A Stitch ... in Time?

Long ago, it became apparent that I have a predilection for new challenges.  In pursuit of this, I often come up with ideas which, when viewed by the cold dual lights of day and sobriety, appear to be ... inappropriate.  I'm not speaking morally or ethically inappropriate, merely things to which no intelligent person would commit herself.  It has long been my hope that by surrounding myself with intelligent, creative people, I would provide myself with a safety net.  In other words, someone would tap me on the shoulder and say, "Ummm.  No."  For some reason, though, this hasn't worked.  All those intelligent creative people either say, "I think that's a great idea for you," or "I'll join in!"  So instead of simply straying from sanity's path alone, I lead the pack.

Okay, it is possible that I exaggerate a bit.  It's not like I've led Arctic expeditions or squeezed a half-dozen people into a small plane to search for Amelia Earhart.  I've never even made Kool-Aid, much less persuaded others to drink a poisoned version.  I'm a low-key, risk-adverse kind of adventurer.  I'll decide that we're driving four hours (each way) to a certain restaurant for dinner, but I'll make a reservation.  I'll put together a group to fly on trapezes, but I know we'll fall safely into a net.  I'll move thousands of miles away, without a job, friends or an apartment ... but I'll know a phone call will net me a return ticket home.

So why am I bemoaning my current situation?

My sister once summed up our personalities well.  She assumes, if she has never done something, that she is unable to do it.  She might prove herself wrong, but she's not optimistic about this.  I, on the other hand, assume that I can do anything until I prove myself wrong.  Granted, I prove myself wrong quite often!  But I always start with the belief that I can do it.

So when, several months ago, I saw a picture of a dress in a magazine and decided I wanted one just like it, I decided to make it.  After all, I can sew a seam on a machine.  I've no clue how to read a pattern, much less how to sew a dress without a pattern, but hey - I don't know that I can't do this, so surely I can, right?  To protect myself (see first paragraph, above), I showed it to a friend, who actually knows how to sew, and asked if "we" could make it and she (see intelligent, creative people sentence, above) said yes, we could.  Excited about the prospect of wearing this glamorous dress to my holiday party this year, I began telling people that I would be making my dress this year.  And then the sewing began.  Turns out my friend, who truly is an excellent seamstress, had never encountered a challenge of this magnitude before.  What looked, to my naive eyes, like a very simple garment, involves no end of "notions" (that's what they call them), some of which I'd never even heard of.  Still, when we bought these strange things at the fabric store, my friend kept nodding, sagely, it seemed, so I felt comforted.

Then the sewing began.  First, mind you, rather than waste good fabric, we decided to make a muslin prototype.  Yes, this means making the dress twice.  Or at least a good chunk of it.  We were actually fairly successful at this.  But somehow, when we used the muslin prototype as a pattern, the problems began.  Now I need to lose two inches in my hips to wear it, it's suddenly gotten so low-cut in the front that I'm afraid I'll be arrested for indecent exposure - in my own house - and with any hem at all, I'll have to wear the shortest of flats.  How did this happen?  And can it be fixed?  Although I am loathe to admit it, I fear the answer is no, at least not by us.  After all, it took the two of us and another friend, three intelligent, well-educated, professional women, to figure out how to put the pieces together in such a way that it wouldn't resemble a court jester's outfit.  

I may have to give in and call in a professional.  Can it all be made to come together into a glamorous dress, just like in the magazine?  Of course!  No one has proved yet that it can't!

The Way of All Flesh

The world appears to be full of dangerous hobbies and people who love them.  People who live for moments of flying down ski slopes at thousands of miles an hour.  People who race cars at astronomical speeds, knowing that a wrong move could send the car up in flames.  People who leap off of tall bridges with only a tiny bungee cord between them and death.  

I’ve always thought of myself as a … well, as a coward.  I drive like a stereotypical grandmother.  If I’m ever attacked by a shark, it’s going to have to be one that has crawled ashore and hiked to find me.  The biggest  risk I take is eating left-overs that are more than three days old.  Okay, granted, I did jump out of a plane once, but really – statistically speaking, that’s FAR safer than crossing a street.  Nope, I assiduously avoid activities that are likely to cause me physical harm. 

Or so I thought.  Yesterday, I realized that one of my favorite every-day activities is incredibly risky.  It’s caused me numerous emergency room visits, pain, scars, and temporary disfiguration.  What is this scary thing I do?  I cook.

Mind you, I’m actually a pretty good cook.  At least in terms of the food I produce; it’s my methodology that seems to be in question.  I began cooking in my mid-teens and within a year, I had caused a fire in my parents’ kitchen.  Now, it was only the kitchen that burned, and I did put it out, and it wasn’t totally destroyed, but there was an awful lot of smoke damage and scorched walls and such.  Then I got my very own apartment in NYC … with a gas stove.  I’d never cooked with gas before, and this was an older stove so it – yep – had to be lit with a match.  I didn’t get the hang of it at first.  What I did get at first was singed fingers and a complete loss of eyebrows, along with my first kitchen-related ER visit.  It wasn’t the last.

