My puppy’s back!  I’m so tired I feel sick but I got up in time to work on my cover letter for a job at the hospital. 

My dinner last night was wonderful.  Great food in the company of one of my oldest friends.  We have shared…well, intimate doesn’t cover it.  I met her when she was dating one of H’s closest friends.  We had our first dog together, our first child together.  There are other firsts I won’t go into.  Her husband has been shipped to Iraq, he’s a surgeon.  I don’t understand it and she doesn’t either.  Well, she must but we didn’t go there.  So she has moved back into her little rental house.  Oh, yeah, we sold our houses together, too.  She has a five-year-old boy who is going to be an amazing person, he already is.  Fresh from his bath, hood over wet hair, he proudly takes us in the bathroom to show off his troops.  He’s lined up his little plastic animals and people, teetering on the edge of the bathtub.  God, I’m glad those days are over.

How bizarre, my puppy’s picture is gone.  Maybe it’s time for a new picture, but I’d like to be the one to decide.  Who took my picture away?

 

I just read my post and I sound like a “snoot,” as Mr. Burns would say.  This street I found is in the heart of …well, it’s in a bad part of town.  That’s the really great part about it.  It’s paradise and nobody knows about it.  It’s two o’clock in the afternoon and the few men around are fishing.  Most of them, if they haven’t left for the weekend are in the bars.  It’s just different over here.  When my last boyfriend showed me the street he was talking about how cheap the houses were.  I said, “No way,” ’cause not only were they were right on the river, but they were really cool.  He said it was a bad part of town.  So that’s why I was so pleased that the woman I talked to seemed really nice.  I’m not a snoot, I just sound like it.

Today I made a discovery, in my quest for a good walk.  I also found a suitable place for coffee.  I mean tea.  I forgot, I gave up coffee.

The coffee shop was big as a minute.  Everyone in there seemed related, and I don’t mean inbred.  A man and woman were playing cribbage and, one by one, people would come in and join them briefly, catching up on the hourly news.  It’s how a coffee shop should be.  The owner, or at least she was in charge, brought in crepes for breakfast, for herself and the girl working the counter.  Tastes were had by everyone but me.  When a very large old man in fishing gear came in my purse was moved and the other chair at my small table was pulled out for him.  There were other places to sit but I knew then that I was in his spot.

I excused myself and strolled down the street, curious about the riverbank.  Eureka!  I entered a street that looked more like Rhode Island.  I spent a week at a friend’s summer house on Watch Hill and when we went into neighboring towns where it wasn’t so much mansions as much as homey cottages with a lot of stonework out front, this is what it looked like.  The houses are at least a hundred years old and they have made a park out of the riverfront across the street.  There is a walkway above which winds down to the river and then crosses over a bridge not accessible by car.  The sun was shining and other than heavily accessorized bicyclers, I saw only three other people.  One of them a woman my age walking a dog.  She was lovely.  And a retired couple who explained that everyone leaves for the weekend, that’s why it was just us.  Walking back to my car I couldn’t wait to get on my bike and get over that bridge to check out the other side. 

I came home and had a successful experiment with tofu.  I made a salad and used  tofu to make the dressing.  It was smooth and creamy and very few calories.  I won’t give you the amounts because it needs work.

Salad:

Diced:

Bok choy

Celery

Granny Smith apple

Green onion

Then I added:

Slivered almonds

Red grapes

Cut up cooked chicken

Cut up cooked tofu

 

Dressing:

Dump all this into the blender:

1 T oil

Dijon mustard

Curry powder

Garlic salt

Lemmon pepper

Apple cider vinegar

Maple syrup

8 oz tofu (first boiled in chicken broth)

some of that broth

I was going to stuff it into pita bread (Tandori Naan) but it was too messy looking.  I ended up liking the chunks of tofu better than the bites of chicken.  It was canned chicken I’m embarrassed to admit.  My last boyfriend talked me into splitting some with him at Costco.  Yuk.  The only problem with the dressing is that because there’s no mayo in it it’s a little harsh.  I am thinking about coconut milk.

I want to talk about money.  I am pretty worked up about it so I will wait until I’ve cooled down.  But just to put it out there, for you who have children or even if you don’t.  I’d be curious to know what your opinion is about spending money for a 16-year-old.  Actually this applies to the older girls, too.  When I was married their father was in charge of handing out the money.  He just kept a pile of ones and fives on his desk and before school they would come in and grab what they needed for lunch, etc.  If they needed more than that, for clothes, we went shopping together.  Once they started driving, I’d give them the Nordstrom’s card, with a note and they would report back with their purchases.  I thought they did a pretty good job.  Well, as you can imagine, I’m not handing out any credit cards, and there’s no stack of ones.  Never mind.  I’ll do this when I’ve thought about it more.  It seems a little weird to talk about money here.

Enjoy your weekends and go get some tofu

Where to start.  I’m a jumble of tangents, with no one direction stronger than the next.  I finally got back out of bed at around 4:00 and on my way in search of pancakes.  Mostly I wanted to see who was up at this hour; who these graveyard people are.   

