| Mushroom Patch -- Page 9 July 4, 2008 thru ??? |
4 July 2008 --
I made a discovery today.
Nothing can shut down a creative writing frenzy like having the ice cream truck park right outside the house while serving up frozen concoctions
to the neighborhood kids.
I think that says it all. <Flees until the truck leaves>
I made a discovery today.
Nothing can shut down a creative writing frenzy like having the ice cream truck park right outside the house while serving up frozen concoctions
to the neighborhood kids.
I think that says it all. <Flees until the truck leaves>
5 July 2008 --
This morning I woke up with the first hint of a migraine. Don't anyone out there feel too bad for me. Griping about a headache is not why I am
here today, and it was my own fault that I had it in the first place. I tend to get migraines whenever my sodium levels are too low or I get
dehydrated. I spent close to three hours helping our local library close up after their annual 4th of July Book Sale yesterday, and everyone in
that gymnasium worked like we were trying to build a fire break in the face of an advancing forest fire. It was hot, there was a time crunch, and it
was tough manual labor. I arrived home dehydrated and dumped a lot of water into my body in a short period of time. For me, that's a perfect
recipe for kicking off a migraine. It's not a big deal. I tossed down two Excedrin Migraine tablets (fantastic stuff for those migraine sufferers lucky
enough not to need prescription relief) before I bothered making coffee, started the day with more water instead of caffeine, and it is already
easing. If it weren't I wouldn't be out on the porch in the bright sunlight staring at a laptop screen.
But I digress ... worse than usual. Sorry about that.
The remarkable thing (from my point of view) is that for the first time in about 25 years, I thought of it as a 'migraine' ... not a 'headache'. It
sounds like such a small thing, doesn't it? It isn't. Migraine headaches can result in an air traffic controller being medically disqualified. The
problem wasn't being diligent about doing what was necessary to avoid triggering one; anyone who has ever had a migraine would probably be
willing to go to any lengths to avoid a repeat. I am extremely lucky in that I figured out what causes my migraines when I was in my 20's, and with
the help of some significant self-discipline in that particular respect, I have been virtually migraine free ever since. What was restrictive was
never using the "M" word, or even allowing myself to think of my headaches as migraines. That's what was so surprising about this morning. I
have come out of the migraine closet!!
And in that instant when I was reaching for the bottle of Excedrin, I discovered how crippling it can be to keep a lifelong secret. Mine was a minor
bit of information that did not affect every waking moment of my life. If my secret had gotten out while I was still working for the FAA, I might have
suffered some financial hardship; but it was not life threatening and I never had to consider losing friends or being ostracized by my own family. I
can't imagine how psychologically damaging it must be for anyone who has chosen to remain in the closet for any reason. It means keeping a
portion of yourself permanently shut away, even from, especially from the people you love most. Being secretive, even on a small scale, takes
energy and effort. It requires a habit of deceit, stifles honesty, inflicts repetitive wounds on the person keeping the secret. Worst of all, it hurts
that it is necessary in the first place.
Mine was such a tiny secret. In 25 years, I never had a migraine on the job. When I looked at the question on the paperwork for my annual
medical evaluation -- Do I ever have frequent or severe headaches? -- I felt that I was being honest when I checked off 'No'. (Oh my word!!!
Does that sound like the ultimate liar's justification, or what?) I didn't have frequent or severe headaches ... but I might have if I weren't so
careful about doing what was necessary to prevent them. This morning's shift in my internal terminology was surprising because of the intensity
of the relief that I felt. I can sing it from the rooftops!! I can get wild and crazy and allow myself to get dehydrated and then dump an entire city
reservoir worth of water into my body all at once without worrying about how rotten I will feel in the morning. I don't have to be cautious every
moment for the rest of my life. I hurt for the people who have to choose between secrecy versus the love and acceptance of their friends and
family.
This morning I woke up with the first hint of a migraine. Don't anyone out there feel too bad for me. Griping about a headache is not why I am
here today, and it was my own fault that I had it in the first place. I tend to get migraines whenever my sodium levels are too low or I get
dehydrated. I spent close to three hours helping our local library close up after their annual 4th of July Book Sale yesterday, and everyone in
that gymnasium worked like we were trying to build a fire break in the face of an advancing forest fire. It was hot, there was a time crunch, and it
was tough manual labor. I arrived home dehydrated and dumped a lot of water into my body in a short period of time. For me, that's a perfect
recipe for kicking off a migraine. It's not a big deal. I tossed down two Excedrin Migraine tablets (fantastic stuff for those migraine sufferers lucky
enough not to need prescription relief) before I bothered making coffee, started the day with more water instead of caffeine, and it is already
easing. If it weren't I wouldn't be out on the porch in the bright sunlight staring at a laptop screen.
