaroni and cheese if it meant saving his life. He doesn't like any white sauces, with or without cheese, with the exception of Hollandaise.

B said "Oh I wouldn't like that soup." and Gerd asked why not. B replied that he doesn't like white sauces and Gerd replied "Well when your wife's gone your mom can cook some of that cheese soup and I'll make you eat it.". B and I looked at one another with expressions that said "Wrong answer.". I know Gerd was just kidding around. I mean I feel like I know he was anyway. But still, that statement grates on my nerves.

Those who are handicapped are dependent on those who care for them. They're completely vulnerable to their caregivers. We can exercise complete control over them. There's a bond of trust that's built between a caregiver and the person for whom they care and it's one that shouldn't be abused. I don't even like joking about its abuse. To say, even as a joke, that B will be made to do anything, especially eat something he finds repulsive, bothers me a lot.

But I have to let this irritation go, else I can't make this trip. If I can't trust someone to come into my precious territory and care for B for 2 1/2 weeks then I simply have to stay home. I have to have faith that my MIL can handle, with Gerd's help, taking care of B. I know that our family physician is available at any time should B become ill in any way and I could be back home in about 24 hours if there were an emergency. I have to know that my MIL will keep B's interests in mind and her loyalties will be first with her son. I have to have faith that B will be the strong, willful person he is now and won't allow himself to be pushed around or neglected or abused by anyone.

I like Gerd and all. I think he's a very nice man and he makes my MIL very happy. I think he would do all he could to take proper care of B. I have to have faith in it. And Gerd better have faith in the fact that if I find out he's put one foot wrong and has compromised B's trust or care in any way, I'll plant my foot up his ass so far he'll think Birkenstock started making hats.

When we hung up the phone tonight B said "Gerd says something like that to me again, I'm gonna tell him to roll me over and kiss my ass.". That's my guy. Don't go down without a fight.

Brother and Sisters

I'd like to express my gratitude to all of you for your kind good wishes and prayers for my brother. I called my mother yesterday evening to see if she'd received any word from him but at that time she'd not heard from him. My sister happened to be there with my mom and when I spoke with her she said she'd left voice mail at his home and on his cell phone and on my oldest nephew's cell but as of then hadn't heard back from them.

I took it that no news was good news. At least he'd made it through surgery safely.

Today I received email from my sister say that she'd spoke with our brother. He was back home and one of his buddies was with him. My brother is divorced and three of his kids live in Ohio and the other, my oldest nephew, is in the Navy and is currently stationed in Twentynine Palms, CA getting ready to ship off to Iraq in a few weeks. We were hoping he could get a few days away to go back up to Los Angeles and spend some time with his dad. Sister didn't tell me if that request had been granted.

Anyway, the surgery was successful but unfortunately it was more than had been initially expected. The tumor was in the left testicle and that was removed but the ultrasound showed some areas of concern in the right. It turns out it was cancer as well so unfortunately both testicles had to be removed. Any further treatment hasn't yet been determined until they do the histology. And now is when I'm beginning to get scared. I worry that the cancer was in both testicles and it means that it has spread to the lymph nodes.

But whatever it is already is so worrying is pointless. Instead of wishing that it's not what it already may be I need to focus on being supportive of my brother and praying that any further treatment he may need be successful. I want him to defeat cancer.

I suppose it's a sign that I've been in Germany a long time but I was absolutely shocked to hear that my brother was back home the day after surgery to remove both of his testicles due to cancer. I had my ovaries removed four years ago due to large benign tumors and I was hospitalized for two weeks. I understand removing my ovaries was a lot more invasive than the sort of surgery my brother had but damn! As he rolled through did they ask him if he wanted fries with that?

My sister said that Brother felt okay but was tired and was sleeping a lot. And he sounded good too so that was nice to hear. She offered to come out to Los Angeles to be with him but he declined and said everything was under control but I imagine if he needs her he'll ask for her.

