One Week After the Disaster

I seem to have misplaced my head.

It has been a week since my computer was destroyed by a rogue water sprinkler. There’s some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that my printer resurrected itself from the dead. I had the new one out of the packaging and ready to go, when something made me try the old one again. It must have dried out following its dance with the water sprinkler, because it worked again. Yeehaw! Back went the new printer into the box, happily returned to the store.

The bad news is that I’ve lost my email program, Outlook Express, along with everything that was in it. After many frustrating hours, I can’t seem to get the new Outlook email program to work, that is, to find my server, log on successfully, and so on. The hours I’ve spent on this endeavor have driven me into a dark depression. I’m forced to use a yahoo thingamajig which is annoying. I curse it. I curse many things. Oh, well, tomorrow is another day.

The good news is that I managed to salvage my document and photo files. I’ve spent the past week working madly on magazine assignments and got them all done and submitted. This is a big deal, and worth celebrating, especially since the subject of one story had her husband go and die on her right before my copy deadline. This threw her whole story out of whack, not to mention what it did to her life. But with a little sympathy and rewriting, the story was written, approved, and submitted. So there’s cause for celebration. However, I’m stuck in the dark depression of the email fiasco, and that is all I can think about. I’ll have to work on that.

The bad news is that my office is still topsy-turvy, with everything moved and stacked and out of its usual place, letting the carpeting dry after its assault by the rogue sprinkler. Oh, well, tomorrow is another day.

The good news is that I have a new computer. My documents and photos on now on its hard drive. This is a blessing, one worth celebrating, if I weren’t so busy being annoyed that it isn’t configured for me. There’s a special circle in hell for training computers to mind, to find their servers, to refrain from pop-ups that one doesn’t want, to behave the way you want them to behave in general. I hope when I die I don’t go there.

My old computer is finally on its way to get an autopsy at its manufacturer. I’m praying for it, as if it were a living person who is deathly ill. I would like to have it resurrected, along with my email program and all its contents. It seems like my life has gone on a strange diversion this past week. And in the hubbub of the past two days, as I worked around the strangeness to get my last three stories finished, I forgot to do my morning meditation, pray, and work on my gratitude journal. That has no doubt contributed to my sense of depression as the day has ended.

Oh, well. Tomorrow is another day. For now, I’ll go make a few entries in my gratitude journal and remember that every day above ground is a good day. May God’s blessings be with all of you.

War Wounds

In a crowded garden like mine, flowers are bruised by the leaves of their neighbors as they jostle in the evening breeze. A stiff hairy leaf, like a sunflower’s, will rub bald spots on a dahlia bloom. I hate that.

I still pick the flowers, though, then patiently give them little haircuts and put in them in vases, disguising the bald spots with greenery and other flowers. To the uncritical eye, they are still beautiful.

My left inner wrist is a mass of scars: eighteen of them, 2 to 2.5 inches long, running lengthwise up my forearm, across the width of my wrist. I made them with an Exacto knife 24 years ago. Some are thicker than others. I forget they’re there. Then I’ll put out my hand to somebody for some reason, look down, see them, and I feel nothing. Most people say nothing. Neither do I.

It was a bad night. I was 34. I worked on it for a couple of hours. Got drunk and got blood all over the kitchen. Had a young child sleeping in a bedroom. Made a call finally, somebody came and wrapped my wrist in cotton gauze. Two days later, I went to a psychiatric hospital for a couple of weeks. I got better. Two years later, I got sober.

Five years ago, I asked my husband of 14 years to hide the Exacto knives because I heard them calling. He had only known me sober. He had no idea I had been drinking in the garage during that winter. But he knew my scars, and he was scared. So he hid the knives. I got honest and sober again a few months later, but the knives are still in hiding. I asked for one last year to do a project. He couldn’t find it.

In a meeting recently, a guy said he was allergic to alcohol, and when he drinks he breaks out in handcuffs and IVs. I laughed. I break out too, in other things. That’s the back story for this poem:

Wounded Flowers

Flowers speak for me. They say
a leaf is a dangerous thing
a petal, too vulnerable for words.
Look
that leaf is a razor
how it has sliced
that petal.
Oh
when I was young
I could not bear the world.
My blood flowed
with the razors
of other people’s leaves.

Flowers speak for me. They say
perfection
is imperfect.
Look
how my wrists
work in tandem with
the scars that line them
as I snip the razored petals
of the injured
flowers.
Look
how pretty
in their vases
are the wounded.

More Craziness Than You’ve Dreamed Of

Insanity takes many forms, and I've seen some of them in my life, but the type of insanity that most affects me these days is this kind: doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

More about this later. Right now, I have to offer you a poem. I’m taking a break from insanity to ride the World’s Greatest Poetry Bus. In honor of what Bus Driver Poet Peter Goulding claims is “one of the most important dates in the Roman Catholic calendar ~ Pancake Tuesday, named after the venerable St. Pancake,” I have done as Peter commanded and composed a ditty to the pancake. Peter also demanded that we write in the persona of a poet of our choice. I chose Joyce Kilmer and to satirize his famous poem “Trees.” If you’re inclined to read somewhat ridiculous poetry, we Bus riders will be linked here.

