All it's done so far is open up a new category of argument during SYTYCD. Do we fast forward through Mary's screaming? Do we rewatch a routine immediately after it's over? Do we sit there quietly or fast forward during commercials? Fuss and fight and bicker, I thought I'd tear my hair out. Then I was informed that my laugh was "Weird and FAKE." At which point I asked everyone to "shut the fuck up so I can watch this," doing my part to make the evening an unqualified success.

I'm telling you, if I lived alone, I am pretty sure the dogs would be quiet during the damn show.

Dog fungus.

me:  You are the sunshine of my life.

I'm a little stoned right now, having made an early AM run to the dentist to have a broken tooth fixed. Ive never had the local anesthetic make me generally loopy before, so this is a new experience and I am all about the new experiences. I want to take this mildly loopy opportunity to make a thoughtful, heartfelt post about Ben, the handsome young man who came to our house to work on the speed of our wireless home network.

At first look, Ben might not hit a person as remarkably attractive. At second look, he is devastating. Maybe 6'1" or 6'2", slightly unkempt brown hair that sort of sticks out a little, delightful brown eyes, regular features, a fairly deep voice. His build was what those of us in the young-man's-build-inspection trade call "perfect," with the long legs, flat, hard torso, broad shoulders and muscular brown arms that are of a pleasing regulation length. Kind of a Golden Mean man, with longer legs.

Yup. Very nice.

Ben was in my driveway when I arrived home on Monday of last week. He was out in his cable truck, talking cable business on his Comcast truck phone, setting out cones and such. I had to park in a weird place in my driveway, and I noticed that my ex-husband, younger brother, sis in law and baby niece were all at my house, as well. My brother and family were returning home from their fourth of July trip up north, and my ex was over because he seems to always be over, these days. 

I walked into a home full of hubbub and family, and of course, Ben the cable guy. We were grilling for dinner, that was the plan, so my ex husband and my brother tended to all that, while Sarah and I and two of my daughters tended to making sides, doting on my niece and watching Ben. And oh, how we watched. I mean, think of it, there were four of us ranging in age from 19 to 49, and we're all pretty awesome at extending attention to men, that kind of intelligent, pleasant, "I am completely aware of how young and attractive you are" attention. We lt it loose. Ben bloomed under our attentions.

Don't get me wrong. I in no way wish to impugn Ben's Comcast professionalism. He went about his cable man business in an alacritous and vaguely athletic way... moving large pieces of furniture, going down into the crawl space, climbing up into the attic. The man was busy diagnosing the problem with how our network was set up, and the limitations we'd encountered in speed and reliability.

But even with all the diagnostic attention to our home electronics, he'd find a reason to stop in the kitchen and just sort of be beautiful and masculine for our benefit. Beautiful, masculine, technical,and young, with a truck and cones and various tools and so forth, and unkempt hair and shoulders and a great smile and obviously very intelligent because of course he'd have to be intelligent to understand all that bigboy wiring, wouldn't he? And we'd beam, and he'd bask.

At some point I started to blush because I KNOW I'm too old to be so bewitched by young male beauty, I am an old crone and I need to STOP this unabashed admiration of all that is young and strong and male. But I can't. The older I get, the more I love to look at it, knowing it has nothing to do with me and somehow enjoying it all the more because of that. I dont have to move on it, act on it, invite it into my bed to survey the damage of too many failed diets, three kids and fifty years. I can just...ogle it. But this makes me blush, and my kids find this hilarious, my new habit of furiously blushing around attractive young men. They find it howlingly funny. I blush when we go to the Joy Theater because the young man there looks like an Abercrombie and Fitch model. I blushed the other day at McDonald's when a gorgeous young Hispanic man with long wavy hair hair pushed back with a headband (Youngest pronounced him "A Hispanic Johnny Depp") gave me my coffee and told me to "en-yoy" my day. Blushing is my new reponse to male beauty.

Ben the cable man had me going up in flames.  Youngest was barely able to contain her snorts, and Oldest had to look at her feet to keep from laughing out loud. I discussed with him the fact that the cable no longer worked in the girls' rooms because of the cable company  changes, and he offered to come back on Monday to get that all set up for us, and to install DVR. When could he be here to address these important cable issues? "Monday morning? Maybe 9:45?" I looked at Youngest. "You hear that? Monday morning, your room better be clean." She smiled and preened. "My room IS clean." I said, "How did that happen?" Ben laughed. Plans were made, and Ben let himself out the front door.

