Guess what!

Remember last week when I wrote my ranting (but later mostly deleted) post about how angry work makes me and how my response was to pick out the best looking job listing I could find and apply for it? Well, apparently sowing seeds really does bear fruit! I got a call back! By that time I had calmed down and was again proceeding through my work world at a pretty even keel. Because a friend claims that I sound like I have Stockholm syndrome when it comes to my boss and because the job is a great opportunity that meets my skill set and includes a lot of the things I want (non-profit, work downtown, progressive environment, environmental/social consciousness, mass transit friendly, etc.), I accepted their invitation to interview.


I am pretty proud of myself for going. It is probably the product of having been overworked, tired and just trying to stay afloat mode for the past few weeks, but I've been a bit less than impressed with myself lately. It is a strange experience to go to a job interview and sell yourself as a high end product when you are feeling kind of bargain basement. Hopefully, the repeated pre-interview listenings to "Razzle Dazzle 'Em" in the car did put me in the zone to show them how much of a first rate sorcerer I am, inducing them to like me enough to produce an offer. If nothing else, it put me in a good mood, making me laugh at the idea that large scale flim-flamming could be involved on my part. I'm not much of a bullshitter and I can honestly say without arrogance that I am qualified for the position. In the end, I think that it's going to come down to likability and personal connection.

So, I'll have to hope that my abilities speak for the themselves and that I was able to call forth the kind of winning personality that I am not feeling right now. I think it's just the feeling of tiredness, but I find myself retreating deeper into my already introvered nature these days. Hopefully, I was able to impart at least some charm. I can be charming, really!

Meanwhile, when I got to work I learned that things are a-changing and that there is a new title/possible accompanying pay raise in the works for me there (are they psychic? I didn't even take time off to interview - I went before work!). So, it's looking like either way I win. Apparently I am a winner even if I am too tired to notice!

The Game

I think that I tried to read Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer's Socery & Cecilia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot a few years ago when it first came out. I have this vague recollection of trying vigilantly to read it during one of my Sunday night soaks before deeming it uncompelling. I'm not really sure why I would do this. Maybe it just wasn't the right time. Maybe it was hard to get into.

Even this time I did have to get used to the tone before really immersing myself in it. Once I did, however, I found myself enjoying the book immensely. Told completely via a correspondance between the two cousins, Cecy and Kate, their story (set in post-Napoleonic war England) is filled with intrigue, romance and magic. It's kind of a Jane Austen meets Tolkien meets Susanna Clarke affair. (The latter in more ways than one - I sometimes have trouble settling in with her tone as well and her stories also tend to deal with magic.)

The best thing about it, however, is how it came to be. The book started as a Letter Game (also known as Persona Letters or Ghost Letters). The idea is that each person participating takes on a persona and writes the other as that character. The plot developes as the letters are written and neither participant is to tell the other what her plot idea is. As a writing exercise, it sounds like great fun. For some reason it makes me think of the unfinished spoof romance (Pammyana: A Woman of Many Appetites) that Jen and I started writing together a million years ago. It featured a soup can heiress by the name of Pamelina Anastasia De La Croixville whose love interest was a bunion plagued dance pop singer known for his big dance extravaganzas and was loosely based on George Michael and it was awesome (in its silliness). For a time when I was away at school, we took turns e-mailing each other chapters. Knowing how much fun we had doing this (and also how much fun Anne and I had writing our opus about Derrida, Kevin and the Topf Ring), I can only think that the Letter Game has to be equally entertaining (and that I have, in my old age, somehow lost a love of collaboration that I apparently once had...I bet it could be regained, though...)

Meanwhile, however, if you've not read Sorcery & Cecilia, I can recommend it. It won't take long. It is the perfect escape into another world for days when your job is making you want to chuck your computer through a window. Not that I would know anything about that.

Venting

Life is not bad. Really, it isn't. Sure, work actually made me want to cry yesterday and it raised my blood pressure more than a few times, but life itself is not bad. It is just tiring. It happens just about every summer. That tends to be our busy period. Last night was, however, the first time in a long, long while that it drove me to send out resumes when I got home. Somehow that made me feel better. Even if I don't get any bites, it allows me to feel like I'm doing something to remedy the situation instead of just complaining (not that I don't do a lot of that too).

[The rest of this post has been edited away, because it was whiny and written out of frustration.]

I'm so tired

Have you ever had one of those nights when a new nightmare is ushered in every time you fall back asleep? Last night I had not one, but three nightmares that I can remember. The first involved people trying to force me to wait on and do indelicate things for them and the second a crowd of people trying to force their way into my house for a party that wasn't going to happen. With some effort, I managed to push the door shut on them, but there were two men already inside the house. They refused to leave, opting instead to try to rape me. At first I was afraid, but then it made me really angry that someone would have the nerve to come into my house and try such a thing. So instead of cowering I firmly kneed each one in the grenoids before throwing him against a wall so hard that his heads left cracks in it. Very empowering. Apparently, I am much stronger than I look.