But I digress ... worse than usual. Sorry about that.
The remarkable thing (from my point of view) is that for the first time in about 25 years, I thought of it as a 'migraine' ... not a 'headache'. It
sounds like such a small thing, doesn't it? It isn't. Migraine headaches can result in an air traffic controller being medically disqualified. The
problem wasn't being diligent about doing what was necessary to avoid triggering one; anyone who has ever had a migraine would probably be
willing to go to any lengths to avoid a repeat. I am extremely lucky in that I figured out what causes my migraines when I was in my 20's, and with
the help of some significant self-discipline in that particular respect, I have been virtually migraine free ever since. What was restrictive was
never using the "M" word, or even allowing myself to think of my headaches as migraines. That's what was so surprising about this morning. I
have come out of the migraine closet!!
And in that instant when I was reaching for the bottle of Excedrin, I discovered how crippling it can be to keep a lifelong secret. Mine was a minor
bit of information that did not affect every waking moment of my life. If my secret had gotten out while I was still working for the FAA, I might have
suffered some financial hardship; but it was not life threatening and I never had to consider losing friends or being ostracized by my own family. I
can't imagine how psychologically damaging it must be for anyone who has chosen to remain in the closet for any reason. It means keeping a
portion of yourself permanently shut away, even from, especially from the people you love most. Being secretive, even on a small scale, takes
energy and effort. It requires a habit of deceit, stifles honesty, inflicts repetitive wounds on the person keeping the secret. Worst of all, it hurts
that it is necessary in the first place.
Mine was such a tiny secret. In 25 years, I never had a migraine on the job. When I looked at the question on the paperwork for my annual
medical evaluation -- Do I ever have frequent or severe headaches? -- I felt that I was being honest when I checked off 'No'. (Oh my word!!!
Does that sound like the ultimate liar's justification, or what?) I didn't have frequent or severe headaches ... but I might have if I weren't so
careful about doing what was necessary to prevent them. This morning's shift in my internal terminology was surprising because of the intensity
of the relief that I felt. I can sing it from the rooftops!! I can get wild and crazy and allow myself to get dehydrated and then dump an entire city
reservoir worth of water into my body all at once without worrying about how rotten I will feel in the morning. I don't have to be cautious every
moment for the rest of my life. I hurt for the people who have to choose between secrecy versus the love and acceptance of their friends and
family.
31 August 2008 -- Take THAT, vile Clutter Burglar!!
This is NOT going to be a particularly exciting, humorous, or insightful entry. It may not be the slightest bit interesting, either. But it's my blog so
I get to write what I want to.
<Crash wanders off to refill her coffee, singing "Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!" under her breath.>
I spent a good portion of yesterday and several additional hours this morning plowing through about four YEARS worth of junk piled up on my
desks, tacked up on various bulletin boards, stacked on top of the buffet, and thrown carelessly on my diningroom table. (Yes, that was desks
plural. One upstairs and one downstairs.) The most time consuming portion of this assault was going through an eight-inch-high stack of pages
torn from magazines and sorting them into files. For the last several years, whenever I read a magazine article and find something in there that
might be useful in a science fiction story -- be it a name, location, scientific theory, new discovery, or picture of some bizarre alien-worldish
looking landscape -- I've torn it out and set it aside to be saved. I eventually get around to sorting those excerpts into files: Aliens, Terms and
Names, Plot Ideas, etc. I didn't do much sorting and filing over the past two years, though, so the pile had gotten pretty large. Add in the bits I
had tacked up on my "various works in progress" bulletin board and the mass tucked into file folder that I haven't looked at since May 2, 2008
(my last day of work for the FAA), and the mound of pages was pretty darned impressive ... in an untidy trash heap kind of a way.
None of this has a single thing to do with my revelation of the day and the reason I opened up my website software, however.
In the process of beating back a recent attack by the Clutter Burglar (if you are not familiar with the nefarious Clutter Burglar and are courageous
enough to ask me for an explanation, feel free to post the question at my forum, 'Feedback'), I wound up rummaging through one of my closets,
trying to make some room for one more piece of useless junk that I didn't want to throw out ... yet.
I found some interesting stuff in there. And therein lies my revelation for the day. (Don't get all breathless with excitement. This one isn't going
to realign planets or rattle your perception of the universe!)
I pushed aside the weather-proof, all-season electrical timer that I used to turn on the block heater in my car on painfully cold winter mornings
when the weather was forecast to be subzero and I didn't want to have to wake up at 3:30 in the morning just long enough to go plug in the car.
