Some things I've heard lately, some things I've said

"You're so tight here," she runs her thumb down the inside of my mouth along my jaw and cheek. "But up here in front, it's almost like there's no muscle here at all."

I can say nothing. She has her hand in my mouth.

"And over here," on the left side. "All the tension that's missing on the right is bundled up here on the left."

I nod, just barely. She pokes around under my cheekbones. "Ok, I'm going to punish you now."

While she does the release, I think about the words she's just said and I try not to laugh, because it would really hurt. Really.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"There was a car in our back space," I point towards a piece of paper where I've scrawled the information. "I could barely make it out, so I grabbed a bag of trash together and took it out. Before I opened the gate, he'd pulled out of the space and headed down the alley, slow and casual."

"Maybe it wasn't anything to worry about, but maybe they're looking for a quiet place to clean out a car," he says.

"Exactly. With the receipts you found a few days back, and wasn't there another receipt a couple weeks ago, with a torn up bus ticket as well?"

"You're right!" he remembers. We both think about this. If were were characters in The Sims, we'd have thought bubbles above our heads with silhouettes of burglars in masks in them. Crime. Thinking about crime.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"She came into town for an ultrasound, and now they want to do a biopsy."

"Really?" I ask, dumbfounded. "A fine-needle biopsy?"

"Doesn't that sound awful?"

"Yes," I agree.

"It's in two weeks, so she'll be back again."

But I'm still thinking about what a big ball of mess I'd be at this point in the process.

"He's not worried," she continues. "They just want to confirm they're benign, and then they'll tag them for the future.

Gang members with spray paint cans holding long hypodermic needles between their fingers like cigarettes. Tagging. All this floats through my brain but I say nothing.

"She's here, do you want to talk to her?"

"Sure," I say. Muffled sounds on the phone.

"Gah, Bridgett," the new voice says. "I was trying to make cream cheese dip! What do you want?"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"I gave Jake the magic D20 for his door prize, but you could have the cat fountain," she offers. I look it over. My cats do need a new consistent source of water. The little bowl I put out seems to evaporate and get slurped up faster than I can keep it full. Plus they like running water.

"I'll give it a try," I tell her. I put it by my bag to take home. A few minutes later, she's standing in the kitchen next to me holding a bottle of Joy.

"I forgot! This was supposed to be your door prize!"

"But you just gave me, like, 48 ounces of the stuff."

"I know, but Dierbergs still carries it so I buy it whenever I'm there." She hands it to Fiona. "Here, it can be your door prize.

Fiona takes the bottle of dish soap with that mild look on her face. She goes and puts it by my bag.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"When she serves, she just gazes out at the people in the congregation," I explain, showing my best interpretation of the look she gets on her face.

"I know, Mom was telling me about it. How she seems to be in her own little world. And you know what? I want to go to her own little world, because it must be fantastic with all the time she spends there."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Miss Bridgett, I was just sitting out there in the car with Kadir's dad? Did you know he's a house inspector?"

It's funny how fast my posture changes when the topic of houses comes up. When people start asking nosy questions about things we've changed or fixed in the house. I rapidly start going through the interaction I had with Kadir's dad back in November.

"Well, he wanted to know if you knew about the trees you planted out front? If their roots spread out or if they went straight down?"

I take a deep breath. "The oak, of course, is a tap root, and the birch spreads out, but I'm not worried about it where it is."

"Well, he's worried about your lateral sewer line," she says, obviously recalling the exact words her husband used.

"That's on the other side of the walk," I tell her confidently.

"Well, Miss Bridgett, I told him that I was sure you knew what you were doing, but he just was worried, sitting out there in the car with me looking at your house."

"Yeah, well, I think we're probably ok. And we put trees in and take them down pretty regularly--there's no power lines out in front, so if something has to come down, my uncle can handle it with us."

"Ok, Miss Bridgett. Kadir, are you ready to go?"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"After we talked, I was chatting with someone about what I do, and I realized I was talking all in future tense. And I suddenly knew I didn't want to make this change. I knew what I wanted to do, I couldn't leave it undone," I say in a rush, thinking of how I was feeling at that moment.

"Isn't it such a blessing to have those revelations in little silly things?" he reflects back to me in language I understand. "It is so good to be able to find what you need to do."

"Exactly," I nod. "I know what I want, and if I did something else," I spread my feet further apart on the wet grass, looking down at them. "I would always be standing in two places."

The look on his face tells me that it is settled, at least between us.

"So now what do I do?" I ask. I'm always one for asking about the next step. I can't leave an encounter without knowing what is coming.

