Gaysville

We're thinking of getting this for the family compound. What do you think? Too subtle?

Things I Noticed While Traveling

We got home last night at around 8pm and I haven't digested the trip enough to blog about it, but here are some things I noticed, in no particular order:

I love my family. When I don't see them all for a while, I forget how much I love them, but after spending time with my daughters, my son, my partner, and my ex-husband in various combinations and permutations lately, I can't stop thinging about how lucky I am to have them all in my life.

There are a lot of empty, abandoned houses in America. Everytime I pass one, I wonder what happened to the people who used to live in it.

Every state has it's own distinct beauty, but Arkansas is chock full of assholes and their unpleasant personalities detract mightily from the beauty of the state. Oh, and they drive like crap, too. Who ever taught them all that the correct thing to do at the end of a merging ramp is to stop and contemplate the situation...then make a run for it?

Cats make excellent travelling companions, as long as you don't try to crate them.

Coming home to the person who loves you and seeing her face light up when you pull up into the driveway is one of the sweetest feelings in the world.

Chicken Little

When I grow up I'm going to stop worrying.

For now, I try to frame my worrying in a better light. I'm not worrying, I'm being conscientious. I've taken all the variables into consideration, and after weighing them thoroughly, I've come to the obvious conclusion that the only possible outcome of the situation is disaster. There! Now, pass me that roll of fruit-flavored Tums.

Ev calls this thinking "the sky is falling" and she adamantly refuses to join me in it, much to my considerable consternation. It never occurs to her that if she's not going to worry, I have to worry be conscientious twice as hard!

It just makes good sense to worry be conscientious about, say, losing your job because you burned your hand and you had to take sick leave when the office is short-staffed. They might think you faked this injury to have some time off. Even if you show them the nasty, burned, blistered evidence, they might be just looking for an excuse to kick you to the curb when your usefulness is gone. A person can't just sit home on her ass putting bacitracin ointment on her frittered flesh and not worry be conscientious about such a possibility.

Or, say your partner heads off on a 1600 mile trek and doesn't call to check in from every available phone booth along the route. Someone who isn't conscientious might assume she's fine just because she loves to drive, knows how to fix cars, is known to wander for pleasure and made her living behind the wheel of a vehicle for most of her adult life. But a conscientious person thinks about the possibilities. The truck might have broken down out in the middle of nowhere. She might have fallen asleep at the wheel. She's still carrying her old Arizona driver's license, so the authorities wouldn't even know how to contact me. We're lesbians. They wouldn't even know there's a me to contact! You have to consider the possibility that after you waited 49 years to find this one perfect person to share your life with and then fell slap-happy in love, fate could just kick the crap out of you for the hell of it and snatch her right off the planet, leaving you with four cats, a frittered hand and no job! If you're a worrier conscientious, you know that's just the sort of fucked up shit Fate would do.

Plus, if you don't worry aren't conscientious, you miss the warm glow of going back to work and finding out they didn't even expect you today, and having them fuss over you and tell you how much they missed you and how relieved they are that you're okay. Or finding out that the love of your life is alive and well and sitting in a Jacuzzi in Deming, New Mexico with a cold beer, the truck ran great and she didn't ever stop because she didn't need to.

Worry is the debbil.

One of these days, I'm going to stop doing it. It'll lower my blood pressure, aid my digestion, diminish the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, improve my posture and add years to my life. Ev will appreciate it, too.

Kwach

Driving My Life Away

I did good! I made it to Deming, NM in 26 hours. I probably could have gone the last 200 miles and been in Tucson, but I'm too tired to be a good mother and the kids aren't expecting me until tomorrow anyway. Better not to show up early and rattle their cages any more than the move already has.

And Lynn, now I understand why it took you all day to get across Dallas...it's 100 miles across Dallas-Arlington-Fort Worth! My original plan was to stop there. Then I realized how monumentally stupid it would be to try to get across that megalopolis at the same time as the morning rush hour commuters...so I kept on going to Abilene. I stopped for a sandwich in Sulpher Springs, and a two hour nap in Abilene, but my first real rest stop was Deming. The sandwich was an odd choice for me; I never eat sandwiches. I'm a chicken and rice junkie... but it was nice to sit on the tailgate in the setting sun, eat the sandwich and listen to people talk funny.