I moved the insulated Carhartt overalls that I can pull on over my PJs to shovel the driveway at 4:00am in order to get to work for an ultra-early
shift. I had forgotten that I had an uber-cheap rainsuit in a small duffel bag, left over from the days when I had a half-mile trek in from remote
parking to the tower, and always carried it with me in case it was raining cats and dogs at the moment when I had to get to or from the car.
I look at these items, and they resemble unrecognizable alien artifacts. It has been a scant four months since I stopped working for the FAA.
That is not enough time to step back and realize how thoroughly that job and the shift work permeated my life. How peculiar to think that I may
never need those things again, except in the rare instances when I choose to get up that early or choose to go for a walk on a day when most
people would be in the workshop building an ark. I have to learn how to NOT take shiftwork for granted, how NOT to assume that it is the most
natural thing in the world to be coming or going at one or three o'clock in the morning. These are the moments I did not anticipate when I
envisioned what it meant to no longer be a controller. As expected, I have begun to miss seeing sunrises and sunsets on a regular basis. (This
dilemma is a simple one to resolve, but it is not so easy to match the vantage point I enjoyed for 25 years.) Other retirement revelations are
slower to reveal themselves.
That's okay by me. I'm up to the challenge.
This is NOT going to be a particularly exciting, humorous, or insightful entry. It may not be the slightest bit interesting, either. But it's my blog so
I get to write what I want to.
<Crash wanders off to refill her coffee, singing "Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!" under her breath.>
I spent a good portion of yesterday and several additional hours this morning plowing through about four YEARS worth of junk piled up on my
desks, tacked up on various bulletin boards, stacked on top of the buffet, and thrown carelessly on my diningroom table. (Yes, that was desks
plural. One upstairs and one downstairs.) The most time consuming portion of this assault was going through an eight-inch-high stack of pages
torn from magazines and sorting them into files. For the last several years, whenever I read a magazine article and find something in there that
might be useful in a science fiction story -- be it a name, location, scientific theory, new discovery, or picture of some bizarre alien-worldish
looking landscape -- I've torn it out and set it aside to be saved. I eventually get around to sorting those excerpts into files: Aliens, Terms and
Names, Plot Ideas, etc. I didn't do much sorting and filing over the past two years, though, so the pile had gotten pretty large. Add in the bits I
had tacked up on my "various works in progress" bulletin board and the mass tucked into file folder that I haven't looked at since May 2, 2008
(my last day of work for the FAA), and the mound of pages was pretty darned impressive ... in an untidy trash heap kind of a way.
None of this has a single thing to do with my revelation of the day and the reason I opened up my website software, however.
In the process of beating back a recent attack by the Clutter Burglar (if you are not familiar with the nefarious Clutter Burglar and are courageous
enough to ask me for an explanation, feel free to post the question at my forum, 'Feedback'), I wound up rummaging through one of my closets,
trying to make some room for one more piece of useless junk that I didn't want to throw out ... yet.
I found some interesting stuff in there. And therein lies my revelation for the day. (Don't get all breathless with excitement. This one isn't going
to realign planets or rattle your perception of the universe!)
I pushed aside the weather-proof, all-season electrical timer that I used to turn on the block heater in my car on painfully cold winter mornings
when the weather was forecast to be subzero and I didn't want to have to wake up at 3:30 in the morning just long enough to go plug in the car.
I moved the insulated Carhartt overalls that I can pull on over my PJs to shovel the driveway at 4:00am in order to get to work for an ultra-early
shift. I had forgotten that I had an uber-cheap rainsuit in a small duffel bag, left over from the days when I had a half-mile trek in from remote
parking to the tower, and always carried it with me in case it was raining cats and dogs at the moment when I had to get to or from the car.
I look at these items, and they resemble unrecognizable alien artifacts. It has been a scant four months since I stopped working for the FAA.
That is not enough time to step back and realize how thoroughly that job and the shift work permeated my life. How peculiar to think that I may
never need those things again, except in the rare instances when I choose to get up that early or choose to go for a walk on a day when most
people would be in the workshop building an ark. I have to learn how to NOT take shiftwork for granted, how NOT to assume that it is the most
natural thing in the world to be coming or going at one or three o'clock in the morning. These are the moments I did not anticipate when I
envisioned what it meant to no longer be a controller. As expected, I have begun to miss seeing sunrises and sunsets on a regular basis. (This
dilemma is a simple one to resolve, but it is not so easy to match the vantage point I enjoyed for 25 years.) Other retirement revelations are
slower to reveal themselves.