As disturbing as dreams one and two should have been, it was the third time I fell asleep that was most vivid and frightening. It was one of my classic house dreams. I came home to find that some items had been subtley rearranged in one of the many spare rooms in my giant dream home and thereby knew that someone had been inside and was probably still lurking around somewhere. It was close to nightfall, so I decided that it would be best to take the dogs and go away somewhere safe to camp in the car for the night. Somehow we never made it.

Instead, some other friends came over. One (who does not exist in real life) was a police officer or detective of some sort. He offered to investigate. While he was doing that, I went into one of the spare bedrooms (not my own - I was afraid to go in there) and happened to see a shadowy figure going up a spiral staircase. Frightened and shaking, I ran back to where everyone else was. Via a lot of pointing and stammering, I was finally able to convey what I had seen. Our friend set off to investigate while I waited in the kitchen with my mother, who (in that way of dreams) had suddenly appeared as thought she'd been there the whole time. As we were standing there, a dishpan full of water began to levitate. I again found myself unable to speak and could only point at it.

A woman materialized. She was pale and beautiful with the most hateful black eyes I have ever seen. She grabbed two sets of spear ended tongs from the basin, preparing to throw them at us. Time moved in slow motion. We went around a corner. Somehow when she threw the tong, they did too - like they were following us, instead of being thrown at us. Yet in spite of that, they somehow missed, landing in the eye sockets of two other women who were milling about the house. I pulled my mother and we ran with this hostile entity after us.

We made it out of the house, and I remember thinking "we'll be safe now, it's the house she's haunting," but we weren't. She kept coming after us (this time with a tray filled with pastries with a lot of pink icing...I know, I know. Pastries, so scary, but it was a nightmare, so they were probably cursed or possessed or something). Suddenly, I stopped to face her. Her pretty face contorted into a nasty smile that faded when I decided the best way to get rid of her would be to chant Hail Mary's at her. This enraged her, replacing her previous demeanor of a cat playing with a mouse with genuine anger. I remember thinking that it must make her afraid when people fight back instead of running, that she wasn't as strong as I had first thought. But I have no idea whether I would have saved us, because at the moment of that revelation, my morning alarm began to go off.

Sicko

A couple weekends ago I got to go see Michael Moore's new movie Sicko. Having seen how well it works for German relatives and Canadian friends, the sections about socialized medicine were no big news to me. I have been a big proponent of universal healthcare for a long time now. Watching the movie just strengthened my resolve about it. It also dredged up some of my own family's own decade old HMO woes.

Rather than see him when my father called his doctor to report dizziness, headaches, and numbness on one side, he was told to "call back if it happens again". Any doctor should have been able to two and two together to come up with the idea that he might have been experiencing TIA's (transient ischemic attacks - basically "mini-strokes" that do no lasting damage, but warn of a more serious episode to come). The American Stroke Association advises calling 911, but apparently Giant HMO Corp doesn't feel they're serious enough to merit even an appointment. In the end, it did happen again a week or two later, but that time instead of TIA's it was a massive stroke that left him partially paralysed.

Once he was in the system, I will admit that the care did improve somewhat. There was one careless therapist who chose the day after my dad's stroke to have a "you don't want to become a burden to your family, do you?" talk with him. He was quickly set straight when we asked to see his boss for our own talk about tact and the notion that no human being is a burden. One may become ill, but that does not make the person a "burden". That individual notwithstanding, the treatment (I hesitate to use the word care) at his HMO hospital was okay. Thing did turn around for a bit after he was moved from his HMO system to Good Samaritan's RIO (Rehabilitation Institute of Oregon) program and the nurses at the hospital where he died (also not part of his HMO system) were really lovely. Everyone we encountered there was not only professional, but caring. Unfortunately, once he was released from the hospital, it was back to long waits for appointments.


Even worse, about year after his stroke, my father suffered a heart attack. Following HMO Corp's instructions to call the number they had provided in case of emergency, my mother dialed it only to connect with a line that rang and rang, finally ending with a recording suggesting she call 911 if it was urgent. Precious time was lost. By the time the paramedics arrived, my father had been unconscious for too long to revive. He was put on life support. At 27 I was left as half of the team that got to make the decision of whether to sustain it. A young woman dreams of many things. The torture of grappling with whether doctors could have been wrong about the lack of hope as she listens to the life rattle and wheeze out of her father's body is generally not among them. For years afterwards, I had recurring nightmares of a blackened room, filled with the sounds of the gasping breaths. Thanks for the memories, corporate medicine.


