Michael

On this day we all pause to think of all the ways Michael Jackson touched our lives. I did pause to do this; and I'm sorry to say that writing about it will have to wait, because I am quite busy. But I'm also quite a fan of Michael and I will write about this soon. I will say right up front here that my first reaction to the news was to sing some of "Momma's Pearl" with more soul than I've mustered for any song in a long time.

Stress

Last night my mother and I got up to go to the bathroom. She then sternly challenged me to account for the day's activities. I told her I had done sundry little things and I gave an example of the kind of minutiae I was talking about. She wanted more examples. Now, my memory isn't great as it is, and this was the middle of the night. I ended up waking all the way up just to answer her. I told my father today that I couldn't take it anymore. Each day I don't know exactly what is on my list -- only that it probably isn't a finite list. Each day I know I will have to keep busy just to stay out of trouble. But I also know that just staying busy and getting things done is no guarantee that I will stay out of trouble. The stress from the uncertainty and the relentless worry is worse than the actual work. I said I couldn't take it anymore and he said that my mother was [mentally] ill and she needed me to hang in there.

Now, lest you think that my productivity stopped with the list I published yesterday, it didn't. I kept going. (When Mom watches TV is a great time to catch up.) I even remembered at one point that the list I published wasn't complete. Having to do the stuff is bad enough. Having to catalog the memories of every little pencil scratch I've done is a hoop too high. Why scar myself with memories of drudgery? Why waste space in my head with checklists that belong on paper? The vaguest generalities will have to do. That's where I'm drawing the line.

Kitty's Dream House part I

My dream house is still within reach... To quickly recap my housing crisis, my sister lives in my tiny, non-conforming "existing structure;" which is one reason why I don't live there. Yes, we tried a few years ago to share the 280 square feet but it just didn't work out. Another reason why I don't live there is because it's lonely.

About exactly ten years ago I bought the place because I thought I wanted to be a hermit and get the world off my back. What I found was an elusive dream, a fitful sleep, an encroaching consciousness that no posture was comfortable. I needed people. I ended up at the supermarket in the middle of the night just so I could be with people. I hadn't thought I was such a people person. A Waldenesque lifestyle was what it took for me to find out how much I needed people.

I dreamed of triplexes with common areas so that three families would have built-in community and privacy. And I dreamed of what I think you would call "intentional communities." I think that's the word they use for communities that are sort of like the utopias (utopiae? spell checker doesn't like it) of the 19th century and sort of like the communes of the 20th century but don't hold all property in common necessarily. The communities I'm thinking of are basically cooperative properties with actual land title for each family and an emphasis on community such that meals and activities might be shared. (If this isn't what the hippies are calling "intentional communities" these days then oh, well, I used the wrong word.)

I continued to dream of what are now called "Social Businesses," and the zeitgeist seems to have taken hold; I hope I played an important part, however small and silent, along with hundreds of other dreamers of zeitgeist. And I think I did, because that is how zeitgeist works -- hundreds of dreamers catch (and each individually discovers) a silent and contagious dream before one rises and speaks.

Another dream I had was that of getting the neighbors together to buy up the town's economy on a cooperative basis -- turn that Walmart building into a store of the people, by the people ... take control of supply lines and make sure workers got paid properly. I hope that fed into the zeitgeist that became "Transition Towns" and "Plan C."

I tried to grow different kinds of food, but the ones I got away with were tomatoes and beets.

I'd like to buy the world a home, as the song goes, but I'll settle for being able to build a nice place for my extended family.

I went to hippie camp at Sequatchie Valley, Tennessee to learn how to build unconventional structures for pennies on the dollar. Oh, we built with mud, straw, ferro-cement, sand bags... Ladies, if you want some perky boobs, just spend a couple weeks lifting adobe bricks and such. Ladies, if you actually want to get an adobe house built, get yourself a man, 'cuz it's beyond the average woman's strength and endurance to do this kind of work long enough and hard enough to get anywhere by yourself. I'm still trying to dream up ways a lightweight like me can build her own house. In Israel they dip rags in cement slurry and drape them over lightweight dome frames to cure. In Arizona they mix paper into cement to get very light bricks of "papercrete." I'm still dreamin'.

Next up, I want to tell you about the kind of home I want on my lot, for my family.

On the Fly

Blogging is a little less therapeutic the way I do it – on the fly, having snuck off to do it, pushing thoughts away because they’re too much to deal with. Mom should know we’d both be more productive if we’d take the time to be ourselves and get our heads in order. Sunday I went to see a movie with my father, and Mom said she resented people having that kind of leisure while she didn’t. Ultimately she gave her blessing for me to see the movie (although I’m pretty sure I will not get a second viewing of this movie that truly rates it.) And she has a point in that, anything I don’t do around here, she will have to do, which is untenable because she has too much to do already.