He doesn't answer right away. I'm thinking I need to work. I'm thinking I need to, in the words of Woody Guthrie, wake up and fight.

"Have faith," he says, almost a question. "I'll let you know when we need you to act."

"I will do whatever we need," I promise. A huge weight is off the old shoulders and everything seems clear again.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Pete!" I call out. There he is, standing (yes, standing) in front of me. He's signing in at the desk of the rehab hospital.

"Mrs. Kennedy," he says, but he can't place Ann next to me. We watch the wheels turn while he mumbles to himself. He says it just as I tell him.

"What are you doing here?" he asks. We tell him about Joan, that we have a friend in there after a stroke.

"You're looking so good," I say, which sounds like a total small-talky thing to tell him but is what is exactly in my mind. When I saw him a year ago I was stunned by how bad he looked. And that was before the train accident.

"Yeah," he's suddenly a 6th grader in my class. A very tall 6th grader. "I've got OT in just a minute," he points around the corner.

"It's so good to see you," I tell him. It's so good you're alive, I think.

The Health Post

My health hasn't been the greatest for a while. Seven years, at least, when my thyroid started to fail and lots of things started to trip up on me. Billy's birth didn't make things better, either. But things are looking up.

1. I don't have celiac disease. I have malabsorption of fat-soluble vitamins and iron, along with thyroid symptoms and Hashimoto's, and I'm Irish, so it was worth testing. But no. This wasn't the answer, which is good and bad. Good because who wants an auto-immune disease (I already have one), bad because it would be easily fixed. So then

2. Time to work around the malabsorption. I started taking liquid vitamin D. You drop it under your tongue and let it mostly soak through the membrane there into the veins. And you know what? My heels don't hurt anymore. It was kind of scary how quickly I felt better.

3. When I went in to buy the vitamin D, I talked with my pharmacist about malabsorption and he asked me if I'd ever been on any heavy doses of antibiotics. In fact, I had. Six different ones and I can't remember all their names, for an e.coli infection I contracted in the hospital when Fiona was born. I was on an IV for 2 weeks full of it and then oral antibiotics for weeks. "Your intestinal flora is probably all out of whack," he told me. But I took acidophilus when I was nursing babies, I thought to myself. But I let this toss around my brain for a few weeks and then went to the doctor.

4. She sat at her desk and totally nodded up and down as I told her this theory. "It could be the root of a lot of problems," she acknowledged. "Health starts in the gut. Seratonin, weight management, absorption of nutrients, all kinds of things." And if I were on such heavy-duty antibiotics, who knows what all I wiped out of my system. So among other things (eating more fermented food, for instance), I'm now purposefully consuming pills full of bacteria. Good bacteria. Acidophilus is only one, she pointed out. The one she put me on has 6 latin names inside it.

5. While I was there, well, I was really there for my inflamed jaw muscle, and she did a myofascial release that made me cry it was so painful. It was so painful. And then it wasn't painful anymore. I'm tired of the magic. But she put me on boswellia. I went home and looked it up. Frankincense. I'm taking frankincense. It's been through clinical trials for inflammatory diseases like Crohns and more basic stuff like osteoarthritis. It's an anti-inflammatory that doesn't tear up your stomach like ibuprofen can. And, knock on wood, it's doing the job. She also wants me at the cranial-sacral therapist I see more often than I have been going. Like every 2 weeks. Which is fine. I always leave there feeling all right.

6. And I've started working out. In the wintertime. It's been a long time. And I'm doing a lot. Have been since the start of the year and I can't believe I'm still doing it but every day it's in my brain nagging me until I do. It helps that I got a sports bra that is AMAZINGLY AMAZING. We are late spring to mid-autumn exercise people, but last year we weren't even that and it's been bad for us. Getting started in January means that those bikes in the front hall will look like an easy transition in April.

I'm going to hike in the Smokies this summer. I have to feel better. I keep trying to focus on that and it's working. All my willpower is going into this area, though, and so Jake has to be in charge of things like money and time and such. Joan's stroke was a wakeup call, too, but mostly, just feeling like shite for so long got really old.

So that's the health post.

Changes

Ten on Tuesday: 10 things to do indoors when it's too miserable to go out

Until about 2 years ago, for many long years, cold hurt me. Now I can go out and take a brisk walk, or even slide down a hill. But for a long time, I was an indoor winter girl. Winter and snow was lovely, when viewed through the frame of a window.

1. Blog. Can you tell the weather's been nice in St. Louis? No time to blog here...

2. Write trivia questions. I contribute to a couple of different trivia nights nowadays. I'm always thinking of a category.