I hate being so far away and feeling helpless. I hate that there are still so many unknowns in the situation and that unwanted answers can be very dire indeed. But it costs just as much to be positive as to be negative so I'm putting on a brave face and I'm spending my time educating myself to the possibilities and what courses of action are offered. If there's anything worse than being worried it's being ignorant and worried.

Again, thank you for your kind words and support. They're very helpful at a time like this. Knowing that I'm not alone as this situation unfolds means a lot.

And Mr. Gallbladder Attack seems to have hit the road for a while. If he can just leave me be until I can get back from my trip I'll see about having my gallbladder removed. And I guarantee you I'll spend more time in the hospital having a simple gallbladder removal than my brother did to have his jewels snatched.

It just doesn't seem right.

Don't Look My Way

My fifty-one-year-old brother found out late last week that he has cancer. Testicular cancer.

This was not the news I was expecting to receive when my brother called me last night. I'd been out picking up my MIL at a friend's house and missed his call. He sounded perfectly normal on the voice mail message he left and I assumed he just called to check in and see what was new with us. I'd spoken to my mother on Friday and she'd mentioned that he had told her that he wanted to come with my niece to visit us next summer. I told my mom that I was thrilled with the idea of him coming to visit and I assumed she'd relayed that message and it had inspired him to give me a call.

If I had to predict the topics of conversation in which we'd engage when I called him back, him telling me that he's going for surgery on Tuesday to have his testicle removed would not have made the top ten. It wouldn't have made the top ten thousand.

Brother gave me the news and I didn't know what to do with it. Of course I'm concerned but even though a day has passed since he told me I still am not quite sure what to do with the information. Being worried and scared seems pointless and unhelpful. I asked him questions but he doesn't know what's going to happen past surgery because that's when they'll be able to determine whether the cancer has spread. He doesn't feel sick - all he can say is that he can feel the tumor and he likens it to having a stone in your shoe. It's irritating but not terribly painful. I asked him questions and told him I'm praying for an excellent outcome to his surgery and that I love him. I said I'd keep in touch with our mother to find out the latest. And then we talked about him and my niece coming to visit. Hard news delivered, looked at and put aside. Now we'll talk about normal things because moving forward is what we do best.

My brother is not the first person I know who has had cancer. I've had friends who have been diagnosed with cancer and some of them have since passed away from it. A cousin died from breast cancer. Both of my maternal grandparents died from cancer. And still I felt a detachment from the disease. Cancer was something that I could liken to a distant acquaintance - maybe my face seemed familiar but it didn't know my name. It feels a little different now.

His Descent Into Hell

Raise your hand if you hate going to the dentist!

I'm betting that if you didn't raise your hand, the person reading this just before or just after you did. As for me, while I don't relish a visit to the dentist, I don't really hate it either. I've had a lot of dental work done over the past 30 years and all the teeth I've had capped, crowned, root canaled, filled or just plain pulled out haven't made me fear the dentist.

My husband, on the other hand, is terrified of the dentist. His teeth aren't all that bad but if he'd not spent so many years actively avoiding the dentist they'd be much nicer. When I first moved to Germany - probably 4 or 5 months after arriving - B went to the dentist after I'd forced him into it. He had a tooth going bad and sure enough it had to be pulled. He had it done and never went back...and that was 9 years ago. I'd try to get him to go and usually he'd say "I will when the weather is warmer." and when it would be summer he'd put it off saying "I don't want to spend a day outside going to the dentist." When winter would roll around he'd claim it was too cold to go outside and he'd make an appointment when the weather got warmer.

This worked rather effectively until we moved. Now we live in the same building where three dentists are located. The apartments and the businesses, while being in the same building, have separate entrances so B does actually have to go outside to get to the office but since he would literally have to go about 6 feet unprotected from the elements his excuse to wait for perfect weather is gone. B knew it was only a matter of time before he would break down and make an appointment. Last week the appointment was made and he's been in a lather ever since. Constant worry and fright. "What if she wants to drill?" So she'll drill! "What if she won't give me a shot?" She'll give you a shot before drilling. "What if it still hurts?" Then tell her to stop drilling and give you another shot.