First, Kilmer's version. He was a brave soldier who lost his life in WWI.

Trees
By Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
~~~~~
Now my version:

I Think That I Shall Never See

A poem lovely as a pancake
Giving me a hearty handshake.
Against my hungry mouth is prest,
With butter flowing from its breast,
An angel’s golden halo round,
A saucer of the sweetest brown.
It makes me lift my hands to pray
But no, my fork is in the way.
I shall in homage always wear
A nest of pancakes in my hair.
Upon their bosom I have lain
While maple syrup falls like rain.
Poems are made by fools like me
But pancakes come from pancake trees.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now back to the topic of insanity. In the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, you’ll frequently hear, “If you like what you’re getting, keep doing what you’re doing. If you don’t like what you’re getting, change what you’re doing.”

My injustice meter has been shrilling its alarm for quite a while. A heartbreaking development in my family since my mother died last summer has finally exploded like an alien in a scene from “Men in Black.” Purple alien blood goo drips from the walls.

Twisted events have twisted me and interfered with my serenity. I wiped some of the purple alien blood goo off my glasses today and found these lines in a book I love: “I can find no serenity until I accept that [disturbing] person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God’s world by mistake.”

Today’s realization is that I need to withdraw from the battlefield. I had wanted to right a wrong, but I was wrong. It’s time to recognize that I’ve become insane as I defined it in that paragraph up there.

It takes a lot of swallowing to give up. My faith that good will come of this is weak. My husband, who has gobs of faith that God will accomplish his plan for the situation we face, has asked me to stop trying. So I’ve decided I’ll lean on my faithful husband and let God do whatever he wants to do. I guess that shows the degree of my pride, because it implies that God needed my help. From now on, it’s hands off. Excuse me while I go wash off the rest of the purple alien blood goo.

Black Friday, the Sabbath Day

Here is a Flash Black Friday 55, the G-Man Mr. Knowitall’s challenge to write a tale in exactly 55 words. He's taking Thanksgiving off, though, so visit next Friday.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Honor Black Friday, therefore, as the sacred day of our savior, the credit card. Fix these words in your hearts; teach them to your children when you sit at home or walk along the road. Write them above your doorframes: Go forth and multiply your sacred debt.

My daughter, for a lark, went to Target at 3:45 a.m. this Black Friday morning, and the lines of people stretched 20-deep for a half-mile. The store opened at 4 a.m., and she says it took 20 minutes for all those people to file in the door. What did she buy? I asked. DVDs and shampoo, she said. Flannel pants and flannel shirts. She doesn’t have a credit card, just a debit card, so she can’t spend what she doesn’t have.

She was in and out in half an hour, she said, even though there was a line of people halfway around the store’s main aisles waiting to check out. People just stopped and stood behind the last person they saw standing in a line, even though all the check stands beyond that first one were open and empty. So she just kept walking, past the humongous line, past empty registers, until she came to the last register and bought her things. Say Amen, somebody.

Is That Your Feet I Smell?

Have you ever been obsessed with anyone? I’ve been happily married for two decades, but I remember what obsession is like as if it happened only yesterday. I’m lucky because I have a written record in my poetry, and I’m lucky because those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it.

In AA we say that the definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I’ve been there and done that. In fact, I excelled at doing that. I was willing to do anything that might plug the vast hole in my psyche. And sometimes obsession accomplished that goal. It got my mind off me and centered on you. But in the end I was always stuck with myself again, and I wasn’t red-hot company back then. So the cycle would replay itself, until I finally found myself in an AA meeting where I heard my story told a dozen different ways by a dozen different people, and I discovered that the hole in my psyche could be filled in healthy ways.

I keep this poem around to remind myself what I used to be like. It’s 55 words long, which exactly fulfills the G-Man’s Friday Flash Fiction requirements. Fellow 55ers can be found here.


Woman Tracks Her Runaway Lover

Twilight falls on me
belly to cold ground
nose pressed to the
imprint of your foot
searching for the scent of you.
I am in hot pursuit:
However cold grows your trail
I’ll not abandon it.
I am the shadow
which trails behind.
I shall lay hands on you.

This Is Insanity

A crazy dahlia called Bed Head

I've spent the past three days working to get a very sick woman friend into a distant hospital for severe opiate addiction.

Day 1: Confront the lies and find out if she wants help or not (YES!), then locate the right kind of hospital for her and make arrangements.

Day 2: Work with family, hospital, friends, and a very messed-up woman to get her on the road and through the ER admission process.

Day 3: Cope with a now-unwilling sick woman who is clamoring to go home, she’s fine, she's not really demented from fistfuls of narcotics every day for the past four months, so come and get me! she says, this once-beautiful woman who looks like she is now 80 years old and who doesn’t know reality from a hole in the ground. Sigh.

