A Bright Side

When Mom moved to Very Assisted Living boxes and boxes of her papers came to me. I am packrat but Mom is even more of one.

The central part of my study has been filed with boxes for the past year and I'd frequently walk in there on a Saturday morning, fully intending to sort, ditch, file, and generally reduce the level of the worst Disney ride ever, Paper Mountain. I'd take one look at it, desultorily move a few items from one place to another, feel totally overwhelmed, and find something else to do. Often something really productive, like play FreeCell.

Well, with Mom running out of money, it's time to submit the paperwork for a "spend down." Mom paid a pretty steep "deposit" when she moved into the facility where she lives and now that she does not have the income to pay the $295 a day that it costs to live in VAL, they will help me organize spending down the deposit. When she runs through that and uses up all but $2,500 of her assets, they'll apply for Medi-whichever it is.

The people in the Finance office are very nice, but it turns out that they actually do need to see paperwork. Lots of paperwork. So I've been spending time in the study and because I have a goal - find X, find Y, find Z - I'm not being dissuaded by chaos and dispair.

So while it doesn't look like it to the average passer-by, the study is tidier and more organized. And I've been getting rid of things outside of the study as well.

Except for the fact that I know it's too much hope for, I'd say that maybe by the time that my nieces have to do this for me, I'll have broken the packrat habit.

Reconciliation

Night flight to San Francisco. Chase the moon across America. God! It’s been years since I was on a plane.

When we hit thirty-five thousand feet, we’ll have reached the tropopause. The great belt of calm air. As close as I’ll ever get to the ozone.

I dreamed we were there. The plane leapt the tropopause, the safe air, and attained the outer rim, the ozone, which was ragged and torn, patches of it threadbare as old cheesecloth, and that was frightening …

But I saw something only I could see, because of my astonishing ability to see such things: Souls were rising, from the earth far below, souls of the dead, of people who had perished, from famine, from war, from the plague, and they floated up, like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and spinning. And the souls of these departed joined hands, clasped ankles and formed a web, a great net of souls, and the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules, of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed them, and was repaired.

Nothing’s lost forever. In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we’ve left behind, and dreaming ahead.

At least I think that’s so.

From Angels in America by Tony Kushner

Not as cute as he thinks it is

Of all of the tricks that Pekoe has learned over the past 10 years, I think that his new one of tipping his cat box onto its side is my least favorite.

Especially when he does in the middle of the night and I find out by walking though cat litter a little while later.

It also happens to be true

Living in Very Assisted Living ain't cheap. It's costing my mother $295 a day to be kept in the style to which she would have preferred not to become accustomed. $295 a day is more than her income, so we're starting the process to spend down the deposit she paid when she moved there seven years ago. When that money is (too soon) gone, the facility will help her apply for Medi-whichever.

It depresses Mom to think that she won't have anything to leave me and my neices. I've tried different ways to tell her that, while it is too bad, it's more important to take care of her than to worry about any kind of financial legacy.

Today I may have found a way to phrase it that works for her:

Mom, you worked hard all your life and saved a lot of money, which will be spent to keep you safe and comfortable. You're money should be spent on you. And knowing that you are safe and comfortable means a lot to me.

She said that was "a nice way to put it." Had Mom been more of a fan of Hemingway, she might have said "Isn't it pretty to think so," but I doubt she would have gone to far as quote Brick's "Wouldn't it be funny if that was true?" Mom's never been as much of a cynic as Mr. Williams.

For my birthday

Don't take to me Nello's for a very expensive dinner. Just buy me a shiny new Passat.* Or a shiny new Eos** and a used Jetta.


*Thunder Blue, manual, sunroof.

**Salsa Red, manual, don't forget the iPod cable-thing.

And that's the way it is - now

Back in the old days (when I was a child) there was the evening news, in black and white, and there were two newspapers, the Washington "Post" and the Washington " Evening Star."*

Then, in the fullness of time, there was news on the radio. Real news stories that lasted longer than a minute. Real news, not just a few headlines at the top of the hour, mixed with traffic, weather, and celebrity gossip. (Or, worse yet, the AM station that my mother liked that carried Harden and Weaver - WMAL, back then pretty Reader's Digest-y, today a ractionary sinkhole).

