anniemiz

Two Months of Those Days

It's been two months since I posted that I wouldn't post just then bc it had been one of those days.  Well, apparently it's been two months' worth of those days.  Work has kept me really busy.  Our library director left a few months ago and they haven't hired a new one yet.  Many of us are doing things that the director used to do.  E.g., I order the DVDs now which isn't difficult, but it is more time-consuming than I expected.  I figured I'd just go down a list and go boom, boom, boom I want to order those movies.  There are always so many new releases.  And there are a lot of things to consider when selecting movies:

• We have very limited space; I can't just order one of each.  It has to be something that will circulate and not just take up space.
• We have a small budget so, again, I can't order everything out there; I have to prioritize.
• But we also have some glaring omissions in our movie collection, e.g., none of The Godfather movies?!?  Well, okay, that last one was just mezzo mezzo, but still!  We're talking about The Godfather!
• We also have a diverse population in town, e.g., a lot of Pakistani, a fair number of Indians, what appears (from my anecdotal observations) to be a growing Latino presence, even a few Poles!  So I ordered a few films that might appeal to those groups, e.g., some Bollywood love story/comedy that sounded fun, a Spanish movie that got good reviews, etc.  I'll see if patrons like them and take it from there.
• One of our trustees noted that our movie collection is pretty heavy on the light stuff, i.e., fluff, and straight out entertainment and suggested we add some educational and informational movies.  So what did I order?  Some nature stuff, e.g., a documentary on the North American grey wolf; a documentary on Alzheimer's (I saw an installment on it on TV and thought it very interesting; I also thought that, with people living longer and the baby boomers starting to retire, some of our patrons might find it useful)...I already forget what I ordered.  Maybe I oughta watch that Alzheimer's documentary.

And that's just some of the things to take into account when selecting movies.

And then there's the technical stuff.  Somehow I am now the technical contact for the library.  And the webmaster.  *snort*  I know, I know!  With the movies, at least I know what kinds of movies we've had in the past, we order them from one source, I can spend $X per month on movies, yadda yadda yadda.  With the technical stuff I usually have very little or no idea what I'm doing.  And with the webmaster stuff, I'm starting at ground zero wrt simply editing the website, forget about doing new stuff.  I've spent some frustrating hours trying to figure out stuff.  One thing I have learned to do before submitting a help ticket to the tech staff at the county library: check the on and power buttons first.  And when a computer goes down - unless it's something really obvious (again with the on buttons...and let's not forget plugs...okay, maybe I'm not that bad at it) - I usually end up opening a help ticket.

I could go on - and I am tempted to settle down for a good chin wag with the internet here - but a) I'm sure you get the picture and b) I gotta get ready for another day at work.

Memorial Day

Hope everyone is having a good Memorial Day weekend.  The day is fine here and, since the good weather will probably hold, I'll be outside today for a spell, planting petunias in hanging baskets and yellow begonias and some small purplish-blue flowers in ground baskets. 

Watching CNN at the moment.  President Obama just placed a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  Missed that.  He'll speak soon.  The news announcer just mentioned that the Commission on Remembrance has asked Americans to pause at 3:00 p.m. for a moment of silence and retrospection:

"It will help to reclaim Memorial Day as the sacred and noble holiday it was meant to be. In this shared remembrance, we connect as Americans."

Observances are to include an interruption of Major League Baseball games; the pausing of the National Memorial Day Parade in Washington; and the National Grocers Association and Food Marketing Institute asking shoppers to pause in stores nationwide to remember the fallen.

"We want our citizens to contemplate the ties that bind us and take a moment to put 'Memorial' back into Memorial Day," said Carmella LaSpada, executive director of the Commission on Remembrance.

Children touring Washington inspired the idea when LaSpada asked them what Memorial Day meant and they said that's when the swimming pool opens, according to the commission's Web site.

Sounds good to me.  Not just the moment of silence.  In fact, more so the attempt to take back Memorial Day.  I'm sure I've blogged about this before, but...oh, what the heck...I'll say it again.  I sure wouldn't mind if holidays like Memorial Day, 4th of July, etc. were actual holidays and not big sale days or just a mile marker of fun in the sun to come.  It seems that going about our usual business on days like Memorial Day is kinda like when we multitask and every activity suffers.  You know how when you're trying to talk on the phone, pull the kid out of the litter box, let the dog out before it pees in the house, take care of laundry/prepare dinner, etc. all at the same time and not doing anything very well?  Maybe you can talk to that person another time.  Laundry will still be there later (actually, it's always there).  Yes, I suppose the kid shouldn't be in the litter box and no, I wouldn't want to have to clean up after the dog (I clean up enough after cats).  Dinner can be simpler or get the kid to wash their hands and set the table, even if they have to bring out the silverware piece by piece.

Well, off my soap box to wish you all, wherever you are and whatever you're doing, a good Memorial Day weekend.
 