3. Sew. Quilt on the sewing machine right now, one I owe Fiona's classroom.

4. Cook a big pot of stew.

5. Drink coffee and chat. This is one of my favorites of course. Annie's predicting we'll spend the next few weeks at her house doing this on more than a few occasions.

6. Clean something thoroughly. Like the guest room. Or the drawers in the dresser in the bathroom.

7. Plan a garden. Mine is going well in my head.

8. Plan a trip. No trips for us this year on the horizon (Disney and Portland last year was plenty) but I love spending quiet winter days looking for things to do in the fantastic places I'm going to visit soon. And there's the girl scout camping trip, after all.

9. Sleep in. Best part of snow days.

10. Art. I have three projects going right now besides prep for teaching. One is stained glass for the cabinet in my dining room (I need more lead). The other two have to do with Jake's birthday so that's all for now.

French Toast Alert Has Expired

It snowed on Thursday. And life has been busy ever since.

In St. Louis, the night before it's supposed to snow, it is tradition to rush in a panic to the supermarket and buy all the milk, bread, and eggs you can fit in your cart. Hence, French Toast Alert. It's so sad, really. One time in my lifetime we've been snowed in longer than a day, back in January '82. Once. And yes, there are heroic stories of folks taking children's sleds to the grocery stores for their neighbors during that snow. There was also, winter of '06 or early '07, an ice storm that knocked power out for several days for some people I know. But seriously, St. Louisans, it makes us look like fools, as if we can't survive one or two days without fresh milk, bread, eggs.

I had milk, bread, and eggs. So on Thursday morning, when we awoke to a nice little dusting, the first snow of the season, I made French Toast.
That's a pumpkin seed cranberry bread. And my last few bites after the girls made a mess of the table on their way to school. We had school, which was good, but Jake didn't make it to work. He turned around after about a mile on the black-ice covered highway and worked from home. It snowed throughout the day. Cold enough that Billy wasn't so thrilled about even walking in it dressed in boots and snowpants and coat and hat and mittens. So I brought snow inside.
Friday was cold. I was having friends over for dinner: the other mary, Maloki, Rob, and Janet. A little into the afternoon, the other mary called me to tell me she was sick and didn't want to expose my kids. Having just gotten Daisy through a double ear infection that made her vomit 15 times in 24 hours, I thanked her. Maloki (pronounced Malachi, and it isn't his real name but has been a nickname since college because he resembles Malachi from Children of the Corn. I've never seen the movie. Mal has red hair and dresses in black), anyway, Maloki doesn't have a car so I was putting on my coat to go pick him up when Ann called.

Ann was in New York at Vogue Knitting Live and had gone to PurlSoho, a store we drool over online. This is the only part of the trip that made me jealous--I mean, trips are fun, but going to PurlSoho was the only part that got to me. I thought she was calling to tell me all about it. And I thought, "Seriously, Ann? Can't the taunting wait?" and picked up the phone.

No.

Ann and I go to coffee every Wednesday with Joan, and oftentimes Emily and Traci join us. We've been going to coffee together, well, I joined them 6 years ago. We knit, solve the world's problems, talk about our kids, you know, adult venting to keep the pressure off. Ann wasn't calling to brag. Ann was calling because Joan had a stroke. Joan's husband had called her in a panic, looking for a place for his teenaged son to stay while he followed the ambulance to the hospital. In New York, Ann wasn't going to be able to do that. So Ann called me, had me call him, and in short order, we had a shy worried teenager joining us for dinner.

Joan is 50. The doctors say she'll make a good recovery--in a year's time--but on Friday night we didn't have any idea. Her son spent most of the evening sitting on our steps in the front hall. Many gestures were made towards him, but he was too much a teenaged boy in a strange place worried about his mother and his future to join us.

Saturday dawned with a girl scout field trip looming. High of 35, heading over to the Chain of Rocks Bridge to see the eagles wintering there. Lightest eagle year yet, since it's been so warm, but we saw some of the local nesting pairs, walked a long way, talked to some Lewis and Clark folks in costume, with a boat and guns and whatnot, and got to touch frozen dead songbirds (this, of course, was the little girls' favorite part of the trip. Daisy picking up the blue jay and asking, "why is his head floppy?" and the department of conservation woman responding, "well, he's starting to thaw out a bit").

Then Sunday Daisy had a reaction to something in church and I brought her home before the Gospel reading--she was puffy and reacting to something at Christmas Eve mass, too, so I wonder about the cleaning supplies. We'll keep trying. I took her out of the pew, down the aisle, and out into the fresh air--she was fine before we got to the car. We still went home.

