20140417 Brian Powers Pier Park VM
Thursday, April 17, 20141:05 PM I am at Brian Powers' waiting room. I was about 4 minutes late getting here. I was worried, but he is in with another client.
I actually had 2 delays that' weren't my fault, as well as a few that were. The other client comes out and then BP heads for the bathroom.
I've started yet another BRAND NEW story, what I need to do is work on the old ones. I have so many stories in progress it's ridiculous!
I was in bed 12 hours today (last night and this morning.) That seems excessive, but the night before, I was in bed less than 4 hours. And being in bed, for me, is not synonymous with sleeping. My itchiness the past two days was worse than usual. At night, I mean.
I did not bring anything new to share with BP
We talked a long time. He kept me late!
2:23 PM 4/17 I am at Pier Park. I intend to walk for a half hour, then go home, unload the dishwasher, walk to Village Market. I brought a coat and hat but left them in the car. AM wearing a "sports jacket" and a thin blouse and it's windy and cool. I wonder if I should go back for more clothes.
I wonder if I should drive over to R'dale and water the seedlings, since Keith neglected to do that and it could kill them.
The sun is warm, the breeze cold. I saw daffodils on the way over, on a south slope.
If I were to drive to R'dale, should I do it before of after I go to Village? K has Scroggin today, which is a good thing since I'm so far behind and would like to accomplish something before he gets home like unload the dishwasher, etc.
Signs of spring: the adirondack chairs are out on the mini dock/deck.
My hair is down. It is very long and wind may tangle it. I keep thinking I should cut it.
4:20 PM I am walking to VM. It is very warm, even warmer than earlier. I am wearing a lightweight fleece shirt over a laightweight blouse (very light summer blouse) and am still hot. It is breezy. The kids next door are locked out of their house and when I asked them if they needed anything, they said "keys". I can't help them with that. Not today. Deeana could give us a key and we could let the kids in if they got locked out.
I did not go to R'dale yet and am hoping I will have time to do so before it gets too late.
A little girl is kneeling on her front porch staring down the throat of any Easter Lily.
Friday April 18, 2014, 3:48 PM I am riding in my own car and Keith is driving. :-( We are going to ake a walk at Elmwood Cemetery or Blisle. Belle Isle, and probably Blisle because Elmwood will probably be closed by the time we get there.
I had a strange dream ealy this monring, it was long and cpmplex and I am not sire I can remember it. Or all of it.
I write down the drem below (the parts i remember. Elmwood is closed and we're on Blisle now.
We walked at Blisle. I was feeling drugged and tired and am blaming the hydroxyzine
Saturday, April 19, 2014, 2:26 PM. I am on my way to VM to get stuff for tonight's dinner and for tomorrow's Easter dinner. I am feeling really angry, primarily at myself for being stupid yet again.
I wanted to walk over to Rolandale but I started working on a poem and picure in Photoshop, just as I was about to leave and wasted all my avaialble time and now am running late for the next ting and can't go to R'dale. ;-{
We will be taking ML to a senior assisted living place today. We have to leave at 3 and it's 2:30 now and I have to go to the store and soetime, I have to walk. This taking her around is important, more important than my posting to facebook. I eman cowbird.
Which is what I was going (for the first time in while, although I have many stories to post, I never have time or energy. And then there are all those stories you have to read in order to sustain an audience. It's a ton of work.
So I am walking down the sidewalk as fast as I can reasonably walk in order to grab things we need.
Yesterday morning, I awoke wish a poison-ivy-like rash on mhands and yesterday night, it had spread to my feet and ankles and this morning my hands, wrists, feet, ankles and inner thoighs were involved.
I am worried and afraid, and I showed Keith, but he showed a total lack of concern. I am afaid I may be allergic to hydroxyzine or something else and I could into anaphylactic shock and die, but does he care. No. Not that I told him that. He wasn't really interested.
On the way back I probably won't be able tow rite because I will be carrying too much shit.
I never got to look up spiders that mimic flowers. I wonder if there is such a thing (from my dream).
