kvetching up

I've been derelict in journaling for some time. I am tired of all the maudlin reminiscences and rehashing of old complaints, in text anyway.

The joy I felt upon seeing her is reflected back at me in Abby's face as we move to hug in the dorm parking lot.    Bliss. ‐-----‐---‐-----------‐---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you have been on a ship, far enough away from shore that water is all you see wherever you look, then you will know how I feel. I didn't tire of writing my journal, nor has the novelty gone away of being able to look back and crisply remember a day or a feeling or a moment. Instead, I have walled myself off, sealed myself away for the most part. If you have rung me up on the telephone, I certainly haven't answered and probably haven't called you back. Yes, it's like that. I am in a place so far inside myself that I can't even talk about it, nor will I.  I suggested it's akin to being at sea, but that isn't an apt metaphor. It is more like being deep in a forest at dusk. The sunlight is fading as the sun sinks...

Entry 1 And Fix Mistakes Before You Say Goodbye . I had a four hour lunch with a friend of Jenny's the other day--a family friend. She and I met the first day Leiney was at coop preschool, 19.5 years ago. She is a therapist, and the only one of Jenny's flying monkeys that eventually saw through the machinations and dissenting. Almost the entire conversation was Jenny related.  Do me a favor, keep in mind, should the topic of Jenny come up, don't tell me you know she loved me. Not helpful. It raises my hackles. Paul loves me. Cheryl loves me. Sara loves me. Eachean loves me. Chris and Moni love me. Ashley loves me. Hell, even my sister Catherine loves me (one helluva concession on my part). Of those things I am certain, based on their actions. But none of us can know--and it isn't helpful to me to tell me something that isn't knowable and flies in the face of her actions--that Jenny loved me. It is soul crushing for me, but living in that reality is more preferable t...

Entry 1 Jenny was 4 months pregnant and alone in the city when the towers fell. I can't get that out of my head, it was nearly  24 hours later, before I could talk to her.  She was overwhelmed with grief and an indescribable need to help people.  The second night, a group had organized a sleep-in at Union Square--people were scared and needed that sense of community. Jenny asked me if I thought she should go. I said it sounded  like a good idea. I don't recall if she went. Looking back, I feel an extraordinary amount of guilt not being able to there with her.  The scale of the disaster is hard to overstate--and hard to understand unless you actually were on the ground and saw the devastation., the destruction. The smell. Even I, visiting the pit for the first time a month after the fact (the soonest I could leave Alabama), overwhelmed. By then, t-shirts showing the Twin Towers with the tag line, "I survived 9/11," were being sold at your finer establishments in ...

 Entry 1 A few weeks before 9/11, Jenny and I flew American out of Logan to NYC. It's hard to imagine today what it was like back then. If you weren't flying, you could accompany departing passengers to their gate, or meet arriving passengers at the gate. Things were more lax than that. We were at the gate early--so early the flight in front of ours had yet to depart. We were prepared to wait. I'm sure we had our Palm Pilots, and were quite happy just playing the masturbating monkey game. It was a thing in 2001, it just was.  Anyway, the plane for the flight before ours was at the gate and was delayed--la plus ca change and all that. It was delayed a lot. So much so that American personnel allowed people to deboard the plane and go get food, stretch their legs, whatever. The counter was across the room from the gate, maybe 30 feet away. As people returned, the gate agent, who was at the counter and not the gate, asked people to hold up their boarding passes. From that dista...

Entry 1 I am home and relieved I don't have to stress about Willow any longer. While my sleep was less than restive since coming home, one thing I am not concerned about is Willow getting out. I am coffee'd up, toast and banana on board and not ready to go to rehab--but will in an hour. 122/74 at rehab at 8. Entry 2 Today my deck was scrubbed.