We exploded. "Oh my GOD." "Mom, you were BLUSHING!" "I KNOW!" We all agreed that he was just about a perfect young man. Sarah admitted, "I finally just had to go outside." Youngest announced, "I'm getting up at seven on Monday morning to get ready." Oldest said, "Me too. I'm straightening my hair." She turned to Sarah. "Want to come up for coffee on Monday morning?" I said, "Maybe I'll need to go into work late."

But of course, I went to work on time, and the girls overslept, and Sarah was busy. When Ben came back, he smiled at Youngest and said, "Is your room still clean?" She told me that SHE'S blushing, now. Well, blushing is fine. We're just lucky that she didn't greet him at the door wearing nothing but her prom shoes.

I guess he spent the morning at the house...cheerfully upgrading everything, I do wonder how much all this is going to cost me. We have a different router, and cable boxes in the bedrooms, and the network works like lightning, and he even moved the phone, which the last cable guy had set up over on the buffet when obviously it's supposed to be over by the microwave (Ben made it so we can plug it into any jack in the house). And the DVR is part of the deal, now, and he showed the girls how to use it. "His hand brushed mine when he handed me some paper," Youngest gushed. I guess they're engaged, now.

I enquired after Ben's mental state. Did he seem impressed with the immaculate state of the house, a state it took much of the weekend to attain? The girls gave me all the information they could, but of course the real fun of a man like that is watching him ably and competently address the man stuff, and I was denied this pleasure by the necessity of earning a living. But Oldest said he was in a very good mood, grooving on all the innocent girl love.

My ex husband wasn't in a good mood when I breezed into the house after work, wanting a full report. He'd gotten wind of the reappearance of the cable guy and he'd come right over to make sure everyone was "safe." Yes, the girls were "safe." He was asleep on the little couch in the family room. He woke up and started casting aspersions on "That skinny cable guy." I demurred. "He's not skinny! He's well-built!" He found it all disgusting. "For one thing, you and the girls are all gushing over the same guy. How creepy is that?" I said, "Not just us, but Sarah. " He was outraged. "Sarah wouldn't do that!" "Oh yes she would!" Well, he was disgusted. "That makes me and Eric feel great. And he's not well-built!" "He's perfect and has beautiful brown eyes." Oldest said, "He liked Boochie. He was teasing her." I stroked back her hair and studied her beautiful young face. I said, "He probably just likes you because you remind him so much of me, honey." 

It didn't matter how much we laughed over all this stuff, how clear it was that we were enaging in hyperbole and absurdity in order to entertain ourselves. My ex couldn't get over it. He started listing off all the things that are currently wrong with him, a list that includes diabetes and high blood pressure, a list that ended with "And I'm not a beautiful young cable guy." No. The only person who is a beautiful young cable guy is, well, a beautiful young cable guy. Finally he got up and fumed out the door.

I don't know what to say to my ex husband. He doesn't understand my middle-aged lustfulness, which is essentially innocent and without goal, and which very definitely does not extend towards most of my exes. He finds his girls' engagement in the same kind of admiration unthinkable. He is upset that none of this admiration, whether for technical expertise, general handyman competence, or pleasing male beauty, is aimed at him. I know that most men want to be admired and desired, and that these things are harder and harder to come by as we age. I know, because it's the same for me. But look, I wanted to say, the way my life is right now, lusting over the cable guy is all I have. Don't wreck it for me.

I just let him stomp out the door.

So now my home network is a thing of beauty, like the young man who repaired it. It's fantastic. And I think I'm going to go start loosening wires...

over here:

http://www.goblinfruit.net/2009/summer/

I'm just having the best weekend. The world's best redheads, an incredible spread put on pretty much single-handedly by my daughter, pina coladas, the blues festival, fireworks.

The only way to repay Oldest Daughter for that fantastic meal yesterday was with an early morning alt-country serenade.


THIS IS MY SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG!

LONG BLACK TRAIN, TAKE ME HOOOOOOME!

OH I WISH IT WOULD RAAAAAAAAAIN!