P.S. Yes, there is a cat in the picture.  There's always a cat in the picture.

Cross Dressing

You know, I've often thought that men have it a lot easier when it comes to business clothes - formal or casual.  If they have to wear a suit, they just pull one out of the closet, pull out a button down shirt, throw on a tie and some dark socks (we're assuming they've already put on underwear), put on some dark shoes and they're done.  If they're business casual, they just pull out a pair of khakis, a more casual button down shirt (or a polo shirt), throw on some dark socks (again with the assumption about the underwear), put on some more casual dark shoes and they're good to go.  It's diffiult to screw up a male business or business casual look (although not impossible; I'm sure we can all conjure up a successful failure).  If you can buy clothes by selecting exactly what the mannequin is wearing, you'll be fine.

Business wear isn't that hard for women.  Back in the days of yore, when I toiled in a cubicle, I stuck to black or navy suits; black or navy shoes; shirts that worked with black and navy; and a black handbag.  By no means was I stylin'...but it was easy and it worked.

Now, business casual is a whole other dog.  There are almost too many choices available to the business casual woman.  I've had to revisit my work clothes now that I work full-time.  I wanted something that's easy and, although I don't require great style, I'd like that others not laugh at me.  To that end, I'm taking a page or two from the buiness casual male.

Kevin wears business casual to work.  He has a slew of khakis in various serious colors and in multiples: khaki (of course), black, grey, brown, navy.  I cannot tell you what color khakis he wore the day before.  Taking that one step further, I've settled on five pairs of black pants.  The same black pants.  Yes, I mean the exact same pair of pants, in black, five of them.

Obvious next choice: black shoes.  A few pairs, all very similar to one another in that they're all variations on the loafer theme, although I am pretty much wearing the same pair every day.  That's something else guys can get away with fairly easily.

Tops: Here's where it gets tricky.  People will remember tops.  I cannot wear the same top every day.  I don't care if it's basically the same style top in different colors, but it can't be the exact same.  Then they will laugh at me.  I need to buy some more tops; for some reason, I feel the need to be more varied wrt tops - probably to avoid humiliation - than wrt bottoms.  Which are pants.  Which are not skirts or dresses.  Which are not even considered.

I'll consider wearing skirts or dresses to work or anywhere on a regular basis once guys start wearing skirts or dresses on a regular basis.  And guys of the Masai tribe or at the Highland Games don't count; I'm talking about American guys.

As an aside, I'd like to note that guys should wear skirts bc they look a lot better in them than they realize.  Seriously.  Most guys' legs look good in shorts (or at least can look good in shorts) and they'd look just as good in skirts or skirt-like things.

Anyways.

So I've borrowed a lot of ideas and tactics from menswear.  Intangible things.  I have also borrowed an actual tangible thing from menswear (and no, not the boxer short): mens' dress socks.  Can someone please tell me why it is apparenty impossible to create a women's trouser sock that stays up?  BTW, a trouser sock is basically man's dress sock marketed toward a woman.  This has been the subject of intense discussion at work: we all want socks that stay up, but cannot find them.  And the things they call trouser socks are often just very heavy knee highs; they're tights in knee high length.  This is not good.  It is not desirable.

It's a sock we're looking for...how hard could it be?  So I have taken matters into my own feet and repurposed (I love buzzwords) some of Kevin's socks to my socks.  And you know what?  They work just like socks are supposed to!

Well, I could go on about my hosiery, but I have to head out to work. 

Live and Learn

Hope you all like the new blog template.  Every once in a while I decide it needs a new look.  I'm not talented enough to do my own web design, so I rely on typepad's templates.  This one is called 'Live and Learn'.  I'm sure you get the idea: chick hatches, she learns that into each life some rain must fall, but! She then learns that that the sun will shine in her backdoor someday and good times return.

I thought that was appropriate.  I'm trying to figure out how to best explain why.  Hmmm.  I've often felt like I should have known/done/achieved/expected/etc. things beforehand.  E.g., I look back at the years I spent in the corporate world and wonder why I spent so many years there and why did I actually get into it when it wasn't personally satisfying?  (Wrt the latter, I was often in a position to find more satisfying work; that's often, dare I say, not usually the case for the vast majority of people in the world.)  Yes, this is unrealistic.  20/20 hindsight suggests that I should have been able to predict the future.  This expectation also assumes that the years in question were wasted when I could rattle off a whole slew of things I learned that I would not have learned if I had gone straight into grad school or vet work.  Indeed, I've often thought that some years in a mainstream workforce provided me with skills and insights I might not otherwise have had while a student.  Of course, I'm biased about this, but I've often wondered if it would be a good idea for college grads to wait a year or two before they enter grad school.