Entry 1 It's departure day. I just got out of a very long shower, now suddenly in dire need of coffee. Not much of a bleak wakeup, no desperate attempt to get sleep last night, it was effortless if one counts the nearly 3 hours of sleep as worthy of being considered rest. Of interest, my watch noted my heart slowed for 30 minutes to just above 50 beats in the middle of the night, meaning I had an episode of brachycadia. The watch is remarkably accurate, btw. I am not sure why that happened, but I am not happy about it. Entry 2 8:40 a.m. Just went downstairs to the coffee bar. I am in the financial district. No one in the bar appeared to be over 30. All the men were dressed in business casual,  women in power suits with pants or dark skirts. I felt like either an interloper or invisible at 56 with my shorts, summer shirt, baseball hat and a week's worth of gray scraggly beard on my cheeks. My coffee and hipster coffee cake are exquisite, especially with music like Moby's Por...

Entry 1 Abby is doing well. While clearly getting orientation fatigue--it ends today and classes begin tomorrow-she is still excited and ready for classes to start.  I awoke this morning in the deepest melancholy. It will pass. The same happened yesterday, I actually wrote Bunghole Liquors. about it but didn't post for fear people would urge me to call the crisis line. I know this shall pass, because by yesterday afternoon my funk was worked through and I was fine. It's going to be 85 today and I am going to go get coffee, two good things that will get me up and out of bed. Entry 2 3:44 p.m. It has been a day of wandering and exploring old books. This morning, after my standard venti with cream at a nearby Starbucks, we meandered around down amongst the tall buildings, until we came across the location where Wm. Lloyd Garrison published The Liberator. It was serendipity, I wasn't looking for it, but having found it, I was quite pleased. After that we made our way, with purp...

Entry 1 Abby texted last night to let me know she may have sprained her ankle and that she is going to seek an accommodation to get a single. I am worried already. Anxiety derailed my first year in law school--I had to go home in October of that year. I started over the next year. It's only day 2 alone, and they have great wrap-around services. They will take care of her, but it's PTSD triggering.  Leiney, meanwhile, is back home with her boy Jared, prepping for Italy, where they fly off to tomorrow for 20 days or more. Then, upon their return, school Little Italy, Boston. starts. I am a bundle of nerves. I hope Abby calls today. I would give anything to get her to talk to me--these teenage walls they build aren't scalable. Entry 2 I'm in a room alone in Boston. When I reserved the room with two queen beds, the cost was $450/night. Given the cost, I only rented one room for my sister Jane and I to share. I had paid for all the rooms on the trip. When she found out two ...

Entry 1 Yesterday was full, incredibly full. We got to Holyoke just before 8:30 and were busy all day until we left at 6. The craziest thing happened yesterday--and I am not including the terrible way Google Maps guided me to Best Buy to pick up Leiney's fridge (it was insane). Jane, who accompanied me on that trip, and I were sitting at a light, waiting to turn left. The green arrow light turns green and as I am letting my foot off the brake, the cars across the intersection just start going straight, running a clearly red light. 4 cars went through before a fifth driver hesitated and I made my move. The return to South Hadley and Mt. Holyoke was otherwise uneventful. It is everything I want it to be for her. Progressive, academically challenging, and absolutely the right place for her to be. I worry about homesickness, and know it's normal. They have such a wrap-around program, she will be okay.  My sister Jane, Leiney and I sat through an hour on the parent's role. I, as...

Entry 1 I lost my first entry in the ether.  Willow is in love with the dog sitter. This is amazing news for me. She keeps sitting on her lap. Willow has been on several long walks, which just makes it even better. We stayed in Swansea last night and met up with Amy, "I'm not your therapist" Lanham and her husband Mark. Abby had shipped a ton of things to them and we went to retrieve them. They fed us pizza and showed up their new giant home. Their basement is about 1600 square feet. The place is beautiful and the sound of crickets coupled with the blue moon took me back to summers in Massachusetts with Jenny--visiting her grandmother and aunts. We stayed at the Swansea Holiday Inn Express-sparing no expense on this trip. It was fine, although it clearly has seen its better days. I love quirky, and was surprised to find the painted ceiling in the storage room, a kind of rural, trailer park homage to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. ROAD TRIP! Somehow, after much repacki...