And how do I get my news now? From FaceBook. I learn about breaking news stories as I read about them in status updates. Then, later in the day, NPR fills in the details for me.

Lee described FaceBook as what happens in the halls between classes in high school. Apparently, it also has a PA with morning and afternoon announcements, too. Just like high school. What goes around comes around.


*Unless I was visting my grandparents, in which case there was the Plain Dealer, which was thinner and more Reader's Digest-like. I liked the "Plain Dealer."

**Today, by the way, is Morning Edition's 30th birthday. Many happy returns of the day!

***And, of course, people who follow Twitter now get their (truncated) headlines from the Twits.

How to escape terrible radio

I get two stations at work - 88.5 (wamu), the local NPR station, and 107.3, the local pop and "personality DJ" station. Mostly I divide my time between the two of them, but every now and then - and more and more frequently these days - I need a break. I was reluctant to use Smudge* at work because when my boss needs me, I don't want to have to take out ear buds before I look attentive. Or miss him when he calls for me.

But then one day ... then one day ... ** then one day I realized that even though the external speaker makes the sound a little teeny, tiny, itsy-bitsy bit tinny, Smudge still lacks the static of my radio and I could hear it just fine even without the ear buds.

So now when I need to avoid hearing about Virginia politics on NPR or to avoid being subjected to the biggest blowhard DJ in radio on 107.3, I grab Smudgy, chose a random song and hit "genius." Et voila!***

Sometimes I use the wi-fi network that I can get to and use Pandora. Also good. Thank you, Modern Technology!


* My name for my iPod Touch because what have I re-learned from having an iPod Touch? That human beings are greasy little animals.

** Oh crap. I cannot seem to stop quoting from Edward Albee's The Goat. That is so not fair.

*** I've done this a bunch of times, so I really should stop looking over at Smudgy as each next song comes up and thinking "Oh! I like that song." Of course, I do. It's on my iPod.

She's known me a while

One of the positive things about having lunch with a friend who is taking pain killers and is a rather stresssed is that you can have exchanges like this:

Her: I've had too many people die lately so be careful.
Me: Be careful? Oh! You mean, like, crossing the street and stuff. For a minute I thought you meant "be careful not to say anything stupid and that ..."
Her: Oh yeah, that's a total crapshoot with you.

It's so nice to be understood.

The bad place

I don't mind Tech Week, which some theater people call Hell Week. In fact, I rather like it. But, oh, how I hate Version Control Hell.

I went to Version Control Hell last week and just got back. Fortunately, it was really only a day trip, unlike some of the extended voyages I've been on in the past.

Upper Management is working on an important document for our company right now. And they are doing it by in-person meetings and by editing the document via our intranet site. And they forgot the most important rule: when editing the document on the intranet site, "save" don't "save as" with a new name.

So I merged the documents back into one and sent the Worthy Gentlemen* an e-mail reminding them not to "save as," but only to "save."

And I included this paraphrase: What Leta has joined together, let no Manager put asunder. **

I'm hoping that the Biblical-sounding injunction will work where "please" and "thanks!" have failed. We shall see.


* Because I work in what is still a very male-dominated field, I am still looking forward to the day when I send an e-mail to Upper Management that cannot start with the salutation "Gentlemen."

** Another reason that I really, really like my job? I ran that sentence past my Boss before I sent the e-mail and he didn't make me take it out.

Notes

"At the end of every rehearsal, we have what are called "notes." If they're not about you, they're boring but if they are about you, they're important."

Amy, giving the best summary I've ever heard for the last few minutes of rehearsal.

She is directing her second show which has a large cast, 90% of which are children, many under age 6, most doing their first show. She is my hero.

Valuable lessons from Old Time Radio

"It's the olives that do it, not the Martinis!"