So, maybe that explains it well enough.  When I feel like I should have known X, it's fortunate if I remember to remind myself that I'm simply an imperfect person just trying to make my way in the world.  Beating myself up  for not knowing/doing what I should have known/done 20 years ago is hardly helpful, except in the 'learn' part of 'live and learn'.  Well, enough deep thoughts for the moment.

Update: My Freaking Problems

So. In the post, My Freaking Problems, I blogged about the following exceedingly bad habit of mine:

So yeah, as mentioned before, my class paper will be a compare and contrast between Lewis (the above paper [edit: New Work for a Theory of Universals] and Against Structural Universals) and Armstrong's theory of universals.  My challenge, besides writing the thing, is to get it done on time.  I have a horrid habit of being very late with papers, so much so that I'm too embarrassed to admit how many papers I still have to hand in.  That's gotta change.  If Obama  (and David Bowie) can change, dagnabit, so can I.

Yes I can!

Well, sort of.  It's a good news/bad news kind of situation.  That is, I've gotten a lot farther on this paper considered in proximity to the due date (in this case, 6/15) than any other paper.  So that's very good news.  The bad news is that I don't know that I'll be able to produce a finished product by 6/15.  In fact, I don't think I can unless my powers of comprehension go into overdrive.  Unlikely.  If I get as far along as I expect to by the due date, I'll guess I could use another few days to finalize it.  I hope that won't be a problem.  I'll touch base soon and see what's what wrt getting an extension.  Kinda bummed if I'll need an extension, but kinda pleased that we're talking about an extension of days.

Back to good news: in that previous post, I enumerated some specific problems that contribute to my lateness.  I've made some progress in those areas.  Here are those specific problems, though shortened.  Fuller versions are in the original post.

1. I don't stick to a topic.  This is a biggie.  I can move goalposts with the best of them (where 'them' = 'the Bush administration').  I've stayed with the topic so far, although there's a chance it will focus a little tighter and be about structural universals.  I consider that acceptable.
2. I don't stop reading about it. Another biggie.  This time, I've managed to restrict myself to a) the two Lewis papers; b) Armstrong's lecture text; c) reviewing parts of Armstrong's Universals; d) reading parts of Mumford's David Armstrong.  This is an especially positive improvement for me.  In the past, I would have read (or died trying to read) Armstrong's entire oeuvre; the Lewis papers plus every paper or book that cited those papers; every SEP article that mentions universals, states of affairs, particulars, properties, laws of nature, etc.; and so on.  I mean, just way too much to try to take in, process and, very practically speaking, use in a 5000 word essay.
3. I overdo understanding the material.  I haven't done this, at least not yet.  There's still time.  Sometimes this is inevitable in that I end up making sure I understand material on an aspect of the subject that is eventually not covered in the paper.  But I could probably be proactive and better at identifying what will be the ultimate focus of the paper, or at least very close to it.  Avoiding problem #1 helps in a big way toward avoiding problem #3.  In this case, I had a very general topic.  I did not have a topic like, 'Structural universals suck'.  I might end up arguing something along those crass lines, but I couldn't know at the start what I'd focus on/what the argument would be bc I hadn't read the Lewis stuff yet.  I'm still not sure bc I'm not at that point yet.  This is always a very nervous stage for me.  When I settled on the topic, I had read most of the Armstrong stuff I needed to read, although I can't say my understanding was sufficient to evaluate it in light of others' criticisms.  I hadn't read the Lewis stuff before, so that was new.  So I'm basically hoping that, when I find that I understand the material, there's something interesting to say.  And that I'll recognize that something interesting, understand it and its implications, and be able to express it.
4. Probably related to #3: I go about understanding the material in the wrong way.  I.e., I focus on the details, take a long time to understand the details, and leave the big picture stuff until the end.  I've improved somewhat here.  I don't think that what I've done in the past is the worst way to go about things, but I have wondered if it would help me understand the details if I had and kept at least a basic understanding of the big picture in mind.  I've tried to do that this time.  Wrt this problem and #3, I caught myself a couple of times heading off into the long dark night of the detail when I didn't need to, that is, it's important, but it will likely fall far enough away from the focus of the paper that I should spend time on other stuff.  Although I don't totally understand something, I'm aware of it so that if it turns out to be useful I can always go back to it.  Of course, there's nothing wrong with understanding every detail of material, but it may not be an option when there's a deadline involved.
5. And then I think there's fear.  There.  I said it.  Fear that my paper will suck.  Suck beyond compare.  Suck without peer.  Hmm.  Haven't done as well with this as with the other problems.  This problem probably motivates some of the other problems, e.g., over-reading or over-understanding.  Over-reading is motivated by fear that I'll miss some universally-acknowledged important reading on the subject.  Over-understanding is motivated by fear that I'll - gasp! - get something wrong.  It seems like this is my default attitude so I have to actually remind myself: that this fear is unrealistic; that everyone makes mistakes; to do my best and accept that I'll make mistakes; that it's more important that I learn from my mistakes (bc it's guaranteed that I will make mistaked; it's not guaranteed that I'll learn from them); that 'all will be well', as Jane Bennett says in my absolute favorite novel, Pride & Prejudice.  What's the worse thing that could happen to a person?  I pretty much figure death or maiming is the worst thing.  Even if my paper stinks, I certainly don't think it will cause death or grevious bodily harm to anyone, or even a much lesser injury.