Yesterday, MLK Day, it was 66 degrees. I cleaned out the rest of the debris from the garden. I finished the treehouse. I dug up a bunch of tigerlily day lilies for their tubers--we're eating them as part of dinner tonight (they are weeds in my back lot and I thin them every few years. Now we eat them, too). Cleaned house, did laundry, helped Daisy ride her bike, worked out (I am faithful to every other day now, since the new year), drank coffee, made chili for supper.

Then this morning, 2:30 a.m., I woke up to thunder. January thunder after a 66 degree day makes me nervous with good reason out here in the midwest. I lay there awake, unable to go back to sleep. I was rewarded soon after with the tornado siren. We live a half block from the fire station, which has a siren. And after Joplin's tornado last year, I don't play around. My girls sleep under the eaves. So Jake went upstairs to wake them. I carried Billy down to the living room and turned on the TV. False alarm, literally, although it was bad to the south of us and the city sirens go off if the county ones do these days. We sat in the living room for about 15 minutes before putting the girls to bed in the guest room and falling back into bed ourselves. I thought I'd been lying there about 20 minutes when the hail started. But no--it was almost 2 hours later and I hadn't really been to sleep. I hate weather at night. During the day, it's so much easier to gauge when to hunker down in the basement. At night things are magnified and distorted.

So 6:30 came early, let me tell you. Jake took the girls to school on his way to work and Billy got up at 8:30. I had a look at his finger, which has some sort of injury that has led to a big red bump between his fingernail bed and the knuckle. It needs looking at. So that's my morning. Hoping for a less eventful week.

New Girl Scout Plan

My cadettes (I have a split troop of juniors and cadettes--only 4 cadettes and 14 juniors) are going to Great Smoky Mountain National Park this summer. I've been researching some for them so they can pick things. It's hard not to make all the decisions (I love planning trips) but frankly I will love whatever we do. I cannot wait.

Year in Review: a Summation in Blog Posts

I did this last year too and it was fun for my most narcissistic side to go back and reread and remember. So what was up with us in 2011? It was the smallest number of communications since I started writing, save for the first year which really didn't start going until Summer 2006. I was busy. Still am. Here's some year in review:

In January, we have a snow day. I get too busy with too many broken things. I go camping with snitchy-cat girls (wow, that was only last January??).

February, we went to Disneyworld. Yes, Disneyworld. Then I got to make the hardest phone call I've ever had to make. Billy got his first haircut. Fiona took first in her reel at a feis. And we spent a night in the basement through a tornado warning.

In March, I saw a movie that made my heart glad. I went on a mah jongg girls weekend and pondered it later. I walked in a parade and Fiona danced at a bar. A bird made me relax. I remembered something I knew for sure.

In April Daisy found a missing cat and returned it to its owner. I listened and prayed at Easter. I freaked out about rising flood waters.

In May I saw a spider and a bluejay. I sanded part of a floor. I said the words "group obtuseness". I went to the country. And more country here.

June brought with it sunburn and capsizing a canoe on purpose. I chatted with a Muslim woman in the grocery store. I consumed mass quantities of garlic scape pesto, and Daisy wrote about Australia.

July is my anniversary. Daisy was in a show. It was too hot. In August we went to Portland (actually the end of July) to get away from the hot. That is all.

In September I started teaching art. I realized dance was over for Fiona. Billy went to speech.

In October I went to mass. Another girl scout camping trip and a homemade Irish dance costume. I thanked heaven for my next door neighbor the endodontist. I thought about eating deer (and ate it, too). Bleys died. And the girl scouts went on a trip.

In November I was accused of being far older than I am. We went to Pere Marquette. Daisy is sweet. I tried hard to be thankful.

In December I hurt. I went camping. I hurt some more. We made a silly gingerbread house. But mostly I just hurt. It sucked.

I have high hopes for 2012. Last year was stressful--many things I didn't write in the blog because of the players involved. I'm hoping this year I can say everything because nothing will be so so bad.

Our First Date

The Spaniards on our floor liked to party. You could tell by the end of the year where Spaniards had lived, by the ring of dirt, cigarette ash, and spilled fluids of all sorts outside the doors. Gorka lived on our floor, and was quick to point out he was Basque, not Spanish, but he partied with the lot of them anyhow. We never knew how old he was but guessed mid-twenties. Grown up alcohol, grown up girlfriends. Parties.

They were fond, not just on our floor, but throughout our cinderblock dormitory, of taking a cigarette lighter to the smoke detectors in the hallway. To pull a fire alarm meant breaking glass and making a scene. But flames up by the wired system of fire detection did the trick just as well. My freshman year had many nights spent waiting in the parking lot with friends and disgruntled non-Spaniards, waiting to be let back into our rooms. During these alarms, the party continued outside with more participants than ever.

