Georgie, and Bonnie and Clyde, and me!

                                            

Back in the summer of 1968, my main source of entertainment and information was DC Comics. At that time, there were Superman, Action Comics, Supergirl, Superboy, and Adventure, in addition to a dizzying array of other publications. 

I wanted to fly. I wanted to do good deeds. I wanted to be invincible. The usual superhero nonsense. I wanted to be given a tickertape parade, while the triumphant concluding theme from the Adventures of Superman TV show played in the background.

But -- lacking that, I was willing to fancy myself as a LSB -- that's a Little Suburban Badass.

It didn't take much to stimulate my imagination in those pre-adolescent years of 1966-1970. The comic cover shown above was one I remember well. I even remember my delight at one panel of dialogue, in which one of Bonnie and Clyde's henchmen, having taken young Clark and Lana hostage, worries that "these brats could get kilt!" I entertained myself (and exasperated my friends) by running up and down the local vacant lot, dodging imaginary bullets, and reciting dialogue in the voices of different characters.

Time Spent with Mary Poppins Today: Zero

                                                      

Today at church was somewhat unsatisfying for several reasons, most of which I will not go into.

Sandwiched between Frustrating Forum and Missed Meeting was about an hour and a half as a nursery volunteer. I once told the Director of Religious Education that I had "totsophobia," because while I do not dislike children at all, I feel very awkward around them. The only kid I ever felt completely at ease with was my own. Those years went by much too quickly and did absolutely nothing to help me relax around anyone else's kids. The problem has nothing whatsoever to do with the fear that a child will hurt me, it's the fear that I will fail in some way to properly care for someone else's little one. The responsibility scares the daylights out of me. I will never hold anyone's baby, at least if the baby is too young to crawl. For one thing, I've never gotten the hang of that casual manner that most mothers seem to instinctively know when it comes to holding a baby. I always held my son something like the way I hold my cat -- with his little head tucked right up under my chin. He never seemed to mind it, but it must look really strange. And of course, I worry that I will drop the baby.

Standard-issue New Year's Post, 2013

Other than my cat (who takes it all in but offers little in the way of feedback), the last person I spoke to in 2012 was my son Wally. Wally was released from prison shortly before Thanksgiving; he, his father Doug, and numerous friends and cousins continue to join me in "giving thanks" for this. He appears to have come out relatively unscathed (except for a prison tattoo on his leg, in the shape of the Nike "swoosh" -- that's my boy...). He got his old job back at the restaurant almost immediately, and is also doing some landscaping in his spare time. While he still has to attend 12-step meetings, that is about the only thing he does at the halfway house where he's living. He shares a dorm with 6 other guys and finds being there unpleasantly reminiscent of his time behind bars. It's clear that some people will never entirely escape the cycle of crime, imprisonment, release and re-offense. Wally wants to distance himself from that phase of his life. I hear a different tone when he talks about his life now. There's less of the false self-assurance and breeziness that I used to detect; he's more willing to say he doesn't know, isn't sure, needs to wait and see. While I can't be there with him, we stay in close contact via cell phone and social media. I'm fairly optimistic that I'll get to see him sometime this year.

Shortly after Christmas, I got a wake-up call with regard to the type 2 diabetes that I was diagnosed with about 4 years ago. I've tested glucose, taken meds, attempted to modify my diet. But all of these efforts have been halfhearted at best, and that's because I didn't want to concede that I had this disorder. I didn't want to be one of "those" people -- my ex-husband's uncles and aunts who all had diabetes and seemed to go on endlessly whining about it. I took the meds -- most days. I convinced myself that because I like fruits, vegetables and "healthy" foods, that somehow counteracted the gallon of neapolitan ice cream that I bought for a party, brought home from the party and proceeded to consume on my own for the next couple of weeks, along with the standard cookies, cakes, candies and other holiday confections. Exercise, as always, was a very rare occurrence. And so, I woke up with parched throat and blurred vision my first day back at work after a 4-day weekend, and heeded the insistent inner voice that told me I needed to test my glucose right away.

~400~

A good reading would be somewhere between 75 and 110.  400 is the lower end of the "very high" range, where you find people having strokes, heart attacks and kidney failure.

Ding. It took four years, but I finally woke the hell up!

While readings over 300 crop up here and there, it's the first one of the day that the experts say matters the most. Mine has been hovering in the 250-260 range ever since last Wednesday. No more blurred vision, and the nighttime dry throat is mostly gone. So is most of the junk food in the house.  All I have to do now is start exercising...

Food has become a greater area of focus. Due to finances and location of my workplace, the standard lunch option for me has been frozen meals. Those are actually the easiest to monitor, since the portions tend to be small and the nutritional stats are right there in a little box. Most of them now include the Weight Watchers Points score as well, which, as a veteran of the program, I can decipher and use.