That's okay by me. I'm up to the challenge.
28 September 2008 --
I feel like talking about cats this evening!! If you don't like cats, or an entry devoted to my four-foots promises to bore you into a persistent
vegetative state (also known as a coma), then feel free to skip down to the next entry ... if there is one.
The last time I talked about my cat was on December 29, 2007. In early December, I adopted a 7-year-old shelter cat that I named Pip. (Pay
attention, please, because I am going to attempt to confuse you with another iteration of Pip later in the conversation.) She turned out to be
more than a little neurotic, and far more than I could or wanted to handle, and after just two weeks, I returned her to the shelter. My house was
once again catless, and I missed my furry buddy, Jadzia Dax, more than ever. I think the abortive attempt to find a replacement deepened my
grief. The emptiness of the house, the lack of a warm, living creature on my bed at night, and the absence of cat beds and cat dishes were the
only things I could think about when I was home.
Leap forward a month, to January 17, 2008. I decided to try again.
This time, I got a kitten. She was 4-months-old, female, pure black, and she wanted to grow up to be a ferocious predator. There was only one
name possible: Aeryn.
Like Dax, she is afraid of vacuum cleaners, and she doesn't like cheese. (Silly cat!) Unlike Dax, she loves chewing on the cords to various
electronic devices. So far, I have lost a travel mouse with a retractable cord, a telephone headset, and a headphone extension cord to those
fearsome incisors. She is hyperactive even by cat standards, has a fascination with toilets that has resulted with her falling in twice, never wants
to sit in my lap unless I'm working on my laptop, and doesn't like sleeping on my bed. She also desperately wanted to play with the other cats in
the neighborhood. That led to her getting beat up by the mean boy kitties next door a couple of times. After that, she tried making friends with
the peculiar looking black and white 'kitty' that often wandered through the yard right around dusk. You know the one I'm talking about. Black
with white stripes ... and smells really bad.
The months passed. Aeryn grew, was lonely, wanted someone to play with her, and was slowly driving me nuts because she was so needy. This
past spring, I began checking the local Humane Society for kittens. I saw a few that were kind of cute, but nothing that really captured my heart.
In early July, I went down one last time, vowing that if I didn't find a kitten that I could not leave behind, I would stop searching and concentrate on
loving the stuffin' out of Aeryn. The Humane Society did not even have any kittens that day. I went home, gave Aeryn a hug, played with her for
a while, and took heart in the knowledge that I would not be cleaning litter boxes for two animals.
Silly me.
Jump forward in time to August 15, 2008.
I had to drive to Rutland, VT to have my car serviced at the dealership where I bought it. I came home with a kitten. That's the way it works, isn't
it? Take the car for servicing and come home with a kitten?
Only slightly more seriously, the drive to the car dealership took me fairly close to a branch of the Humane Society that I never visit because it is
too far away (close to 70 miles from my house). On the way home, on a whim, I stopped in. They had just one female kitten, a 10-week-old
short-haired tabby. Be still my heart.
She is younger than Aeryn, an interloper who arrived a half a year after Aeryn came to live in my house, a bit wild and reckless, and she is gray,
white, (brown) and black. Her name is Pip. Do not confuse her with Pip The Neurotic Freakazoid Cat who I mentioned earlier. This is Pip the
Younger.
She is 100% kitten: funny, fearless, bursting with energy, and totally laid back. She is the ultimate lap cat, loves cuddling, and sleeps on the
bed. She beats the hell out of the stuffed mice that are strewn all over the house, loves to stick them in my sneakers, and likes to play in the
bath tub (without water). Aeryn's tail is a toy, as are my ankles; and she has taught Aeryn about sleeping on the bed and being a lap cat.
I feel like talking about cats this evening!! If you don't like cats, or an entry devoted to my four-foots promises to bore you into a persistent
vegetative state (also known as a coma), then feel free to skip down to the next entry ... if there is one.
The last time I talked about my cat was on December 29, 2007. In early December, I adopted a 7-year-old shelter cat that I named Pip. (Pay
attention, please, because I am going to attempt to confuse you with another iteration of Pip later in the conversation.) She turned out to be
more than a little neurotic, and far more than I could or wanted to handle, and after just two weeks, I returned her to the shelter. My house was
once again catless, and I missed my furry buddy, Jadzia Dax, more than ever. I think the abortive attempt to find a replacement deepened my
grief. The emptiness of the house, the lack of a warm, living creature on my bed at night, and the absence of cat beds and cat dishes were the
only things I could think about when I was home.
Leap forward a month, to January 17, 2008. I decided to try again.