Entry 1 I am exhausted. It's 10:37 eastern standard time. What a long day. Up since 3:30, I'd expected the day to be long, and I wasn't wrong. Abby had enough things to outfit a small traveling circus. How we get it all to school is an entirely different question. 205 lbs shipped via plane via 2 giant and one large duffle bag and 1 very large suitcase. Last year I spent a small fortune on updated suitcases,btw, and she managed to find a decrepit old thing with a handle stuck in the closed position, making it even more fun traveling today. We ended up spending 40 dollars on luggage carts to boot. Tonight we went to see Amy and Mark for pizza and retrieval of the Amazon boxes. All involved were careful not to mention Jenny. It's a good thing.  When we finished with dinner and a tour of their lovely home, we packed the boxes and headed back to the Holiday Inn Express, the finest lodgings in town. I spent a lot of money today. A lot, between the car rental and the hotel roo...

Entry 1 " Qui s’excuse, s’accuse ." This is the last day of the family-rearing era. We take Abby to Massachusetts tomorrow. Jane, Leiney, Abby and I board a plane at zero dark thirty tomorrow morning. I am tired just thinking about it. I'm stressed about the housesitter and dog. I'm stressed about coming home to the sprawling empty cave. I'm stressed about Abby being 3000 miles away for the first time. I am just terribly uncomfortable in general.  I feel utterly unmoored without Jenny. I feel incredibly proud of this kid and > feel excited for her future. Tomorrow afternoon we will see Jenny's best friend who conveniently just moved to Massachusetts after her husband landed a job at Brown a couple years ago. Abby has shipped items to her. Entry 2 I hate anxiety. I want to take a Xanax, haven't since Jenny died, but really want one right now. Confirmed our flights, paid for our bags and got our boarding passes squared away. I have an SUV rented for tomor...

Entry 1 I am sure I learned cynicism at my mother's knee, listening to her deconstruct bullshit about the Vietnam War, Watergate, talking about Nestlé killing babies in the global south for fun and profit, U.S. sponsored death squads seemingly in every country that July 11, 2018, top of Notre Dame, avant l’incendie . . dared to seek liberation from colonialism, etc. I was raised to understand the world is a hard place, and as Leo Getz says in Lethal Weapon II, humans, given the chance, "They fuck you at the drive-thru." I like to think that the jadedness of my teenage years was as real as it was justified.  My mom, and life generally, is complicated. She also taught me to give back to my community, and without saying it, she had a belief that all people are good. She was a member for a time of a small sect of radicals, and they would meet at our house. It was the 70s, and the idea that a revolution was coming didn't seem so crazy. She had my sister and I go out and pu...

Entry 1 1:35 p.m. This made me tear up: Downtown LA, 2014. Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You have to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.  ~Louise Erdrich from her book,  The Painted Drum      

Entry 1 6:00 a.m. Crash cart at my gym My knee recovered by yesterday afternoon . Go figure. After two rounds of ibuprofen in the morning, I laid off. By mid-afternoon I had full range of motion, albeit with still some swelling and discomfort, but the pain is gone, and the remaining swelling is what I normally have with this knee. The only thing that I can think is that my knee, as I have experienced in the past, was impacted by the change in barometric pressure. No matter. I skipped exercise yesterday, and will determine which machine I will get on today, as I move through the hours. I met with the dietician on Monday. She was 12--okay, maybe 15. Her instructions were not what I was expecting from my interactions with Heidi the nurse. I was under the belief that she would recommend either a vegan or vegetarian diet. Neither was true. She told me to stay away from Atkins and Paleo, as research has shown it consistently leads to early death for people with Type II diabetes. I get it. In...