2:49 Well, how do you like that. We crammed everything in the backpack! Of course, I did not get everything on my main list, only those things we most needed in the next two days.
Kristina is going to be singing Pamina in the Magic flute. Next November, hope we get to go to Grand Rapids and see her perform. I am so excited for her. YAY! Well, I will have 13 of my required walking for the done when I get home and will do the rest, I guess, when K is cooking spaghetti.
Paul will not be coming to Easter dinner.
I wonder why.
It's possible that it may be the last holiday meal at ML's. That is, if she goes into assisted living.
Since shopping is more difficult than walking for me, at least I will have a break between seesions. I don't count the shopping time, but it is exercise. I saw Keith coming, but he doesn't look like himself. He's dressed up and jacket makes him look bigger.
3:04 we are in the car heaed for ML's but Keith just told me something that totally upset me--I got 1/4 pound of ground round to make up the difference with the 3/4 pound I thought we already had, but we ate that meat last night in tacos, which means we still need 1 pound or 3/4 pound of ground round for the spaghetti which means I or we have to go back to the store AGAIN. And the store was very crowded with Easter shoppers.
AK!
3:40 PM So now I am in the back seat of the Chey that used to be ML's. ML is riding shotgun (in my seat) and Keith is driving and we are on our way to the Sunrise Senior Living Center. The sky is a neary cloudless blue, a pale spring blue instead of a deep autumn blue. We are slightly more dressed up than usual. Kwith is wering widewale brown cords that went out with the dinosaurs (but which we both like) and a nice stiped shirt. One I got him.
It's about $900 a month at the previous place for asistence dressing and undressing. $15 dollar every morning to dress and $13 in the evening to undress.
I am wearing a blouse and a necklace, but did not have time to change into a skirt or redo my ahir, which is in braids.
I ma having health issues that make me fearful that I, too, may need assisted living in the not-too-distant future. :-(
The guy ahead of us is riding a brand new motorcycle with a pink slip on the plate and a black Northface lightweight jacket. K says we watch him in case he's a newbie instead of a retread and does something dumb.
There is a young woman with an orange vest standing in the middle of the road, maybe handing out leafllets. I see the long curve of her neck as she turns away and worry for her safety.
We drive by a garden store where there are flats and flats of pansies out and I want some.
The whole building is your home can come and go as you wish. Friends relatives can come and go as they wish. They do the laundry, linens, You furnish the apartment. They provide all the means all the way to the end of life.
They entirely private pay
6:09 PM I am out walking again, ML is enscounced in the house with a book and Keith is making dinner and I will be walking for 30 minutes. It is sunny, cool, blue, one small thin cloud, burds chirping. I'm walking on the sunny side of the street because it is warmer.
* * * *
Camouflage
I am staring ithrough sliding glass doors into a house where there are some huge holographic screen where large colorful nimals are leaping from one screen to another. Then a bunch of stuff happens and I am baack there at the glass doors, later. The doors are steamed up. I am staring through agaisn, but the screens aren't on. Instead, there is a party going on, a weird party with black cats and chickens wandering through and I see someone I think is cute. I order to see him, I have to get close to the window because it is al steamed up. Just as I am staring at this cute guy, he turs and spots me. I back up and walk aay. It is raining lightly, almost a mist. I go to a hedgerow and bend over to look at something and spot something very strage. It is a spider with appendages between its legs that allow it, when it stands still with its legs spread, to look like a flower. I see three of these spiders. They are fiarly small. They ook like spirea flowers, sort of, and there is a spirea bush nearby. On the ground, they look like fallen blossoms.
The only cmera I have with meis the Fuji W3, and I take it out of stereo qand try to photograph the spider flowers, or flower spiders. But I keep failing, becuase something gets in the way, a dead leaf or a plant or a chicken or a black cat. Then I relaize these are the chickens and black cats from inside that house. I look up, and there is the cute guy I'd seen through the window. I grab his leg to try to anchor him beside me.
