My EMail to Bart Stupak

On 3/20/10, I went to Bart Stupak’s website and angrily sent the following email, which I admit could’ve been better written:

“So rather than allow a woman to abort an unwanted fetus, you prefer to see an unwanted baby born addicted and then neglected and abused? How does that make any sense at all?

Nobody likes abortion, but it must remain an option. I don't see right-wing control freaks stepping up and adopting those at-risk babies from the mothers who didn't want them to begin with and don't love them once they're born. How many have you brought home?

How many people, who are already alive and suffering, will die if you and others like you defeat health care reform? And how is that not on your conscience? Do you think that sits well with your God? How dare you sentence so many people to suffering and premature death?

I'm not in your district, thank God. But I'll do everything I can to help those who will prevent you from being re-elected. You will pay for deciding when poor people should die."

My EMail to Bart Stupak

The Sweetest Little Guy

We’re lucky to have wonderful neighbors who have two darling kids, a boy who’ll be four soon and a two-year-old girl. Well, the little guy was in the yard today, observing our dog, who was pulling at her lead, wanting to play with him. So I went outside, let the dog loose and struck up a conversation. He asks a million questions. Today, one of them was, “If you sat on our deck steps forever, what would happen?” I told him I’d turn green with mold, so he started asking about the mold. His questions remind me of the ones my son used to ask . . . constantly.

Anyway, he asked me if there were any toys in our house, and I told him that some of my son’s trucks were in the basement for when kids visit. Naturally, he wanted to see them, so I took him down to our basement, where he fell in love with one of the Tonka front end loaders. He asked if he could maybe take it home for a few days. I told him he could.

Well, he was thrilled when he got the truck back on their deck and couldn't wait to play with it. Then this little boy, who hasn’t been very affectionate in front of me, blew me a kiss and said, “If I had a net, I’d put it over the railing and catch you and take you in my house, to play with me forever.” Now he owns my heart!

The Sweetest Little Guy

My Ex-Husband's Funeral

On Sunday, we attended my ex-husband’s memorial service. He died after a long and brave battle with cancer. We’d been divorced for many years, and he remarried, but we remained friends, and it killed me to see him suffer and die so young.

The service was difficult, to say the least. My son struggled over whether to give a eulogy. He wasn’t sure he could get through it, and he didn’t want to break down in front of friends and coworkers. But he did it.

He gave a beautiful eulogy, which was incredibly moving. At the end, he said, “I will always love him and will always keep trying to make him proud of me.” And as I listened to his words, I imagined his dad smiling with pride, as he heard his boy speak so lovingly in front of all those people. I am so proud of him. I don’t think I could’ve done half as well.

My Ex-Husband's Funeral

Gotta Laugh About Aging!

Birthdays don’t bother me, and I don’t feel much older than I did 10 years ago, except for an occasional muscle ache. But significant changes started happening somewhere around 40. I can remember using a new hair conditioner and checking the label to see if I had to leave it in for a few minutes or could rinse it right out. Well, I thought I was having a stroke or something – I couldn’t read it! No matter how much I squinted, I couldn’t make out those little letters. Although I’d always thought I could will these things away, I soon realized that my reading vision was shot. That was only the beginning.

It’s just too bad I hadn’t figured it out earlier. Like when I went to Nordstrom’s cosmetic counter to return my Lancome mascara, because it must’ve been dried out when I bought it, since there was obviously none on my lashes. The saleswoman looked at me with a mix of incredulity and disdain, but she gave me a new one, which also appeared to be dried out. When I finally decided to look at my mascara with a magnifying mirror, I almost died. I looked like Tammy Faye Bakker! How long had I walked around like that?

It’s the same thing with those little hairs that show up around the chin and lip area. I could feel them, but I didn’t see them. So nobody else could, either, right? Oh, my God! And now I’m having trouble with my eyebrows. Every now and then, a wiry pubic hair with a mind of its own pops up in a brow. Someone said to use eyebrow wax. To hell with that – I just pull the little bastards out. When will this stop?!

Gotta Laugh About Aging!

Bunco, Anyone?

Almost two years ago, I was persuaded to join a bunco group. I knew only one woman there that night and didn’t even know what bunco was - thought it was a card game. But it’s actually a dice game, an old lady’s dice game, according to my son. (Our ages range from the mid-30s to early 60s, which is probably typical.) It’s mindless fun, if you’ve got the right people in the group. You laugh a lot, some of that due to the martinis and margaritas! And a couple of our players are Martha Stewart types, so it’s worth going for the food alone when they host. (When it’s my turn, it’s “Bunco by Costco”.)

Our little group started with 12 or 13 women, but we usually have only six to eight. We had six last night. And on my 30-minute drive home, I remembered how reluctant I was to join the group initially. I’m not much of a “joiner”. I don’t go to meetings of my volunteer organizations, and I don’t join clubs or anything else that requires regular attendance. But this is different.

It occurs to me that I look forward to bunco, because these women have enriched my life. We’ve bonded, even if for only three or four hours a month. We have such a good time that we’ve actually stopped playing the game, because it gets in the way of the conversations! Who would’ve guessed that this would become so meaningful for me? It’s what often happens when I venture outside my comfort zone.