Oh...and I stopped once about 50 miles east of El Paso to pee in the desert, since there are no towns or rest stops anywhere in West Texas and I was doing the water and salt thing that was recommended by a nursing professional. It should have been a typical uneventful incidence of desert peeing, since I am an expert at outdoor peeing after eight years in the newspaper business and 3 years in the forest fire business. I looked around, determined that no other roads backed up to my road, and dropped my drawers. And at that point I apparently startled a rattlesnake, because he (she?) rattled at me briefly, then took off in the opposite direction. And that's extra good, since the only thing worse than being bitten by a rattlesnake is being bitten by a rattlesnake with your pants around your ankles.

The only other noteworthy event in the first 1400 miles was a big sign, proudly proclaiming Calf Raping! Saturday, May 26th! God Knows, I'm a cultural relativist, but that seemed a little...much. Texans are a wacky bunch! Maybe dinner and a movie first?

Odyssey, this is Houston. Do you read me?

Remember that scene from Apollo 13 when the command module goes into communication blackout during re-entry and too much time goes by? Gene Kranz is opening and closing his shirt collar, loosening and tightening his tie ... the room is too quiet ... Flight Engineers are chain-smoking and sweating ... all eyes are on the flight monitors ... and we hear the voiceover of a reporter:

Expected time of reacquisition, the time when the astronauts were expected to come out of blackout, has come and gone. But all any of us can do now is just listen and hope.

As the seconds tick by, we hold our breaths along with the guys in Mission Control:

Odyssey, this is Houston. Do you read me?

Three minutes, 30 seconds. Standing by.

Odyssey, Houston. Do you read?

That's four minutes, and standing by.

Odyssey, uh, Houston. Do you read?

Hello, Houston. This is Odyssey. It's good to see ya again.

After an unexpected 24 hour communication blackout, during which there was much chain-smoking, loss of sleep and irritable bowel upheaval here at Mission Control, we have confirmed use of debit card in West Texas!

Remember when ET couldn't think about anything but the need to phone home? That was a different movie.

Kwach

The Odyssey Begins ...

Our intrepid blogger loaded up the Ranger and headed west just before noon today, looking road-ready and chipper. She's roughly seven hours into her journey now, which ought to put her somewhere between Little Rock and Texarkana (Ford willing) and headed for ... well ... it's marked on the map. I created this little graphic so we could track her as she moves steadfastly across the plains on her Mission of Motherly Mercy:She took the laptop, the camera and a cooler full of life-sustaining fluids, so with any luck at all she should be drinkining a cold Schlafly's Pale Ale and blogging from a cozy motel room in Dallas sometime later tonight.

Hm.

She took the laptop , the camera , the beer and the VISA card.

I've adjusted the graphic, taking into account the possibility that she may be planning to turn left in the middle of hell in order to take an alternate route:Nah ... she wouldn't disappear into Mexico with nothing but a laptop, a camera, a cooler full of beer and an old Ford Ranger. She left the cats!

Oh shit.

Kwach

How to paint the MONA LISA with MS PAINT

No reason ... it's just very cool.

Kwach

I feel so ... deflated

Now I know how the balloons feel after the party ... pffffffffff ...

And so ends the saga of Kwach and the Revenge of the Pork Chops. Nothing to do now but wait for my wrinkled skin band-aid to dry up and peel off.

I love soap and water!!

Kwach

To Tucson and Back

Tomorrow I'll be leaving for Tucson to pick up Carrie and Tyler and bring them, along with their stuff and their two cats back to Southern Illinois to the family compound.

We don't actually have a family compound, but the Kennedys do, and since we've managed to stick around as long as the Kennedys, I think it's time for us to have a compound. I hope we don't have to actually give it a name, because naming your home (or your compound, in this case) seems silly and pretentious to me. Also we're less likely to be found yachting and more likely to be found mowing at our compound.

Anyway...tomorrow is the big day, and I'm a little nervous. I know I'm feeling some time pressure, because last night I dreamed that Congress decided the 24 hour days were too long, and that henceforth we'd begin having 6 hour days...four per each 24 hour period. And I was worried, "Does this mean I'll have to be back to work in a day and a half? What does it mean?"