We have a pleasant conversation and then he goes away and it rains harder and harder. I curl up on the ground in fetal position in my long grey wool dress as the cold of the rain seeps itno my skin.
* * * *
Taming Uncle Beast from earlier file:
*
"No wonder you aren't a minister or priest any more," I screamed at him, and pointed, at him, at the beer he was wrapped around. " You are bad! You are downright evil!" And I burst out crying.
Everyone stared at me, including Harmon.
"Tiny . . . " Jake started. He looked embarrased, mortified, even. He did not put his arms around me, and neither did Trey.
Instead, Harmon did, and I cried on his shoulder. He held me close, and it seemed ok. I wasn't weirded out out (embaraased) or anything. I also didn't feel like he was hitting on me or feel skeeved out the way I sometimes do when an older guy touches me. Instead, I felt loved and accepted just as I was, comforted.
This made me feel guilty for yelling at him and I cried even harder, so hard I couldn't catch my breath for a minute of two.
I've been noticing that when someone makes me angry, if I behave in a reprehensible way rather than in an honorable way, so that I then feel guilty for not being kind and compassionate and wise and gentle like I'd like to be, without even realizing it, I get even angrier at the person I was already angry at for causing me to feel guilty. I know that sounds really stupid. But when I do that sort of inappropriate thing, I'm not thinking with my intellect or with my heart, but with my fish brain and some wounded inner child. That's what Martin says, sort of.
I wonder if it's like potty training. I mean, will I ever get the hang of it and stop myself before I poop all over myself and someone else? I hope so, but I seem to be a slow learner, at least in this area.
So Harmon kept rocking me, and I let him. I thought about Boris the Bug Bugnasty. After Jake got back from Iraq and had his meltdown, and we all had to go into counseling, because Martin said the problem belonged to the whole family and Jake (only he called him Farley, of course) wouldn't get better until we all got better.
So here I am, with Martin, and he tells me I have to go to Al-Anon. I'm not happy about this. Not at all. Who wants to go to a group with a bunch of strangers and talk about your family's secret problems. Pa calls that "hanging out the dirty linens" and Ma calls it "hanging out the wash." Ma makes more sense, I mean why would you hang out your dirty linens?
Anyways, since I had to go, I went. And, guess what--they weren't all strangers. Of course I can't say who they were. "What you hear here and who you see here stays here."
Anyway, there was this guy and I will call him Boris the Bug Bugnasty. That's not his real name, but it's a little close for comfort. Luckily, what I am writing to you is not for general consumption. Or I'd have to call him something else further from his real name. And, since it's not his real name, I am not breaking the Alanon rules to use it. (I hope you dn't know him and can guess who I mean.)
* * * * Taming Uncle Beast New:
So, As I told you, . . .
Oh, wait, I just remembered the latest assigmnet, I'd gotten distracted by the all the stuff going on. I was pistcuring lazy days of floating down the river with nothing to do when I agreed to do these assigments. Seemed like I'd Have all day to do it. You said to write in the third person from the POV of the protagonist, and then to do a chapter or section in the third person Omnicient.
I don't understand how to write NONfiction in the 3rd person Omnicient when I am trying to write the truth and I don't actually know what other people are thinking. I know what you said, you said, use your imagination and put yourself in the place of the other person. But sometimes when I do that, what I think they might be thinking is not what they're thinking at all. It may be diametrically opposed or just quite different. Sometimes I am shocked to learn what someone else is thinking. And sometimes I'm correct.
But here's the question: If I am imagining what other people are thinking, and may be wrong in my imaginings, how is that nonfiction. Sounds like fiction to me.
OK, so anyway, let me do the first part of the assigment, which should easier part. I'm going to back up a little and start with my yelling at Harmon.
*
(rewrite that part in third person)(?) or just start where I left off?)
*
Tiny Lee's first Al-anon meeting with with adults. She sat in the corner trying to be invisible, trying to suck her arms and legs into her shell like a turtle. She visualized herself as a box turtle and closed the box around her soft inner body. She closed her eyes, too, because it was dark in the box, so she was surprised when someone spoke to her. She was trying to picture the closed box as invisible, but apparently, it asn't working.
