Feline Warrior

The weather lately has reminded me of living in Washington, DC. The sensation of pollution sticking to one’s skin, contact lenses feeling like paste nestled tightly against the pupils and the overall ickiness of dampness that just doesn’t stop.

Well, until you go indoors - to air conditioned comfort. If you don’t have air conditioned comfort, it’s awful. Oh, I have it now. But in my poorer days, I had one crappy window unit that would gather water inside and make a hideous buzzing nose. I’d have to turn it off, open the face plate and sop the water out. The more humid it was, the more often I’d be doing that particular task. Needless to say, nights were hell.

Now, though, I’m fortunate to live in a home with central air. At the risk of sounding hideously corny, I must say that I am truly grateful for my place in life. Sometimes I piss and moan, but really… it ain’t bad.

And on that note, an evening shower and then to bed!

I’ve been thinking about how we yank up well-established roots to build housing where we generally won’t establish roots.

Where’s the respect? And who wins?
Trees: Zero

Selfishness: 50

Stupidity: 50

Karma: Zero

The correct answer: Nobody wins.

Music for opening the soul…

I’m tired and I’m slightly grouchy. And I spent serious quality time in my gardens today - well, tonight after work. Spouse outta town, came home, had a sammich, some marvelous sun tea, then out to water, dead head and pick some tomatoes. Oh, and I’ve found that after dead heading my marigolds, I can sprinkle the little dead heads around veggies and day lilies and the local snacking rabbit won’t munch my plants. So there’s your take-home gardening tip for today.

Hours increased at work, finally and today Gordita suggested that I join her for walks at some nearby outdoor place (an arboretum?) - anyway, after work walks with my pal. Fun *and* healthy! We said that we’ll be training for our next 5k. (We were practically last in the one and only other 5k we did, so we truly do need to train if we want to do more - which we keep saying we do.)

So much to be grateful for… a rich life, to be sure. And yet tired and grouchy. Just goes to show you… something. I see it, but it’s just a hazy shadow - don’t recognize it yet.

So that’s all good stuff. But I seem to be dehydrated and can’t get enough water - but I’m tired, so will have to stop drinking water and hit the hay. First, I’m going to click on that link up there and listen. It’s another “shut your eyes and listen” types o’ deals.

Be well…

I watched the movie “Quinceañera” last night and it gave me weepish memories. Good but sad; easy but hard; weepish but… well, just weepish. Just like how hearing the song “Unforgettable” (by Nat “King” Cole - solo) makes me long in a deep and achy way for my Grammy.

Watching Tio Tomás Alvarez with his grocery cart of champurrado, chatting with the ladies, in his garden with the green bottles reflecting light, his niece and nephew’s images nestled with love and care among the Holy Virgin statuettes… it took me back.

The movie “Like Water for Chocolate” (”Como agua para chocolate“) does the same kind of thing to me, although it’s truly been years since I’ve seen it. The abuelita in that movie also evokes rivers of tears.

But these tears, the weepish memories, are for feelings, sensations and the desire to have them back (melancholy?). I miss my Grammy constantly. I think of her still just about every day. Her singing, funny little dances and oh, that food - I don’t believe I will ever have anything like it again in my lifetime. Food that is infused with love cannot be duplicated. The food prepared by my Mexican grandmother Rose was such that I cringe and want to slap anyone who uses the words “Mexican food” and “Taco Bell” in the same sentence. Or at least as if they are one and the same. (If I hadn’t clarified that, I’d have to slap mySELF!)

So as a child, I might spend a week in the summertime with my Grammy. Her Los Angeles neighborhood, at one time beautiful and sweet was, at the time of her death (Lord, 17 years ago…?), changing drastically. The graffiti was becoming more prominent and the beautiful little stucco houses were showing signs of impending doom, the creeping in of gangs.

Anyway, there we’d be, the two of us, riding the city buses to get to our destinations of the day. We’d go sometimes to Olvera Street, shopping, looking around, sometimes eating. Orange Crush in the bottle - glass bottle, that is. You just can’t tell me an Orange Crush tastes the same from plastic. Oh, she’d embarrass me by calling -loudly- my full name if I somehow managed to get out of her sight for a moment.

In downtown LA, we’d go to the tortilleria, where I’d be in awe of the women moving with such precision at the conveyor belt. We would eat churros, which are the Mexican version of my favorite kind of food - fried dough with sugar. (The American version being, of course, funnel cake.)