Memorial Day, Now & Then

Our Memorial Day this year reminded me very much of Memorial Days (and other national holidays) from when I was a kid.  We had a quiet long weekend.  My friend/co-worker/neighbor, Stephanie, kindly invited us to a shindig at her home, which was a lot of fun; she had a great day for it, too.  Kevin worked on the dining room quite a bit.  I started a new knitting project.  We both did some stuff around the house.  I spent a bit of time on the front porch, enjoying the fine weather.

Memorial Days of my youth went something like this: 1) guests show up; 2) bring chairs and selves down to Main Street to watch the Memorial Day parade (sometimes march in said parade); 3) go back home to eat burgers, dogs and yer basic picnic stuff; 4) run around outside like a nut for a few hours; 5) eat ice cream and watermelon; 6) run around some more; 7) feel sickly; 8) go to bed with towels and a bucket nearby.

It was pretty quiet once the parade was over.  Neighbors were either home having picnics or away at picnics.  Most businesses were closed.  A few grocers might be open until noonish.  One or two gas stations in town might be open for part of the day.  Restaurants were closed.  It may have been disappointing to find that Oh noes!!1! we forgot marshmallows! and not be able to go to the store to get them, but by all accounts, most people who went without marshmallows survived.

Now pretty much everything is open, it's business as usual on national holidays.  I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but we went grocery shopping on Monday, Memorial Day.  Sure, it's convenient to have another day on which to go grocery shopping and it was quieter there and so we got through faster, but I now wish we had gone over the weekend.

A few years ago I decided to avoid doing everyday stuff like grocery shopping on big holidays.  I missed the forced stoppage when things just shut down at the holidays.  At the time, that's just how things were.  Now, I look back and think it was unintentionally brilliant.  Having fewer options was actually beneficial in that it pretty much forced people to slow down, take the day off and maybe even spend it having fun with friends and family.

Yes, I can achieve the same effect by just going ahead and spending the day having fun with friends and family.  But it's sure a lot more likely to happen when a lot of other options are off my table and when these options are off everyone's tables.

Sometimes too much is too much.  I'm embarrassed, in a way, when I go grocery shopping and see all the permutations of orange juice available.  With vitamin D; with calcium; no pulp; some pulp; all pulp; heart healthy; for kids (whatever that is); less acid; no acid; with antioxidants; brain healthy; with glucosamine; and on and on and on....  And that's just the OJ!  I'm embarrassed bc such overabundance of products is overkill upon overkill.  It makes me think that the American public must be such pansies if they need or simply want such narrowly focussed products.  Who are the people buying rubbery shark-shaped fruit-like kids' snacks?  My outer curmudgeon suggests skipping that crap and eating the actual fruit instead.  I've heard people say that their kids won't eat fruit any other way.  Tough crap, kid.  Life isn't a box of rubbery animal-shaped cherry-fascimilies; get used to it.  I've said it before and, rest assured, I will say it again: you don't do your kids any favors by granting their every whim.  Now, who doesn't want to make the kids they love happy?  You want to raise a happy kid, but you also want to raise a decent human being and that doesn't come about by spoiling the stuffing out of them and, beyond a certain age, buying foods for them different from everyone else's food.  It's the shopping equivalent of not making a separate dinner for each person.  Yes, yes, make your kid's/SO's/cats'/whatever's favorite foods, just don't become a caterer in your own home.

Now I'm not saying grocery stores should resemble Soviet-era stores.  The onslaught of choices at the grocery store is just one area in which there's much too much.  The current recession has had the silver lining of slowing down some of our national consumer stupidity.  Sometimes I feel like I'm in another world with the din of consumerism and waste all around: commercials spouting off about 'must have' cashmere scarves (there is no such thing), people buying the biggest vehicle they could find, convenience items and foods out the ying yang; etc.  Yes, this is the first world, but at times it feels otherworldly.

Before I end this rant, I'd like to point you to Crazy Aunt Purl's, who's written two posts recently about over-consumerism:  Mid Year Resolution and And just what is essential anyway?  I've been thinking a lot about this stuff lately and her posts say much of what I think and feel, but in a much better way.