By day I’m nervous that, when Mom comes home from work I will not have enough to say for myself with regard to how I spent the time. I mean, I know I was productive but – did I hit the most important things? Did I optimize the time?

What have I done, then?

 Returned her truck to its storage space 4 miles away
 Made and ate a very good lunch with my father
 Cleaned up the kitchen
 Took out the kitchen garbage
 Fed the cat and watered the dogs
 Put a financial obligation on hold for 6 months (one of those arrangements you make over the phone when you can’t pay.)
 Trimmed roses
 Made jello
 Wrote email for a Church-oriented project

… That’s all I can think of, and it’s been five hours. Trouble is, someone who wasn’t here could (and may yet) look at it and say I could have done all that faster than I did. But you can’t push a rope. Of course it all looks simpler when it’s done – when all the head-scratching about what should be done next is over and done with.

Yesterday Mom was off from work and we were both so miserable plugging through our work loads and addressing our problems. Again I was anxious that I somehow wouldn’t do it right. The anxiety followed me right off the clock and into bed, where 6 mg of melatonin was needed to put me down in the middle of the night.

One of the chores ahead of me is pleasant. I must prepare audition material.

Sweeny Todd

I never saw the show; and I either don't know or don't remember what it's supposed to be about. So I thought it would be funny to write down what I think it's about, drawing from articles, reviews and promotions that I don't fully remember. Here goes:

Sweeny Todd is a ghost barber who tries to be both funny and horrible by teaming up with his daughter, the other ghost barber, for music and mischief.

brain dump

Life and impressions fly by. If I were taking the best care of myself I would blog enough to keep up with myself. I feel all scrambled and at a loss because I haven't been keeping up. I feel like life and its impressions have gotten away from me. Sneaking away to blog is difficult. I live with my mother, and she doesn't quite relate to my need to do this. In fact, when she finds out I was writing this instead of choosing an activity that she considers more practical, she probably won't like it. I've found that I'm on a short leash and I'm one of few people I know who can handle it. Still, I'm not exactly happy.

That reminds me, Jake and I thought I was one of a few people who could handle hanging close with the latter; and it turned out I dropped the ball. So I shouldn't get too cocky about this situation either. Still, so far, it's mostly working out.

On the employment front, things might be looking up in a month or so. I took a test for a job in a nearby town and it looks like I made muster for an interview. They said to call back in about 3 weeks to schedule it and that they'd be hiring a little while after that. I want steady work this time, none of this temporary nonsense. I hate looking for jobs. If they don't want me punching the clock 2,000 times that sucks, 'cause I just want to dig in my cleats and stay. I'm sure that right about now a lot of people feel that way.

I talked to my uncle at an impromptu family reunion, about cheap ways to build a house. (If you're not up to speed on my housing crisis, my sister lives in my house which is not big enough for both of us; and at the moment I don't mind 'cuz it's lonely up at my country place but here I enjoy the company of my mother and her animals.) When I mentioned shipping containers he said, "People do that... Take a welding class."

For what seemed like about 5 days I had a headache and at least once I got dizzy and had the vague notion that I had been episodically dizzy before that during those 5 days. I should get some raw vinegar to drink and check my blood pressure. There has never been a documented problem with my blood pressure, so if it's up something is awry. My head drained last night and I felt a little better today.

Ah, garcinia cambogia. I had a pinch of the fruit in my tea about a week ago. Now, I'm not saying it was the cause of my headache, which seems to have set in a day or two after I drank the tea. Really, there's too much that could possibly be going on for me to narrow it down that way, even if it turns out that the headache happens to return close to the same time I imbibe again. But lemme tell ya this tea has some potential. When I went to the herb counter the lady there warned me that g.c. smells bad. I replied that if it makes me skinny I'll take it. So she said the effect wouldn't be instant. Frankly, I don't know how much more "instant" a product could be. I quickly got the rash I usually get when my system cleans out after a virus, or maybe when the virus is on the ropes -- something like that. So I had this rash for like two days, and even tho I lost only just short of a pound this week, the usual vicissitudes where I weigh 5 pounds more for part of the day were tamed to only 2 1/2 pounds. For trying something once, unless it's post hoc, this is pretty remarkable. It was so powerful I figured to wait before trying it again. At this point I really would be ready to try it again, except that I'm afraid to tempt fate with my late, great headache. When next I take my tea I'll probably be able to honestly tell the herb lady that it works instantly like a charm.

Ya know what I think the headache was all about? Sinus pressure. I kept swallowing in my sleep, then stuff came out my nose in the morning, and I was better all day. Vinegar. Gotta drink some (watered down) vinegar to flush out the last vestige of inflammation. I drink raw, not distilled, so it will cost.