The stove wasn’t the problem in my next kitchen.  There, I attempted to open a can with a serrated edge.  The can opener didn’t fully separate the top from the can so I tried to wriggle the top off, not realizing that that serrated edge was slicing through my thumb with every wriggle.  I discovered the problem when I saw blood splattering on the backsplash.  And, as I looked around, the walls.  And the ceiling.  And the floor.  I grabbed a towel which was hanging over the refrigerator door, leaving long streaks of blood down the door, and ran to my neighbor’s.  They wrapped it up for me, let me lie on their couch for a while until I stopped feeling faint, then I went back to my own place where I realized I’d left my apartment door wide open (this, in NYC) with my purse sitting next to it, all the lights on, and the kitchen looking like a scene from an Alfred Hitchcock movie.  I’m so grateful that my roommate hadn’t come home!

The next apartment – the next kitchen – I was stabbing a potato with a knife prior to baking it (everyone does this, right?) and stabbed right on through my thumb.  By this time, I’d learned to recognize when I would need stitches, but I really didn’t have time for a long ER visit that night; I had my law school contracts final the very next day!  I strolled over to the nearest ER, looked at the long line of patients waiting and turned around.  Back home, I decided to approach this logically, so I got out the phone book and opened it to hospitals.  I made a mental note of all those within an easy walking distance and set out again.  (I did lock the door this time, but I also left all the lights on and I left the phone book open to hospitals … and this time my roommate did come home.   Ouch.)

No need to continue.  I’m sure it’s long been obvious to everyone around me that I should take up a safer hobby – like welding – but only last night did I begin to question myself.  Today I have several fingers covered in band-aids.  No stitches needed, but I have gone through half a box of band-aids between last night and this morning.  What did I do, you might wonder, to elicit such blood-letting?  I baked a cake.  A coconut cake.  This requires inserting a screwdriver into the eye of the coconut to let out the juice, then breaking open the shell with a hammer, prying the meat out with the screwdriver and, finally, grating off the brown inner skin.  The upside is that I managed to keep the blood out of the cake. 

I’m considering retiring my apron and taking up a safer hobby.  Maybe mountain climbing.

Car-mically Speaking

Some time ago, I accepted that I have very bad karma in three areas: cars, computers and travel.  (The latter concerns going to and from places and should be distinguished from my fabulous vacation karma – once I get there, I’m golden.)  My computer karma is so bad that one of my colleagues, something of a computer expert, refuses to let me in his office for fear of what my being in breathing range of his computer would do to it.  Lately, however, it’s been my car karma that’s been trying to get me.

My car has needed a lot, recently, ranging from the expected (new tires, new batteries), to the less expected (new catalytic converter, new brakes, new sensors), and as I currently have a leak in my radiator which must be seen to in the very near future, the fun isn’t over.  So when I discovered that one of  those fairly new tires was flat this past weekend, it was a bit more annoying than it might usually have been.  Add to that that the guy from roadside service sent to change it couldn’t find some particular tool he needed (apparently it should live in my car but didn’t appear to be in residence at the moment), so he couldn’t help me, meaning that I then had to have it towed to a tire store … well, you get the picture.  I was fantasizing about living a car-free life again, the way I had in NYC.  Mind you, I live in DC, not NYC, where friends are scattered well beyond the range of the metro system, and where the grocery store, liquor store, and the theatre where I act are all too far away to walk.  Snapped back to reality, I was headed home with my new tire when I noticed a small metal piece in the center console.  Now I know little about cars, but I had no doubt that this was the piece the roadside service guy had needed.   What could I do but burst into laughter?

Later, I told my father about the tire and he asked, “Well, what would a new one cost?”  “A tire?”  “No,” he said, “a car”.  I stated that I don’t think a flat tire is a reason to replace a car.  He noted that the car is 12 years old and has needed a lot of work in recent months, which is certainly true, but, as I pointed out, it has relatively low mileage.  And then I realized why this conversation struck me as so silly.  This is the same man who, when I suggested that if he replaced his twenty-plus year-old mattress he might have less back pain and sleep better, he exclaimed, “You don’t throw out something just because it’s old and not perfect!  Are you going to throw me out, next?”  Again, I had to laugh.

Now I’m wondering if perhaps I haven’t found the answer.  No, I don’t expect my karma to magickally improve.  That radiator is still leaking and yesterday, the console cover broke when I opened it to pull the gas lever.  There’s no reason to assume that I won’t again spend 24 hours in an airport hotel while the airline brings another plane over from Ireland, or that the airlines will suddenly take me off the list of people whose luggage must always be lost.  What is happening, though, is that these things don’t annoy me the way they used to.  I’ve spent a lot of time laughing about the car.  I used the 24 hour layover to catch up on sleep and I’ve learned how to fly without checking bags.  Or I take the train.  So the question is, does it count as really bad karma if it’s not upsetting you?  And even if it does, do we gain good karma by dealing calmly with the bad karma?  And finally, what did I ever do to computers to make them hate me?

We Once Were Friends

This week, I "unfriended" someone on Facebook.  I'd never done that before.