Honestly! This is the man who, after falling into a swimming pool in 1 meter of water, landing on his head and damaging his spinal cord at the C-5 level had doctors drilling screws directly into his skull with no anesthesia so they could rig up something to pull his spine straight. That he thinks wasn't so bad - except for the sound - but getting his teeth cleaned and checked was putting him on the verge of an anxiety attack.

But today was the fateful day. And I brought the camera. What? You didn't think I was going to miss recording for posterity this monumental event, did you? Who knows when it could happen again!



B in the waiting room. This is the face he made when I told him to relax a little bit. He actually looked more panicked before I told him to relax but I thought if I took a picture of him in full blown shit hemorrhage panic y'all might call the authorities on me and report me for torture.



Waiting for the dentist to arrive. Gerd and I got B out of his wheelchair and into the examination chair and I as I drove B's wheelchair back out into the hallway I impressed everyone with my mad wheelchair driving skillz.



"Hmmmm....I wonder if I can fling myself from the window and land in that fountain that's just below the window. Maybe not. I've had some problems in the past from bad landings in water."



The dentist gets to work.



"Hmmm....Herr G, you seem to have enough tartar on your teeth to rebuild the Berlin Wall. I may need to use a sandblaster. Or dynamite."



"Damn. I'm going to have to stand up to wrench this crap off his teeth!"

It was as this point that the sound of the instruments of torture tartar removing blaster thingy was beginning to wear on my nerves so I began reading the book I'd brought with me, lifting my eyes occasionally to check how B was doing. At first his eyes showed nothing but sheer terror but after a while he seemed to relax more and more.



"All finished! Can I now get a prize from the Treasure Chest?"

All around B did very well. And unfortunately he needs to make a few more trips back. He's got 7 or 8 cavities that need to be filled - only a few at a time can be done because he's unable to sit in that exam chair for more than maybe 45 minutes - and he's going to need to have a broken molar pulled. The dentist assured him that she would always give him Novocaine before any drilling or tooth yanking and that made him feel better. She did, however, get all that tartar build up removed and his teeth look so much better now.

And you know he's just so proud of himself for having done it. I'm proud of him too.

Blindsided

Sundays are our days to be lazy. We don't generally entertain visitors on Sundays and instead spend the afternoon watching movies and avoiding anything that might cause me to make movements greater than reaching for the remote control. So when B's mom called us at noontime and asked me to drive her to the cemetery so she could visit the grave of B's dad a monkey wrench was thrown into our plans to have no plans.

"And while we're gone, Gerd (her gentleman friend) can stay with B."

Hmmm. I don't like that. I am not fond of leaving B alone with someone other than his mom while I'm gone. I'm territorial. If I were a dog I would have peed in every corner of my apartment to mark my area.

Still I couldn't say no. It's the anniversary of the death of B's dad - hence my MIL wanting to go to the cemetery - and it seemed to be uncomfortable for Gerd to drive her there. She could get there with a streetcar but the area where B's dad is buried is waaay in the back of this huge cemetery - like a mile back - and she wasn't up for the walk.

B wasn't crazy about this plan either. He didn't want to stay alone with Gerd - we're just ridiculous like that - and it just seemed silly for Gerd to come over while my MIL and I were cemetery bound. If he didn't want to drive my MIL himself, why not just stay in her apartment with the dogs?

It's a mark of the closeness B and I share that we had the idea at the same time that the reason for Gerd to be here was that he wanted a chance to talk with B alone. About what? They're going to move in together! That must be it! Gerd wanted to have a man-to-man talk with B about it! Or they're talking about getting married! Living together is one thing, but getting married? No. Nuh uh. They don't need to get married. Living together can be seen as a practical step seeing as they're together all the time anyway but married? With this guy suddenly being able to get access to her money and make decisions in her absence? Nope. Noooo. Nonononono. And with the laws in Germany, he'd get half of her stuff at her death - half of her stuff? Not gonna happen on my watch. Plus they'd both lose their widow/widower pensions.