She opened her eyes and opened her box and poked her head, arms and legs out of the box and stared around the room. Everyone was looking at her.
"What is your name?" asked the person sitting next to her. It was a woman with long red braids and green eyes and a big bruise on her face.
"Tiny Lee Latham," Tiny said.
"Oh," said the woman, "we don't use last names here. Do you want to be Tiny or Tiny Lee?"
"Tiny is fine," Tiny said. Tiny wasn't exactly tiny, but she wasn't very big, either. But for the first time she could remember, no one commented on her size. She didn't have to tell them about being a preemie and almost not making it past her first day in the world. Not that any of them would have cared. They looked like a bunch of weirdos, Tiny thought.
Several other people gave their names and Tiny deduced that the others had given theirs while she was in box, being blind and invisible. Apparently, she'd also been deaf. She wondered if turtles had a way of closing their ears. Probably it was just the hyperfocus stage of her ADHD. She rarely heard anything when she was in hyperfocus mode. She wondered for the umpteenth time how hyperfocus could be part of the same syndrome as ADHD. Martin Jakata said it was, so it must be. But it didn't seem logical. It would be sort of like Mammoth Caves being part of the Empire State Building.
Everyone said, "Hello, Tiny."
Someone asked Tiny if she wanted to tell her story and she shook her head. "Maybe later," someone else said.
The man sitting on Tinys left began to speak. "My name is Boris," he said. Tiny wasn't sure what a Boris should look like, but Boris did not look like that. He had sandy blond hair and a pink face and kind-looking smile. He semed shy and defferntial. He said he was an alcoholic, but that his sponsor said he should come to Al-aanon to get an idea how his behavior might be affecting the people in his life. Tiny thought that sounded like a good idea and wondered why Beast's counselor, martin Jakata, didn't suggest that for him.
Boris said that people called him Bugs, explaining that he was also called Boris the Bug, but he liked Bugs better. Everyone said, "Hello Bugs." Tiny didn't think he looked like a Bugs, either, but he did look a little like a bug, only she could say why she thought that. He didn't have buggy eyes. He didnt' have a buggy body, he was a little fat around the middle. He looked more like a businessman than anything else, Tiny thought.
Bug rambled on about his wife and daughter, about how they didn't understand him. He sounded sad and earnst. Tiny felt sort of sorry for him. (The kids next door are locked out of their house. I asked them if they needed anything and they said, "keys")
They went around the room, everyone taking a turn to speak and then came back to Tiny. She'd relaxed enough to say a few words about her Uncle and the trouble he'd been causing at home.
After the meeting, Tiny tried to sneak out but Bugs cornered her and told her not to be shy, there were there to help. The meeting was in a church basement, not Tiny's church, but another. When they got outside, it was raining hard and Bugs asked her if she wanted a ride home. She wasn't supposed to ride with strangers, but Bugs didn't seem like a stranger any more, and all the other people from the meeting were there, nodding their heads. no one else offered her a ride.
It wasn't far, she could walk it, but she'd be soaked when she got home, so she accepted the ride and Bugs took her straight home and pulled into the driveway as close to the house as he could.
"Thanks," she said, and ran isnide.
The next week, Boris was friendly at the meeting and offered her a ride and because she was in a hurry, she accepted it and soon, it became a regular thing. Occasionally, Boris would give her something to tale to her mother, a dozen eggs from a friend's farm, an extra bag of sugar he said held purhcased accidentally. Then he began bring small treats for her. A single individuallyw rapped truffle, a chocolate chip muffin, a bag of doritos he'd picked up somehwere. It happened so slowly that Tiny didnt' notice. If he'd given her a box of chocolates that first night, it would have sent a warning signal. But one day, a few months later, he gave Tiny a box of chocolates he said he'd won at the P&C. He and Lenny were on a diet. Lenny was his wife, Leonora. So could she please save them by taking the chocolates. Tiny did. I mean, who doesn't like to help someone out? she thought.