As I would assume is the case for most people, I have an odd assortment of Facebook "friends".  Many are people who are dear friends in real life.  Some were close friends once but are now more like cherished acquaintances, and still others are people I barely remember but who, for whatever reason, wanted to stay in touch with me in this way.  I rarely refuse a friend request - only those from people I don't know at all, or those from clients are ignored.  I also rarely make a friend request.  As a result, I have good friends with whom I am in contact day-to-day but aren't Facebook friends and people I wouldn't recognize if we came face-to-face who are.  

This week I made the decision to eliminate someone from my life.

We used to be good pals.  We had each over for dinner, always went to each other's parties,  saw each other in plays, and got together for drinks or lunch regularly.  When she moved to Los Angeles, I made a point of seeing her when I went out there.  When she moved to Houston, I made sure I visited her when I was there to see my sister.  When she moved to Australia, I tried hard (and unsuccessfully) to find an affordable air fare so I could visit her there.  And when I finally got around to signing up for Facebook, she was one of the first to "friend me".  Good friends.

Although I try to pull up Facebook every day or so (mostly to try not to miss birthdays), I miss far more of my friends' posts than I ever manage to read.  So I'd go weeks without reading anything she wrote, but I began to notice other friends' rising discontent with her.  They began to grumble about how right-wing she had become, how intolerant of other views.  They talked about how greedy and bitter she seemed and blamed it on her life as the wife of a wealthy man.  This puzzled me.  She and I had talked for hundreds of hours over the years and I'd never noticed any of this.  She'd adopted a child from Russia and kept her low-paid occupation for a long while after marrying; surely she couldn't have also adopted tea-party values.  Could she?

Then I saw the vitriolic post about a recent Supreme Court decision and I knew she could.  I responded to it, querying with what she disagreed, pointing out various points that will benefit millions.  Her response was sarcastic, insulting, prejudiced and mean-spirited.  I read it twice, then unfriended her.

Ever since, I've felt mildly adrift.  If not for this forum that allows  everyone to voice every thought instantly and express opinions to be read by others before one has time to think them through, I might never have known that she and I have become so politically alienated.  I might have continued to view her as a dear, rarely-seen friend, without realizing that our values are now planets apart.  And though it could be nice, holding onto happy memories without facing new realities, unlike my former friend, I am neither afraid of change nor desirous of ignorance.  I've lost a friend.  One I loved.  But she was gone long before I knew if; Facebook just told me the truth.  Thank you, Facebook.

The Bright Side of Termination

Recently, a friend of mine left a therapy job and thus had to terminate with all her clients.  This reminded me of the last time I endured that and I dug up something I wrote at the time and decided to share it here.

After three and a half years of practicing psychotherapy with the chronically, severely mentally ill, I accepted a position at a military medical center in order to work with a more diverse population.  My first thought was of how this would help advance my career ... then reality hit!

In the mental health field, we describe those clients who have schizophrenia, bipolar I disorder, or the kind of long-term, disabling depression that causes clients to commit suicide as chronically, severely mentally ill.  Today I became aware of the challenges that lay ahead, primarily that of working with possibly higher-functioning clients than those I had been seeing.  But the PRESENT challenge was that my current clients must be "terminated," ending my relationship with each of them.  I was faced with the daunting process of ending not one, but thirty-odd relationships of varying intensities and durations.

Termination is a fact of life in therapy.  All clients terminate and it is, in fact, an important part of the therapeutic process.  One doesn't simply say, "Okay.  You're cured.  Have a nice life."  Instead, termination is a process, one that can take several weeks or even months, depending on the length of the therapy and the attachment the client has formed to the therapist.  Therapists who have the luxury of staying in one job long-term do terminate with all their clients, but they usually do so one at a time.  When a therapist leaves a job, however, he or she suddenly has to end all these relationships at once and the impact can be devastating, and not just for the clients.

A good start on my first day!  I went to the Day Program where our residential clients spend their days, and announced to them all, en masse, that I would be leaving.  (If one tells them individually, one is only able to tell one or two directly; the others will all have heard the news minutes after that first session ends.)  About 10-12 of the clients lined up to hug me and tell me how much they would miss me.  In this group was a woman who wasn't my client, but with whom I had often joked, and there was another woman who had recently joined the program and whom I didn't even know.  These clients are used to loss and they have all had a variety of therapists, so they handled the news well, even through their tears.

By late afternoon, I was feeling as though this wasn't going to be the horror show my therapist friends had painted.  Then Lucy* came in.  Lucy has been suicidal the entire three and a half years we've been working together.  She's never actually attempted suicide, though she's threatened, and I've never actually hospitalized her, though I've threatened.  Her official diagnosis is major depression, recurrent.  In reality, she has traces of a variety of "ills", including PTSD, anxiety, an eating disorder, and traits of four separate personality disorders,  She is a survivor of incest and physical and emotional abuse.  Lucy has trusted very few people in her life, but, slowly, she has come to trust me.  When I mentioned that she must "feel as though" I were abandoning her, she said, "No.  You are abandoning me."  Her sadness took, as I expected it to, the form of extreme anger.  She threatened to set my house on fire.  She wished aloud that I would be physically harmed in my new job so that I would have to return to her.  This was indeed the horror story that I'd heard it was.