So we spent the 3 hours before they showed up in an absolute froth. Sunday afternoon bollocksed up and half of my MIL's stuff going to a guy who would end up passing that same stuff on to his kids - kids we don't know and who aren't very nice to Gerd in the first place. Let the grumbling and grousing begin.

In the meantime the Pink Ribbon sock I'm knitting? More fucked up than a soup sandwich. I, like an idiot, merely read the instructions in the pattern - I didn't read and think about them as well. If I'd read and thought about them I would have realized that the instructions for the heel turn on the size sock I was knitting makes a sock that would be great if someone's heel was 2 centimeters to the left of center. So now I have a lopsided heel and I proceeded to rip the heel back to before the turn. Couldn't get the needle back in. Ripped it back to halfway through the heel flap. Couldn't get the needle back in. Ripped it back to the start of the heel flap. Couldn't get the needle back in. Swore entirely too loud for it being a serene Sunday afternoon and ripped the entire sock apart. And then I took a deep breath, prayed for a moment of serenity and cast on for the fourth time. I think trying to knit the same sock four times is somehow a test. It's testing my patience or ability to follow through or my masochistic streak but it's a test all the same.

The lovebirds showed up and I settled Gerd in with a glass of mineral water, gave B a "Be strong!" look and left with my MIL. And when my MIL tried to find the back entrance to the cemetery - the end where the grave is - we got lost. Well, lost isn't right. I mean we knew what neighborhood we were in but couldn't find the right street. After a few U-turns and false starts down narrow streets we found the cemetery's back entrance and I sat in the car while my MIL made her visit. All the while as I waited in the car I could imagine the conversation going on back at my apartment.

"B, I adore your mother and I'd like to marry her. I'd like to have your blessing."

"Gerd, you're a nice man but I'm a practical man. Live in sin. You're not getting half of her stuff."

Upon our arrival back home I flew into the living room where I gave B the look that says "And?" and he gave me the look that says "And nothing. False alarm.". And it really was nothing. Our imaginations had run wild and there was no hidden agenda to this afternoon's events. My MIL really did simply want me to drive her to the cemetery and Gerd really did just want to have some buddy time with B.

But I still say the Pink Ribbon sock is testing me.

Fans

I think it's pretty well established to everyone that I am not a fan of especially hot weather but one thing I do like about it is sleeping with a fan running in the background. It's not just the cool breeze slipping over my skin that I love so much as the sound of it. A running fan has the ability to put me to sleep within minutes. Perhaps it's because many Southerners grow up with the sound of fans running all summer and over the generations our ability to be comforted by it is nearly genetic.

Fans really remind me of visiting my grandparents - my mother's parents. By the time I was six years old we only lived in houses that had central air conditioning so using fans was generally limited to those times when it wasn't quite hot enough to justify turning on the A/C. But my grandparents had A/C only as a window unit in the living room so electric fans were used throughout the rest of the house. It's seldom I turn on a fan that the sound doesn't instantly transport me back to the home of my grandparents.

Visits to my grandparents, generally lasting about two weeks, were something I'd look forward to and my enthusiasm for being there would last for maybe a day or two. Mostly because there simply wasn't much to do there. They lived in Woodruff County, Arkansas, otherwise known as The Middle of Nowhere. They didn't even live in town but instead lived in a 100+ year old house about 4 miles from town in a little community called Grays which was essentially a gravel road with some houses. Even as a child it used to amuse me no end to see the sign before their road that said "Grays - Pop. 25". I think the 25 the sign claimed was perhaps a little overly ambitious. At any rate they lived in a one story house with a modest front yard and a rather large piece of land out back that contained my grandmother's large vegetable garden and, until I was seven-years-old, an outhouse.

Knowing how I am with such things it's a wonder that I didn't simply cross my legs for two weeks instead of braving the outhouse but in reality I imagine I mostly availed myself of a chamber pot and have blocked out the actual memory.