Last Friday my newfound passion for nutrition caused me to have a meltdown in the workplace. Two co-workers were planning what to do for lunch and mentioned a local "greasy spoon" establishment that offers an array of basic grilled items. I know they offer a grilled chicken sandwich, and I just happened to have a few extra bucks on me. So I ordered the sandwich and veggie hash browns, then sat back and waited semi-patiently for Jerry to return with the food. I could taste that sandwich -- lettuce, tomato, a packet of portion-controlled mayo, the moderately seasoned chicken breast -- oh, yeah. I was overjoyed when Jerry came through the door. Four of us had ordered and I waited until everyone else had retrieved their lunch from the bag. There was something wrong with mine, and I could see it from several feet away. A grilled chicken sandwich comes on an untoasted bun, not dark, soggy bread. Upon examining it, my fears were confirmed: They'd given me a chicken melt, and HAM on the hash browns, just to add insult to injury. It was like some unknown person far away was saying "Screw you and your fancy-ass healthy diet, lady. You'll eat like the rest of us and you'll like it."

Well, I didn't like it. "I can't eat this!" I wailed. "Does anybody want it?"

John, who is my favorite co-worker and a saint, immediately stepped up and said he'd take it. He asked how much he owed me and I said "Oh, forget it!" I gave him the plate and stormed into the break room, still holding the packet with the plastic knife, fork, napkin and salt packet. I opened the freezer, pulled out one of my Lean Cuisines, tossed the utensil packet into the freezer, slammed the door and basically scared the hell out of everybody in there, including our senior mechanic, who hastily offered to let me go ahead of him at the microwave. "No, it's okay," I shrieked. "You go ahead. I'm going to just go in the bathroom and scream!" I went in the bathroom but didn't make a sound; I just stood in the corner, gripping my head between my elbows and taking lots of deep breaths.

That  helped. After a couple of minutes I went back to the breakroom, where Griff was assembling his lunch. Griff's wife Joy is well-known as someone you don't want to mess with, ever -- just that morning he had relayed the story of how she had "run off" the repo man who had tried to take back her brother's Corvette. Yeah.  "Do you think your wife would like to go down to that restaurant near the interstate and beat somebody up?" I asked him. "Oh, she'd like that very much," he said. "Good," I replied, still upset to be talking loudly.  "I just blew seven bucks on a pile of shit!"

I was finally getting my appetite back, and as I was nuking my nutrionally appropriate steamed chicken marinara, John came in quietly, gave me seven dollars and told me the meal was delicious and he appreciated not having to go out on a cold day and figure out lunch. As I was eating, he told me about a girl he'd dated long ago, who got so upset when McDonald's put pickles on her burger, against her explicit request, that she drove back around the restaurant and proceeded to throw pickles at the drive-thru window, while hollering curses at the frightened employees.

A woman after my own heart!

The story had me laughing and I finally got over my anguish. And the next day I went out to an eatery close to home and got the sandwich I'd wanted the day before. In the intervening hours it occurred to me that maybe the cook heard "grilled chicken sandwich" and thought of it in terms of "grilled cheese sandwich," where you take all the ingredients, put them between two slices of bread and grill the whole thing. In other words, a grilled chicken sandwich, rather than a grilled chicken sandwich.

Or something.

2012 had some very good moments. As a liberal of a certain age, I have found it especially gratifying to get confirmation that I'm neither alone nor crazy. Anyone who lived through the Reagan and Bush years probably had occasion to wonder. Clinton's presidency was a very ambivalent time -- there was so much noise from Limbaugh, who just seemed to be getting up a full head of steam, and Clinton didn't help much with his self-confessed shenanigans. While now, he's almost attained "elder statesman" status, he didn't come off as especially trustworthy or reliable when he occupied the White House.  The Tea Party and other right-wing nutjobs can wear themselves out trying to paint Barack Obama as [fill in whatever silly label they've attempted to stick on him; I've heard 'em all and can't be bothered to repeat], he calmly holds his head high and gets on with the job. He's had a few "B minus" moments here and there, such as the first 2012 debate against Romney, but all in all, he's more than fulfilled the role he took on 4 years ago. I'm proud of him and over the moon about Hillary Clinton who has taken the lemons of losing the Democratic primaries and transformed them into some awesome on-the-job lemonade. I'm optimistic about her recovery from the concussion and the blood clot; hopes she gets a chance to rest a bit and then gets back into campaign mode. It would be a thrill to help her get elected.

There were profound changes at work and at church. On balance, all the changes were for the better.

Usually, I start new years with the nagging fear that nothing within me is going to change. But many things did this time, and this time around I feel equipped with what I need to keep the changes going in a positive direction.

Don't Miss This

It's been on Facebook, but if you haven't, please read this. It's terribly important.

There needs to be a huge shift in the way we think about mental illness: What it is, what we do about it, how we approach it, and the difference between someone who can't function at all and someone who functions well enough to wreak havoc.

I Am Adam Lanza's Mother

Overdue Update

                                           

I know y'all have been just curled up in a fetal position, waiting to hear what's going on in my life, so here I am, taking pity...