Johnny Dollar in "The Confidential Matter" episode of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar

Character Reference

"Since you should know something about me, I have asked the Reverend Simon Simpless, of St. Hilda's Church near Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, to write to you. He has known me since I was a child and is fond of me. I have asked Lady Bella Taunton to provide a reference for me too. We were fire wardens together during the Blitz and she wholeheartedly dislikes me. Between the two of them, you may get a fair picture of my character."

A letter from Juliet Ashton to Amelia Maugery in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Don't ask for much, do we?

Collect of the Day
Sunday, October 5, 2009

Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire to deserve: Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Savior; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

We would also like a pony.

Byron, Bryon

Byron* has been popping up in my line of sight again lately. Sara Joy is rehearsing Arcadia and her Facebook status updates are peppered with Hannah's dialogue; John Malkovich appears in the film version of J.M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace and has this comment about his character, a professor of Romantic poetry: "Probably if you spend your whole life reading Byron and Keats and Shelley, partaking of their worldview, then you might have a different moral compass than those who don't."

So the lame brat is on my mind again.

A couple of nights ago I was reading a Time magazine from a few weeks back and came across a book review. The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes** describes "an era when science was both glamorous and dangerous" and the review by Lev Grossman notes that at that time "Poetry and science weren't wholly separate yet: they were seen as complementary ways of piercing the veil of everyday phonomena. William Wordsworth, Lord Byron and the Shelleys (Percy Bysshe and Mary) followed scientific breakthroughs like sports scores."

And the single hardest part of Arcadia for me to memorize is back in my head:

I had a dream which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air... ***

In rehearsals, before those words were secure (which nearly required a nail gun) I would get to that point in the script, look intelligently**** at Patrick and say "Bryon, Bryon, end of Byron" and we'd go on with the scene. I think the director was a little afraid that I would do that in performance, too, but I did not.

Perhaps the universe is trying to tell me something. Perhaps while I am between scripts, I'll read some Romantic poetry and see what - if anything - it does to my moral compass.

Assuming I have one, that is.


* George Gordon, Lord Byron

** I don't think it's the same Richard Holmes as the baritone who sings for NYGASP, but that would also be a nice piece of serendipity, wouldn't it.

*** Darkness

**** Or so I like to think.

Camping ... in Pennsylvania

A couple of years ago, when I was working on Taking Leave, I would have dinner after rehearsals with a friend. We'd chat about this and that and I don't really remember how much of my Markland experience peppered my conversation but apparently enough because one day he said something along the lines of "This camping you mentioned: did it happen ... in Pennsylvania?"

Why, yes. Yes, it did. I used to go to the Pennsic Wars every August and be all medieval surrounded by hundreds of other people being all medieval, too. There was very little that was modern as far as the eye could eye could see. Well, except for the coolers.* And the sunglasses. And the paperback science fiction.

Every Pennsic had its own character but certain things seemed to be a given: There would be at least one torrential rainstorm during the week which would teach excellent lessons about the inadvisability of having one's blankets touching the edge of one's canvas tent and about how efficient a process "wicking" can really be; at least one person would get what everyone else called the Plague but more literal me called a flux,** although thankfully not a bloody flux; and at least one someone would hook-up with one someone else with said hook-up turning out to rather regretable and a fruitful source of mockery in the future.

I haven't been to a Pennsic in years, so imagine of my delight when I found this post on Medieval News.***

Ahhh, good times.


* We used coolers for our food because food poisoning is no fun no matter what century you are currently inhabiting. And it's even less fun when you are a modern person sleeping in a tent and sharing a port-a-potty.

** See the reason for the use of achronistic coolers, supra.

***I should note, however, that even though the "Voice of America" video says that the winner of the Pennsic War receives the title to Pittsburgh, them of us what were there, know that it's the loser who takes possession. See? Even those strangers on Wikipedia agree with that.

Beets - the worst vegetable ever

Quinn and I are quite different in someways, I'm extroverted and like Facebook; she's introverted and likes Twitter, but there's one way in which we are soulmates.

