Did I happen to mention.... ?

Me and my doggieboy are content and happy in this small life we have.
Around me, the little city grows and the green spaces diminish. The property values soar ever higher and the newer residents all seem to be disgustingly wealthy. They also want all the perks of the big city and vote for changes that are spoiling this little paradise of ours. But that was inevitable.

Still this happiness has settled upon me in these, my advanced years.
As opposed to those my retarded years. heh. Truth!

The sorrow of my birth family continues as addiction and co-dependance continues without respite. It pains me greatly as there is no gain in dissecting the past. It is dead.
Many times in my life, I have been reminded that my capacity for compassion was born of this horror of olde. I could easily have been the one still searching for solace. In key ways I still am. More likely, I , like the Witch of the East in the Wizard of Oz hear the cry: Begone! You have no power here!

I am lighting my candles now.

Creekside Kate. Shopaholic extrodinare.

A very nice woman of my acquaintence asked me if I knew a certain lady they called Creekside Kate. It rang a bell. I remembered the whole name but I could not quite get the details until my friend told me that Kate slept in her living room, so that she could watch the Shopping Channel on her hugescreen television that she had ordered, of course, from the Shopping Channel.

Oh yes, I remember Kate very well. I was noone to her and there she was, touring me through her home showing me all the things she had bought from that Channel.

"They all know me by name", she said, like that was a good thing.

Kate was neither rich or needy. She occupied that grey space of having just enough money to get through life, but she had discovered to her delight, after her husband died, the joys of credit. Shortly after that she learned about liquifying investments and then finally, reverse mortgages. She suffered dreadfully from anxiety attacks and lived alone in a very nice little strata complex where she had a newer modular home. I would talk to her and coax her into doing little things, like leaving the house, bit by bit.

Kate smoked like a chimney and finally I told her that I could no longer come see her if she smoked in the home. I just cannot breathe. We parted ways but I did continue to drop by from time to time. I always wondered why her family did not come to help her a little bit. Why were the operators and telemarketers filling the role of paid family? It seemed such a sad thing.

My lady friend told me that Kate had a bout with pneumonia and was in hospital. Her daughter came over but declined to stay and called this friend from the ferry saying: "You'll have to pick my mother up from the Hospital. I have a reservation for the ferry."

Cold as nails.

Mom came home and went back in again. My friend called the daughter to tell her that her mother was very ill, and the circumstances were grave.

"What do you expect me to do about it?"

---- *

I know that not everyone can do for their parents or family. But if you cannot, find someone who can. Paid help, volunteer help, government help... whatever. It is so sad to think that Kate died alone in the hospital.

She was the woman I once told that it might be best not to show every person who came in her home the chiffonier loaded with shopping channel jewellery. She told me once she had spent her last 50 thousand dollars on nothing but jewellery. She never wore it, it just sat in the chiffonier, twinkling in the dark drawers. What that 50 thousand dollars really bought her was a friendly voice in the middle of the night.

She was a very pleasant and kind woman. I am glad she had someone who will actually miss her.

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.

The euphoria of yesterday has given way to the harsh reality of today.
----holy moly my jaw hurts-----

Tighter and tighter to close the spaces so my jaw bones are aligned correctly and the scars are in all the right places. Of course moving teeth through bone is never painfree but when they winch me tighter the next day I generally want to call in sick.
My pain tolerance is very high but FUCK this hurts.

------ tsk tsk, a nixonism on my blog. NO fucks here thank you very much.
Wish I could say I gave at the Office but no, that just doesnt happen these days.

It was sunny today and I wore an orange singlet under a floral blouse that positively screams hawaiian colours. Oh how festive I am. This day was a good day.
The Wordsmith was on my list again today. The change really is noticeable.
He told me the same story 4 times. (sniff)
It's a good story. He would be very shocked to think he was a repeater.

---

Time catches us all. Representative as I am of the non-botoxed, stretched pulled or implanted feminine divine, I truly grieve for my sisters who feel never good enough.

Things Remembered, not all with relish --*

Dear sweet ZeeZee sits in her kitchen snoozling as the National sings out more woes.
Waking her up, somehow within moments she is talking about ballroom dancing
(" And I was very light on my feet too!")