I'm sure she loved it, though it's hard to tell because she doesn't seem to be speaking to me.

I am typing to you from my new laptop...

I am embarrassed by how much I love Haven Kimmel. Seriously. Well, not her, of course, I don't know her, so I don't love her. I love her books. I love them so much that I want to marry them. I love them so much that I want to move into her novels, lock stock and barrel. I love them so much that I want to fly around and touch people with them as a form of blessing. No, I don't mean her memoirs, I don't care about her memoirs that Zippy thing, whatever, who cares. I mean her novels.

Me at the copier, duplicating precious archival materials: Oh my god, we had a shirt called the Clansman.
Guy: Did it come with a hood?

If you were going to ask me which group most colored my very young years, I'd have to say the Beatles. We loved the Monkees, too, don't get me wrong, but the Beatles reigned supreme. Other groups we loved included Peter, Paul and Mary, The Supremes, the Temptations and the Four Tops. My mom took my musical tastes very seriously. If I wanted to listen to it, I got to listen to it. I had a hippy mom and a Motown-loving babysitter, setting me up for a lifetime of varied musical tastes.

In 68 or 69, Cat and I discovered that there was an entire pop culture offering out there, geared to girls our age and older. We bought a lot of teenybopper magazines (actually we shoplifted them but that is another blog entry) and we immersed ourtselves in the teen idol court. The reigning king was Bobby Sherman, and we both hated him. My sister was an acolyte of the young usurper, David Cassidy. I loved the jester--Jack Wild.

And then there were the groups. There were two groups duking it out, the Osmonds and the Jackson Five. The Osmonds were a pretty potent force, with all those boys, all those TEETH, and Marie. Marie wasn't part of the group, but she was cute and those were her brothers (oh, the bliss of proximity). She could give tips and advice in columns, and she could even sing. But the Osmonds creeped me out. They were Mormon. What the hell did that mean? I didn't know any Mormons. Donny was cute, and there was one other cute one, but the rest of them were not attractive. They were too toothy and too hairy and their eyebrows were too much. To my young eye, they looked like werewolves caught mid-morph. Still, they were massively popular.

The Jacksons had sisters, but their dad had decided to keep the girls under wraps so there were just all those incredibly beautiful boys, who were all mannerly, soft-spoken, and incredibly good dancers. They were also members of a bizarre religion I didn't understand, Jehovah's Witnesses. They were not nearly as forthcoming about their lives, cowering in fear as they all were, but we didn't know that. We just knew that whenever they were going to be on something and we tuned in, it was unbelievably fun to watch. And they had the cartoon. In the cartoon, they were madcap and silly, and they didn't appear to be members of any strange religion. And also, the Jacksons wore the BEST clothes.

Beautiful, beautiful young men. And their voices blended perfectly, and their songs were awesome. So as far as I was concerned, we had a winner.

The Jacksons were never off my radar. Michael always had a song out there... Some of you remember Ben? We sang and sang that song, though after I saw the movie it was never quite the same. When I was in highschool, "Off the Wall" came out. April LOVED Michael. She had a full length poster of the Off The Wall shot on her door in her crappy little apartment (she worked at a music store, part of her inestimable highschool coolness factor).

I called April when I heard and she said, "Oh, I'm so glad you called. I was in the car when I heard and I started crying so hard and I wanted to call you. But then I thought maybe I was just being a dork."

I said, "You're not being a dork, April. I remember."

I used to come home from my job as a file clerk at OHSU in 1980 and put on that record. Vinyl. For some reason we were all living in the same house that fall, I mean, my entire family which hadn't lived together since I was fifteen had all gathered in a tiny little house in SW Portland and we were all going insane. But I'd get home and I had about a half hour before everyone else came home, and I spent it listening to Michael Jackson. He would rock with me. We were certainly living off the wall.

I remember when the Jacksons had their comeback. This was the record, and I remembering how much time I spent just staring at how beautiful they all were as I listened to it.



And of course, out of this came the tour, which was insane. Maybe you all don't REMEMBER how big they became. Michael came back for another try at a solo career after this tour, when things were huge. By the time Thriller came out, I was a mom, but that didn't matter. I have clearly demonstrated that I will never set aside my childish things, and I bought Thriller. I put it on, and my baby daughter, who couldn't walk yet, scooted over and pulled herself up on the steamer trunk we used as a coffee table. She held on with one hand, fixed me with her delighted brown eyes and commenced to get down with it. It was the first time she had ever danced. Her father and I laughed and laughed, and danced right along with her.