Ahem.

I've given a bit of thought to just quitting this blog altogether, since there isn't all that much to say that has any importance. So many, many other people do it a whole lot better than I do.

But...I like the connection. Nice to feel I'm not just drifting around out there (even with Facebook, Twitter, and real-life relationships). This fills whatever void still remains. And I do go through phases in terms of my writing. Back when I really began focusing on this blog, in 2008, I was just brimming over with thoughts. I have a hunch that will start happening again at some point, so might as well keep my options open.

So here's the latest:

First: Wally. He's due to be released in November, close to Thanksgiving. The plan was, he would come here to Vollywood. Amenities would be thin on the ground, but at least he'd have a permanent address, a place to sleep, regular meals consisting of non-ramen nutrients, and someone to help him out with this, that, and the other. Sounded like a reasonably good plan.

The only condition was a somewhat hefty administrative fee that the state he's currently in requires to effect this transfer of his parole. His father, Doug, sent it a few months back. Rather than holding it in reserve in his account and exercising a modicum of self-control, Wally saw fit to spend it on whatever items he felt he needed. You see, he thought he'd be getting a tax refund. Never mind that the amount of the refund was something like a quarter of the total amount of the fee. He spent all but a small amount of the fee, and therefore, no parole transfer.

Yes, I understand fully well that prison inmates need "stuff" to trade and barter so that they don't go too far down the prison social hierarchy. I tried to keep a trickle of money going to him; he kept saying all he needed was a small amount for envelopes and stationery, and enough to buy a phone card. In all the time he's been behind bars, I have not gotten a phone call from him, in spite of filling out the required paperwork.

At any rate, the money's spent, his father is furious, and I'm of the opinion that Wally is charting the course he wants to chart. Meaning, he doesn't want to come to Vollywood, regardless of what he may say. Is this a blessing in disguise for me? Many people close to me seem to think it is. But of course, I have very mixed feelings. The one called "no control over the situation" is by far the worst.

Wally turns 23 toward the end of this month, and a few days later, it will be one year since he got arrested.

The job situation hasn't changed much, but it has at least not gotten worse. I had high hopes for a complete change of career during  June and the first part of July, but those hopes were dashed, and in typical fashion, I crawled back into my turtle shell and have not attempted any more job applications. Part of me is saying "C'mon, let's get this show back on the road," and the other part of me has her fingers stuck in her ears, chanting "Lalalalala, I can't heeeeeear yooooou..."

I did start doing horoscopes again. This is my advertisement. Read it carefully. If you're interested, drop me an email at the address shown on my profile.

Church: Busy-busy-busy. Early August, I let them put me back on the Board of Trustees, but this time I'm over a few committees of strong interest. So far, it's been fun. The "challenge" part of the job description appears to be rearing its funny little head. Egos abound. I will be reporting more as time goes on.

And that's the way it is, September 16th, 2012.  Best wishes to you, Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the blogs at sea.

Use your imagination

The best cartoon I've ever seen cannot (so far as I can tell) be found on the Internet, so I have no choice but to describe it to you.

In Eric Tyson's book Personal Finance for Dummies, Rich Tennant's "5th Wave" cartoon shows a couple sitting at their dining room table with past-due bills stacked to the ceiling. The woman turns to the man and says "I can't figure out where all the money goes!" The room they are in is lovely -- large framed paintings on the walls, and stacked nearby are several unopened cartons, each marked "ORIGINAL VAN GOGH OF THE MONTH CLUB."

I have labored in vain to find the hidden OVGOTMC in my life -- have sent back numerous oil paintings and Rolls-Royces and still can't raise that bottom line.

I suspect my boss is holding out on me...

Music as a Weapon of Choice

Some years ago, I got brave and volunteered to do a sermon at the UU church I attend.. During the summer months, the minister is on vacation, so congregants and guests take over the pulpit. We even have a full-time committee that makes sure something is lined up each week, to include preacher, service leader, Board rep, hymns, musicians, sound techs and a story for the kids.Usually by October or November, the entire church year's schedule is filled in, along with contingencies for no-shows.

I wrote the piece below, and it was more or less in place a week before, when we learned that a homicidal wingnut had gone into a UU church in Knoxville and opened fire, killing two people and wounding seven. Because this incident was so fresh for us the day I spoke, and because the shooter had concealed his rifle in a guitar case as he entered the church, the title was changed to "Music as a Healing Choice."

For ease of reading and effect, I've made a few changes in the wording to accommodate the videos I'm inserting.

~

Very few of us can go through a single day without hearing music.  I think most people probably wake up to a clock radio or an alarm that plays a chosen tune.  While coffee is brewing, we listen to the perky theme music on the morning news shows and catch the latest commercial jingles in between segments.  Or, perhaps we get reminded that “Barney” loves us, and we love him!