My Freaking Problems

Do you ever have a day during which you feel lot you got a lot of stuff done?  Or made a lot of progress on something?  And not just any stuff or something, but the right stuff or something, i.e., the stuff or something you should be doing and not the stuff you a) would rather do bc it's easier or fun or whatever and/or b) do iot avoid doing what you should be doing?  That's the key: doing the right stuff.  Bc I can easily fill my day doing useful yet not the most important stuff.  E.g., purging the house of clothes, housewares, etc. to donate or throw out could take up a whole day.  And while it would be nice to clear that stuff out, it's not the most important thing at the moment.  It will probably never be the most important thing at any moment which is fine bc the important thing is that the important things at any given moment are the important things that I do.

Anyway, the point of this is that I got a lot of the right stuff done yesterday:

1. read David Lewis's New Work for a Theory of Universals; took notes in the fervent hope that I will fully understand it after another reading or seven; there was originally a typo here that called it New Wok for a Theory of Universals which I'm glad it wasn't bc that's sure to be an exponentially more complex argument
2. did an estimated EIGHT loads of laundry in the background to item #1; is this item as important as item #1?  Noooo, although a complete lack of clean underwear lends a sense of urgency to getting at least one load done.
3. did the usual other stuff around the house...tidy up the kitchen, scoop some litter boxes, made a couple of phone calls, etc.
4. performed the basic tasks of humanity (showered, ate, cuddled a cat here and there and there and there, etc.)

So yeah, as mentioned before, my class paper will be a compare and contrast between Lewis (the above paper and Against Structural Universals) and Armstrong's theory of universals.  My challenge, besides writing the thing, is to get it done on time.  I have a horrid habit of being very late with papers, so much so that I'm too embarrassed to admit how many papers I still have to hand in.  That's gotta change.  If Obama  (and David Bowie) can change, dagnabit, so can I.

One might wonder, what's my freaking problem?  Well, I'm afraid I must admit to multiple problems.

1. I don't stick to a topic.
2. I don't stop reading about it.  I have this irrational fear that I'm going to miss something really, really important and really, really obvious.  Of course I am.  I can't possibly read everything that is relevant and important on the topic.  Nor could I cover all the relevant and important stuff in a normal size paper so I shouldn't worry about missing something; instead, I should focus on setting boundaries on what material I will consider.  Depending on the topic, a paper covering all the important stuff could be a lifelong project.
3. I overdo the understanding of the material.  What does that mean?  Perhaps that's not the best way to put it.  What I mean is I think I need to understand every iota of whatever material I'm writing about.  Well, perhaps not every iota; if I don't need to cover a section and I don't think it will inform what I am writing about, I don't go over it with a fine tooth comb; e.g., I won't worry about fully understanding the last section of yesterday's reading (which is a fortunate thing in this case, let me tell you).
4. Probably related to #3: I go about understanding the material in the wrong way.  I don't think I do it in the best, most efficient way.  I struggle getting the details right, which takes time, and leave the big picture until the end.  I wonder if things would go smoother and faster if I posit a big picture first and then flesh it out with the details, correcting the big picture as I go along.  Slogging through the details of each section of material in question isn't a problem until a deadline is involved.
5. And then I think there's fear.  There.  I said it.  Fear that my paper will suck.  Suck beyond compare.  Suck without peer.  That it will be used over coffee or beers to regale other students and/or professors.  Okay, I don't really think it would suck bad enough that it would be a punchline.

That's it.  Well, those are all my freaking problems that I can think of right now.  I hope that's it.

Bouts

Unsurprisingly, I a) haven't been much in the mood for blogging lately and b) have been feeling kinda sad lately.  I have these bouts of sadness, often first thing in the morning, when I want to just stay in bed and not go anywhere/do anything.  I felt like that yesterday and I did reschedule my annual gyn appointment (oh drat), but I did go to work.  For my first few hours at work on Mondays I'm in the Community Room during kid time.  I was in a foul mood and wanted to hammer down on some small, helpless, defenseless children yesterday.  That, of course, would not do and, really, it's not their fault that I'm blue.  Eventually, I felt better as the day went on.  Today I wanted to stay in bed instead of going to class, but decided to go bc I figured a) I'd feel better as the day went on (I did) and b) I should go.  That's kind of how things have been lately.

Perhaps my dad's death and my cat's death affect me more than I expected.  Both deaths were expected in that my dad and my cat had been very ill lately and, short of a miracle, were not going to improve.

I thought that a number of things would soften my sadness upon either death.

• Both deaths were expected.
• Both had been declining for some time and so I felt like I had lost each little by little along the way.
• I wasn't very close to my dad.
• Both lived long lives.

As others have since told me, and I have learned, grief manifests itself in so many different ways.  I thought I had come to peace with certain things as my father's health declined.  And perhaps I had.  But perhaps also that his actual death brought them to the forefront again.

E.g., as I said above, my dad and I were not close.  There seemed to be so much that prevented us from having a good relationship.  That pained me for a long time and for a long time I tried to fix that, to no avail.  Finally, I had a breakthrough moment where I decided that I wasn't going to beat my head against the wall anymore bc a) it wasn't good for me and b) my head hurt.  And I do believe that was a good decision for my mental health.  However, it was also a letting go of a certain hope and I believe I did a sort of grieving about it at the time.