And yet, over the next three or four weeks, my clients learned a great deal about themselves, their resiliency and their strength, and they taught me a great deal, too.  One of the tenants of therapy is that the clients never entirely lose a therapist.  They should be able to "feel" the therapist's presence and "hear" what the therapist would say in a given situation, long after the therapy ends.  What I had not realized was that I would carry my clients with me in much the same manner.

The next time I'm feeling as though I'm incapable of making a difference for a client, I'm going  to remember Martin.  Martin has had severe schizophrenia for decades and the medicines don't help him much.  He isn't delusional, that I've ever been able to ascertain, but he spends all his time with his "voices", which makes it impossible for him to focus on reality for more than a few seconds at a time.  When we began working together, at the end o every session, he would walk out of the room, closing the door, and turning out the light.  He wasn't able to retain my image once he was no longer facing me; he "forgot" that there was anyone left in the room.  After several months, he stopped turning out the light.  A victory!  When I told him I was leaving, he looked at me and whispered, "Shame."  Not only did he leave the light on, following our final session he shook my hand and told me he'd miss me.

No matter where I go, I don't think I'll shake the image of Sally, who had her first psychotic break when she was in college.  She is understandably angry at this illness that has stolen, or, at best, delayed many of her dreams, and she tends to take this anger out on those around her.  She challenged me at every turn.  Because she was a residential client, I had the ability to go find her and bring her to her sessions.  But that doesn't mean she came willingly.  She'd often refuse to come to my office; other times she'd spend her entire session facing the wall with a blanket pulled over her head; there were times when she'd spew out vulgarities aimed at me in a barrage of hostility.  Although I actually liked her in many ways, and cared a great deal for her, she also made me feel victimized and helpless more often than not.  I had no idea what to do with her.  I'd like to pretend that all my interventions were well-planned and that they were all designed with maximum therapeutic aid in mind.  They weren't.  I flew by the seat of my pants with her and sometimes, my interventions were as much to help me cope with my anger and frustration at her (my counter-transference) as they were to help her.  When I told her I was leaving, I thought there was the strong possibility that she would cheer.  Instead, she missed her next session.  When I ran into her a few days later, in the program's day-room, she confronted me and told me that she was angry with me for leaving.  This, from a client who is a master of passive-aggressiveness and downright meanness, but who had never, to my knowledge, appropriately confronted anyone with her anger before!  She came to her next session, sobbed the entire time, and talked, in heartbreaking detail, about all the myriad of things she'd gotten out of therapy.  In retrospect, I can see where my training "kicked in",  causing me to do things that actually were helpful for her, but I still feel like I was groping in the dark every step of the way.  The only thing I can take away from this is the belief that a strong degree of caring will be intuited by even the sickest client ... even when the counter-transference is negative.

By the end of my tenure at this program, I was emotionally exhausted and felt like I had nothing left to give to anyone.  So when Lucy came in, my last patient on my last day, I dreaded the session.  She was composed, however.  She told me that she planned to take my recommendation of another therapist since she trusted me to choose wisely for her.  She explained that she was still angry at me, but she understood my need to move on and she wished me well.  When we hugged good-bye, I knew I would miss her for a long time to come.

I've learned that my clients are almost always stronger than I know.  That they have reserves of compassion and empathy that we often don't provide them room to demonstrate; that all the insight and interpretations in the world won't help unless the therapeutic relationship is strong; that these relationships are two-ways streets and the clients usually give as much as they get.

I'm hoping that I stay at this next job for a long, long time, so that I don't have to endure another mass termination anytime soon, but I know that, when it happens, I'll continue to learn from my clients.  And I'll continue to miss them.

*All client names and details of their diagnosis/treatment have been changed.

City of a Thousand Stories

There are a lot of reasons to love life in a big city.  There are even more reasons to love life in the particular big city of New York.  Broadway (and off-), restaurants, sights, shopping ... and I did love them all.  But what I loved most was the constant sense that once I walked out of my front door in the morning, I had no idea what might happen between that moment and when I arrived home that night.

While there are slight variations, I generally know pretty much exactly what my day is going to be like every single day.  I know who I'll see, where I'll go, and what will happen there.  You might think this would make me happy.  But my life is a conundrum.  I'm the least spontaneous person alive.  I loathe spur-of-the-moment.  Yet I hate being bored or feeling like life is predictable.  And in NY, I could have both.  I planned my life out for two weeks.  There was no point in suggesting we get together in a week and a half; that was booked.  There was never an available evening earlier than two weeks hence.  This could, in a different place, make life quite predictable indeed.

In NY, though, from that moment when the front door closes behind you, you are never alone, and that brings with it a constant sense of adventure.  You're not alone walking down the sidewalk, or in the subway, or at the office, or in restaurants.  No one drives (no one except the very rich or the supremely car-addicted), so that "private time" is lost.  Take an empty elevator to your office?  Dream on!  Sit alone at a bar, nursing a drink?  Not happening!  No, you are around people at every moment.  And people are fascinating creatures.