Adieu, Archie

                                    

About a year ago, and then sometime before that, I described a man who attended the UU church that I'm a member of. Archie (not his real name) was an opinionated, badly behaved elderly gent who, it seemed, simply could not contain himself. The mere mention of his name was shorthand for "Nobody likes him, but we can't make him leave."

After his car wreck, we saw a rapid decline in Archie. He lost an alarming amount of weight, and was never seen without a neck brace, an oxygen tank, or his wife Edith. We had never seen the lady before, but the general consensus was that she did not share her husband's religious preference. All of this changed once Archie was forced to surrender his driver's license. She was at Sunday services with him, the early-morning discussion forum, and even an eclectic, semi-metaphysical group that meets once a month on Saturdays. He was known in every quarter of the town, attending meetings of retired members of his former profession and contributing to a senior-citizen organization.

As the months went on, Archie and Edith continued their attendance at all of the above-referenced functions. Edith quite obviously had health problems of her own. She would most likely have preferred to remain at home, comfortably attired, but she got dressed up and drove him wherever he wanted to go. She always sat directly behind Archie, because he needed his back rubbed and his oxygen adjusted. He also needed her to occasionally poke him and murmur "Archie -- shush!" when he got caught up in the moment and offered one of his famous outbursts. For the most part, he behaved, but due to the pain he was in, everyone in any room knew when he had arrived, because a hearty and high-pitched "Woo-hoo!!" was what we heard as he settled into his rolling walker-chair and put his leg up to rest it.

Archie simply never missed any gathering, no matter how bad his bodily pains got. And when he did fail to show, we knew something serious was going on. Sure enough, in late April, the minister announced from the pulpit that Archie was in the intensive-care unit, and had been intubated. About a week later, we had an update that the minister had paid him a visit in the hospital, and that no one should be too surprised to hear that he had passed on. That announcement came the next afternoon. The minister himself had been at the scene, and Archie had taken his hand in a surprisingly strong grip, not letting go until the end.

He was a tough, determined guy, and we learned more about this fact at the memorial service that was held for him. Archie and Edith had no children, just nieces and nephews. The two of them had met some 60 years ago, around the time he was flying air refueling tankers for the Air Force. Edith said he had swept her off her feet. Apparently, he continued to do so, and when he started getting sick (turns out he had Lou Gehrig's Disease), his main concern was that Edith would be left alone and uncared for.

The minister recalled a time he had paid a home visit to Archie. In the den were six TV sets, all working, all turned to a different news channel. Only one was running the sound; Archie kept track of the world by watching the crawls along the bottoms of the screens.

Unitarian Universalists don't have a scripture or a creed, just seven principles. The first is, "the inherent worth and dignity of every person," and the last is "respect for the interdependent web of existence, of which we are all a part."

Archie's memorial was a powerful reminder of these important "absolutes."

-----------
Photo credit: Rex Temple afghanistanmylasttour.com

As for me and my house, we shall hug the trees.

Within the last month, I have come across two very retro product lines.

Here's the first one: LobotoME.

And here's the second: The 10-year journal.

I actually bought the LobotoMe product linked above, to keep track of my so-called diet and exercise routine (they had a special on Groupon).  It's cute, but I'm underwhelmed.  The 10-year journal is, I admit, fascinating to think about.

There are many, many (many) people out there who much prefer written communications to reside in a paper environment. I understand this. There's something compelling about paper, for both reading and writing. Julia Cameron, creator of The Artist's Way, recommends Morning Pages in longhand as a therapeutic technique. I tried it about 10 years ago and am more or less as messed up now as I was then.  My arthritis is worse, too, which is why I rarely assault the world with my penmanship anymore. Once in a great while (like when I'm traveling or the computer is down), I'll resort to a handwritten journal, and I have many years' worth of "Dear" diaries and day planners that are important enough to keep on their own shelf in chronological order.  Truthfully, this quirk originated with some silly book I read in my teens, where a visitor to an old mansion is browsing aimlessly in a library full of leather-bound volumes and "chances upon" a collection of diaries tucked in with the novels and encyclopediae.  Sure, I fantasize about someone curling up in front of a fire with some Earl Grey tea and my journals (which this unnamed person probably tosses into the fire before calling it a night), but for real-life purposes, the computer is by far the quickest and most efficient means (for me, at least) of organizing the days, months and years.

For reading, too: While I'm increasingly inclined to use the Internet for factual inquiry, I still prefer fiction in paper form, with turnable pages -- though the library is now my preferred source, mostly due to financial constraints, but also because I'm too picky about literature to want to keep much of what I read.  I have a few e-books on my computer but have not yet resorted to Kindles or Nooks.

But I still have sort of a problem with products that are aimed at drawing people away from the computer and back to reliance on paper, like the aforementioned items.  Whenever possible, for the purposes of keeping track of my life, I make an effort to get it done electronically.