If you weren't there, you can't understand. Michael Jackson just took over. I remember that awards show, i don't even remember what it was, but the Jacksons came out and did a song together and then Michael stayed up there alone, hiding under that fedora and wearing that glove and those white socks and loafers. He started to perform Billy Jean, and everything changed. I looked at my then-husband and he looked at me, and we knew everything had changed. Because, of course, before something becomes old and tired, a stale joke or a Halloween get up, it is absolutely revolutionary. How he looked, how he moved, even this new way he'd found to use his voice, it was absolutely breathtakingly new, and no one knew what to make of it, or where it came from, or where it would go.

We lived in an apartment in those years, a very nice townhouse in a very nice complex that has since gone condo. All the kids ran around together, a multi-age mob, and my little girl was one of them. I'd sit out to kind of keep an eye on things because she was so young, and because I was paranoid, of course, and I'd watch and listen to the kids. There were a lot of shows put on, and most of the kids knew every word, every step to the songs from Thriller. They all did it badly, but that wasn't really a problem. Who cared? They knew it. Two boys actually had and wore white gloves and did credible versions of the steps, even. They'd do this stuff for me, because I was a very young mom and somehow the fact that my husband was black made me an "expert" in the way their harried, divorced moms in their thirties were not. I was asked to judge, but I refused. I was just too amused and delighted by the whole thing.

I cued in early that Micheal was losing touch with the idea of himself as a real human being. You could see it in the videos. He was a little too large in those, a little too possessed with the idea of somehow obtaining superpowers with which he would make this world safe for children. But did I watch? Did i buy? Did I sing along? Oh, you bet. But Michael became something for the kids. I can't quite figure out how it happened. I liked him, I loved many of the songs, but the kids had appropriated him and I let them have him. I was moving on in different areas musically. I had to play the Fine Young Cannibals "Raw and the Cooked" obsessively, and also Lisa Stansfield. The kids took MJ off into their rooms and kept him there. My nephew became obsessed with MJ when he was about three, and in a very Aspergerian fashion learned every single thing there was to know about MJ. He also used to shriek at my kids to fix his hair like Michael's, somehow expecting them to make a dangling Jeri-curled lock appear on his forehead, even though he had short blond hair.

But did I still love the music? Oh, yes I did. How could you not love the music? Because the music was a miracle. Michael Jackson was like a vision of the Madonna spontaneously appearing on a wall. He came from the familiar, and completely transformed it into a vision of the miraculous. He was worshiped, consulted, offered to, celebrated. He had that much power. And then like all those miraculous images of the divine, he got incorporated. Someone built a church around him, and then he got enhanced, and then the image was sold on prayer cards and bookmarks. It was less about the music and all about the merchandising. The icon became a fixture, a taken-for-granted part of the musical landscape, mundane and painted over, relegated to the oddness of the remaining worshipers. 

The man became increasingly odd and remote from the world. His nose got smaller, his skin got whiter, his hair got wiggier. There were too many animals and children at that ranch, and then it all blew up in a series of accusations that made us all sick. And I was one of those weird people who kept saying, "I don't believe it. I just don't believe it." Like anyone cared what I thought, my theories that Michael Jackson had somehow decided that because of his father, the scariest thing in the universe was an adult black man, and to the world in general was a black man, and so he worked harder and harder to make himself less male, less black, less adult, shrouding himself in a delusional innocence until he was a wide open target for anyone looking to extort what money he had left. Certainly he is not the first megastar to be driven to ground. But I was terrified of this comeback. Michael Jackson was delusional, but certainly he had to know he was not currently musically relevant. What a horrible thing to know about yourself, what a drastic, frightening thing to face when attempting a comeback. I'm sure he was doing it to set his kids up financially. What an inhuman, cruel pressure.