I despise beets in any form. Canned, baked, precious little heirloom ones on a fancy salad, they all taste like iron filings to me. I’d sooner lick a handrail; same flavor and you’re done faster. But beets are very good for you and I’ve always felt badly that I hadn’t given them more of a chance, when I wasn’t shooing them off to the corner of my plate. I’d eat a jar-egg and it would taste in some way of beets and even if I never did another brave thing in my life, I’d have that. If Daughter flinches at the sight of a Brussels sprout, I can lean over to her and say knowingly, “At least it’s not marinated in beets.”

A few years ago when some friends and I participated in CSA*, Stacey and I had half share each**. When the food arrived each week, Stace and I would divvy up our share and try to figure out what we had. Our general fall-back was that if we didn't recognize a vegetable, it couldn't hurt to roast it. This is a very good rule. Well, for everything except lettuce. Just don't even roast lettuce.

Anyway, for a while there we were getting ourselves some beets. We tried all kinds of ways to prepare them and no matter what we did, they remained beets. Roasted beets? They are beets with a slightly less horrible than usual exterior.

So if Quinn is willing to eat a beet-marinated jar-egg in order to set a good example for her daughter (or at least not lose too much of the moral high ground), I can but admire her. Would that I had the same strength of character. Because while I would get up at dawn if I had to in order to provide a good example, I am not eating anything marinated in beets.


*Community Supported Agriculture, or Tree Hugger Food.

**There are four people at Stacey's house. My house is me and the not-very-vegetable-eating cat. Even a half share resulted in much soup being made from the left-overs of each week's bounty.

***Don't know what a jar-egg is? Read her post. But not, perhaps, over lunch.

Of course it does

I am enjoying Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma*, but this bit made me laugh:

"Angelo called it rapini, and said the young leaves were delicious sautéed in olive oil and garlic."

Because, really, aren't most things delicious when they are sautéed in olive oil and garlic?


*As I was typing this my fingers really, really wanted me to misspell "dilemma." Which meant that I kept seeing "The Omnivore's Deli." And you know? That sounds pretty good. I know I'd stop in.

Time to buy some rap

Bill Forman wrote such an interesting piece about Busdriver that I'm going to have to pick up a couple of his songs. Because even if they don't sound entirely like G&S, it's hard to resist someone this engaging. And it will add another entry to the list of stuff that people wouldn't suspect that I have on MyPod.*

As on previous albums, he employs a rapid-fire delivery and convoluted rhyme schemes, like some unholy offspring of Jamaican dancehall deejay Bounty Killer and light opera savants Gilbert and Sullivan. Asked which he found more influential, Busdriver says he appreciates rap's debt to "old-school Jamaican toasters, but I never really sought that out. So I would have to say the latter. Unfortunately, I don't spend enough time with [Gilbert and Sullivan's work], but I know what you're talking about and I do shoot for things like that."

*Or in my bookcase. Unflattering f'rinstance: "You? Like Mamet? You? Really?"

The Birds of New York

Sometimes of late years I find myself thinking the most beautiful sight in the world might be the birds taking over New York after the last man has run away to the hills. I will never live to see it, of course, but I know just how it will sound because I've lived up high and I know the sort of watch birds keep on us. I've listened to sparrows tapping tentatively on the outside of air conditioners when they thought no one was listening, and I know how other birds test the vibrations that come up to them through the television aerials. 'Is he gone?' they ask, and the vibrations come up from below, 'Not yet, not yet.'

Loren Eiseley (via The Writer's Almanac)

It pays to have smart assy friends

Because then you don't get in trouble for saying stuff like I did yesterday. I would probably never say anything so snarky to my very nice and not Smart Assy Friends.

Smart Assy Friend: So how's your Mom doing?*
Me: Oh, pretty well. She was pretty incoherent there for a while but she's recovering nicely.
SAF: Yeah, I spent some of the weekend incoherent, too.
Me: Yes, but with my mother, we can tell the difference.


*Mom spent a few days in the hospital with the UTI. Between the infection and the dehydration, she was not very lucid for a couple of days, scaring the bejeebers out of me. Yay both for anti-biotics and Mom's dislike of superbug-creating anti-bacterial everything.