If I haven't already mentioned Memiary, I want to first tip the hat to Kay (she of the Thinking Cap), who rightfully praised it in her blog a few years ago and turned me into an immediate devotee. I keep two Memiary pages: One for my personal notes and one for events at the office, such as various employees' first and last days on the job, power outages and anything else that might be of historical significance. Memiary is similar to Twitter: It's limited to more or less the same number of characters, so you can't go on and on, but you can still make your point.  Hashtags are useful there, too.

With regard to the 10-year journal, I have devised something that works even better for me: I call it the Reverse Chronology, and it's done on an Excel spreadsheet. I simply add a row for every year of my life, and when the spirit randomly moves me, every few months or so, I fill in the columns that say [x  years ago] on this day in [year] I was [years old] and [fill it in with whatever I remember most about that little slice of time]. It is very useful for putting things into perspective. I think we all have "things" that keep bothering us years and years later, when everyone else has forgotten them.  Noting a sticky moment on the spreadsheet and then seeing that it happened forty-five frackin' years ago for gawd's sake can take away its power over us and maybe even render it humorous.  Not unlike the "Riddikulus!" technique that Harry Potter and his classmates used to banish their Boggarts.

For more conventional chronologies, I transcribed the monthly Index pages from my many years' worth of Franklin-Covey planners to -- again -- an Excel spreadsheet, allowing one primary and one secondary category for each item.  After I stopped using Franklin planners, I started slacking off, but am slowly but surely bringing the Super Index, as I call it, up to date.

The last, most obvious, advantage to the non-paper mode of writing is its virtual indestructibility. Yeah, I know, everything you put on the Internet is forever, even if you want to delete it, and some evil entity out there is secretly collecting all this stuff to use against you in some Orwellian dystopia where -- well, you know. That's the pessimist's version. But y'know, I have enough to worry about. Dystopia will probably be a few decades late to my funeral. Meanwhile, among the things I don't want to worry about is the prospect of all those diaries, all those years of words, insights, musings, going up in flames or down in floodwaters. I've already had numerous occasions to search Evernote and Google Docs to come up with some obscure snippet of personal data that could otherwise have been lost to clutter or carelessness.

The clouds on the servers have saved me from the ones in my head, and will continue to do so. And the trees shall live long and prosper.

26 Random Non-Profit Organizations I Support

If you're suffering from fiscal excess and would like to get a big head start on those year-end tax deductions, here's a handy list:

• Southern Poverty Law Center
• Center for Inquiry
• Amnesty International
• Just Detention International
• Heifer International
• Kiva
• People for the American Way
• Planned Parenthood
• Doctors Without Borders
• Move to Amend
• ONE.org
• Truth Wins Out
• Food Democracy Now
• One Law For All
• Courage Campaign
• USAction
• Military Religious Freedom Foundation
• Green For All
• Secular Coalition For America
• Common Cause
• Bold Progressives
• UUSC - the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
• Advocates For Youth
• Get Equal
• The Hunger Site and related one-clicks
• SOCM

Thanks!

Sunday, April 8

Another quickly dashed-off post, to avoid getting bogged down in attempts to say everything "just right."

Big news: The Scorpion Queen has been fired. For those who might be new to this blog, The Scorpion Queen (aka TSQ, aka Cruella) was my supervisor for just over three years. She often made my life miserable, to the point that when I was transferred to an out-of-state location, turning my 10-minute commute into 45 minutes, I was happy about it. She is a brilliant accountant with exemplary work habits and zero people skills.

About a year and a half ago I saw her name on the corporate organization chart, beneath the name of a new manager -- female. I remember thinking "Hmm. This oughta be interesting." TSQ frequently talked about how she was "terrified" of her father and "terrified" of any and all older, stern, militaristic male managers she worked for at this company and previous ones. And she had a very difficult time dealing with assertive female subordinates, such as myself, who were willing to put up with only so much of her crap. I was not the only one of those. Marilyn, a woman about 10 years older than me (who recently retired), transferred to another department to get out from under TSQ's thumb. I took it as an encouraging sign that I was transferred to another location, rather than being fired, at a time when people were being laid off left and right.

Unfortunately, even 40 miles away, I still had to deal with her when it came to collecting overdue payments from customers. Many of these customers had been in business longer than she'd been creeping about upon the face of the earth, and made up a substantial portion of our revenue. And yet, she had no problem putting many of these customers on credit hold for minor delinquencies, thereby jeopardizing our current and future business relationships with them. We are hardly the only game in town, and her decisions made the sales department's jobs that much more difficult.

I don't know the specific issue that caused the conflict between TSQ and her new boss, but there was one. She was shown the door on a Friday, and the announcement made the following Tuesday. It caused a serious dispute among the staff, which could not agree as to whether the appropriate theme music for this event was "Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead" or "O Happy Day."

Culture Shock and Career Musings

 

I spend a significant portion of every week reading articles via feed from The New Republic, The Atlantic, and others. I "know from" good writing, you might say. So there was quite the cognitive shift yesterday when I settled in for a lengthy wait at the doctor's office and had to choose some reading material.