Sometimes, they are fascinating in weird, creepy ways.  For instance, I was perusing the aisle at my local supermarket when a man sidled up to me and stopped, inches away.  This was a definite invasion of my personal space but, as a sophisticated, worldly New Yorker, I wouldn't dream of assuming it was meant that way.  He probably came from a different culture, so I turned to him, questioningly.  Different culture, my ass!  He leaned in another inch and whispered obscenities to me.  It always amazes me how many thoughts can zip through one's mind in the space of a second.  Mine dashed to how I tolerate this from construction workers on a daily basis (never mind all the "Fuck You's" I threw disdainfully over my shoulder at them) to how I would not tolerate it in MY supermarket.  So, calmly, I opened my mouth, let out a bloodcurdling scream, turned, and continued with my shopping.

There were also the lovely encounters.  I picked up a huge box at the post office and before I had time to dread lugging it the six blocks home, a nice guy offered to carry it home for me.  He dropped it with me at my front door, waved, and was gone.  In a similar vein, I spent an hour in a ticket line on my lunch hour and struck up a conversation with the guy behind me in line.  I mentioned that I planned to just grab a hot dog on my way back to work as I hadn't eaten and when I reached the head of the line, he suggested I wait for him and he'd buy me that hot dog.  And then proceeded to take me out to a very nice lunch.  He made not one inappropriate comment or suggestion, just thanked me for my company.

These interactions cause one to both develop good instincts about danger and to be wary, while simultaneously creating a comfort level with strangers.  The query, where to meet people, just never is heard.  One meets people everywhere.  I've gone out with men I met on the subway (a funny Russian guy), in the grocery store line (he was not so memorable), and in the Laundromat (not a keeper, but a nice guy).  There is always the possibility that a new friend - or more - is just around the next corner.

Last, there are the only-in-New-York experiences.  I'd been living there less than a year when one day I found myself being taken to lunch at La Cote Basque by an honest-to-god Russian Count.  Of course, he was on the other side of 90 at the time, but he was elegant, charming and kind.  He saw himself as a goodwill ambassador at my new job, and would always take new people to lunch to welcome them.  Of course, all I could think was, "I grew up with chickens in my backyard and now I'm having lunch with a Russian Count!"  I knew just how Shirley Maclaine felt when she sang "If They Could See Me Now".

I've done an interview for an early cable show, been invited abroad by a Dentist to the Stars whom I'd barely met, and dined in a penthouse apartment on Park Avenue.  I've walked down streets late at night where I feared for my life, and jostled with the crowds on the subway at 2:00 a.m.  I've eaten in the finest restaurants and at the lunch counter at Woolworths.  I've been to private parties at the Metropolitan Museum and in tiny Hell's Kitchen walk-ups.  I've felt every range of emotions known to humans while inhabiting that city of a million stories.  The one thing I never, ever was, was bored.  And the one thing life never was, was predictable.

Standing on my own two feet ... NOT

It started when I began noticing that my feet hurt in some of my shoes.  Not killer hurt,  but hurt.  So I casually mentioned it to my doctor, who, equally casually, diagnosed bunions and told me that surgery was the only cure.  He added that surgery would involve cutting out bone, breaking bones, putting screws in bone, and - worse - would mean 2-3 months of being completely off my feet, so I decided that surgery sounded like a silly idea; after all, I could just use the mind-over-matter approach and my feet would stop hurting, right?  I suppose I should have tried the mind-over-feet approach, as the former didn't work all that well.  Still, I managed to go along for quite a while without feeling the need to do anything drastic.

When I realized that not one single pair of shoes were actually comfortable anymore, not even my sneakers, and only one pair of bedroom slippers caused no pain, surgery stopped sounding so silly.

Naturally, if I were to go ahead and have this surgery, doing one foot at a time made no sense at all.  Okay, it would be nice to have one working foot, I suppose, but it would mean taking twice the time off work, just months apart, and having someone come in and help me not once but twice as one shouldn't really be left on one's own too much while on pain pills.

So I began planning.  A note here to military generals:  If one can successfully plan an operation of this type (pun intended), one can plan anything.  Got an invasion you need organized?  Maybe a take-over of a small country?  Just call me.  I can handle it.

First, the surgery had to be scheduled to suit my doctor, me, my job, my sister (who would come take care of me for a week), my friend who would move in after my sister left and this had to be done within the confines of my podiatrist's scheduling system (come in the month before you want it done and we'll schedule it for the following month ... and so one can't make actual plans until that date is established) - well, you get the picture.

Next, came the peripheries.  How to get my sister and me home from the surgery (she can't drive my car - a stick), how to get us back for re-bandaging several days later, how to get her to the airport to return home....  And the extras.  There was the need to stock up on things like prescription drugs and groceries, to prevent friends having to do much shopping for me.  I spent weeks accumulating enough toilet paper, cat litter and hand soap to fill a pantry.  Once things were in place, I began cooking.  I'd been told that the two things I wouldn't be able to do for myself for several weeks were drive (at least not my car) and cook.  Ergo, the latter had to be done in advance.

The first step was cleaning out the freezer.

After eating - er, eliminating - the majority of the contents, I was free to prepare for surgery.  Weekends became cooking marathons - big pots of this, huge casseroles of that - all packaged neatly and tucked into the corners of what had become a fairly empty freezer.