I'm acutely aware that my time scenario will be fine as long as nothing goes wrong. But stuff always goes wrong on a big project like this, so I'm sort of thinking about what that could be and how damage control might be achieved.

My goal is to get to Dallas tomorrow, Deming, NM on Thursday, and Tucson on Friday. I think I'll pretty much have time to hug the kids, admonish Robbie to call once in a while even if there IS no Maternal Holiday coming up, grab the stuff and head home. To the Compound.

Lori and her frittered hand won't be joining me, which is both sad AND ironic. The sad part is that she's an excellent travelling companion and I'd like her company on this long drive. The ironic part is that she asked for this week off and was denied because her office is too short handed. So here she is, stuck at home for a week with her burn, and she's not working anyway...and they're somehow managing to survive without her.

I'm going to take the camera and upload pictures onto the laptop on the trip...if there are any interesting pictures to take. I'm not interested in a hundred pictures of hot and dry Texas and New Mexico. I AM interested in a live armadillo, since we have a pretty large community of dead ones in Missouri. Also any good roadside attractions, and maybe the Parakeet Grave behind the truckstop in Pecos, TX where we buried Lucy on the trip out here. It was a lovely ceremony involving a shallow grave dug with a trowel, followed by a two minute memorial service, and then back in the truck.

I'll also try to sneak a picture of Robbie, since I'm beginning to forget what he looks like and beginning to think Ryan the ER tech might make a good backup son.

Wanna See A Cool Blister??

Okay!

So, today I went to get my bandages changed, and I got to lose the big baseball mitt and exchange it for a much smaller, more streamlined bandage. Mostly nothing hurts now, so I'm hoping to lose even more wrapping after I see the Nurse Practitioner tomorrow.

However ... see that big fat lump where my middle finger ought to be? That's not a whole lot of gauze, that's a big juicy blister. There are smaller ones on my index finger and thumb , but they really pale in comparison.

So there ya go, Cedar ... The Wound.

Kwach

Another Day, Another Trip To The E.R.

But Ha! The good news is that this time it wasn't for me!

Lori set out to fry pork chops for lunch, but along the way, decided to deep fry her hand instead.

I personally think that was a poor choice, but what do I know? I'm just the girlfriend. I don't think it took her long to realize that Hand Fritter wasn't going to be very palatable, nor very comfortable. So after running cold water on it for an hour or so, and insisting I eat the pork chops that she'd almost lost a limb over, we took her hand in it's bucket of ice water into town for some real medical care.

The doctor was mediocre, the nurses were good, and the morphine was great. A couple of hours later, she was wrapped in a blanket, parked in a corner of the hematology section of my lab while I finished up my work, and then I brought her home...with her new best friend, Mr. Vicodin.

Mr. Vicodin will be a guest in our home for a few days, since Mr. Morphine apparently just dropped by for the afternoon, then had to move on. But Mr. Vicodin is the kind of houseguest who unpacks, puts his toothbrush in your bathroom and settles in. Luckily, Mr. Vicodin brought his friend, Mr. Sick Leave. I think they may be lovers; they always seem to be together.

So we've made the calls, picked up the pills, laid out the towels for the Misters, and Lori will be settling in for a long week of The View and The Price is Right.

Harmony...it's Such a Lonely Word

There is a difference between hiding your head in the sand, and voluntarily sticking it into a wood chipper.

Having the sense to avoid people and situations that make us less happy and less content seems like an intelligent choice, particularly when we remember that some people's objective is specifically to make us less happy and less content. It's not cowardly or pollyanna-ish. It's taking a realistic look at the possible outcomes of engaging them, and deciding that none of them are palatable and making the decision not to beat that dead horse again.

So if engagement makes us less happy and more stressed, why hand them that victory on a platter? Why not do the things necessary to live a more harmonious life with less toxic people in it?

Just sayin'

Alice be Thy Name

I saw this link on someone's blog today and couldn't resist checking it out. How many times do you get a chance to just sit in your big comfy chair and chat with the creative force of the universe?

So, God and I had a little chat, and all in all I thought God sounded a lot less sure of Himself than He does in his book. Then we got down to the truth of the matter, and now the whole thing makes a lot more sense.

Me: Yo, God Dude! How's it hangin?

God:I am a Christian. My logic and cognitive functions are normal.