I had my Web-capable cell phone with me, but that particular office gets little to no reception, so I had to turn to the magazine rack in the corner. After thumbing through the January issue of Money, my next field of choices was a very narrow one. It consisted of two issues of, well, let's just call it The Glob. If TNR is written for an 11th-grade reading level, and Money aims for more like 7th or 8th grade, then The Glob appeals toward approximately 4th or 5th grade. Small words, short paragraphs, lots of pictures. Lots of schoolyard judgments, too. Adjectives galore, with very little to support them. 

It was nice to hear my name called so I could abandon my perusal and save a few brain cells. Nice to get home and say hi to Marty Peretz and Conor Friedorsdorf again.

But it did cross my mind:  I could write like that if I wanted to.  I mean, on Facebook, I share giggles with friends about the feasibility of banishing Rush Limbaugh to an imaginary land called Douchebagistan. That's juvenile enough; all I need to do is set my sights lower and aim them at innocent celebrities. I can indict Paula Deen for eating a cheeseburger in public just as well as anyone else can. I have credentials, too -- my late grandmother taught me everything I need to know about watching soap operas and labeling the characters and the actors who portrayed them in broad, black-and-white terms.  "He's up to no good -- you can just see it in his face," she'd announce. Or "That sow! She needs to get run over by a bus, before she can ruin Jennifer's life.  Poor little Jennifer!"  Maybe that's where that fuzzy nostalgic feeling came from yesterday -- reading The Glob made me feel like I was communing with Grandma. 

I know people who write for tabloids make decent money. I could do that sort of thing freelance, in my spare time. In my sleep.  All I'd have to do is rent out a storage unit and lock away my self-respect for awhile...

I'm a little depressed. So pass me the Kleenex and shut up.

Back around the turn of this century, I was VERY depressed. Enough to verbalize some suicidal-type feelings. Enough to want to stay in bed most of the day and not make the effort. Things got better after awhile, but all together, it had me down for about 4 years. Since that time, I can spot the signs better. Recognizing it goes a long way toward helping it pass faster. Right now, on a scale from 10 (everything's fine, couldn't be better) down to 0 (Slough of Despond), I'm probably around a 5-1/2.

Anyone who's ever been depressed can relate how frustrating it is to talk to the non-professionals in our lives about it -- especially those who have never experienced depression, or claim to have never experienced it. Though why someone would deliberately lie about such a thing is a mystery to me.

These (probably) well-meaning but clueless types will almost always try to cross-examine you as to why you're depressed or what the depression is "about."  Not only is it often impossible to pinpoint a root cause, it's annoying because even if the depressed person does  have the ability to identify a cause, it still makes no difference whatsoever in helping lift the depression.

In this way, depression can be like a cold. How often do we really know what brought the cold on? We can search our memories for every person we've come into contact with, who could have transmitted the virus to us. We can determine that lousy nutrition, immune deficiency, or going out in the cold weather without adequate clothing, brought it on. Great. But after you whittle it down and say Ah-ha!, what are you left with? A big box of tissues, maybe a day off from work, hot tea and maybe a little somethin' from the pharmacy. Or the liquor cabinet. And time, if you're lucky. Time to catch up on your sleep and ride it out until the virus gets bored with your room decor and moves on to the next victim.

Does anyone ever say, "Well, okay, now you know that little kid with the runny nose in the grocery store is where you got it from. Feel better now? No? Well, why the hell not? Suck it up and get back to work -- other people have problems much more serious than yours!"

Nobody says that to a person with a cold. But just dare to mention that you're depressed and here come the questions. 
"Was it something I said?"
"Was it something I did?"
"Is it because your _____ died?"
"Trouble at work?"
"Is there something from your childhood that's bothering you?"
"Are you angry at somebody?"
"Is it your subconscious??"
"Is it the weather?"

And the "remedies":
"Go out and get some exercise."
"Make some new friends."
"Go sky-diving."
"Think of all the good things in your life."
"Put on some dance music."
[insert inane religious advice here]
"Smile!"
"Volunteer at a soup kitchen."

So -- if KNOWING where your cold probably came from doesn't do anything to alleviate it, why on earth would anyone expect that figuring out what made you depressed (which only happens in very rare cases) play any role in making you stop being depressed? If you want to help someone who's depressed, you can LISTEN to them, if they feel like talking. And them not wanting to talk is NOT an invitation for you to start jabbering at them for hours on random subjects because their silence makes you uncomfortable. Another thing you can do is address concrete issues (as opposed to their state of mind, which you and they actually know very little about). Depression makes people feel indecisive and overwhelmed. It can leave them awash in piles of unfinished chores, which makes them feel even worse. You can offer to do a couple of things for them -- wash some dishes, maybe, or run an errand. Something to cut down on the number of things they know they need to do but can't seem to. And the key word here is offer. If they don't accept your offer of help, you're fine telling them that you care about them and that they don't have to cope with it all alone. Unless you really know this person, know their entire history and what kind of risks they face, simple trite remedies don't do any good. But above all, confusing a "diagnosis" with a "cure" really doesn't work, for depression or colds or a lot of other things.