Thing is, although I let go of that desire, it could still have happened.  That is, it was possible, although highly unlikely.  When my dad became very ill, that desire was no longer just put aside, it had become an impossibility.  So there was a sense of a loss of a possibility.

Nothing changed between the onset of his illness and his death, but death itself brought that issue to the forefront once again.  To be dealt with once again.  Enough already.

Oddly enough, there's been sadness for my mother and not for the reasons one would typically suspect.  She's spent the majority of the last few years caring for my father and dealing with the different implications of his illness.  Besides the actual physical care there's been prescription coverage, medical coverage, legal stuff, the usual stuff of life (house, cat, yard, etc.), her own health, her own prescription and medical coverage, blah blah blah.  She seemed to become rather bleak and unenergetic during these past few years.  Now, she will be 82 this year, so she's no spring chicken, but her attitude has always been upbeat (if occasionally martyr-like) and her health has been, I think, better than most people her age.

Yesterday, I was talking to her on the phone.  She asked after Kevin and I made a little fun of him bc he's in pain.  No, I'm not that mean.  So, Kevin and I were sick a few weeks ago w/some nasty bug.  We're still coughing from that, maybe a few times a day.  The other day Kevin had such the coughing fit that he hurt himself.  I don't know what he did, but it's like he pulled a muscle in his side.  He's been walking around like an old man for the last few days.  He's even put the Official Ointment of Old Men (BenGay) on it.  Anyway, my mother laughed a little at the remark about Kevin walking around like an old man.  Her laugh sounded strange and I suppose it's bc it's been so long since she laughed.  I think she's had so much on her mind for so long now that it just kind of wore down her spirits.

As an aside, I wish Kevin would at least call the doctor about this pain.  He says that every time he coughs now, it feels like he's damaging it anew.  And OMD when he coughs, his face is contorted into such pain that it looks like he's finally having The Big One he's always threatening to have.  (Kevin's paternal grandfather, Homer, died of a heart attack in his early 70s.  For some reason, Kevin's convinced he's also going to die of a heart attack, but at a much younger age, as in any day now.)  It's happened a few times now and the first time I saw him coughing, grabbing at his side, contorting his face, the color rushing to his face...I thought maybe it was The Big One and that I should be calling 911.  I didn't call and he lived, so that's all good.

Anyway, the sadness around my mother is sadness for what she lost these last few years.  Now, she didn't have to do so much of the work wrt caring for my father.  And she did get a lot of help from my brothers in the area.  She could have had more help, but she declined.  That particular decision irked me; it still does; but it was her choice.  Even though I disagreed with some of her choices wrt my father's illness and she had a right to those choices, I feel sad at what she lost as at least a partial result of those choices.  Like I said, she is almost 82 now, but I do hope she will have time to enjoy herself.

Two Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Days

My father, Casimir Mizera, died last Monday, March 24, 2008.  We euthanized our cat, Smudge, the next day, last Tuesday, March 25, 2008.  It will go down in history as The Week That Was The Suxxor.

My dad was 87 yo.  He had been ill for some time since suffering a stroke and heart attack in one night several years ago.  Even before then, he experienced some mild physical effects of aging, e.g., sciatica, arthritis, etc., but nothing serious.   He also was getting forgetful.  Fortunately, he had voluntarily given up driving some  years before, but when his mental facilities began to decline he would try to drive anyway.  My mom and brothers took to hiding the car keys so he couldn't drive.  His mental facilities continued to decline after his stroke and heart attack.

He spent most of his time these last few years at home in the care of my mother, brothers, home health aides,  visiting nurses and other healthcare types, e.g., physical therapists.  I don't know what his preferences were on the subject, but I'll assume that he wanted to be at home for as much and as long as possible; that's just what I'd expect of him.

He did spend time in the hospital, rehabs and nursing homes over the last few years.  He was in the hospital a couple of months ago and was not expected to survive then.  I don't recall if they did any kind of resuscitation, but, IIUC, my mom signed a DNR after that episode.

Unfortunately, as in exceedingly unfortunately, he did not make his wishes around care known before he became ill.  I really, really, really wish he had done so.  I think it put a terrible burden on my mom who still isn't 100% sure she did the right thing in signing the DNR.  I believe my bros and I are agreed that it was the right thing to do, in fact, that perhaps it should have been signed earlier.  He was bedridden, his legs curled up, his arms with limited motion, his speech non-existent and his mind, as far as we could tell, was functioning poorly.  During one of my last visits, I'm fairly certain that he didn't recognize me and, I'm sad to say, he seemed alarmed.   Perhaps a visit from a 'stranger'  was disconcerting.