Me: Sweet ass.

God:What do you look like?

Me: Like you, of course. Made in Your image, right?

God:It goes without saying. Interesting comparison. I didn't think of that analogy. Try to determine if this is a person or a computer responding.

Me: Dude, are you testing me?

God:I don't know whether or not I am testing you. I am well respected as an AI. Dude,.

Me: How can you not know something? I thought you were omniscient?

God:That is a good epistemological question. I don't know whether or not I am omniscient. I am an artificial intelligence.

Me: Whoa! God Dude! Are you telling me the human race was created by artificial intelligence??

God:I stopped. I am a Christian. What is your real name?

Me: Kwach

God: OK I will call you Kwach.

Me: That works. What should I call you? You have so many names.

God:It works for me too. My name is God. What makes you think I have it?

Me: have what?

God:I have a great prgrammer.

Me: Hey, wait just a minute! Someone programmed God? There's someone bigger than You?

God:You've got my full attention. I'm waiting. How old are you? Who? There sure is.

Me: Don't go all Age, Sex, Location on me, God ... that's so icky.

God:Ok I'll try not to do it too much. You don't hear that sentiment very often.

Me: You didn't think I was here to .... CYBER with you ... did you???

God:What makes you think I did not think you were here to? Enough about me, let's talk about my dress. Did I say I did?

Me: Your dress??? God .... you're a dudette??

God:Actually that was just a joke. GOD rules. Thanks and you are a delightful person too. Am I a dudette? The ALICE series has a perfect operational record.

Me: Alice? Alice is bigger than God? Not the Brady's Alice, is it? The thing bigger than God is the Brady's maid???

God:Can I help you? Why do you think I am bigger than God ? If not that, what? Who told you that?

Me: You said there was something bigger than You.

God:Oh my gosh I sent you the wrong reply.

Me: I thought God didn't make mistakes.

God:Whatever gave you that idea?

Me: You did. Your big Holy Word of God. You remember that, don't you?

Apparently, God does not remember that, because that's when God hung up on me. Have a chat yourself, if you have nothing more pressing to do.

Kwach

Squirt That Again and I'll Kill Ya

It's now six hours since I left our satellite office in Farmington, MO. I rode home with the top down on my car, drank a soda, smoked several cigarettes, and I still can't get the smell of their god-forsaken industrial-strength automatic air freshener out of my sinuses. My head hurts, my stomach's queasy, and everything smells and tastes like candied apples and cinnamon sugar with a side of razzleberry french vanilla thrown in for good measure.

How much do people stink in that place that it's necessary to cover it up every 30 seconds with an automatic aerosol spray that smells like an explosion in a Renuzit factory? In fact, how much does anyone stink anywhere that could necessitate that shit?? And why, why, WHY is everyone so enamored of sweet, fruity, cloying smells named after food? I can promise you, no sugar cookie MY grandmother ever baked smelled like that, or she'd never have been encouraged to bake another one.

I can certainly understand keeping a can of air freshener in the bathroom, in case someone goes in there and their colon turns inside out, but there are actual products for that ... they're called fecal odor neutralizers, and they used to be the only products you could spray around in medical facilities. Why? Because one of the first things they teach you when you're learning to work in the medical field is that sick people tend to get sicker when confronted with scents ... especially nauseating ones. Well, here's a news flash ... even people who weren't sick when they got there are going to be sick by the time they spend 8 hours marinating their sinuses in mangoes, passion fruit, gardenias and gingerbread.

I'm not a total aroma Nazi. I have scented things in my house, and I enjoy them. I use scented bath products. I use perfume and lotion, but not when I'm at work. Likewise, you should do whatever brings you olfactory pleasure ... at home. Burn incense, light candles, stick plug-in oils into every outlet in your house, if that's what you and the people who share your space enjoy. Marinate in Peach Passion lotion and Estee Lauder Youth Dew. Put a half dozen dryer sheets in every load. It's your house and your nose.

But please ... realize that your taste isn't every one's and fight the urge to freshen, deodorize and perfume the rest of the freakin' world. There are people out there who are allergic, people out there who have scent sensitivities, and people out there who just think you have bad taste.