End of rant.

For those who have wondered about the Wally situation, he should be out of the hoosegow and taking all the usual steps toward a fresh start this coming summer. This may or may not be complicated by a recent health crisis involving his father, Doug, who faces cancer surgery in early March. No prognosis will be available until the surgeon does her thing. Everything else is, well, same as it ever was.

Our Encroaching Food Desert

                                               

Earlier this week, we learned that the grocery store we frequent will soon close. The same is true for other locations of the same chain in our area.

This store is not "sexy." It doesn't have a cafe or a pharmacy or a sushi chef. On the other hand, it doesn't have a police guard, bulletproof cash register windows or display shelves made of cardboard boxes. It's just your average utilitarian grocery store. The kind you probably shopped at when you were a kid. A supermarket...but just barely.

We like it because the prices are exactly right. The nearest competitor prides itself on its "sales," but otherwise, their prices are at least 5% higher than this one, across the board.

For some background, I pay most of the bills for our household, but Carl takes care of electric, water, and groceries. We've reached a state of detente with regard to our widely differing diets: He gives me $20 a week to stock up on my semi-healthy frozen entrees and other items for lunch. On Sunday, the last day of his work week, he takes the bus from work to our grocery store, shops, and then calls me to pick him up. Then we go home and spend an hour or so putting food away and conversing about how much things cost and/or how much we saved. It's an arrangement that's worked well for a couple of years now.

Put your money where your mouth was

I shall be brief!

A friend of mine posted today on a popular social networking site about restaurant servers and their view of Sunday customers.

That view is uniformly negative.

Why?

Because when they see a crowd of well-dressed people coming in, they surmise that this group has come from their house of worship. After being run ragged by these people, who are for some reason typically fussier, pickier and more demanding than the average customer, the server can often look forward to a very measly tip -- or worse, no tip at all, or worst, a religious tract or fake money with a scripture verse on the other side.

And no, I am not making that up.

Apparently, some people think it's much more important to leave money in the offering plate than next to the dinner plate.

As any server will tell you:  If you can't afford to tip, eat at home.


Servers make as little as $2.13 per hour. Plenty of countries around the world don't even have a policy of tipping -- they pay servers a reasonable living wage. But here in the good ol' Free-market States of America, it doesn't work that way.  Tips are used as a means of encouraging good service. Servers, however, are at the mercy of numerous factors in the course of their workday, such as incompetent kitchen staff and customers who don't know what they want, among many other things. The server may take the order perfectly, interact with the customer impeccably and deliver the food swiftly, and still take the brunt of the customer's dissatisfaction if something goes wrong.

Cooks are paid on a completely different scale and bussers usually get a percentage of whatever the servers make.

This is not "easy money."

Everyone should have to wait tables at least once in their lives.

This has been a Public Service Announcement on behalf of your restaurant staff.

Oh, what the hell.

This is not the way I prefer to blog.

I prefer to construct careful, orderly, logical posts on an intriguing subject, sprinkled with wit, following a neat sequence, decorated with eye-catching pictures, and wrap it up (just like they taught us in elementary school) with a solid conclusion that will keep 'em coming back for more.

But...

If I keep trying to blog that way, the result will be what you've seen lately.

A big pile of nothin'.

That stretches on for months.

[cue a scream from Miss Thistlebottom:  Look at all those sentence fragments!!!!!!!!  Gaaaaaah!!!]


Shut up, lady. Can't you see I'm trying to write?

So, here I am, prefatory to jumping in the shower to start my first workday of 2012.

My son will be home some time in the fall (more about that later)
My good friend Matt from church died yesterday after a long struggle with Type I diabetes and kidney failure. He was only 54 and a light has truly gone out with his passing.
My cousin Pat came to visit over the New Year's weekend. It was a fantastic time. We went up to Lookout Mountain and took lots of "pitchers."
Our friends came over for New Year's Eve. We celebrated the holiday and their 35th anniversary with snacks and bubbly.
My cat is in heat again. She wanders around the house crying out for some dude named "Harry." The nogoodnik still hasn't turned up.

It's going to be a good year, and I'm going to post more. Just like this, if that's what it takes.

Happy New Year to all.

Sharing an Infographic

There's a lot more to this than will show in this space, so check out the link:
http://www.militaryeducation.org/military-equipment/


From: MilitaryEducation.org

All manner of good news

It really was a good week overall (for purposes of journal-keeping, my week starts on Saturday).

Got 3 postcards from Wally today. Apparently all but one of mine got through to him. I figured out that the people in the mailroom must be "trusties." Some are sticklers for rules (or maybe they just get bored and like to play head games with inmates' families) and others will be happy to let it slide. Whatever the reason, he and I are back on track with communications.

