Fried Day

Whew.

I don't know when Friday turned into Fried Day, but I suspect it was some time when my kids were growing up.  But I don't really remember much - all I truly recall from the Eighties is Michael Jackson and crack.  Oh, and shoulder pads and teens wearing safety pins as bling.

Twenty was, like, get off from work, pick auntie up from the airport, drop her off with Mom, meet friends for some cheeseburgers, go on a movie date with some guy I met, meet friends who got off late in the parking lot at work, pile into somebody's car and ride through town with the radio blaring (Is that a disco?  Whaddya mean you gotta pay to get in?  How come we don't know any dudes with money?), and if I hit the hay by 2 a.m., I could pop up at 7 for an early shift after coffee with Mom and my auntie.

Fast forward - but not too fast - to fifty four.

Fifty four is, like, get off from work, fall asleep on the train, wake up in Baltimore and then . . .

FREEDOM!  Whoo!  I can drink coffee after 9 p.m. and it won't matter.  I can tie up the bathroom as long as I want.  Let's see now, do I drink coffee and write in my blog first or do I read on the toilet?  I can't decide . . . surprise me! 

And then, it's over.  Thud.  Klunk.  Pfffft . . .

In middle age, we learn that Fried Day occurs weakly.

But really, that's all I can handle anyway.

ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz  . . .

Jesus Christ, Superbowl

Like many others, my family replaced the still in the back yard with a swingset during my lifetime. Somehow, that exponential increase in sophistication determined for many that a sufficient degree of wisdom had been achieved to change public policy with regard to prayer in school.


My beliefs, whether conformist or controversial, are presumed to be safe in my head. If I choose to pray, to calculate the odds on a sports event, to recall Robert Frost or the speeches of Martin Luther King, to devise a grocery list or to fantasize about sex, I can use my silence with the same aplomb with which I am guaranteed my freedom to break it.

Through courtesy taught by my elders, I share my rights with my neighbors.

Unlike the assistance many citizens need(ed) to pursue happiness in the physical realm, I do not need a law allowing me to capture happiness in my mind.



Why, on earth, should students who believe in Buddha or Allah, in the infallibility of the Pontiff, the ultimate wisdom of their rabbi or in Absolutely Nothing, and are able to get along together and to receive an education at the hands of teachers who may emphatically believe in something different, be compelled by any means to focus on Jesus Christ at public school or at sports events?



A gladiator two thousand years ago may appropriately have offered supplication to his god(s) that his life might be spared at the end of a game that typically resulted in the death of the loser. Modern day children, whose parents may have bestowed a tolerant spirituality upon them that allows them to thrive in a secular educational environment, should not be forced to trivialize one of mankind’s most elegant and enormous concepts in anticipation of or regarding the outcome of a vulgar approximation of bloodsport.

WWJD? What makes me think I should interrupt the education or the leisure of my civil and tolerant neighbors and force them to polish my ego while I pretend to know?

Uptown Blattidae Night

The air is very balmy - it is one of those nights where, if I was eighteen again, I'd be wishing I had a honey to blow in my ear and walk around the neighborhood holding hands.





All six of them.






This has got to be Exoskeleton Week in Baltimore. If you crunch when somebody steps on you, it's your party. While I was perching near the Transit Authority's posies at the train station, I kept seeing these huge black things with thick, long antennae. After a moment or two, I realized they were just really big crickets. But LOTS of crickets. Everywhere.




I got off the bus uptown, where I live. No crickets. Instead, there were "waterbugs".  Doesn't that sound way better than American cockroaches?  They were in full force. Fortunately, these tanks prefer to live outside. They were so large and so numerous, they made a tinny, percussive racket scattering as I walked toward them.


If you've got six legs in this town, you are in da zone. I think they heard about December 2012 and decided to take to the streets early.




So that's what's going on here. Anything bugging you these days?

The Embrace

My mom passed away last month.  I'm more bewildered than anything.  Where did she go?

I have introduced my beliefs in earlier blogs, but I know that if there really is an afterlife, Momb will find a way to launch a message.  Her beliefs were really different from mine and she will find the way if it is there. 

You can imagine the ramifications if she is actually able to pull it off.

You never saw anyone more hopeful that their beliefs were wrong!  My mother's passing has put me in touch with the longing that leads so many people to embrace and defend traditional teachings. 

Last night rocked my world.  I went to bed at midnight after a day that started at 6 a.m.  It was difficult to sleep, and I felt myself going through some unpleasant sensory experiences, such as smelling smoke that wasn't there, and losing control of my body while my sensibilities drained from my mind.  This was probably no more than falling asleep in slow motion and experiencing the shutdown that usually takes place too quickly to examine.  But I was conscious enough to wonder if I was dying. 

What happened next was not really linear, but I found myself in the great hall of an old house.  It was pitch dark.  No windows, no moonlight.  Even so, I could see the glint of a great white fireplace.  Mind, I could not see it, but in a dream, you often know the lay of an environment you cannot actually see.  I saw fingers in front of me, and felt them with an explosive sense of recognition.  I had Momb by the hands!  Both of them!  I pulled her to me and squeezed her so hard.  I have never been a hugger, and Momb had always been a more emotional being, so I often felt in life that I was having gestures of affection extorted from me.  Not last night, though - I had a sense of joy that was better than any earthly pleasure I have ever had.  I would have checked out without so much as a goodbye, and run off with my mom . . . to do what?  I have no idea!  And the dark mansion itself was not a place of beauty or joy, or even importance.  And I never saw more than her fingers.