While the floor plan of the house changed since the time my mother had lived there, I remember my grandparents' house like this: It was a brown clapboard affair with long, unshuttered windows. A porch ran the length of the house and the front door was at the far left end of the house. It opened directly into the living room - a somewhat cheerless room with a sofa, my grandfather's recliner and another two upholstered chairs. A table by the front door held the telephone and I remember that for many years it was an ancient black rotary dial affair with a receiver so heavy it could give one a concussion should one be clanged in the head with it.

A door separated the living room from my grandparents' bedroom which was in the dead center of the house. This was the largest room, dominated by their beds - two double beds with ancient felt mattresses and chenille bedspreads. I remember those mattresses being like rocks. I remember as a teenager turning those mattresses and nearly suffering a hernia on the strength of it. A long double window separated their beds and at one time this room had been the living room and those double windows were the front door. Two of the walls were decorated by large professional portraits of two of my mother's sisters, sporting the finest in early 1960s beehive hairdos. I thought they were beautiful. While my grandfather's chest-of-drawers was bare on top save a dresser scarf, my grandmother's dresser was topped with an ancient jewelry box, a silver backed brush and hand mirror and various school photos of her nineteen grandchildren, often tucked haphazardly into the edges of other framed photographs. Regardless of the time of day, that room always seemed terribly dark - the result of having the only windows in the room being those that were sheltered by the porch.

Two other doors lead from their bedroom. One led to the back of the house where the kitchen was at one end joined with a dining room and from that was a door to my great-grandfather's bedroom...at least until he died and then it was turned into a sort of storage room. A back door in the kitchen led to steep, rickety steps that led to the back yard under which my grandmother's collection of half wild cats slept. These cats were never allowed indoors, were never fed anything but table scraps and all the mice they could catch and were never played with by us children. They weren't fond of humans and picking them up insured one of a scratched face or arms. In 1969 an addition was built on the back of the house adding two rooms - a laundry room with an automatic washer and dryer replacing the wash house housing the ancient wringer washer and a bathroom which replaced the outhouse and having to bathe in the kitchen in a galvanized tub. It always seemed to me those two rooms leaned somewhat and I took my baths with slight concern that the bathroom would simply fall off the house one day.

The other door in my grandparents' bedroom led to the other bedroom of the house. Two double beds were in there, also with ancient mattresses that sagged in the middle. Two people in those beds would have to cling to the sides of the mattress for dear life to keep from rolling into one another. When I was very little I would often have to sleep in one bed with my mother and my sister and invariably I'd be in the middle which insured that I would not only be kicked by my sister but would be rolled upon by both.

The best part of the house, to me, was the front porch. At one end was a porch swing covered with at least twenty layers of white paint. Lawn chairs lined the porch from the swing to the front door for the use of anyone not lucky enough to land a spot on the swing and no rural Arkansas porch could really be complete without a tin Coca-Cola thermometer nailed to the wall. A couple wire handled fly swatters were also hung on a nail. Survival on that porch depended on one's ability to kills flies, mosquitoes and wasps with one blow and I became a crack shot at an early age.

The front yard was dominated by an enormous elm tree that in my younger days had a well-loved swing hanging from its branches. The ground underneath was sandy which was perfect for digging your toes in to get the swing to stop but playing in that ground was discouraged as occasionally cat crap could be found there.

Days on these visits went pretty much like this: We'd get up early but not nearly as early as my grandfather, who was already up, bathed and dressed, breakfasted and already had driven into town by the time we were awake. We'd play or read or do something to stay out of the kitchen while my grandmother and mother were cooking the noontime meal and my grandfather would arrive back home in time to nap for a half-hour, eat dinner, relax in his recliner and watch As the World Turns before driving back into town for the afternoon. These trips into town generally consisted of running errands and hanging out at the hardware store to bullshit with his cronies. Afternoons for us kids were not as much fun as the mornings as it was much hotter and we were growing bored with one another. Staying outdoors was encouraged and repeatedly coming inside to cool ourselves in front of the air conditioner was greeted with shouts from our mother to "stop fannin' that door...you're lettin' the air out!". There were no other kids around for us to play with - the average age in that community hovered between old and ancient - and we kids would grow bored with each other's company within a few days. My brothers often spent their time finding something disgusting or scary to throw on me in order to watch me scream and dance in fright.