One day, when it was raining, Boris showed up at school. Tinyw as walking out with her friend Meg. Boris rolled down the window and offered the girls a ride. Meg backed away, but Tiny told her it was okay, Boris was a friend. Meg got in reluctantly. He dropped them off at Tiny's "on the way," he said, to the drugstore get pick up some pictures for Lenny.
"That guy is skeevy" Meg said, after Boris was gone, but before they got in the house.
"What do you mean?" Tiny asked. But she knew what Meg meant. Boris was starting to skeeve her out too.
"He's creepy He gives off bad vibes. I'm kind of afraid of him."
"Me too," Tiny said, It was true. She started having her MOm or Dad pick her up after meetings, but they weren't always avaialble. She started sneaking out of the meetings eary on the days when no one was able to pictk her up. She'd excuse herself to use the restroom and and then sneak away. Then she started skipping meetings.
Boris started showing up at school, and leaving treats and cards and messgaes in her mailbox at home. Meg called him "Tiny's stalker."
Tiny was ambivalent. Boris always seemed so nice and so helpful and kind and generous and never did anything wrong. Why was she worried about him. She was, that was for certain. For one thing, Hew as married. He was older, and she was just a kid. But he sort of seemed to be courting her, not that she knew much about it.
Then Boris called Uncle Jake and threatened him. He told Jake to move out or he'd be sorry. Jake told the family about the weird call he'd gotten, and Tiny had an idea it was Boris who'd made the call. When Jake got a second call, she was furious.
Of course she'd talked about Jake at Al-anon. That's what she was there for.
She called Boris's house to confront him, and of course, Leonora answered the phone.
"Who is?" she screeched. "Are you having an affair with my husband?"
Tiny gasped. "No!" she said. "I just need to speak to him."
"Who is this? If I find you my husband, I'll kill you."
Tiny hung up. She called Martin and told him what happened.
"It does sound like you have a stalker, Tiny." he said.
"What can I do?" she wailed.
"They are very difficult to get rid of. It's best not to interect with tem at all."
Meg had called, later that same day. "You know that salker of yours?" she asked.
"Yeah, what about him?" Tiny snapped.
"I think he's dead. He was having an affair with some woman and her husband caught them and shot them both. She was only 19. That could have been you."
"I'm 15, (14, 13?) Tiny said, and I am not married."
"You know what I mean. He could have forced you to have sex with him. That might have been what he was working up to."
"or not. He could have been inncocent."
"He wasn't inncoent. He was screwing some married girl. Young woman. And I read she was pregant. Now she and the baby are both and the father will go to jail or to the electric chair."
"I don't know what to think," Tinyw ailed. He was nice to me. Maybe he wasn't so bad, but now he's dead and I feel guilty."
"You didnt' kill him."
"No. I didn't But I feel guilty for being glad. I feel one percent sad and 99 percent glad and that makes me sad and guilty."
"That's ok," Meg said, "that's about right." But Tiny actually felt more thaan one percent sad, and she felt confused.
Now, sitting on Harmon's lap, she remembered Boris the Bug, how he's been kind, or seemed to have been kind, how he'd made her feel special. He was someone who seemed to care about her who didn't have to care about her. She snuggled closer to Harmon, feeling safe and loved, and then thought, I still don't really know what was going on with Bugsy, and what about Harmon? I don't even know him. And a few minutes ago, I was furious with him. She leaned back and looked up at him, and he smiled beatifically down at her. Neither Jake nor Trey seemed concerned any more.
"Feeling better, Little Lady?" Harmon asked. If someone else had said that to her, Tiny would have been pissed, but coming from him, it somehow seemed just right.
"You are absolutely right. I deserved that, every bit of it. I deserved to be defrocked. I did the wrong thing, more than once."
"Then why do I feel so safe with you?" Tiny asked, feeling more confused than ever.
* * * *
"Because I'm not a bad guy at heart. I have a problem with alcohol. It's like a monster riding me. It lives inside me, and when I drink, I forget to be all that I can be otherwise. The shadow slips out and swallows me."
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