There's a lot of good music on the radio this weekend. If I hit the buttons enough, I can almost always find an MJ tune, and I turn them up and sing and smile. Because Michael's songs have always made me smile. He'd done it before, you know, he'd come back from being dismissed as over. Maybe he could have done it again. Listening to the best of it, i wonder if he could have done it. My sister left me a prim little voicemail saying that maybe his death was "best for him." I had expected a big sobbing mess of a voicemail akin to her reaction to Princess Di ("She's always just reminded me so much of myself!" my sister said about Princess Diana) but that's not what Cat thinks, I guess. I don't know. I wish he'd had a chance to try.

About three years ago, the girls and I were driving up Barbur behind a small Honda. it was nighttime, and we could see the driver ahead of us. She was rocking out. I mean, she was gone, she was singing, shaking her ringlets, one hand up in front of the rearview, snapping and gesticulating. We cracked up and then Middle Daughter said, "Mom, find the song!" So I punched around on the radio and found the song. She was listening to what was then Portland's "feel good radio" station, and the song was Billy Jean. The girl ahead of us was cardancing for all she was worth. We were laughing so hard that our eyes watered, watching the beautiful syncopation of it, her surrender to the beat and the pop and the words. She was doing an excellent job, we all agreed.

And then we stopped our laughing and  joined in, singing and dancing our hearts out for whatever was left of the song.

Earlier today, I had an itch on my ankle. I scratched it. There doesn't appear to be a bite. Just that moment of itching. Which I scratched.


Do you think I should Tweet this stuff instead? It's pretty important.

He wasn't always nuts, and he was always brilliant.


Here's a link to an article I read in 94 that sort of changed how I perceived what had happened to and with Jackson:   http://www.buttonmonkey.com/misc/maryfischer.html

I woke up this morning, considering Brad Pitt and Anjelina Jolie, and holding my stomach from the pain of coughing. Yes, I actually do have some stomach muscles in there, as evidenced by the fact that they HURT from days and days of coughing my guts out. I probed around my gut to reassure myself that I don't have a hernia (like I'd even know) and went back to thinking about the household of Pitt and Jolie.

The Pit of Joy.

Do you think Brad ever looks around him at the toddler and baby mayhem, the kitchen full of hardened bowls of cereal with curdling milk, the piles of laundry, the unmade beds wet by an adorable array of children from many different countries, the Post-it notes by the phone that say "Call Dr. tell him NO MORE EMBRYOS," and does he think, I chose this?

Does he pile all those children into the car and take them to the various daycares, playgroups and preschools, and then stop by some coffee shop on Melrose with his twins in their carseats, and does he look at the firm limbs and expensive shades of young women passing by and think back to the days of his youth, of Thelma and Louise when he and Johnny Depp used to compete for parts, and does he think, I actually chose this?

Does he remember the days with Jen, the days of Pilates and cardio, of getting their hair ironed and highlighted and their nails done, of all that red carpet and vacationeering, just the two of them? Does he remember the tomboyish charms and strong limbs and square jaw, always by his side, so full of love? Does he think about the stick-thin arms, gently swelling abdomen and eyes that glitter with isanity of his life partner, wherever on the globe she is at the moment, and think, yes, I chose this?

Maybe their life isn't as bad as it looks on the outside. Maybe they like each other, I don't know, they don't seem to like each other anymore but I'm on the outside, some stranger in Portland, Oregon, watching them and thinking, whoa, nice body language there.  And whenever I see those kids being carried around with their bags of Cheetos in hand it just looks like unhappiness and chaos to me.

And he chose that.

One of my eyes hurts. I've probably caused something to pop out with all my coughing.

I'm getting better, but this low voice remains.

I can still comfortably hit all the low notes in the Sly and the Family Stone songs.

Also, Elvis.

Let's go sing karaoke. I'll do "In the Ghetto." And then some Barry White.

Everyone will think I'm a drag queen.

My next door neighbor to the North has breast cancer. Next door neighbor since 1986, mother of two teenage boys. Currently in remission, though still doing chemo.

My next door neighbor to the east has prostate cancer. Next door neighbor since 1987, 59 years old, father to 11 year-old twin girls. Had a prostatectomy and will be doing some chemo.

My dear friend Julie's mother, advanced pancreatic cancer, no treatment options.