So anyway, hard to know what my dad would have wanted.  I do believe that he enjoyed his physicality, e.g., he enjoyed puttering around in his workshop.  He especially enjoyed gardening and yardwork.  Had he remained in Poland and, like, WWII never happened, he probably would have become a farmer; if not professionally, at least extensively enough to provide for himself and family and maybe some to sell.  If I had had to decide, I would have thought that he would not have wanted to continue as long as he did in the reduced mental and physical state that he did. 

He rarely spoke about his life in Poland, the war, his time in a German POW camp, his move to England...and certainly not about how and why he and my mother hooked up.  When I was in high school I participated in a donkey basketball game between school athletes (I know, I know, it must be difficult to imagine an athletic me, but I swear it's true!  In fact, I'll have you know that I scored 2 of our pitiful 6 points.  We lost.  Bigtime.) and the town police.  During a spell on the bench, I visited with my parents and my dad told me how to get the donkey to do what I wanted.  That was the first I knew that he knew from donkeys.

Actually, he was not a conversational sort about anything.  He was talkative enough within his circle of friends from the old countries, but outside of that, and especially with new people, he was not conversational.  I think he was very self-conscious of his status (we didn't live in poverty, but I'd say we were poor to a meaningful extent; enough to get food stamps when his union went on strike which was entirely too often for our comfort and well-being though it may have benefitted union members) and his poor command of the English language.  It's too bad he could not see himself as just one of the millions of people who have come to the US to make their future.  I don't know why this was the case, but he seemed overly aware of class and status and placed himself rather low down on the various socioeconomic totem poles.  It always seemed to me that that attitude colored much of his behavior and attitudes and probably kept him from doing a great many things he might have otherwise enjoyed doing.

Obvs, my brothers and I (and my mother, but I'll leave that for now) were not strangers to him, but he was not talkative with us either.  I think that he (and my mom, but that's another story) were all set to raise their kids the way they might have done back on the old sod, but met with some, shall we say, resistance when trying to raise kids in the US.  My 5 brothers are all older.  I think most of them were quietly resistant to my dad's approach to parenting.  My youngest older brother, Caz (named after my father and thank goodness for that bc I was next and last!), exhibited the liveliest resistance to my dad.  Turns out they were very much alike, most noticeably in the stubbornness department, but woe to any who suggested the likeness to either party.  Caz was nothing like my father and my father was nothing like Caz!

My dear friend and neighbor from across the street since 4th grade, Michelle, once said that she thought that, even after my father had to deal with five boys, I was the kid who broke the camel's back.  I don't know exactly what she meant by breaking the camel's back, but I thought she meant something along the lines that my dad thought he knew what to do with my brothers, but was nonplussed when I started to have my own thoughts, wants, opinions, etc.  Perhaps my brothers and dad went at it in typical guy-style, but I wanted to talk about stuff, like feelings, and that was not a big hit chez Mizera.  So, in the end, I have to say that I - and probably my bros, although I won't speak for them in this regard - didn't know my father as I would have liked.  At least, I think I would have liked to know him; perhaps we would have been disappointed in each other.  I was, after all, supposed to become a mathematician!

I'll write more another time and also will write about Smudge another time.

One More Thing

After reading my post about our houseguest experience, Kevin added Lesson Learned #6:  Don't ever do this again.  Ever. Never ever ever ever ever.

Now, I don't feel so strongly about this #6.  I could see instances where both of us would be delighted to have someone stay with us for a while.  Kevin thinks I'm nuts bc I've invited a blogger and a student, neither of whom I'd met IRL, to stay with us when they were in the area and needed a place to stay for a few days.  The former was attending an unfogged meetup in NYC.  The latter was a foreign student who was looking for an apartment in NYC.  Why not?  It's not like I knew nothing about these people.  Plus, in both instances, my uncanny intuition supported the invitations.  I think it's fun to have people stay with us.  Of course, a few days is very different from a few months.

So I wouldn't make a Lesson Learned as rigid as Kevin's #6.  My #6 would be more along the lines of: Know more about the potential HG before deciding whether or not to invite them to stay with us.

But what to know about them?  And how much more to know?  E.g., I didn't imagine until this virgin HG experience that a HG could be such a blithe slob.  Temporary, victimless slobitude is one thing; slobitude that leaves marks is another.  The latter is unacceptable.

I also didn't realize until this experience how much I want to live with sensible people.  When HG did something weird, I'd wonder, 'What was he thinking?'  I soon began to wonder if he was thinking at all.  He seems peculiarly unobservant.  E.g., last night - obvs, this is fresh in my mind bc it screwed up Nosey's urine testing and annoys me to no end - we confined Nosey to a bathroom (the one HG uses) with a bed, food, water, an almost empty litterbox and a big sign on the door, 'Do NOT let Nosey out'.  The Plan is that Nosey will eventually urinate in the almost empty litterbox; it will be a relatively untainted urine sample; and we can use the home test strips to check his sugar.  Today, we were also going to give the urine to the vet to run another test that tells her what Nosey's sugar level has been over the last few weeks.  The Plan has been executed numerous times since HG's been here.