One night in late April, there were three fire alarms. It was 5th floor, not 4th, where they kept happening, and yet the party wasn't shut down entirely. We all could have told Jeanette, the official in charge of our dorm, exactly who was responsible. But she wasn't listening. In fact, she rarely did, and that year was spent in frustration of not being listened to. Not being listened to about Tino at the end of the hall probably date-raping the young high school girls he brought up every weekend. Every weekend a new girl. Not being listened to about depressed floormates. Not being listened to about living conditions, about the trash not going out, about the rings of dirt and ash and alcohol on the carpet outside the party rooms.

But that night, the fourth fire alarm, I found myself outside with Jake. His roommate had left after the second alarm, took his girlfriend and found friends in another dormitory where they could crash for the rest of the night. Jake and I had had a big fight earlier that spring and I'd written off the potential of even being friends. The fight had been all my fault and I was having a hard time living up, owning up, moving on. That night, coming on to morning, just the bits of twilight appearing in the east, I stood out there next to him for just a few seconds. He swung his keys around in a figure 8, catching them in his hand, walking to his car. I followed, knowing wherever he was going would be better than the night had been thus far.

We drove down Kingshighway and found a McDonalds that was open for business. Fries and milkshakes. His was vanilla but tasted like strawberry. He left it on the curb and shared mine. We headed back to the dorm. He was still dating the tall mysterious Vanessa. I had Troy in my back pocket, although if I were honest for a moment, I knew it wasn't going to last. I wasn't looking for a boyfriend; Jake has infinitely more integrity than I do and he certainly wasn't looking for a girlfriend. Back home, the 8 story 1960s era grim beige brick facade loomed. Morning was upon us and the first few early birds were leaving for their day in classrooms to the east. My first class wasn't until 10--I could catch a 4 hour nap and drag myself over to Ethics, easy.

I met Jake for lunch after, in the cafeteria, but with several other folks. It wasn't until much much later that I realized this was our first date. There are other contenders--ice cream on my last day of freshman year before my dad and I drove home to Texas; the balloon glow the following September; the first official date of "Much Ado About Nothing" on September 20, 1993. But really, if I'm honest, it was the middle of the night drive down an empty thoroughfare and bad fast food. Thank you Spaniards, thank you Gorka.

Ten Things I Like Unabashedly

The last one was the hardest. These should be easy:

1. Living in the city
2. Waldorf dolls
3. Tapas
4. Archery
5. Tex-mex
6. Christmas lights
7. Croissants
8. Letters to or from friends (in the mail, I mean, with a stamp)
9. Trees, especially oaks
10. Henry Rollins

(the last one was probably just to make you laugh)

Ten Things I Admit to Liking Despite the (Real or Imagined) Judgment of Others

Hmm. This is a harder list.

1. Roleplaying Games. There, I said it, and I'm not sorry.
2. Milk chocolate. Why is this sneered at? I don't get it.
3. Country music
4. St. Louis style pizza. I don't prefer provel, but I will eat it. I just love the cracker crust.
5. (Sort of) being from Texas. I'm not really from there, but it was the last place I lived before I went to college and became an adult.
6. Cream cheese dip (cream cheese mixed with milk; eat with fritos or potato chips)
7. Rodeos
8. Grunge music and other music from the early 90s (Nirvana, Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails, and so forth)
9. Screwball comedies (Top Secret, Airplane, Clue, Murder by Death, etc)
10. Texas style barbecue

Ten Things I Don’t Like But Wish I Did

Part Two. I soften my opinions. Thing is, I'm not too hard persuaded into liking something, so most of these will be food.

1. Black coffee
2. Black tea
3. Cheese (I like cheese under certain circumstances and certain kinds)
4. Sauerkraut
5. Sushi
6. Classical Music (I don't hate classical music. I just don't like it)
7. Scary movies
8. Little Big Planet (a Playstation 3 game)
9. Dogs
10. Mardi Gras

Ten Things I Don't Like and Probably Never Will

From Indigo and Mali, now it is my turn to write the list. There are a couple of lists in this theme. Perfect distraction from the sickbed downstairs where the (not really sick anymore) girl is watching cartoons.

1. Ironing
2. Dystopian Literature
3. Bratz Dolls
4. People who affect an accent for a non-comedic reason (simply to be pretentious, for instance)
5. Hamburgers that are not well-done
6. Spongebob Squarepants
7. Sucralose, aspartame, saccharine
8. Elmo from Sesame Street
9. Pep rallies
10. "Cinnamon" candy