Bunco, Anyone?

Shitcicles and the Piss River

Oh, my God! I just came in from throwing a Frisbee to the dog. We still have snow on the north side of the houses in our sub, so our yard has a strip about 15’ wide along the back of the house that’s still snow-covered. The rest is grassy mud that deer hooves have turned into muck.

Maddie, our dog, doesn’t care if she’s covered in mud after chasing her Frisbee. But I want to watch some of the Academy Awards pre-shows while I clean bird cages (exciting, huh?). I sure as hell don’t want to be giving an unwilling dog a bath. So I threw the Frisbee along that snowy strip to keep her feet clean. The problem was that I had to stand between our and the neighbor’s house, in order to give her some distance to run. And that area, my friends, is known as the Pissing Field. We don’t have fences here, so dogs have to be let out on leads to do their business. Maddie has about 25 feet in any direction from the steps to use as her toilet.

Well, if you have a dog, you know what I’m dealing with. If you don’t, picture this. Because of all the traffic on the area, it’s pretty much frozen over, rather than snow-covered. It’s mostly yellow from urine, with occasional shitcicles preserved in the ice. And as for the stuff that’s not frozen, it’s deteriorated into a poop pie that has to re-freeze before I’ll even think about picking it up with a shovel. Honestly, I gagged out there, as I tried to avoid stepping in any of it while throwing that damned Frisbee. And I was terrified that I’d slip on the ice and land in one of those disgusting piles.

Ordinarily, I don’t deal with this – it’s my husband’s job, since he swore if we got a dog, he’d do the work (yeah, right). He can’t do it now, of course, because he just had rotator cuff surgery a week ago, and has the use of only one arm. So I’m stuck, because I can’t keep walking through our septic tank of a yard to fill up the bird feeders for the next five weeks. I have to clean it up. So please join me in wishing for one last freeze, so I can deal with that mess without puking.

Shitcicles and the Piss River

My Son's Father is Dying

This afternoon, I visited my ex-husband, who’s a hospice patient at a hospital downtown. My heart is breaking for him, whose life is being so cruelly cut short; for his wife and for our only child. This man, who, at 6’5”, towered over everyone else in the family, looks pale, too thin and at least 10 years older than his years. It hurt so much to see him that I almost looked away.

Just before I got to the hospital, the nurse had given him pain meds and a sedative, so, although he tried to respond to our words, he couldn’t. Garbled sounds escaped from his throat, as his eyes floated open and closed. My son, brother and sister were there with me, and tears were in all of our eyes. We touched his arm hesitantly, because the cancer that’s consumed his body makes touch painful. We said gentle, loving things to him. And we mourned, even though he’ll be here for a few more days or weeks.

Being a hospice volunteer, I comfort family members of patients all the time. But I don’t know exactly how to comfort my son, who never stopped hurting over the divorce when he was only five. I tell him he can talk to me any time, day or night, if he needs to, but he holds back. Maybe he thinks he has to be strong for me, while I think I have to be strong for him. I was the same age as him when I lost my mother. But I had four sisters and four brothers who shared the pain and agony with me. My son is alone. I just hope I can comfort him enough, while giving him the space he needs to grieve in his own way.

In the meantime, I want to visit my ex again. Although we couldn’t live together, I never stopped caring for him. To me, he became almost like another brother. And, because one of my sisters married one of his brothers, our families are permanently intertwined. My preference would be to see him for a few minutes with just my son there, like we did today after my brother and sister left and before his wife arrived. For a few precious minutes, we can pretend our little family never split in half and that we never broke our boy’s heart.

My Son's Father is Dying

Post-Op Days

After Friday’s surgery, my husband is finally feeling human again. When we got home from the hospital on Friday, he was enjoying the effects (or lack) of a nerve block. Not only was there an absence of pain – he couldn’t even move his fingers. But it was blissful . . . until about 4:00 Saturday morning. That’s when the nerve block began wearing off. Within four hours, he was going crazy with pain.

The hospital discharge instructions said to call the doctor if that happened, and the doctor on call told us to go to the ER. Well, they gave him an IV of some really powerful stuff and added Advil to his pain medication regimen. The two hours we spent there worked wonders on his pain. It turns out that the catheter delivering pain meds to the nerve surrounding the repair site might have been inserted too deeply, rendering it useless. But now his pain is at about a 2 on a scale of 1 to 10. That’s definitely an acceptable improvement.

A home health nurse visited on Sunday (yes, Sunday!) to pull out the nerve block catheter and change the bandages. Then today, a physical therapist came to get him started on the exercise chair that was delivered to the house last week. She also showed him how to eventually sleep in the bed again, instead of his recliner. I about croaked when they came into the bedroom (bed unmade, unfolded clean laundry in a basket and makeup paraphernalia all over my half of the bathroom counter). The cute young thing actually climbed into bed with him to show him how to best support his shoulder while sleeping. Well, that not only made his day – it probably made the whole ordeal worthwhile!

Post-Op Days