If we were lucky then perhaps we could go into town with my mother in the afternoons while she grocery shopped at the Mad Butcher - a grocery store that had a rather weird logo of an insane looking meat cutter that laughed crazily in the TV commercials. Under normal circumstances it would be a trip we'd beg to get out of but grocery stores in another town always seemed more interesting. Plus vacation time was always a good time to try to con my mother into buying stuff she would normally avoid.

Evenings were the worst time on these visits. My grandfather went to bed not long after sunset and we were sharply reminded to be quiet lest we awaken him. Trips to the bathroom became like missions because one had to go past my sleeping grandfather to reach the back of the house where the toilet was located. We'd wait until all of us had to go or until peeing in one's pants became a distinct and very real danger. TV reception in the evenings could be iffy and one was never sure if one could clearly tune in a station coming from Little Rock or Memphis. Finally we'd give up and go to bed, always careful to wash our filthy feet before climbing into bed. It seems that no matter how clean we might be otherwise, our always bare feet looked as if we'd been wading through mud.

Tussling and grabbing for mattress real estate ensued and continued until finally the electric fan was turned on. It's soothing whoosh of air would caress our clammy skin and its sound, much like the ocean in a seashell, would fill our ears and lull us to sleep. I have always sworn that once asleep, I slept better at my grandparents' house than almost anywhere else I've laid my head.

The secret is the fan.

Archives

I had to spend a dull hour at with Aunt Annoying and Uncle Milquetoast yesterday to celebrate Uncle Milquetoast's birthday. An hour of Aunt Annoying announcing at least three times to everyone that I don't drink coffee and that she made a pot of tea especially for me.

Golly, Aunt Annoying. Perhaps next time we're having a party I'll announce over and over that I buy non-alcoholic sparkling wine especially for you since you're a recovering alcoholic.

The hour wasn't a complete loss though. Aunt Annoying is in charge of the restoration of an old ass church there in POS Cow Town (I don't know if she's actually in charge but if you hear her tell it, she's the boss). I did have to suffer through her telling us a couple times that they've written to the bishop and he's accepted their invitation to see the church when the restoration is complete. She was bragging that the invitation to the bishop was all her idea and this will be such a prestigious event. It's not about having a spiritual leader come bless or rededicate the church or something - it's all about prestige. The woman is a life-long atheist. She has about as much knowledge of the Church as I have about brain surgery. Yeah, I know you don't have to be religious or a believer to be interested in restoring a church but when you only want the bishop there to make yourself look important it seems somehow a bit phony to me.

Anyway, getting back to the actual restoration, they've found lots of old documents in this church and they're cataloging them and using them to help fill out holes in the history of POS Cow Town. Yesterday Uncle Milquetoast showed me a couple documents that they found. They're handwritten in that old sort of German handwriting that went out of style after the war - I can't read that sort of handwriting. B even has a lot of trouble reading that sort of handwriting - my MIL does a bit better at it since that's the way her parents wrote. One document was a mystery to me - I never did understand what it was all about, although it involved my MIL's family and the date on it was from 1846 - and the second document was the posting of banns for a woman with the same last name as my MIL's maiden name. Catherine Dorothee Elisabeth...well I won't post the last name as it's the same last name Aunt Annoying and Uncle Milquetoast have. I don't know if those two know how to Google up stuff but let's not get me into the position to have to explain to them the definition of milquetoast. The document was dated September, 1844. Since it was a woman with that name we know B's not a direct descendant of her but it does show us that at least a branch of that family was living in POS Cow Town back in the mid 19th century.