 

I didn’t go to Seattle because of several things.  My house is past the point of being manageable.  The puppy has gotten a lead in our constant battle.  She brings things in from the garage, and as she gets taller she has access to new shelves.  This week, it was the painting stuff.  When I was on that walk admiring people’s gardens I happened to look in this one window and they had shit stacked right there in plain sight.  I came home and when I walked into my house I wondered how I could live like this, oblivious to the stacks.

 

Also I had my writing class to prepare for.  I went last night and came away reeling.  J read in workshop and when he got done I started clapping.  Soon the whole class was clapping.  There was no question, in my mind, as to whether it was autobiographical.  He was describing a hot day out in the yard at home.  The main character sneaks a couple “pulls” off a whiskey bottle he had hidden out in the shed.  Apparently he was under doctor’s orders not to drink any more.  He finds he has to go pee but there’s someone in the portapotty.  He doesn’t want to go into the house because his wife, ever vigilant, will notice liquor on his breath.  So he’s trying to hold it, rocking back and forth on his heels, losing a few drops which produce a dark wet stain on the tan, khaki pants, when he spies his wife.  She’s loading the hummingbird feeder.  He’s rocking, squeezing his fists when the door opens and he practically runs the guy over on his way in.  But here’s why I clapped.  Once inside, and he describes standing there with only the left fist clenched (I was the only one who burst out laughing) He goes into great detail about the interior, describing the flies and the sunlight coming through slit above the door.  He starts talking about how smooth the plastic feels under his fingers and how he wants to touch that cool, green plastic with his lips.  I can’t remember if I said it out loud but I wrote a big YES!! On the paper there.  Then he launches into dialogue using the wife’s nag voice, she’s coming out after him. 

 

The guy held nothing back and it’s why I’m so excited.  I can do that.  It’s not all about who has the biggest vocabulary.  The girl next to me read tonight, too.  She is afraid to do more than breathe in public.  Her piece was constructed well.  It was clever.  She personified a building and used it to give a history lesson.  The only problem was the building had no personality, just like her. 

 

The other thing, and I can’t quite put my finger on why I am so excited about it, drunkpunches wrote beautifully about rain.  And when I was driving home after my pancakes I thought about why it had turned me on in the same way the green plastic on the lips had.  I haven’t gone back to read it again yet.  I usually read his stuff a bunch of times.  But I remember something in there about the rain forcing it’s way into – You should just go look – But something in me stirred at the reference.  And the nature of the stirring is what’s stirred me up.  It’s new.  It’s a different way to tantalize the senses.  Or maybe it’s an age-old trick I’m just now noticing.  I’m noticing a lot of stuff.  I can’t hardly sleep for wanting to stay up noticing stuff.

 

Mostly what got me going is my new lease on life.  I immediately went to my tree to give thanks.  But when I got there she was covered in ivy, just like the first day I found her.  I will need to go back with scissors to really get all of it off, but I got everything disconnected from the ground.  It was so sunny and being back on the trail I’d walked for 30 years, I did the loop, walking through all those memories.  It’s been at least a year since I’d been there so it meant a lot.  It’s just too far to drive now. But it made the search for a new trail all the more urgent.  lionne, do you know the Wildwood trail? 

I just got the results:  everything’s good!  I’m going to my tree and then I might just get in my car and drive to Seattle.  I am one lucky motherfucker.  I’m sorry.  I’ts just…well, I see now some of you know how it is.  lksdfjpoaseitrpdsr9yo-srp[wtoputopt][pprkipyp[]4oipv4

That’s JOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I probably shouldn’t say anything, ’cause it’s probably nothing.  After worrying on and off for the last couple months, I went in and had a chest X-ray.  Not having breasts, I don’t get mamagrams so it’s anybody’s guess what’s goin’ on in there.  You pretty much just have to wait until you have a cough or something hurts.  And by that time whether or not they can operate you don’t know.  Intention is everything and I have the intention of living.  I brush off minor aches and pains but a couple months ago, when I’d get in bed and lay down, I’d  feel pressure in my chest.  And during the day, sometimes I’d feel a wheeze.  I never had a cold so it didn’t make sense. This has been going on, off and on, for two months.  So last Thursday I went in and my surgeon said call me on Monday for the results.  So I call Mon and the girl says, “Well, they’re not in yet, but you could try at 4:30.”  Then she remembers the doctor won’t be in and he’s the one who tells you.  So I was to wait until Wed.  Okay, so I find out tomorrow. 

So the way I got through all the waiting over the years is that I wouldn’t let myself worry until the night before.  I’m probably going to erase this so you won’t know the kind of fear I live with( I’m a virgo who worries)but if I don’t let’s just say I have a plan A and a plan B.  And it’s why I pretty much live for the day.  It might seem reckless the way I’m burning through a fair amount of money with no job in sight.  And I do what I feel like when maybe I should be buckling down, but when you don’t know how much time you have you take all the fun out of life you can find.

Volunteering with cancer patients on Tuesdays brings me so much joy.  Just today I was able to steer someone in a direction they might not have found.  But it also keeps the suffering so fresh in my mind.  We all gotta go sometime and I’ve had a wonderful life, but I could sure go for another 30 years.  And I’m counting on it, but just in case there’s plan B.

I found the following email from a woman in my support group: