Presby flashback

So I'm driving through my neighborhood on Sunday, minding my own business, and all of a sudden as I pass the park, I see this sign. YAD Picnic! YAD PICNIC?!?

It took me right back to GA where events, picnics, briefings of all stripes happen all over the place. For those of you who don't know (or give a hoot) about the national Presbyterian church, GA (General Assembly) is our every-other-year legislative meeting which yes, has its merits, but can basically be boiled down to 10 Big Days of Stress and Strain. (My GA recovery routine generally involves three days of sleep and some sort of ailment my body uses to get back at me afterwards.) And YAD is our lovely Presbyterian acronym for Youth Advisory Delegates--a mightily lobbied group of which I was part in 1993.

Which is to say, since GA happened in June, I have been extremely content living in a post-GA world where I know I don't have to do it again for two more years. And which is to say, any reminders of GA that might crop up in my neighborhood park are MOST unwelcome.

What on earth could YAD stand for in my own neighborhood? Any guesses out there? C'mon, it could be fun...

59 or 116--and everywhere in between

The world's oldest person (Maria Esther de Capovilla of Ecuador) has just died, at age 116. The next-oldest person in the world (Elizabeth Bolden of USA) is also 116.

Kinda puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

I'm 30, so if I live to be 116, right now I'm only about a quarter of the way through my life. However, if I live as long as my dad (59), right now my life is half over.

Either way I'm doing my best to live each day to the fullest. That's one of the great lessons we learned from my dad. You never know what will happen. You gotta make the time you have the best it can be. Even if you're suffering or sad or sick or having a rough time, you honor those experiences, you reach out, you keep moving. You love the people who are here now. You breathe deep. You give thanks each day.

I'm convinced that these practices are what helped my dad live as long as he did. And maybe it's what helped Maria Esther de Capovilla live to 116 too.

I love that "in her youth, Capovilla liked to embroider, paint, play piano and waltz at parties." I, too, love to paint, and I love to play the piano, and I love to waltz. Embroidery I'm not so sure about, but I am learning to knit...

59 or 116 or 30... take life by the reins and go!

Morning after pill makes debut

Today history has been made. The FDA finally approved Plan B--emergency contraception known as the "morning after pill."

If I understand correctly it will be available over-the-counter for women 18 and older. Women 17 and under will have access with a prescription from their doctor.

I also learned:
- Over 1 million abortions take place in the US each year.
- Half of all pregnancies in the US are unplanned.

Check out the FDA statement and NYT coverage.

Thanks to Katie for the news!

While we're on the subject

...of anniversaries, I'd like to mention a few more. Can you believe:

1 year (almost) since Hurricane Katrina.
(Good info at NCC Eco-Justice and New Orleans Network.)

5 years (almost) since September 11.
(Check New Yorkers for a Dept of Peace and Nonviolent Peaceforce.)

8 years (last week) since I moved to Louisville - !

100 years (also Sept 11) since Mohandas K. Ghandi launched the modern nonviolence movement.

Seems there's a lot going in the universe these days...

Any other anniversaries out there?

Nine months

Today it has been nine months since my father died. Like today, November 21 was also a Monday. He passed about 10:40pm. Remembering the timeframe of the experience of his slipping slipping slipping away--and then suddenly being lost forever--feels as close as my breath. Feels as quick and close to the surface as the place where my heart catches in my throat.

I know this timeframe of 9 months like I have never known another 9 months. Slammed with loss and pain and grief and also release, we have only done what we could do--make sense of the wreckage and keep moving. Sometimes we move forward, sometimes backward. But we move. We do not know this path and all it holds, we do not like this path and all it holds, but it is ours.

What I hold is a small, and at times unsteady, measure of hope that we will be delivered. Indeed, we make the road by walking. What other path is there? These 9 months have been the path of new grief--perhaps not unlike the path of pregnancy that holds and gestates a new life to come. A liminal place where the old life has gone away and the new life is yet to come. Have we become pregnant with something? grief? possibility? memory and re-membering? the hope that we can keep him with us in new ways?

There are days I want to find him, hear his voice, delight in his laughter, rest into the boundless love for me that only he could provide. But he is not to be found. Not as we knew him. So we wander, feeling small and lost, not yet fully knowing that the path is the only place we can truly call home. We must learn to find him in new ways, new places, new life.

Yes we are pregnant, yes we are walking, yes we are here and alive and have breath. May we be delivered into the place where we commune with the ones who don't.

"Sit down a spell. That can wait."

I hereby proclaim myself a member of the Professional Porch Sitters Union. Because to join, that's all you have to do. PPS started on a porch right here in Louisville.

There is no membership, no dues, no agendas, no actual meetings. People just take to "sitting a spell" on their porches, talking and sharing their lives. Now this is my kind of organization.

Having been raised in the South, I know a little about porch sitting. When our family was moving to Atlanta, my dad saw a photo of a house for sale with a huge wrap-around porch. He fell in love with it, proclaiming on the spot that this is the house we were buying. You can imagine his dismay when the realtor told us the photo was a mistake--the house for sale was actually the house next door. Sans porch.

The house I live in today has a fabulous porch, with comfy chairs, great shade and lovely windchimes. There is also a deck around back, and I make a mean iced tea. Come join me. Let's sit a spell.

All I'm saying is

go to Google, search for the word "failure,"

--and check out the first listing.

Bye bye laptop

I am experiencing one of those moments in life where I want to completely reorganize, throw stuff out and get back to basics. In particular, this week, that means the scary task of cleaning out The Guest Room Closet. It is here that I came across the old work laptop--you know, the one that weighs about 100 pounds. The IT people said long ago that we can't upgrade because it won't take any operating system higher than Windows 95, and yesterday in retrieving my old files, I discovered that it also does not take my jump drive. So I am digging up old 3.5s to save what (if anything) I may still "need." Yee-haw.

The good news is that my workplace recycles obsolete electronic equipment at CyberCycle, a program of the City of Louisville. In perusing their site I discovered they take a plethora of items electro(u)nique. Such as my old walkman (broken), my old discman (broken), my old camera (broken), a friend's old cell phone (obsolete), and Terri's old PC (obsolete--and also taking up residence in the guest closet), which she disassembled upon kindly replacing my CD burner and DVD player. (That process was also scary, as the inner caverns of my tower had collected enough cat fur to create--as Di put it--a whole new cat!)

So check out CyberCycle. Our good city properly disposes of toxic substances such as lead and cadmium and reuses the shells and parts containing said contaminants. The residents' program allows ordinary janes like me to drop off up to three items (or systems--meaning tower, monitor, keyboard, mouse, external drive) per visit, free of charge.

Guest post from Cecil

Hellooo darlings. It's me Cecil, and it is delightful to meet all of you. Enchante. I hear you've inquired as to my well-being, so I wanted to impart my thanks and let you know that life is indeed divine! I'm having a grand time, riding around with Melanie and seeing the world. She has been a darling hostess (that is, once that dear soul Carolyn talked some sense into her). I do declare, the vantage point of a shoulder is the most fabulous place to be!

We took a lovely little trip to see Dr. McIntyre on Monday. (She is simply divine, darlings--smart and nice and adorable--nothing like that silly fool from "immediate" "care.") We are so pleased to report that all is well. Of course I do have that pesky infection to clear up, but the Lovely Doctor is doing all she can to help us avoid surgery. Melanie is especially thrilled, as the prospect of surgery positively unnerves her. (Can you believe it? Personally, I feel she should deal with this little issue in therapy, but of course she has to be Miss Let's Cross That Bridge When We Get There.) Apparently she also buys all that churchy nonsense about her body being a holy temple, blah blah blah. So for the love of God don't cut her open and mess things up on the inside. My delicate disposition cannot bear to deal with the anxiety that such would provoke!

My, look at the time! I really must be going darlings, but thank you all for your kindness and care. Ta-ta!

Mattie Catt

After catching the fabulous InKY Reading Series Friday night, my friend Kelly and I hung out on her steps and talked a while. Three neighboring cats practically ran to greet us, I suppose intuiting that we are both cat people and would humor them with a little love fest. And love fest we had. We cooed, they purred. We petted and stroked, they sashayed and basked.

As cats do, they got their fix, grew bored and sauntered off into the night. A little later I noticed that one cat (who we called Mattie, as his coat was full of mats) was precariously entering my car through the halfway-rolled down window. Mattie made himself right at home in the back window, as though the sun was shining warmly and devotees were parading him regally about the town...

The name's Cecil

My friend Carolyn is a wise woman. She suggested I befriend the cyst. We named him Cecil.

Cecil’s the kind of friend that, you know, hangs out on your shoulder. Whispers in your ear. When he first arrived his whisperings needed some interpretation. But now I hear him clearly. Cecil says helpful things, like “Take good care of yourself." "Be kind to your body." "Rest."

Cecil is also the kind of friend that causes discomfort. But then those are usually the best kind. We're going to journey together for a while and make the best of it. Welcome.

Medical anomaly

I’ve had a cyst on my shoulder for a year and a half. It’s just been hanging out, small and quiet, minding its own business. Recently my doctor confirmed it was fine—unless of course something changed, in which case I should call her.

Having lived with this mass for 18 months, I was surprised to awake on Friday to find that something had, in fact, changed. Suddenly it was big, red, sore and warm to the touch. Hmm. Maybe I just bumped against something and irritated it. By Saturday afternoon, though, it was demanding some attention. Now the size of a quarter, it was angry red, screaming hot and hurt like the dickens. Hmmmm. I called a nurse who (contrary to my hopes of hearing that this could wait until Monday) urged that I see a doctor. Geez. There go my plans for spending Saturday afternoon fully engaged in the most proper of naps.

At the immediate care center I grow a little more panicked to learn that not only is my blood pressure through the roof (181/106, the mere knowledge of which causes a second reading to raise to 191/116), but the cyst is infected and needs to be removed. They give me the choice of having it done on the spot (kindly acknowledging in a matter of words that this is not their specialty), or waiting until Monday (as a surgeon who does these regularly would cause less scarring). Not wanting to be here in the first place, I happily agree to wait.

Except that, the whole time we’re talking, the doc is poking and prodding (despite my playful but genuine yelps of pain), and suddenly, the cyst pops. “Uh-oh,” he says. “We have to remove it here. Now. It is already open.” Thoroughly pissed at but now somewhat dependent on these people, I proceed to the Trauma Room. Except that after I am numbed and on the verge of hyperventilating (from pain and the sudden shock that I left home with neither friend to console me nor my trusted blanky), I hear the doc and nurse exclaiming to themselves that My goodness, there is nothing left to drain, and How interesting that the cyst is still in there, underneath (and not connected to) this particular infection.

What?!

I focus on breathing for a while. (Because really this isn’t happening is it? I’m at home and this is a dream during my nap, right?) They poke and prod and talk some more and finally give up. They clean me up and the doc is out the door with reassurances that I need to see my doctor first thing Monday and arrange for a surgeon to remove the mess. Sheesh. Oh, and because the infection opened and could spread, I’ll be on yet another antibiotic.

This is my fourth infection in as many weeks.

Feeling gracious (or perhaps guilty), the nurse offers that I can continue to lie in the oh-so-comforting Trauma Room and take a nap. Thanks, that was my original plan! And would I like another blood pressure reading now that this is all over? Yes as a matter of fact I would. After not resting, I get dressed and meet the team up front. We get a better reading (148/79—not great but definitely better), and the nurse exclaims, “Well you’ve been our excitement for the day!”

And you’ve been mine.

The bestest kid on the face of the planet

Not that I'm biased, but I would like you to meet my godchild, Arden Mel. He is also my namesake. I am fiercely both proud of and in love with him. Check out this little video his mamas helped him make for me.
(I'll translate a portion of his stunning debut: When he tells me his dogs' names, they are "Rudy and Tunie," Tunie being short for Petunia.)

Arden turns 2 tomorrow, August 12. The day his mothers went into labor, this very day two years ago, I got the call at home one late afternoon and instinctively stepped onto my 3rd-floor deck to look at the sky. I was drawn to the southern sky, the direction of Atlanta, where this particular labor was taking place. Low and behold, there was a double rainbow. I remember it well--my hands were sticky, the air around my kitchen was tinged with the scents of salsa-in-the-making (tomato, garlic, cilantro, onion), and the double rainbow felt like a sign. I ran to get Molly and Kristen downstairs, told them the news, and we sat on the steps rainbow-gazing until it faded into the evening sky. Then I went back inside, paused to say a prayer, wrote that baby-in-the-making a poem, and finished my salsa. Early the next morning, I got a call from Jess saying they had delivered. It was a boy and they named him Arden Mel, after me.

Happy Second Birthday, my darling Arden Mel.

Techno funk

Was it just me, or did anyone else experience the world in technological funk yesterday? In the scope of one afternoon, I found myself unable to access voice mail, post to this blog, burn a CD, upload video. Although I grew inclined to throw my computer out the window, ultimately I was able to find deep breaths and resign myself to "tomorrow will be better." And it is. :)

When life gives you tomatoes

My friend Wayne has 69 tomato plants in his garden. 69! (And this he considers scaling back--a few years ago it was 114.) He knows I love to make homemade sauce, so last week when my phone rang and I heard Wayne's voice saying with a smile "How would you like to make some tomato sauce?," I dropped everything. Wayne had a motherload of 'maters, and was offering me all I wanted. So this weekend I spent a good few hours getting veggies at the farmer's market (a must for my sauce), chopping, stewing, tasting, adjusting--and finally, I arrived at perfection. Mmm mmm good.

Welcome!

I'm excited to start blogging--so much so that I spent a good coupla half-days at work setting this up. Surely all that work isn't going away, is it?

As Ellen Degeneres says, "Procrastinate now--don't put it off!" Having been away for week after stressful week (count 'em: six), this is what easing back into the routine is all about. Enjoy!