Book group, a special subset:
1. Lois died five years ago, in her fifties, from the eventual complications of the crazy radiation they used to give back in the 1970s, when she had thyroid cancer. She left behind a son and a daughter and a wonderful granddaughter with whom she was so close. Now there's another granddaughter that Lois never got to meet.

2. Kris has also been treated for thyroid cancer. She is healthy and thriving and her three sons are driving her nuts and making her proud.

3. Ann has had a double mastectomy. She went in for a routine mammogram on the day her younger sister was having a mastectomy and mentioned that to the techs, who did additional testing on Ann. She found out that she had the same kind of advanced, aggressive cancer in both breasts. The doctors hit it with some of the most horrifyingly intense treatment I have ever seen, because she just wanted to live long enough to see her youngest son (who is one year younger than my youngest) graduate from highschool. She's doing great and so are her three sons.

My dear friend Sue's childhood friend L, who has stage 3-c ovarian cancer. I have known L for years in the way you know the best friends of friends. We had a great time together recently at Sue's son's wedding in Tacoma. I'm not sure what her treatment options are, though she's had surgery and Sue and her husband will be coming down to spend some time with her. She has an 11 or 12 year-old son.

My friend Sarah's dear friend Anna, with whom I've done some social things, recovering from a mastectomy beautifully, as Anna does all things.

My boss has had breast cancer. She's been fine, but as she says, "Once you've had it, cancer might forget about you, but you never forget about cancer." Her boss, my division head, had serious colon cancer five years ago and is fine, running miles per day and carrying on. One of the merchandisers who left two years ago but with whom I have lunch now and then, had cervical cancer. That's just in one division, mind you.

My friend Liz, whom I don't see very often, had breast cancer once, and five years later had it again. She went both times to one of those facilities that almost kill you in the name of making you better. She is fit and happy and glowingly grateful every day she has left.

My mother died nearly five years ago of cancer, fourteen days after her second opinion confirmed that she had it.

Her sister, my aunt Elaine, spent two years fighting breast cancer.

Their uncle, my uncle Lynn, has had skin cancer.

My dad, with whom I have no genetic connection, but he's my dad, has had skin cancer.

My biological father has slow-growing prostate cancer, no plans to treat it. "I just know what's going to get me."

Okay, I could probably go on all day with more examples, but that's probably enough. I have quoted the horrifying statistics of my paternal genetics, which include the fact that the only living aunt I have on that side is probably  alive because she had a prophylactic mastectomy. But in truth, look at that list. Only two people on it have died. One is my mom, who made it to 68, four kids, four grandkids and a helluva life before it got her. The other is Lois, who had an entire life, including two kids and one grandkid, before her body gave out.

I've watched enough people be treated for cancer to know that it works like this: on one side, there's cancer. On the other side, there's the doctors and all the poisons, surgeries and radiation they can muster to fight the cancer. You are passive. You are the battlefield at Gettysburg. Your job is to provide a battlefield upon which these forces will clash. You don't fight cancer. You host the war on the battlefield of your body, and hope when all the carnage is cleared away that you're still there.

Do I have a point? I hope so. I hope it's okay to illustrate my point with one of the prettiest pictures I've ever seen of a very beautiful woman.



My dear friend Scott's wife, stage 3 esophageal cancer, currently doing chemo, mother to three kids in their teens and the prettiest woman in a headscarf I've ever seen.

Sometimes, I am so overcome by the beauty and bravery of people in the face of the unthinkable that I just have to stand back and marvel.

Being spectacularly ill is a ride.

I'd been limping along for a few days, trying to pretend I wasn't really getting sick. I did my errands, went to the eye doctor to select my first pair of prescription glasses, secured the Vanity Fair issue with Johnny on the cover, drove Oldest to and from her performances. I took care of the important stuff and pretended it was just going to be a mild cold. But I was smart enough to ban myself from seeing Dad, and when this thing finally flourished, when the cough turned into great rolling sea lion barks and the fever spiked, I was grateful that I'd had the sense not to expose Dad to it.

My voice is so low that Dad can understand what I say on the cell phone, and calls made to work to try to drive projects from home are met with "Oh my GOD you sound TERRIBLE!" I am terrible, but I'm making it.