Ahhh.  All my stresses were over.  Now, all I needed was the pre-op "stuff" and I could curl up on the operating table with a good knock-out drug and emerge with happier feet.

Silly me!  All the pre-op blood work - check.  Good to go.  The pre-op EKG?  Not so much.  Turns out I was having atrial fibrillation, a nasty little disorder that can cause blood clots and resultant strokes.  Anesthesiologists, in particular, do not like to see this, I was told.  A week of beta-blockers later, a second EKG and ... nope.  Still no good.  Three days to surgery and it's a no-go.  The day before surgery, I saw a charming, extremely busy, avuncular cardiologist who fit me in thanks to some pleading from my wonderful primary care doc and got the go-ahead.  Naturally, this emergency dr. visit required me to cancel a couple of my own clients so I then got to go into work the day of surgery to care for them.  What is life without a little last minute stress?

But the day had arrived!  My sister and I drove a borrowed car to the surgery center, where they took me in early (!), taught me to use crutches, and found me the ugliest boots ever,

before hooking me up to wires and drips.

And now I'm a week post-surgery and ecstatic.  I've had no pain, in spite of having ditched the pain pills after the first three days, and I'm reasonably mobile on my crutches, as long as I don't have to go long distances or navigate stairs.  Spending the better part of a week in bed with the cats, my computer and a large stack of books is not an experience to be dissed.  Having one's sister bring food (and, post-pain pills, wine) three times a day is lovely.  Having her around was actually one of the best parts of the whole thing.  Wearing these boots for another month, plus - not so great, but I can handle it.  I have visions of the future to keep me going:

Duke of Jones

Anyone familiar with the stories of Eudora Welty knows that life in small Southern towns is quiet and placid on the outside and filled with drama and fascinating characters underneath.  So it was in the small Southern town from which I hailed.

There were the "normal" people who did - unusual things - such as the wealthy attorney who picked up soda cans from the side of the road so that he could turn them in and finance his next European jaunt, or the other attorney who wore berets to work and listened to bagpipe music all day long.  And there were the eccentrics, such as the man who walked around town, dressed entirely in black and carrying a guitar, going by the moniker "Johnny Cash"; he apparently hadn't figured out that the "original" Johnny Cash was a different race than he was.  And that he lived elsewhere and had made real money.

There were also the people who were simply larger than life.  They would have stood out anywhere, I've no doubt, but in a small, slow-moving town, they became legendary.  Duke was one of these. He didn't actually live in my small hometown - he lived 12 miles away in a much smaller town called Jones.  To put Jones in perspective, I once drove through the state with a close friend of mine from NY.  This friend, who is well aware of my allergy to small Southern towns, kept commenting as we drove through town after town, "I could live here.  You know,if I had a family, and was kind of settled down, I could live here".  When we got to Jones, he looked around and declared, "I couldn't live here."

We were in Jones to visit Duke  - the only reason for anyone who wasn't born there, to stop in Jones. But what a stop it was.  In this tiny backwater, Duke lived in a house which featured mahogany wood panelling in the library, immaculate gardens, and boasted peacocks who met us at the door.  Duke called himself a "country farmer", but he was well-educated, well-travelled, and beyond intelligent.  So my friend and I sat and talked to him about the types of subjects you just knew weren't often discussed in that town, enchanted.  Finally, I said that we had to leave, so Duke rose, took our glasses and walked to the bar.  He handed me another "glass" of wine (plastic cup) and one of beer to my friend.  My friend, flustered, noted that we really did have to go.  Duke looked at him and said, "Yes.  This is a roadie."  He then said, "No one is going to bother you for driving home drinking these, but if they do, just call me."  When we reached the car, my friend's comment was, of course, "I could live here."

Duke was an astute businessman and accumulated significant wealth.  He was also consistently generous, using numerous methods to ensure that the less fortunate citizens of Jones were cared for in many ways, such as buying bicycles for all the children in town.  But he clung to his  simple country farmer persona.  After all, such a persona does allow one to be underestimated, often when it counts.  And between this persona and his disdain for political correctness, he could, did, and enjoyed, ruffling the occasional aristocratic feather.

One of his sons has held prestigious and important jobs with some of the finest art museums in the country.  At a dinner honoring this son, held in Boston, Duke found himself seated by a female donor who was chatty.  She asked him, "Is it true that your son was educated at Oxford?"  "Why yes, ma'am, he was."  "And aren't you a farmer?"  "Yes, ma'am, I am."  "Where do you farm?"  "In Jones, Louisiana."  "Jones, Louisiana?  I've never been there."  His answer:  "They haven't missed you."  Undeterred, she continued, "Sending a son to Oxford must have cost a lot.  How did you afford it?"  Equally undeterred, Duke replied, "Well, ma'am, we had to sell a couple of slaves."  That ended the conversation.

Duke was always ready with a quick retort, an offer of food and drink, and a seemingly endless supply of fascinating stories.  What he didn't have was immortality and he died far too young.  He was in his 80's, which, for such a man, is far too young.