Stopping to get Chinese sometimes, a special treat breaking up the special treat of her cooking, if such an idea even makes sense. Oh, me practicing my flute in the living room while she cooked, her Spanish-language radio station blasting at the same time… my little heart suffering little fractures until I’d stop and she’d come into the living room and say, “Mi’ja! Why did you stop playing? It was so beee-youu-tee-ful,” and then the fracture would instantly heal - and expand with the joy of receiving praise from my Grammy.

Mass in Spanish… I understood not a word, but I loved it just the same.

Oh, I haven’t mentioned, maybe, that at least when I was a wee lass, being bilingual wasn’t exactly the way to be. My mom didn’t speak Spanish to us, we didn’t learn it at home. And despite my growing up in California -with all those Spanish names for cities, brown people everywhere and being connected to Mexico and all- I grew up in a place and time where being Mexican -even half- wasn’t cool. I mean… somehow it might come up conversationally in school and a kid would say, “You’re Mexican? Huh. You’re not like them…” shaking his or her head towards a group of cholos.

My sinuses keep telling me (in their secret sinus language) that they’d like to be cleaned with a few pipe cleaners. That’s always a sign of allergies. That and itchy eyes, scratchy throat and a desire to run hot water on the back of my head. That always seems to help.

I’ve been trying to tell you a story from my childhood, but my brain won’t let me focus. Damn allergies! So the post is saved and I will share it with you tomorrow, ‘kay?

[sneeze!]

I am calling it a beginning, but for all we know, if could be a beginning and an end. Agnes may call the whole thing off - who knows?

An explanation: Agnes is my friend. Her real name is not Agnes - I’m only allowed to tell her stories if I use fake names and switch up some of the details. She feels -and probably rightly so- that if her identity were revealed, she’d have a mess on her hands.

(And really, for the record, unless you know me personally and know that this is my blog, you don’t really know my true identity, either!)

Back to Agnes… It’s her story, after all.

She’s a lovely person - smart, funny, not bad looking at all. She’s in a relationship that can only be described as strained. Or stressful. Or painful. Not easy. (Well, no relationship is really “easy.”) This is beyond the traditional “we have to put a lot of work into our relationship” statement.

I’ve asked her why she doesn’t leave and she won’t talk about it. She loves the guy, he loves her, it’s “just difficult.” There is no physical violence - she’s sworn that to me and it doesn’t appear that she’s lying - there have never been any indications that she gets hit and while I don’t see her every day, I think I would know about physical violence, one way or another.

So her man -haven’t decided on a name for him yet- is generally pleasant when friends come calling. He’s polite, charming, not unpleasant to be around. I understand from my own experience that people can be one way in public and a totally different way in private. My father, dragged to marriage counseling by my mom, turned on the charm to two-hundred-twelve degrees Fahrenheit and had the therapist thinking my mom was a loser by the end of the first session.

I can’t say for certain what’s going on there, but I’ve been listening to Agnes’ stories for quite some time and decided to start recording them. (And then it occurred to, oh, ASK her if it’s okay!)

In case you’re wondering, I chose the name Agnes for Saint Agnes, who became a martyr at the age of 13. Her feast day is January 21st, a day of some significance to me, but for completely different reasons.

I’ll start with some stories either later this evening or early this week. As with everything else, it depends upon the availability of time.

…Or at least for now:

Part of my drive to and from work is a two-lane road. It’s country - farmland, really. Every now and then I pass a dead deer on the side of the road, which isn’t as upsetting as it once was, but it still makes me sad. (It’s not emotionally paralyzing - that’s what I mean.)

Today on my way home, just about midway from work to the freeway, I saw what appeared to be a dead raccoon in the middle of my lane. You see lots of dead possums and raccoons everywhere, not just the country roads (and probably more on the roads that were country roads not too long ago).

As I approached, I realized that the raccoon, who was on its back, was alive. Its head was moving from side to side and its little arms were reaching up and around frantically. I swerved around it and missed (or I wouldn’t be writing now - I’d be in a freakin’ psych ward on nerve pills or something).

Alive… the damn thing was alive.

I wanted to turn around and pull it from the road. Even though I knew it would die… maybe I thought -in some crazy super-fast thought pattern of an instant- that there would be a raccoon cast and raccoon crutches. The raccoon would come live out its days with me in grateful servitude. Who knows what I was thinking? In that crazy moment I felt its fear and wanted to fix it. (Oh, glory be to dysfunctional families and being the “fixer.”)