Entry 1 Excruciating pain wakes me up at zero dark whatever. My right knee is throbbing, it's range of motion reduced to that of statuary. Oh, I can move it, but if I do, hellzapoppin'. It is so stiff, the pain so terrible, regardless of  how I reposition myself, it feels like a vice was tightening around the joint. No matter if I prop it up, lay on my side, or whistle Dixie, the knee aches.  I wasn't going back to sleep, although I wanted to and I tried desperately.  The dog heard me stir.  Mind you, it was the middle of the night. She came in wanting me to get up and play with her or  to give her a snack. I convinced the gratitude beastie to lay down and roll onto her back and I rubbed her belly, racking my brain on what to do. My range of motion--or should I say my pain tolerance, sat at about 1 percent, and that hurt like a son-of-a-bitch. But I had to get up. So, ceasing the belly runs, I lifted my legs up off the bed, swung my hips around toward the edge o...

 Entry 1 August 21, 2023 . Entry 1 7:40 a.m. I haven't eaten in better than 15 hours. I took my meds. I am at rehab. My blood sugar is not cooperating. It is better than last week, when I clocked a 356 at rehab. But I had stupidly eaten breakfast on that day. This is a fasting blood sugar, and it is off--way off at 203.  In better news, BP 110/62.  I have been having chest pain for almost 24 hours now, right where my heart resides, but think it's a pulled muscle from yesterday's workout. I made it through the night, so we will see. 10:45 a.m. My blood sugar levels, despite having no food intake now for almost 16 hours has gone up all morning. This makes zero sense. I don't  understand.

Entry 1  5:50 a.m.   A movable crop. When a dog looks you in the eye and punches you with her paw, well, it's just the best. Sunday mornings are my favorite time. I get nostalgic. Today I am remembering driving around in the ridiculous convertible Camaro in California last Spring with the girls, going to In-and-Out burger, driving with Abby to Balboa Park and down to the Drive-In 10 minutes from the border with Mexico. Abby had a good time, in spite of being stuck with her dad, and I certainly made memories to last through my last days, or dementia, whichever comes first. I am intending to do some yard work this morning. Last night Abby and I schlepped the bucket with the mammoth sunflowers in it over to the fence. This allows the giant flowers a place to lean. The planter, a large red bucket, can't hold the top heavy plants without listing, nor without falling over in a brisk wind. The stakes I planted in the dirt when the sunflowers were half this size have been outgrown, an...

Entry 1 Saturday morning it is. Abby and I have two more Saturdays, this one included, before Holyoke. I am blue this early morning, for a bevy of reasons,  none controlling. The soft trumpet on Brubeck's Take Five sounds melancholy, but I'm sure my ears are just distorted by my mood. Flu shots today, clothes shopping for Abby. I may go to Dick's Sporting Goods and get the spin bike that Amazon was supposed to deliver on Thursday, but balked. I'm going to go buy some small concrete bricks to border a portion of the yard where berry plants have been planted. Other things are on the too list and I hope to tackle them all. When I grew up in our 800 square foot home, most of the time I lived in the bedroom above the garage, which was tiny, had a closet with  painted plywood walls, Parquet floors and wolf spiders. Abby has an 1100 square foot apartment, with a bath, bedroom, living room with a built-in surround sound system and video projector, a kitchen with a full-sized re...

Entry 1 In 2015, when Leiney first showed signs of depression, our world was rocked. The suffering she was going through was painful to watch and experience. I was just about that age when I went through my first bout of clinical depression, so I could feel her pain. At the time our kid fell ill, I was struck by how many tools Jenny had in her toolbox to help Leiney. She knew who to call to do intervention. We pulled together as a team to help Leiney, but Jenny, because of her profession and job, knew what to do, and got Leiney the professional services she needed. I remember spending days with Leiney, taking time off work and caring for her, snuggling with her on the couch, and watching television. We watched Deadpool on our big leather couch together--her first R-rated movie.  What strikes me about these memories is how hard Jenny and I worked as a team. I always was the one who stayed home with Leiney those many days she was too sick to go to school. There was a lot of good stuf...