I woke up unable to stop crying.  My husband, whose sleep I had disturbed, put his arms around me.  I wasn't sad - I mean, could I possibly be any sadder than I already am?  Maybe they were tears of joy, but my emotion was so extreme, my body cannot differentiate.  Did I want the experience to continue?  Of course I did, but the embrace had ended before I awakened.  My awakening did not shorten it.  I woke up crying, but realized I had received the entire message.  The word I spoke into my pillow was "awesome" and by 2:00, I was recording it in my diary because I never want to forget the dream that left me feeling awed and grateful.  Believer or not, it honestly feels like she came back to me for an instant.  I can't help wondering if a mixture of emotions attached to my mother and menopause are messing with my tear ducts.  I know that was a spoiler.  I'm not sure I care right now.

So was it only a dream? 

Since the dawn of Man, dreams were not television in one's head, but an arena of alternative realities.  But if these scenarios were any sort of reality, why should such phenomena occur only at night?  I am reminded of a conversation where someone explained to me that even the stars shone during the day.  The aurora borealis, all celestial wonders, were present during the day.  We simply could not see them because of the sun's presence.

Of course, it is possible that night, once we lie vulnerably and relinquish control, is the only time it is quiet enough for the mind to go seeking or to receive a message with one's whole being.

Monkeys and Shooting Stars

If I could wear a string of vacant lots around my neck like pearls, I probably would. 

I sold Bonvenon (Esperanto for "welcome"), the one I purchased first, and have gotten over my pang of loss, as I could not possibly keep it groomed, prevent dumping on it, and work full time.

At the end of 2010, I purchased Melinn (my stepfather's pronunciation of my mother's name), driven to inch closer and closer to the neighborhood where I went to kindergarten.  I still don't know why I am drawn to it.  Melinn has an odd shape, as a portion of it was sold many years ago to satisfy a lien.  Someone suggested the sold portion might have once been a privy, although I think the land's early occupants had plumbing.  I do, however, find myself looking out of the corner of my eye to see if there is any nine-foot-tall mint growing anywhere.  That would let us know for sure.

Today, I put in an offer on another lot.  If accepted, this would be the first time I owned more than one.  This lot is gorgeous - deep, green, and cool -  it's in very nice neighborhood called Govans, and Patootie and I could see putting a small home there if things don't work out elsewhere. 

Maybe it's an only-child thing, but I name every property I have ever owned. The house I currently live in is "Ouistiti" (pronounced wee-stee-tee). A ouistiti is actually a type of monkey, but I chose that name because it is the French equivalent of "say cheese!" when you are about to take a photo.  Enunciating "ouistiti" forces a francophone to smile. Although we have not had time to upgrade the house and it's still a little run down, I've had plenty to be happy about while in it.

Back to the new lot.  I have named it Stjarnfall.  STJARNFALL is the Swedish word for shooting star. A missionary asked me how I met my patootie, and I told her that I was out walking one night and a star got caught in my hair, and it turned out to be him.

Ask Me . . . I'll Tell

I have only two words for gay and lesbian troops serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.

T H A N K   Y O U.

Swatting at a Superbug

We are now to understand that the NDM-1 superbug lies in wait to assail us. Now that we have overhauled our food service system in the wake of e coli poisonings, innoculated ourselves against swine flu, and been at the mercy of hantavirus and MRSA, we are once again having to shutter the windows. Well, at least we're talking about bacteria this time.

In the interest of full disclosure, I admit my doctors do not condone this idea, but once in a while I add two caps (CAPS, not cups) of bleach to my bath water, taking a "bleach bath." When I was a teenager, I swam frequently and noticed that my facial acne was better after swimming, due to the chlorine in the pool. Years later, it became known that chlorine kills HIV. Due to these facts, I decided to try to help an occasional bout of dermatitis by taking a spiked bath now and then. This will have no effect for bacteria which has entered one's system, which should be addressed immediately, and is no substitute for a doctor in any case. My personal rule: if one or two such baths over several days doesn't help a rash, I make an appointment with my physician. I would say that a bleach bath or two has at least delayed the worst of a skin eruption, making it possible to make an appointment that didn't inconvenience my employer and then wait for it with a higher degree of comfort.

But one experience I wish to share is my dunk in Sol Duc Hot Springs, at a hotel on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. You may have grown up, as I have, hearing occasional anecdotes about miracle waters . . . perhaps miraculous waters were featured in folklore or old movies, the reminiscences of elders or old travel documentaries. One year, I took a dip with my friends just for fun but, to my utter amazement, I emerged from the hot spring pool with smooth skin.

Sol Duc publishes the chemical makeup of the natural spring, which includes chemicals we commonly find in ointments to treat stubborn acne, such as sulfur. If I recall, one or two radioactive elements were listed - in low enough quantities to be safe, of course.

Some swear by a bath spiked with simple table salt or even Dead Sea salts. I wonder when a spa will offer artificial hot springs treatment to approximate the miracle of natural hot springs with the right mix of chemicals. Maybe YOU will be the entrepreneur or innovator that we allergic, low-immunity, rash-prone neighbors need.

In any event, it is possible to have a cheap, low-tech, first line of defense against bacteria, since cowering under one's bed (tried that, too) isn't effective.

The simple, unvarnished truth is that when these assailants to our health first make themselves known, the doctors are not ready. I find it emotionally valuable and of some physical use as well to have a first line of defense under the sink while doctors catch up. Because for many of us, allergic or not, the first symptom of superbug infiltration is not a skin eruption. It is fear.