What was really amazing about the whole thing to me wasn't the fact that they were old documents for distant relatives of my MIL's family but the documents themselves. One would think the documents I saw would be fragile and brittle and yellowed with faded writing but the opposite was true. While the edges showed age, most of the paper was still a creamy white and still smooth and rather pliable and the handwriting was still clear - if you can read that sort of writing anyway. Both documents had official seals in wax and the seals were still pretty clear to read and weren't cracked. The sealing wax was even still shiny. It was as if they documents were written, stamped, and filed away immediately and they haven't seen the light of day in the past 160-some-odd years. I would love to have those documents for myself but they belong to the town, not to the family. And it's better that they stay with the town archives anyway. My MIL's family is dying out. Her cousins didn't have kids and Uncle Milquetoast doesn't have kids and that makes B the last one ever. The only other relatives there would be would be children of siblings of B's great-grandfather and as far as I know, not even my MIL would know who they are if they ever existed. Funny how after four or five generations you no longer have any idea of where you're connected to anyone else.

Even though I didn't want to go out to POS Cow Town, it did end up being worth it just to see those documents. They make me wonder about those people from long ago - who they were and what they were like and how they lived. That's what I love about history. It's not just the events and the people surrounding the events but it's the ordinary people as well. I love thinking about their lives and who they were and what they did. I can imagine that back 163 years ago when Catherine Dorothee Elisabeth was getting married and posting her banns that she couldn't possibly have imagined me holding them all those years later and thinking about her.

Fifty Minus Two

I have a good reason for getting drunk on a Wednesday if you're looking for one - it's B's birthday!



This birthday also commemorates the tenth anniversary of the first time I celebrated B's birthday with him and since it is I may as well tell you about that particular celebration and how I made a horse's ass of myself.

It was B's 38th birthday and I was visiting him in Germany for the first time. B's mom was throwing him a big party with lots of people invited to not only celebrate his birthday but to let people meet me for the first time. Boy oh boy, there's no way better to make you feel confident and at ease with the situation than being in an 82 square meter apartment with 25 other people and there's only one other person there who speaks English! And he doesn't even do that all that well!

Our old apartment had two adjoining sitting rooms so the party guests were spread between the two. I kept myself stuck next to B as much as possible except for when I'd have to go to the kitchen to get food for us. I was in fear that I'd do something idiotic and B wouldn't be there to explain anything to me.

The party had been in full swing for a few hours and I was practically dizzy from the noise and gibberish being spoken around me. B wasn't as good at quick translation as he is now and trying to keep up with even the most simple conversation was proving to be work. I spent most of my time smiling and nodding and throwing in the occasional "ja!". Jeez, I felt stupid and all I could think was that I must look like a dolt in front of B's friends. I wanted to be charming and bright and witty and there was no way I was going to pull that off when I only knew a handful of words in German.

Finally I had to excuse myself. The chatter was driving me mad and anyway I had to pee something fierce. I walked down the hall and found the main bathroom, the only one I'd used since my visit began, was occupied. So I ducked into the powder room. While the rest of the rooms in the apartment had solid sliding doors, the powder room had one of those flexible accordion type doors. I did the bathroom type stuff I'd gone there to do and when it was time to leave I found that I couldn't get the door open. I tugged on it; it wouldn't budge. I tugged harder to no avail. I hesitated tugging too hard because I didn't want to break the door. I wasn't all that sure that B's mom liked me all that much and until I did, I didn't want to be responsible for destroying her property.

Still I did a bit more tugging at the door with no results. I wondered if perhaps someone was in the hallway who'd be able to help me so I tried knocking on the door - which was nearly useless as knocking on it only made the door flap around as it was attached to the door frame only at the top - and saying "Hello? Hello? Help? Hello! Help!".

Evidently everyone was busy in the sitting rooms slowly getting bombed.