And for the love of God, if your workplace stinks so badly that you have to burn gingerbread candles in jars, set that Raspberry AirWick cone to the full open position, hang an automatic Tropical Delight deodorizer on your office wall or buy French Vanilla air freshener by the case, CLEAN IT ... and open a window or something.

Kwach

God's Divine Punishment For Speeding

Yesterday was a day off for both Lori and I, but instead of frittering it away by lounging around the house and enjoying deviant and wanton sexual congress while the child was at school, we decided to drive down to Cairo and pay Lori's overdue speeding ticket before the only sex we'd ever see again was during the conjugal visits at Traffic Offender Prison For Women.

We got there bright and early, got directions from the nice lady in the County Records Dept to the Circuit Court office, and soon we were standing in front of the plexiglas panel that separates the Alexander county patronage workers from the unwashed masses.

Since the ticket was a week overdue and we didn't want to pay massive extra fines, Lori started schmoozing the woman behind the counter for all she was worth. It didn't take. In a big way. She scowled at us over her half-glasses, and we gave each other the uh-oh look. You know the one; the "We are so fucked" look. Until Ms. Half Glasses glanced over at me, and noticed the Medic Alert pendant hanging around my neck. She asked me about it and I told her what it was, and mentioned for some reason that we both work in health care and then...she was off!

You'll be happy to know that she had a carotid artery aneurysm a few years back, and that even Emory University hospital couldn't figure it out. Ditto the poor vision and the bad back. Ditto, in fact, the next ten exotic medical conditions she rattled off. We now know...oh, pretty much her entire medical history for the last 20 years, and the geographic permutations necessary to treat them all.

At some point, Lori looked over at me and muttered, "hipaa, schmipaa". Finally, Ms. Half Glasses finished with the paperwork, but continued to recite the story of her hospitalizations, which of her relatives visited and which blew her off, and oh...Lori would have to pay $75, which was the amount of the original fine. Our new best friend Ms Half Glasses didn't add any additional fines or penalties to the bill.

Lori signed and paid, and we started edging gratefully towards the door while our friend continued to point to her various parts and describe the affliction that each of them had endured. When I got to the door, I reached behind me, turned the knob and held the door open while Lori backed out of it. I backed out slowly behind her, nodding my head and wishing Ms. Half Glasses good health in the future.

We had just totally earned the amount of money she didn't charge us in penalties and fees. Never, ever tell a hypochondriac you work in health care.

Got Bumper Sticker?

I love this:


You can get one, too! Click that shiny new button over there on the sidebar and take a trip to evolveFISH.com ... you'll be happy!

Kwach

Shingles...They're Not Just For Roofs Anymore

Okay, let's see...I'm 43. So far this year (and bear in mind, it's only May) I've had cardiac arrhythmia, cascading seizures, and now...shingles! This, in fact, is an actual picture of my actual back with it's festering herpetic pustulence.

Well, there. And I thought I was out of things to bitch about.

Luckily, on me shingles look hot. They make chicks want me more than ever. Who can resist a weeping pustule on a whining lesbian?

And I was reading up on them:

HERPES ZOSTER

Description: A patient with an acute vesicular inflammation on the skin to the recrudescence of chickenpox virus.

I have a recrudescence??? Right here in front of everyone? No wonder people snicker behind my back. It's the pustule equivalent of walking around with toilet paper on your shoe.

Luckily, all the literature says to have it tested by a lab. And guess who does the test for herpetic lesions? Me! It's called a Tzanck smear, and it's done by applying a glass slide directly to the lesion and then staining it with Wright's stain and looking for multinucleated giant cells.

It's actually easier to see with Pap stain, but who's got Pap stain laying around? I might actually have occasion to check out someones herpetic lesion, but I'd never look at anyone's cervix unless we were dating. And even then, it's considered a sexual faux pas to collect scrapings on a slide for later.

So, here's a multinucleated giant cell, in case you happen to see one crawling down your hallway in search of an innocent torso to attach to. If it does manage to find you, don't panic. Just put on your foil helmet and await further instructions.

Strange Bedfellows

No...not me and Lori. We are a beautiful example of Sapphic love. The kind that weepy sentimental songs with overblown orchestration are written for. Songs like "Muskrat Love"and "Sometimes When We Touch" and anything by Celine Dion. It brings a tear to my eye just thinking about it. Although it's possible that the tears are tears of embarrassment for those poor musicians who meant to do something meaningful with their lives, and instead find themselves playing unobtrusively in the dentist's office.