He left Jones a legacy that benefits its citizens and visitors on a daily basis.  Another son of his continues to live and farm there.  Annoyed by what he sees as a speeding ticket racket, he took matters into his own hands.  When you enter and when you leave Jones (about a mile apart), there is a huge sign with bright flashing lights announcing "SPEED TRAP.  SLOW DOWN."  My visiting friend asked me how on earth Duke's son was allowed to put up such signs without running afoul of the law.  Simple.  He owns the land that houses the signs.  Duke was proud.

Bad Bob

The subject matter of the e-mail caught me off-guard.  "Bob ____".  It was from a dear friend and generated an immediate disconnect.  "What the....  She doesn't know him!"  He is an ex of mine from about ten years ago.  It was a tough relationship.  I loved him very much and sometimes I thought he loved me but there was a lot of pain and we brought out the worst in each other.  Or at least he brought out the worst in me; I'm not sure what I brought out in him, but it wasn't what I wanted.

She and I chatted.  I tried to be as neutral as possible.  After all, it was a long time ago and he might be less self-absorbed now, more genuinely thoughtful.  She decided it would be weird to date a friend's ex and chose not to pursue anything with him and I was relieved.  Not because I didn't want her dating my ex, but because I didn't think this ex would be good for her.  (Or possibly anyone.)  But then again, it was a long time ago and he might be ... except he's not!

She wrote an account of their first date which is when it became clear that he has changed.  For the worse!  On their date, he was, frankly, creepy.  At least my first date with him wasn't icky.  He saved icky for later.

I'd placed an personal ad in the paper.  I was very specific about who I am and what I wanted, which I suspected wouldn't generate many responses but which I hoped would mean that any who did respond would be worth exploring.  This was how it turned out.  Only about ten men answered and I went out with nine of them.  They were all lovely men, men worth getting to know, only there wasn't a "connection" with any of them.  Until Bob.

Damnit, I'm a sucker for voices.  His voice on my answering machine was smooth and sexy and I was half-hooked, just by listening to it.  When I went to meet him, I kept looking at the people approaching the pub, hoping they weren't "him", and the one I wanted to be him, was.  Physically, totally my type!  (Okay, he dressed like he'd been cleaning out the attic in long shorts and an untucked button-down shirt but clothes can change.) And bright and interesting and quirky.  Yep, that "connection" was there.

After a chat over a glass of wine he asked if I'd like to see a place in the neighborhood he'd been talking about and I agreed.  He asked if it were okay if we stopped at his house to pick up his dog and walk him with us.  This seemed fine; kind of a sweet touch.  But that's when I got my first clue.  We walked to his house, a huge house in a very upscale part of DC and he went in (he invited me in, but I declined) to get the dog and change his shoes.  I, of course, was in nice heels, without another option, so when he came out in ratty tennis shoes, I began to have some doubts.  We walked through the poorly-lit streets into what seemed to be a park.  It was muddy, it was dark, and there was no one about.  I stopped, turned to him and said, in a half (just half) - teasing voice, "Just so you know - I left your name and phone number with a girlfriend and if I don't call her by 10:00, she'll send the police looking for me."

I didn't need the police.  We trudged up the muddy hill and sat on a bench so that he could throw an old, chewed-up tennis ball to the dog, over and over.  He apologized to me for not suggesting I throw the ball, thinking (correctly) that I wouldn't want to pick up the saliva-drenched muddy object.  The conversation was eclectic and great fun, the dog was well-behaved and my shoes needed serious cleaning but weren't ruined.  A little weird, but no ick.

It's probably good that he's gotten creepier up-front.  I think all men should come with a sign around their necks telling us what they're really like.  And if they won't wear a sign, their early behavior should give up clear clues.  His sign would read:  Bad Bob.

The Problem with Reading

The world is full of fascinating information.  For instance, just today, I learned that codpieces have pockets.  This came up in casual conversation.

If one goes a bit further afield in search of new tidbits – say a magazine or newspaper – one’s mind can easily be boggled.  Granted, not all information is useful.  For instance, I may never have occasion to put my new knowledge about codpieces to use.  But with a little imagination, a small blurb read somewhere could be life-changing.

Recently, I read that some Chinese entrepreneur is making tea out of panda feces.  This is reputed to be extremely healthy tea and he foresees a large market for it.  (The marketing aspect to this alone is incredible - what a challenge! -  but I’ll leave this to others.)  The tea will be expensive because, according to this article, panda feces sells for $34,000 a pound.  When I mentioned this to a friend, he was astonished, noting that pandas eat all the time and so must eliminate all the time.  Upon more reflection, we decided that even with this constant manufacturing of the product, the price must reflect the world’s scarcity of pandas.

And therein was born a plan.  I have two cats and so spend a fair amount of time scooping out litter boxes.  I can’t imagine that scooping up some panda poo would be significantly more onerous.  How long could it take?  Ten minutes, tops?  And think about it – if I scooped up and sold a mere pound a day for one month, I’d be a millionaire.  Two months of this, and my retirement fund would be set.  As a basically lazy person, this strikes me as brilliant.  Ten minutes of work once a day for a few months and then I’d never have to work again.