Minutes were passing - many minutes - and I was still stuck inside. I went to the bathroom window actually considering jumping out until I saw that I truly was too far up. I briefly considered asking a passerby for help but unless I could make him understand my plight by using the only German words I knew at that point - danke, bitte, Liebe, ich, ja, nein, klar, schön, Bier - I didn't think I'd get too far.

I tried the feeble and futile door knocking and pitiful cries for help and still got no response. By now over twenty minutes had passed and I thought surely someone would notice I was missing but logic told me that the only person who would really notice my absence was the one guy who couldn't get up to look for me.

Finally I figured that I either needed to make my escape or spend the rest of my vacation in Germany locked in the bathroom. Broken door be damned, I gave it a hearty yank, the door popped free from it's latch and I was free.

By this time I must have looked like a crazed escapee from a prison and in a way I was. My heart was pounding, I was scared, upset, thirsty and I felt like a sweaty mess. And I must have looked a fright because when I returned to the living room B looked at me and said "Honey, where have you been?! What's happened to you?"

And I just lost it. My nerves were like kindling wood and I simply snapped. I burst into tears and babbled the whole story to B who tried his best to understand rapid-fire English from a hysterical, crying woman.

Naturally the rest of the party guests were wondering what had me in such a state and after hiccuping the story to B a few more times so he could understand it all he relayed the events to them. And they burst out laughing.

I felt like a first class jackass. I wanted so much to impress B's friends and make them think he had a lovely girlfriend from America and all I'd succeeded in doing was looking like a doofus who couldn't figure out how a door opens.

Finally B's mom came to me and hugged me and told me through B that the door in question was forever getting stuck and the only way to get it open was to either yank the hell out of it, as I had done, or lift up on the handle as you pull the door back to release it from its catch. But that one hug saved me. If B's mom thought I wasn't an idiot then the rest wouldn't either. Or if they did they would keep it to themselves.

It's been ten years since that party and I still on occasion get razzed about being locked in the bathroom. Except now if they give me too much shit I can dish it right back to them.

Happy birthday, my darling. I hope your special day is filled with every wish you make coming true and I hope your new life year is filled with good health, good luck, joy, and lots of love. I'd tear down every door in the world just to get back to you. I love you without end.

Save Me a Place

Last week while trying to stave off an enormous personal meltdown I told B that I was tired and burned out. I love him, I love my life and I love caring for him but I haven't had a full 24 hours off in nearly three years.

"Well, maybe you can take a weekend trip somewhere."

I don't want to take a weekend trip. Well, I do but it's not what I really want.

"Do you think I could go home this year?"

B knows how much I miss my family and how I really need to go see my mother before she begins to forget who I am. There's a lot to work out before I can leave but he was willing to take it on. Getting B to agree to this isn't the trick. It's getting my MIL to agree to it since she takes over caregiving duties when I'm gone.

Yesterday my MIL came over to visit. She came back from a two week trip to a spa in Poland on the Baltic Sea all refreshed and rested and I envied her. And I dreaded bringing up the idea of me leaving home for two weeks. About an hour into the visit B mentioned that I'd like to go home for a visit this fall and I cringed inside waiting for her answer. And true to form - because my MIL loves me so much - she said we'd work something out. She's too old to take on the physical demands of caring for B all by herself and she'll need someone to come in and help her but she said we'd find a solution. We're going to look into service organizations and see if they can have people come in and help with various things and there's the option of hiring a nurse from Poland or the Czech Republic (a cheaper solution than hiring a private nurse based in Germany) and there's also the possibility that friends of the family, Norbert and Helga, can help. They're both retired now and there's the added advantage that they also had a son who was a quadriplegic and they know what caring for a quad is all about.

In any case, we should be able to find a solution so I can make this trip. As of now I don't have any dates - sometime between mid-September to mid-October - it's really going to depend on when I can get a reasonably priced flight. I haven't even told my sister yet and this is the sort of thing we never mention to my mother until I'm on the plane but I feel 99% positive that I can pull this off.

And what will I do first when I hit my hometown? What I always do first. Drive straight to Sonic.