Today wasn't very fun. The computers lost their internet connection and I feel like the 4 hours I spent restoring them was stolen from me. Now tomorrow I have to clean house. Everything I want to do will have to wait. Even blogging would have had to wait had I not snuck away and done it.

I posted on someone else's blog lately -- a stranger's. More on that later, because I really do want to share it with anyone kind enough to read my blog.

Pix

Behind the Windbreak, Stage Left (Brain Dump)

Picture shows me at computer a couple days ago.


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There is a place in some of my fantasies and in stories I try to write. It's called "behind the windbreak, stage left --" a real wysiwyg -- what else can I say? I think it grew out of my early impressions of my Aunt's house, one of the most familiar places in my life. She moved into it when I was little and she has almost always had something at least resembling a wind-break to the right of her front yard. That's where we all headed to take walks in the woods when we were little. At least once we all went back there to ride the pony, but pretty soon I got too big for the pony and the others quickly followed suit.

Behind the windbreak, stage left doesn't always figure prominently in the stories. It's just there. I'm like, "OK, the character escapes. Then where to? Behind the windbreak..."


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In the middle of the night we were out at my woodland road-frontage with a pick axe, head lamps and shovels. Krissy and I shared a laugh over the impression others might have that we were up to no good. But in fact we were only planting flowers. The guy who sold me the bulbs was so late that planting time ended up being extremely late. In fact, that's why he gave me more than ten times what I had paid for, and why we were out there so long fighting the hard ground to put in countless plants. Some of them were still flowering and looked really special with the roses and the vase of cut flowers by September's (cat) grave.

Krissy and I had a real good time together, something that hasn't happened in a while. Then I rushed to my mother's house some 40 miles away, fighting sleep behind the wheel. When I arrived I couldn't even take a shower if I had been awake enough to do it because a thunderstorm had blown in on my heels. Well, I don't actually know what direction it had come from, but it arrived just after I did. Throughout the trip I could see lightning in the south, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't have seen any in the north if I had been driving the other way (does it?)

The dogs were afraid of the storm, which may sound unnatural for dogs ages 8 and 13, but there is a possible explanation. The elder dog must have told the younger about the time lightning struck the dormer and tore a hole in the house. And dogs don't lie, so the younger dog had to believe him.


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When I was young I didn't always have very much control over when I could sleep and wake. But now that I do, 2:30 PM seems to be my natural, preferred time to kick into gear and get stuff done. As in former times, though, 6PM is when I really hit my stride.

One of the things I think is responsible for my increasing control in this area is melatonin. It's my miracle drug. I've also learned to do things that improve my health in general -- like watching my diet, exercising (though not as much as I'd like,) and taking nutritional supplements. Also, the doctor involved in my "inverted circadian rythm" diagnosis of 1984 said that in my thirties I would find my states of consciousness easier to manage. I didn't fare particularly well in my thirties, but that could be because of medication I was taking then that I have tapered to a maintenance dose now. In fact, just before I started taking them I was 28 and was just starting to realize an impressive level of control; but this vanished when I went on the drug -- paxil.

Paxil has also been implicated in memory loss and weigh gain, both of which I suffered right on schedule when I started on the drug. I hope naturopathy catches on with insurers (including Uncle Sam -- are you listening, President Obama?) so that people don't automatically resort to iffy drugs before exploring wholesome alternatives.

The body is a wonderful healing machine. Just give it what it needs and it knows what to do.


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I have this annoying friend -- I'll call him Jake -- that I probably hung around too much. He was always putting me down, and (as he himself warned me he would) he was unfair about the arguments this caused. "I don't lose arguments," he'd said, "That has nothing to do with who's right." I'm afraid I might have unwittingly internalized too much of his negativity towards me. I think I realized this maybe a few months ago but it was a while before I could get a wholesome distance.

Jake says that people aren't rational, but that instead they rationalize. It's clear that he's talking about himself; but he certainly doesn't speak for me, and I'm sure he doesn't speak for most people. It seems to me, from long experience with people who actually do argue with fairness and integrity, that all the rest of us really want is for people to be fair to us. You see it all the time in magazines, "Just show hubby/junior/mother that you appreciate his point of view, and then he'll be more open to yours."

Fairness is certainly all I want when I talk to people, and when I don't get it I'm hurt. So until I got some distance from Jake, I'd been kinda hurt. It still hurts. I even admitted it to him because I figured I'd ultimately feel better that way than if I continued to eye-roll it whenever I remembered it. I mean, it's a weight off my shoulders and he could actually turn around and help me with it.

pix

Voila.