This time, I got a kitten. She was 4-months-old, female, pure black, and she wanted to grow up to be a ferocious predator. There was only one
name possible: Aeryn.
Like Dax, she is afraid of vacuum cleaners, and she doesn't like cheese. (Silly cat!) Unlike Dax, she loves chewing on the cords to various
electronic devices. So far, I have lost a travel mouse with a retractable cord, a telephone headset, and a headphone extension cord to those
fearsome incisors. She is hyperactive even by cat standards, has a fascination with toilets that has resulted with her falling in twice, never wants
to sit in my lap unless I'm working on my laptop, and doesn't like sleeping on my bed. She also desperately wanted to play with the other cats in
the neighborhood. That led to her getting beat up by the mean boy kitties next door a couple of times. After that, she tried making friends with
the peculiar looking black and white 'kitty' that often wandered through the yard right around dusk. You know the one I'm talking about. Black
with white stripes ... and smells really bad.
The months passed. Aeryn grew, was lonely, wanted someone to play with her, and was slowly driving me nuts because she was so needy. This
past spring, I began checking the local Humane Society for kittens. I saw a few that were kind of cute, but nothing that really captured my heart.
In early July, I went down one last time, vowing that if I didn't find a kitten that I could not leave behind, I would stop searching and concentrate on
loving the stuffin' out of Aeryn. The Humane Society did not even have any kittens that day. I went home, gave Aeryn a hug, played with her for
a while, and took heart in the knowledge that I would not be cleaning litter boxes for two animals.
Silly me.
Jump forward in time to August 15, 2008.
I had to drive to Rutland, VT to have my car serviced at the dealership where I bought it. I came home with a kitten. That's the way it works, isn't
it? Take the car for servicing and come home with a kitten?
Only slightly more seriously, the drive to the car dealership took me fairly close to a branch of the Humane Society that I never visit because it is
too far away (close to 70 miles from my house). On the way home, on a whim, I stopped in. They had just one female kitten, a 10-week-old
short-haired tabby. Be still my heart.
She is younger than Aeryn, an interloper who arrived a half a year after Aeryn came to live in my house, a bit wild and reckless, and she is gray,
white, (brown) and black. Her name is Pip. Do not confuse her with Pip The Neurotic Freakazoid Cat who I mentioned earlier. This is Pip the
Younger.
She is 100% kitten: funny, fearless, bursting with energy, and totally laid back. She is the ultimate lap cat, loves cuddling, and sleeps on the
bed. She beats the hell out of the stuffed mice that are strewn all over the house, loves to stick them in my sneakers, and likes to play in the
bath tub (without water). Aeryn's tail is a toy, as are my ankles; and she has taught Aeryn about sleeping on the bed and being a lap cat.
Aeryn has her playmate at last. It took her 72 hours to
accept having Pip in the house, and less than a week to
figure out that it was great fun to have a buddy to chase
around and wrestle with at all hours. Except when the two
of them are zooming from one end of the house to the
other, going over, under, and through the furniture in the
process, she is a steadier, calmer animal for having a
companion. The change is astounding.
The two of them have bonded with an intensity that I never
could have imagined, let alone predicted.
accept having Pip in the house, and less than a week to
figure out that it was great fun to have a buddy to chase
around and wrestle with at all hours. Except when the two
of them are zooming from one end of the house to the
other, going over, under, and through the furniture in the
process, she is a steadier, calmer animal for having a
companion. The change is astounding.
The two of them have bonded with an intensity that I never
could have imagined, let alone predicted.
I will live the next 15 years or so with the knowledge and the fear that when I lose one of them, the other may die very soon after. This pair is
gradually becoming a single entity, and they are close enough in age that I think once one of them goes, the other will pine for her missing
companion and follow soon after.
It is worth it. I'll take the heartache and the grief when it comes, knowing that my life has been blessed for the second time by the love and
dependence of this pair of furry nut cases. Pip is currently asleep under the comforter at the foot of the bed (NOT under the sheet next to me ...
that's more than I will allow). Aeryn is sleeping on her back, right alongside Pip but on top of the covers. They've left me no room for my feet.
That's fine by me.
gradually becoming a single entity, and they are close enough in age that I think once one of them goes, the other will pine for her missing
companion and follow soon after.
It is worth it. I'll take the heartache and the grief when it comes, knowing that my life has been blessed for the second time by the love and
dependence of this pair of furry nut cases. Pip is currently asleep under the comforter at the foot of the bed (NOT under the sheet next to me ...
that's more than I will allow). Aeryn is sleeping on her back, right alongside Pip but on top of the covers. They've left me no room for my feet.
That's fine by me.