Normally contemptive, ZeeZee is veering to obsession about remembered slights.
Apparantly she weighed over 300 pounds. ("None of it was real weight you know, it was just water a Doctor told me years later.") ("My husband never believed it. He always told me I had a sweet tooth and most be sneaking chocolates or cookies.")

Her husband had a grand position with a MultiNational company and part of his job was to entertain important clients. On the occasion she is remembering with such vividness it was a formal dinner/dance at a swish dinnerclub.

" I lived on the scent of bananas and lettuce leaves and got myself down to under 150 pounds. I looked very very good. So I went out and got myself an elegant black dress with layers of crepe and tulle. And I LOOKED MARVELLOUS! I wasn't just slim I was really slim."

Oh how intently she reminded me of this.
Imperitive that I know that she truly was slim.

The happy couple went out with another to aforesaid swish spot, and immediatly the band began to play, her gentelman husband swooshed the client's wife out onto the dance floor.

" And then, as that woman walked all over my husbands feet, and my toes started twitching, the husband leaned forward and engaged me in desultory conversation.

"I never did get to dance that evening but his wife was absolutely exhausted. On the way home I said to my husband in the car ' I never even got one dance out of him.'"

ZeeZee rolled her chair closer to me and stared into my eyes.

" And do you know what he said? He looked at me and said: ' Well dear, face it. No man wants to drag a heavy woman across the dancefloor.

" He never even noticed that I was no longer heavy, but you see he could no more change his nature than turn into a toad."

Poor dear ZeeZee sitting in her beautiful home reflecting on 90+ years of ZeeZee-ness and her primary memory of the man who was her beloved is that.

I am glad she lives on in the Waterfront mansion and he is feeding the worms.

-=- More Changes -=-

With great sadness I have learned that the Nurse I identify with the most, has accepted a position far away from our Paradise but closer to her own.

She endeared herself to me permanently when I learned she backed up her spoken dedication to workplace wellness with actions. How I love to see management, oh pardon me, Management reaching out in equity and not down in imperiousness.
Aww, she will be so missed, *sniff*

Change change and more.
There has been entirely too much of it in our Region and now it is time for things to settle down. (please)

------ *

Positively speaking, the gentle soul who daughter attended to him so lovingly got his wish and died in his own home. I am very happy for that.

---- *

"Is that nothing to you?"

"Your dignity is not just rubbed in the dust. It is trodden underfoot and spat on. Our people are being killed as if they were but flies. Is that nothing to you who pass by? What must we say that we have not said? 'God, give us eloquence such that the world will hear that all we want is to be recognized for what we are - human beings created in your image'" (Tutu 101)



When you suffer a blow to your dignity, it is a wound that takes a long while to scab over.
------

Today I realised that I would like to spend a working decade making a difference to people in poorer countries. We have such wealth. They have so little.
And I, do I want to be one who passes by?
One who goes to sleep as if it is nothing to me?

It is something to me. Something big.
My own problems have created in me a huge need for social justice within my own realm.
I would like to spread it further.

--------


The storm in my brain spoiled my birthday :(
Wthe tornado is there right in front of my mind's eye, I get a screaming headache and my whole left side goes into excruciating pain. No, oops it'e my right side. I get more dyslexic as the years go on. That's so typical; my getting it wrong so wrong.



I am without grace tonight.
Utterly.


-----------

Sorrows and Joys

My heart is elastic. It grows to encompass each soul I touch that needs me.
I met such a soul this last little while. As I am unable to meet the specific need she has,I have taken advantage of the open referral service that Hospice has. Hospice addresses people with any sort of loss.

No amount of cajoling would make my leaving after one hour acceptable.
I told her that we just had to see her through the winter and then in the Spring she could move. "I won't make it to the Spring," she cried. And yes, she really was crying.

This is the 3rd woman on my client list with identical symptoms.
Their faces are marked from frequent pulling at themselves.
They spent more time pondering the "what-if"s of life than actually living it.
And they live in a home worth well over 300 thousand dollars.

Why do things have to get to this point?
This woman should have been assisted with these tough decisions long ago.
She is lonely. That is pretty much all that is wrong. Lonely and hyper-aware of all that could go wrong in life.

It is very sad.