I was on the phone with my friend Nurse D (I know, I know, but I had my Bluetooth on) and she told me NOT to go back and pull it from the road. I just didn’t want it to lay waiting for certain death, frightened and unable to move. She told me to forget about saving the raccoon. She grew up in the country, she said, she’s used to things like that, so she didn’t want to upset me more, but these things happen. Me, I’m more at home (still) with a drunk guy leaning on a building asking for fitty-t’ree cent for the bus. I’m a city girl.

Surely by now the raccoon is dead. Dead-dead. But that little head, those furry arms waving frantically to and fro… they’re burned into my memory forever. Or at least for now.

The doc’s office called today. I don’t have a tumah and I am not dying.

YAY!

Not a drill, really. But if you were to look at the spot where they went in, you could see a hole. I mean, really, you could see into it. And they told me they were taking “about four strings of tissue,” but really - I saw it in a little shot-glass-like cup, and I would NOT describe it as “strings.” I would call it a glob.

So the people were all very kind. Joan the RN was my tour guide and official hand-holder. She’s the best. If you ever have to undergo an unpleasant medical procedure, get Joan.

Kindness doesn’t make up for painfulness or discomfort, sadly. You can read about the procedure here. Mine was the vacuum-assisted biopsy. And the doc has given me category 4. Scary, I say.

Even though the needle just went in once, it did move around in there, and that’s what actually hurt. Or caused discomfort. The kind that makes you sweaty and queasy. I am really hoping that this is the end of testing - that it all comes back normal and Joan, Dr. W and the gang and me just have one big laugh over root beer floats. I don’t know if I can handle more of this kind of experience.

Not just physically - I feel completely worn out. Emotionally drained. Pooped. I want to go have a nap, but I’m kinda nervous about laying down. What if I roll over on my wounded bosom? Wah!

I was going to write something really clever and funny, but right at the moment, I’m not in my Happy Place. Lo, again I say, Wah.

Think good thoughts, please.

Here’s yer update: Biopsy on Wednesday. Let’s say it all together: It’s prolly nothin’. NOTHIN’.

But just in case it’s not, don’t forget: Susan Sarandon to play me in the motion picture story of my life! Valerie Bertinelli can do the Oxygen channel version (”Valerie Bertinelli as you’ve never seen her before!”) but please - Susan S. for the big screen.

You can pick whoever you want to play you, okay? We all get to pick our own stars!

Okay, I made a note while at the women’s health clinic today. The program they use for imaging is called Mammovision. Yes! Doesn’t that sound wonderfully 70s? Russ Myers? Something like that? It has a sort of porn-ring to it, doesn’t it? “Marilyn Chambers, brought to you in super-techno-color MAMMOVISION!

I’ll leave you with that. I need to go watch a movie so that I can return it to Blockbuster. Even though they say there are no late fees, why keep something longer than necessary? Someone else might want to see it! It’s “La Mujer de mi Hermano,” btw.

So in the last week of June, I had a mammogram. A week later the place called to say that I need to come back for another mammogram AND an sonogram ultrasound. Those are happening tomorrow (Monday). I am not very happy about it, but of course it’s best to follow up on these things as quickly as possible.

The woman I spoke with at the women’s health clinic told me, of course, that it’s probably just some tissue or something - nothing to worry about. I’ve done really well for the last week but on the eve of the second set of tests, I’m not really in my Happy Place.

Just think good thoughts, ‘kay? It’s prolly nothing, like the woman said. Right? Right…

I am so tired right now that my eyeballs feel like they’re covered with little drops of paste. Dry paste, that is. Well, not totally dry - with just enough sticky to make blinking kinda yucky.

I’m disappointed that the judge threw out the Plame suit. Here’s a snippet of the story: “U.S. District Judge John Bates suggested that the Wilsons hold the moral high ground, CNN reported. He said that if the Wilsons’ claims are true, Cheney and other top Bush administration officials committed “highly unsavory” acts.

“But Bates also found that federal laws protect top executive branch employees from lawsuits for actions involving their official duties.”

Oh, pooey on that.

Today I drove behind a car with the bumper sticker: “Defend America - defeat Bush.” Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!

Sorry for such a brief, strange post tonight, but I’m tired, I have cramps (wah!) and I have to get up at the crack of dawn to freakin’ EXERCISE. Hmph.

Oh, and one request to ya’ll: If you ever notice that the blog is all askew, doesn’t look quite right, or something - email me and let me know. Or post a comment. Something. Apparently it was all messed up in IE (which I don’t use - Firefox all the way!) for MONTHS and I had no idea. Help a girl out, huh?