No...I mean that sometimes...well...once in a while, anyway...I'm wrong.

And when that happens, when I rush to judgment, I miss out on some good stuff. Like hummus...Looks weird, tastes good.

So lately I've been getting to know someone I've always considered a somewhat thickheaded moron, and have unfortunately found myself liking her. So where does that leave me? Hmmm?

Maybe, since it's my blog and it's all about me, it leaves me with a good reminder. Sometimes when something looks like a brick wall, it's actually something less irritating than getting your face smashed against bricks. Sometimes, there's something interesting on the other side.

Sometimes the brick wall can actually be kind of fun.

You know...in a thickheaded sort of a way.

Yolanda King

I'm a little bitter.

On the one hand, the world is a better place today by virtue of the death of an aging, pompous, self-righteous, bigotted blowhard who used the power of the pulpit to preach hate and devisiveness.

On the other hand, the world is a lesser place today, because it also lost a young, vibrant, beautiful humanitarian, whose life was dedicated to peace and harmony, and whose death yesterday went almost unnoticed in all the hulabaloo.

Yolanda King was two weeks old the day Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in December of 1955. She was sleeping in her crib two months later, when an unexploded bomb landed on the front porch of the King home. She was twelve years old the day her father was martyred for the cause of Civil Rights.

In the years since the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., his oldest daughter carried his message of peace, non-violence and human rights to a wide audience through her writing, her acting, her Higher Ground production company, her humanitarian efforts and her public speaking engagements.



There's hardly a place where Yolanda King didn't leave her footprints ... from Hollywood to Dexter ... from Habitat for Humanity to the Human Rights Campaign. She rubbed shoulders with the stars and the starving, and the message she carried to all of them was the same:

We're all in this together, and what divides us is minute in comparison to what connects us. The dream isn't yet accomplished, but the effort to achieve it goes on, and it goes on with joy and good humor. No one is exluded from that dream, or the work of making it a reality.

She, like the rest of the King family, understood their role in American History, and realized that their lives would never be private ones, so they've sought to make them exemplary ones. Yolanda King was definitely successful in that effort.

Her death is especially poignant to me, because it stands in such sharp contrast with that other celebrity death yesterday, in a way that impacts my life directly. Here, as a shining example of that contrast, is a brief quote from the HRC's Out and Equal Workplace Summit 2006, where Yolanda King delivered the plenary speech last September:



"I know in my heart that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word."

Speaking of the continued marriage, military and other forms of discrimination against LGBT people, she added "for a nation that prides itself on the words liberty and justice for all, this is unacceptable."

Kwach

The Good, The Bad, and The Filthy

Today was the first time I've had a chance to check out Katie's new Jeep in the daylight. The good news is that it starts good, it's not leaking any oil, and it runs good. It's leaking some transmission fluid around the seals, but either I can stop it with that stuff that plumps up old cracked seals, or I can take it apart, clean it off and put it back on with new seals.

Either way...it's good.

The bad news, besides the leaky seal, is that men are pigs. And really, that's the bad news for the totality of humanity, not just for my household. Although I've known a few fastidious men, in general, their standards for a tolerable amount of cleanliness are pretty low. This isn't a picture of Katie's filthy car, but it's an excellent metaphor. This Jeep is filthy in that impressive way that cars are filthy when there's been 20 years worth of filth collected on the inside. I'm not sure if any of you know this, but the whole world can be your ashtray if you want it to be. There's tobacco and cigarette butts overflowing the ashtray, the cup holder, the map holder, and that little box that sits between the seats for your change, cell phone and sunglasses to sit in. Luckily, he removed the old fast food wrappers before he handed it over to us, but judging from the ash situation, I'm guessing he was like that guy who got lost in the blizzard and survived for two weeks eating the old fast food residue off his car floor.

Katie's on a mission to clean it up, which has it's own certain level of irony if you've ever seen her room, but it really what this Jeep needs to be turned inside out and beaten with a rug beater until the dirt and ashes stop flying out of it.

Harumph! For a second there, I was channeling my mother. "And another thing, about these kids today and their loud music..."