After my father's death, we went to an administration office to register a complaint with the HMO regarding the phone information. We were quickly relieved of the documentation we had with the bad phone number, but their literature now does refer people to 911 in an emergency. At the time I was too numb from just having gone through it all to see what they were doing. In retrospect, it is pretty obvious that they were relieving me of any paperwork that could be used in the law suit we never filed against them.


Now, ten years later, I don't know if my father would have survived the heart attack anyway after such a massive stroke. It is very likely that the damage was already too great. It is very likely that life support decisions may have had to have been made, even if he had received more responsive care. People do get sick. People do die. What I do know is that thanks to the crappy administration of his health management program, he was never really given much of a chance. Certainly, there were some dedicated nurses and doctors who meant well and took their positions as caregivers seriously, but I can't see where the system itself helped them too much. Those who want to protect the big business of healthcare always say that socialized medicine will result in poorer care, long waits. Yet when I compare the treatment my father got to what my grandfather in Germany received for his multiple heart attacks (his doctor made regular house calls and scolded him when he tried to come to the office when he was too ill), it's not our corporate run healthcare that comes out smelling like the rose. Even worse, my father had insurance. There are a lot of people who don't even have that and are far worse off than he ever was. It baffles me to think that he was one of the "lucky" ones.

A Tale of Two Monkeys (and a little brown dog)

Baxter was filled with gleeful anticipation when he heard a monkey would be coming to live with him.

The two became fast friends, going everywhere together .

They were inseparable.

Until one day when Purple Monkey went out for cigarettes and never came back. After going on a three week tequila bender, he finally came home and promptly passed out under the butterfly bush in the front yard. (*dramatic reenactment - Playing the role of Purple Monkey is Brown Bear)

Baxter was inconsolable.

Even his girlfriend, Isis, could not cheer him up. The only thing that seemed to give him any solace was listening to Freddy Mercury's "Love of my Life" on repeat in the CD player.

Things changed when a new monkey came to town. In Purple Monkey's absence, Green Monkey swooped in to usurp his place.

Then one day Purple Monkey came back. He was filled with false regrets and empty apologies. Baxter tried, but things just weren't the same. Seeing his chance to regain his status, Green Monkey he fanned the sparks of Baxter's resenment into a brightly burning flame and encouraged him to do do the unspeakable...

[graphic picture of wounded Purple Monkey with stuffing coming out supressed by censors]

It was touch and go at first. It did not look like Purple Monkey would survive. After hours of surgery, doctors were able to save his life...

...but not his right leg.

The road to recovery has been long and hard, but with therapy the monkeys have put aside their differences. Green Monkey is secure in the knowledge that he is still the favorite (for now). Purple Monkey is now in a twelve step program. He spends his days trying to make amends and dreaming of the day when he has finally saved enough money to buy himself a pegleg.

And Baxter?With time and the help of his friends, he has managed to put the whole ugly business behind him and regain some of his former joie de vivre.

Happy Birthday!!!!!!!!

Today is the birthday of my friend, Jen, with whom I have over the past twenty years created memories of Wigfest, learning to play poker (out of a book - because that's how you roll when you're born to be mild), enduring the deaths of our fathers, pronking, singing "why why why Delilah" at the dinner table, countless road trips ending at seedy hotels (often because having to pee really badly impared our judgement - remember the Santa Ana Sniper Arms or the seedy hotel with the vibrating beds in Yuba City?) and heart to heart talks about just the sorts of things good friends talk about. She and her sister are still among the few people who can make me laugh so hard that the nerve behind the back of my ear starts to hurt. Everyone should have at least a few people like that in her life.

Over the years, Jen and her family have become like family to me (which is a good thing, because, just between you and me, some of my biological family members bear a more than passing resemblance to Cletus the slack-jawed yokel). Thinking back to when we met in a History of Western Civilization class as when we were both starting college (remember the instructor with his Hitler mustache and penchant for sighing and muttering things like "they told me never to teach at a community college" as he stood at the lectern?), I think Jen and I got along so well from the moment we met, because (as we would later learn) our crazy overlaps in so many ways. She is just a few days short of being exactly three months younger than me, which means that I am older, wiser, more experienced, and therefore able to dispense useful advice on everything from love to how awesome she doesn't realize she is to penning indignant and harshly worded "how dare you!" letters. Get to know me! I'm very helpful that way.

So, Jen, have a very Happy Birthday!!!! and here are some words from ee cummings to put in your "Just say yes!" file:

Thank you God for this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is inifinite which is yes

May this new year bring you an abundance - nay, even a superabundance - of YES!