Obviously, this isn’t as simple as it sounds.  First, where exactly does one manage to get panda poop?  I’d happily volunteer at the zoo, but I can’t believe they’d let me leave with such a valuable commodity.  Is it possible they don’t know of this?  Would it be okay not to tell them for a few months – giving me time to settle my own financial future before letting them in on this secret to financial prosperity?

If I can’t do this at the zoo, do I have to move to China?  Do they give visas for people looking to enter the country to clean up after pandas?  And how, exactly, does one store and ship this to the entrepreneur (whom I also have to identify, locate  and contact)?

This is the problem with reading.  One short paragraph and now I’m faced with all these questions and difficulties!  And if I can’t answer/solve them, it’s back to working for a living … for a long, long time!

I’m going to go look for an article on napping.  

Mi dilema

In the past few years, I lost between 60 and 80 good friends.  These were people I saw almost every day, people who shared the most intimate details of their lives with me, who inspired, infuriated and entertained me.  These were people I could always count on, albeit not in the usual way we count on friends.  I couldn't call them up at 2:00 in the morning to cry on their shoulders, or share take-out with them in a nearby park.  But they were always there for me.

When, in my peripatetic youth, I moved from city to city and state to state, they came with me.  Until I became settled, I might go days or even weeks without socializing with new friends but these "old" friends were there, day after day, week after week, year after year.

When a television show is canceled, people take it hard.  Fans mourned the loss of "Seinfeld", "M.A.S.H" and "Cheers".  People described being bereft and at lost ends when "Sex and the City" or "Lost" ended.  They had a small hole in their lives where anticipation and enjoyment of those shows used to be.  Well,  I more than feel their pain.

When those shows ended, they had usually had a nice run of several years.  They came on once a week, not counting re-runs.  When a soap opera ends, at least when mine ended, they had been on the air between 35 and 50+ years, five days a week.  I began watching two of them when I was in high school which was ... let's just say a long time ago.  I knew the family histories of these characters far better than I know my own.  I, like so many millions of others, sobbed alongside them when loved ones died and I eagerly awaited certain weddings and reunions.  When my own life was difficult, I could either escape into their worlds or at least gain perspective from them about my own.  When my love life was non-existent (like now), I could live vicariously with their "Love in the Afternoon" plots.

People comment about how we spend more time with work colleagues than with our own families.  Mine can be a fairly solitary occupation, so I don't spend nearly as much time with my co-workers as I'd like.  And my family lives far away.  I have the most wonderful "real" friends in the world but all of us are busy, involved, and actually getting together becomes a rare treat, rather than a constant.  So in a way, my soap "friends" were a larger part of my life than virtually anyone else.  And they are gone.

First, Guiding Light bit the dust.  It was a television institution, having been broadcast for over half a century.  I knew that my loss would be difficult, so I sought to replace it with All My Children, a show I chose because some of my favorite actors from Guiding Light had joined the cast.  Just as I was getting to know this new group of people and feel at home in their fictional city, As The World Turns was cancelled.  Another half-century-plus run ended.  These were shows I'd watched with my mother during summer breaks when I was in high school.  Initially, I disdained her viewing choices and sat with my nose planted firmly in a book while they aired, but a good soap has a way of pulling one in whether one chooses to be pulled or not.  So by college, I was scheduling my classes around my soaps.  And now both were gone.  I taped various episodes, consoling myself with the thought that I could re-visit them later, but everyone knows that that's not the same.  It's like watching a video of dinner with a friend, hearing all the stories you heard that night, rather than catching up on what is happening now.

But I'm an adult.  At least in most ways.  So I mourned and took solace in having found a "new" soap to love.  And - you guessed it - All My Children got the ax.

It never occurred to me to give up soap operas.  My excuse, which has some validity, is that I'm working on a large needlepoint project and I need something to watch regularly while I sew.  Something that I truly enjoy but which is so familiar to me that taking my eyes off the screen every few seconds doesn't interfere.  In truth, however, I also need my "friends" - those whose screwed-up lives I can't even try to fix, much less want to - those who show me new trends in fashion and make-up, as well as what not to wear to an office! - those who will be there, wherever I am.

So once again, it was back to the drawing board in the form of Soap Opera Digest.  This time, I chose scientifically.  I picked the show with the best, consistent ratings, in hopes that this one will stay with me for a while.  The only problem is that I don't like it very much.  Most of these characters aren't people I'd want to hang out with in real life, so why would I want to spend my reel life with them?

And yet - replacing it is problematic.  There are only four soaps still on the air.  (This is down from about 12-15 in their heyday.)  There's the one I watch. Another focuses mostly on the mob and is filled with violence, so I'm not interested in this one.  Of the remaining two, one is only a half-hour and doesn't sound all that intriguing ... but its ratings are decent.  The last is an hour long, has some cast members from my former shows, and seems to have a good plot.  And poor ratings.  Having already chosen a show for its rating and been disappointed, the third choice seems questionable.  I'd probably be happy with the fourth - until I, yet again, have to say good-bye.

I think the answer is clear.  My free time will now be spent learning Spanish.  American soaps keep deserting me.  Let's see if the telenovelas prove to be more loyal!