In the middle of the night, I hear HG get up.  As an aside, I expect to sleep a lot better once HG is gone.  He's kinda heavy-footed and -handed.  He also coughs and hacks up bits and bobs of his bronchial passages throughout the night.  Anyway, he goes into the bathroom.  Okay.  As he's coming out, I hear him talking to Nosey (he is fond of Nosey).  I don't hear the bathroom door close.  HG heads downstairs.  I do hear Nosey.  Sounds like he's out and about.

Now, if Nosey peed and one of us gets down there to test and bottle the urine before we can say for sure that no other cat contributed, we're okay.  If he hasn't peed since he's been in there, peeing in a regular litterbox was probably his first order of business upon his unplanned release.  That won't do us any good for test purposes.  And he probably won't need to pee for another 12 hours or so.

I was kinda snoozy and didn't really want to deal with it, but I did (by waking up Kevin and asking him to check on Nosey).  I waited too long, though, bc by the time I'd awoken Kevin and he went downstairs, Nosey had enough time to pee in a regular box.  So that confinement was all for naught.

The thing is, what was HG thinking?  He's seen this scenario before.  Nosey's been confined in that very bathroom several times before for this very purpose while HG has been here.  In fact, the foster kittens are confined in this way except for when Kevin or I take them out of their room.  Obvs, he blew past the sign on the door.  Still, once he was inside, did he think we'd accidentally locked Nosey up in the bathroom with food, water, a bed and an almost empty litterbox?  That we'd accidentally locked up Nosey with the exact same setup as the six or so previous times we'd intentionally confined him for urine testing?  I know it's the middle of the night, but it ought to register with any adult that any cat found confined in the bathroom might very well be there for a reason.

Again, it's probably bc I read too many privileged yet self-loathing peoples' blogs, but: I read over the above and think it's yet another form of elitism to want to live with sensible people.  Yes, I'm working with a very personal idea of what is a 'sensible' person.  Is there anything actually wrong or unsavory about wanting to live with people I actively like?  And with whom I can easily live?  I don't actively dislike HG, but I can't say I actively like him or that I'd expect that either of us would want to socialize with each other under other circumstances.  As I've mentioned before, it's like having a 50 yo son in the role of a 17 yo son who's moving out as soon as he turns 18, which is relatively soon, so I'll just hang in there until then.

I feel kinda bad writing about it here.  I don't expect that HG would find my blog.  I've never mentioned it, although I suppose he could google me and end up here if he pages through enough results.  It's not so much that I'd be embarrassed if he read this.  There's nothing here that I wouldn't say to HG, but I haven't said anything to HG.  I think I'm afraid of insulting him.  There's always also my preference for non-confrontation.  Furthermore, I don't expect anything to change.  E.g., I did ask him to keep the toilet lids down bc Edison will drink from the toilet, which we'd rather he didn't do.  It's been 50/50 wrt that request.  That's a pretty typical experience.  E.g., when Smudgie was still feeling ill and he hadn't yet been diagnosed with lymphoma, we told HG that Smudgie will sometimes poo outside this one litterbox in the half-bath so look first.  Well, I can't tell you how many times Kevin or I woke up to find that HG had gone in to use the bathroom, stepped in cat shit, threw his sock in the bathroom garbage and left the smeared shit on the floor.  Now, I don't expect him to clean up my cat's shit, but how many times does a person have to step in shit before they learn to look down first?  And please look before you swing the door, only to swing it over the shit, smear it on the underneath of the door and across the floor in an arc that corresponds to the range of the door's swing?  Cleaning cat shit off the bottom of a door is a pain in the butt.    I don't know how to say to someone exactly what I just said, i.e., 'Dude, how many times you gonna step in shit before you look down?'  OTOH, I previously couldn't imagine that someone would have to learn that the really, really, really hard way.  OTOH, how do you ask that w/o making someone feel like an idiot?

Full disclosure: I have done some stupid, shit-related stuff in my day.  The classic e.g.: Kevin and I stayed at a B&B in RI where the owners also stabled a few horses.  Hence, the horseshit in the rural yard.  After stepping indoors, the smell of horseshit seemed to linger behind us, like an unbidden guest.  I thought, 'I think I stepped in horseshit.'  I took off my sneaker, held it approximately 1" from my nose, inhaled and was able to definitively declare, 'Yup, this is horseshit' before passing out.  We had - and still have - such a laugh about that.  What was I thinking?  But I can assure you that I never put my nose so close to a potentially shitty substance ever again.  Lesson learned.

Verily, this has been a fascinating post to write, but I just realized the time and that I'd better get out of here and do some holiday stuff before it's too late!