My husband calls opiate addiction "dancing with the devil." It is impossible to extricate oneself from the grip of the devilish disease by sheer willpower. It is impossible to make someone else want to be free of the grip of the devil. Until a person wants to be sober more than she wants to be loaded, there is nothing anyone can do, not her, not friends, not doctors, not the U.S. Senate.

Today I am enormously grateful for the grace of my Higher Power. I don't know why I was blessed with that willingness. But blessed I was and am. If you say prayers, please pray for a sick addict today.

My Recipe for Disaster

Put off everything with a due date that is NOT today.

Buy some small chocolate bundt cakes, drizzled with chocolate icing and studded with chocolate chips, from Trader Joe’s grocery store or anywhere else.

Start a big project that is unrelated to anything with a due date.

Attend to a few personal needs. Examine your wrinkles closely.

Put a bundt cake in a bowl, lather it with whipped cream, and enjoy while working on the project.

Take a break to piddle around. Consider the things with due dates. Vow to do them.

Return to the random project. Ponder potato chips.

Take a long phone call. Announce you must do things with due dates.

Drop everything to organize your 2008 income tax file.

Return to the project and discovered it has multiplied itself. In a burst of self-discipline, find somewhere to stow it.

Go floss your teeth.

Eat some cheese and crackers while deciding which of the things with due dates you feel like starting. Then edit some old photo files.

When you’re cross-eyed with fatigue, close up shop. Vow that you will do things with due dates. Tomorrow.

This Is My Brain

This used to be my brain:

This is my brain now:

Four days without blogging! A new laptop! None of my settings are right! Nothing's where it's supposed to be! Where's the Internet Explorer icon? Where's the Blogger shortcut? I hate the new email, that "Live" thingie with all its blaring, blinking, popup ad CRAP! And the wireless mouse has run away with the moon!

In AA we laugh about the alcoholic's dislike of change. For the past four days I've rediscovered a complete aversion to it. I want my old stuff back. I'm inadequate, stupid, frustrated, and bewildered. I'm even writing this post on my old laptop because if I spend one more hour trying to find my favorite stuff, I'm going to hurl that bigger, faster, shinier, shittier pain in the a*s out the window.

How do you deal with things like this?

My solution's going to be prayer, patience, and phone calls. In the meantime, have a great day.

(My photos are of the seed pods of a sweet little flower called "Love in the mist" or "Kiss Me Quick!")

Dumb Habits That Drive Me Nuts

Last weekend I tore out the dried sweet peas, a pod of which you see in this photo. It was dusty, itchy work. I heard myself humming. I don’t know why I wasn’t aware of it before. Now that I notice it, this compulsive humming, of the same bars of the same song all day long, is making me nuts.
Since I took note of it, I’ve tried to stop myself. As soon as I stop thinking about the humming, it starts again. And my repertoire, since I noticed it last weekend, is not large or even interesting. So far this week, I’ve hummed:
It’s a Grand Ole Flag
Camptown Ladies
Hark Now Hear the Angels Sing
And this timeless classic: The Muffin Man

Sunday I went around and dead-headed the roses, trying not to hum. When did this habit begin? I used to talk to myself while gardening. So I tried talking to myself. It was ridiculous. It was not a stimulating conversation. I said the same crap over and over again. And as soon as my mind drifted from the boring self-talk, there I was, humming It’s a Grand Ole Flag.

It was crazy. I came in the house and told Joe, “I can’t stop humming.” He told me, “You always do that.” I pondered this news. How could I forget that I hum a lot? Or did I just never notice this essential, tedious, daily thing about myself? Why do I hum? To break the silence in my head? To keep myself company? Yet I hum in the presence of others. What does it look like to them, this woman of a certain age walking around randomly humming the same lame tunes? I must have thought no one else could hear me.

That got me thinking about habits of other people that also drive me nuts. (I don’t want to be alone in my weirdness.) I know someone who always sticks his finger in his mouth after a meal to wipe around his molars. Yuck! How about guys who turn and spit on the ground while you’re talking to them? Double yuck! Someone in my household who shall remain unnamed always leaves tiny bits of veggie matter in the sink strainers. Gross!

There’s the lady who inserts “And, uh…” into every other sentence. The young women whose spandex tank tops cling to the rolls of fat around their midsections. The drivers who don’t know what their turn signals are for. People who say, “Irregardless”…

Does anyone else out there have humming issues? Habits that drive you nuts?

Camptown ladies sing this song: Do dah! Do dah!...

Peace in Difficult Hours

These are days that try my soul. Why would God afflict a woman who loved Him with a terrible case of dementia? Why would He give her a healthy body and disinegrating brain?

As she struggles in the new care home, wetting herself, endlessly pacing without sleep, thinking whatever fragments of thoughts are allowed through that mind, I struggle with deepening depression. It is Spring, life is good, there is much that is fine. But my mom is so ill. It's an oppression that follows me wherever I go.

My cat Mystery is interested in life. She wonders nothing about the inequities or spiritual conundrums that plague me. This morning I am doing a 2nd step with a sponsee. I praise my creator for lifting me out of the depths of insanity in which I dwelt for 37 years. I show Him my fist in memory of Mom.