The weather cooperated by being grey and cool, this Summer that Wasn't we're having in Oregon (though today threatens to be lovely, and my sneezing can't stand the sunshine). I selected my sick uniform and took to my bed, emerging once to take Youngest to the store, where she was supposed to find me something that would dry my sinuses up and kill the pain in my head. When she took her Tylenol Sinus and Flu and a box of fluffy tissues up to pay, the checker at the Fred Merer where I've been shopping for 26 years refused to sell her the Tylenol. "You have to look 27 to buy cold meds without ID." Did you all know this? I didn't know this. I'm not going to describe what I was wearing or how awful I looked when I went into the store to get it myself. Use your imagination, taking into consideration my age, how sick I am, ow pale I get, my Germanic heritage and my predilection for sleeping in well-worn shades of black and grey. Add some plaid wool slippers, and there you go.

I did ask the woman, "Did you think she was going to take some Tylenol and a box of Softique tissues and go make meth?" She said, "Well, maybe."

Jesus Christ.

I don't remember much of yesterday between the fever, the nose blowing and the great rolling waves of coughing that had me throwing up, and the steady, grinding sinus pressure that kept my eyes running with tears of pain. I'd occasionally succeed in knocking myself out, and then the noise of life (dogs barking, Oldest making something in the kitchen, Youngest cleaning out her room) would wake me. I have the most unlikely memory of Oldest sauntering into my room, turning on the light (it it would have to be after ten PM), and announcing, "I'm just eatin' a fried egg on toast." That has to be a fever dream, because I've known this kid for almost 27 years, and aside from her first three years of life, she's never eaten a fried egg on toast. She hates eggs. But I remember sitting up, cross-legged in bed and saying, "Could you please turn out the light and stop yelling?" So when she wakes up I am definitely going to have to ask her if she did that, and if she did, ask her why she did it. And why she was eating a fried egg.

So, in moments of lucidity, I have been spending time with Shirley Jackson. I had a paperback edition that combines Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons, her family memoirs about moving from NYC to Vermont with two kids, having two more kids, life as a mother of four, Vermont, pets, etc. There is a long history of women writing books about matters domestic, what we read before we had mommy blogs (and since some of us won't read mommy blogs, what some of us read now instead of mommy blogs). Books like With Six You Get Eggroll (Yours, Mine and Ours), Please Don't Eat the Daisies, all of Erma Bombeck, these Shirley Jackson books which are absolutely charming and hilarious.

I love finding a writer like Karin von Blixen or Shirley Jackson, one who writes beautiful and charmingly of her domestic life and world, and then also writes fiction. Anne Lamott does this, and though I am less impressed with her fiction than her nonfiction, I read and love both. I don't think a person has to or should choose, if she can do both well. I like women who refuse to choose. I'm now reading Just an Ordinary Day, which is a collection of Jackson rarities; unpublished, unfinished or uncollected stories. Fifty-some of them! The Shirley Jackson apocrypha, if you will.

I also read in the notes that Shirley Jackson died young, after health and weight worries had made it hard for her to leave her home, and that she was addicted to drinking, smoking, amphetamines and chocolate. I think Shirley sounds like a party and a half, and she would have got on well with the Baroness, who died from anorexia maintained with amphetamines. I think I'd better get that prescription strength Sudafed scrip refilled, and load up on the Hershey's bars and start smoking. 

Time to get ready to walk the road to literary greatness.

Dad is doing great and should be discharged soon! In the course of five days, he's gone from hooked up to a nose tube and a pain pump and not eating to... well, he's a fully functional, tube-free, IV-free, hallwalking son of a gun. Plus, he's quit smoking. This was his plan this month, though he had Nicoderm in mind, not an emergency bowel resection as a method. Dad's been smoking since he was very young, he's tried many times to quit (like, after he burned down my house with a cigarette). I think he's going to finally make a go of it. Amazing what determination will do for a person's recovery.

My problem is that I have developed a cold and can't visit him. I visited him every day until Thursday, and then my friend Sarah went up to spend time with him. She'll go up this afternoon (they're friends in their own right) and I think my ex husband will go up to see him but it sucks to think of him not having any visitors yesterday because of this stupid cold. I know with the level of stress I've been under that getting sick was inevitable, but couldn't it have waited a week? And I mean, this is one of those big yaowking cough colds, croupy and stupid.

This will work out. Everything is going to work out because the alternative is unacceptable.

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