There may be a way to send him $ without paying exorbitant fees. He's been getting postcards from many other people as well, so he doesn't feel too isolated.

Undelivered Messages, Ineffective Inoculation

In accordance with the jail's regulations, I snail-mailed Wally several postcards with messages of varying importance. I started sending them out on October 17th. They started coming back to me this past Friday, November 4. Why? Not for lack of a return address -- I'm glad I put one of those on each card; otherwise, I'd never have known they were rejected.

Why were they rejected? Because the return address I included was on a pre-printed label (with a heart). "NO LABELS" said the, um, label that the jail-snail-mail guardian affixed to the card. So I can expect the other half-dozen or so cards to make their way back to me as well. Fortunately, there is now a public defender in the mix. We have spoken and exchanged emails. He seems like he knows his stuff and has demonstrated a willingness to convey urgent messages that can't wait for postcards. But, because mail is likely to be a vital morale-booster, I've started cranking them out again, without labels this time. Oh, and blue or black ink only... [eyeroll].

I've had several conversations about Wally's situation with friends and family members. One of the family members is Carl's sister Melanie. Melanie is the religious one in the family. She was quite supportive over the phone, having been through something similar with a nephew. Inevitably, though, she had to ask me "the question."  "Is Wally saved? Does he have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?"

Me, the Reader October 23, 2011

Google Reader is a great way to keep up with any website that has an RSS feed. Kind of a one-stop shop, it's an alternative to surfing around, trying to remember what your favorites are, or digging around in your Bookmarks. I find it convenient to visit Reader right after checking Gmail, since the link to Reader is at the top of the page.

Many of the bloggers I follow on Reader offer a daily, weekly, or otherwise occasional listing of sites they've been following, which offers opportunities to add still more sites to my growing list.

So, today, I thought I'd return the favor -- a series begun a few months back.

My Reader is divided into categories, with one called "Culture." Most of these are stand-alone webzines and blogs. I have another group called "Magazines," but those are web versions of magazines that one might previously have subscribed to in print.

• A few of the blogs listed to the right of what you're reading now are included in my Reader feed to ensure that I don't miss anything. One of those included in "Culture" is PZ Myers' Pharyngula. An appropriate placement for one of the heroes of the "culture wars."

• Politifact is another. When this column in the St. Petersburg Times began tracking the status of President Obama's promises, I was in the habit of clipping and saving them in a folder. But in keeping with my resolve to avoid such cluttery behavior, I found the column in Reader and began accessing it that way. Much better.

• Roger Ebert's Journal (also listed here in the blogroll) is next. As a side note, has anyone noticed how many great examples we have today of individuals who are in the grip of a devastating illness, and yet keep going in spite of it? From Ebert to Hitchens to Hawking to the late, great Ann Landers to Michael J. Fox and beyond,(what the hell, I'll even throw poor old Zsa Zsa into the mix), we have no shortage of examples of grit and determination to inspire us. Perhaps it's the relentlessly intrusive nature of the media, who won't let someone retire to their sickroom in peace, but more likely this phenomenon has the opposite effect. Celebrities who are gravely ill but still able to go online have the reassurance of knowing, for real, how many millions of people are out there pulling for them -- and how many non-celebrities share the affliction without all the publicity. We really do live in an interdependent "web" of existence, with fewer and fewer occasions to feel alone when we don't want to be.

Ebert is a social critic as well as a film critic. His medical struggles have given him a large helping of fearlessness as well as clarity of voice -- ironic, considering how that "voice" is now produced by technology, after nature failed.

• Salon.com appears to have changed its feed structure as of October 1st. I had a subscription to the Life section, which included the advice columnist Cary Tennis, but that exact feed seems no longer to exist. I now subscribe to Cary's column separately (he's filed elsewhere in my Reader), and have resubscribed to Salon for its eclectic mix of stories.

• SimpliFried is a spinoff from Unclutterer.com. I've come to rely more and more upon web-based sources for recipes and cooking tips, despite my love of cookbooks. Yummly is one; this is yet another.

• Slate is another site where I came for the advice columns (Dear Prudence and Friend or Foe) and stayed for all the rest. It's a Washington Post offshoot.

• The Daily Beast is an online fraternal twin of Newsweek, which used to be owned by the Washington Post. Are you following all this so far?

• The Skeptic Detective is another science blog with lots of entertaining and informative geekery.

• Wowowow is "Women on the web" and includes contributions from  Mary Wells Lawrence, Liz Smith, Lesley Stahl, Peggy Noonan, Marlo Thomas, Candice Bergen, Margo Howard, Lily Tomlin,Whoopi Goldberg, Jane Wagner, Joan Ganz Cooney, Cynthia McFadden and "Miss Manners," Judith Martin. Came for the advice column and forgot to leave. 

Those are my "culture" recommendations from Google Reader.  Next: Feminism.