Did I ever tell you about my Mom?

My mother was not always a great mom. She was an active and very drunk alcoholic until I was 21. I never really knew her until I was an adult. When she finally sobered up, she changed and it was like meeting a new person.

People loved my mom. I continued to be surprised by how much. I guess I had seen her be such a bitch for so long, that when people gushed about her, I was just sort of surprised.

And it’s not like she was just a bitch when she was drunk. She apparently was … uh… let’s say high maintenance as a teenager and young adult. She threw some fairly colossal fits.

She was beautiful when she was young. Not in an ordinary way, although she was a nice looking woman. It was the way she carried herself and her style. And although the alcohol stole her physical beauty and replaced it with bags and wrinkles, she never stopped carrying herself with a certain style and attitude.

But more than any of that, my mother taught me several important things. She taught me the importance of equality and tolerance. She taught me that being smart was the most important thing I was. She taught me that helping people was the gift you gave yourself. She taught me that family was important. And she never really told me those things directly.

But she taught them to me, despite being drunk and mean and not very reliable. And when you think about that, that is pretty fucking impressive.

But the biggest and most important thing she taught me was that it’s possible to change. It’s possible to pull yourself out of mire of misery and self destruction and make your life good again. Because she did. She sobered up and changed her life completely. She did it after 20+ years of being at least some level of drunk 90% of the time.

She did it at the age of 60.

She became one of my best friends. And I miss her so much.

Cemeteries and gravestones

I don’t want to be buried, I want to be cremated. I think funerals are a big scam on the vulnerable.

But, that said, I am a little bit sad that I won’t have a gravestone. My grandmother taught me the importance of cemeteries. On the western Iowa and Missouri border, there are many cemeteries filled with my ancestors. They are physical genealogy markers.

Grandma Allen would get a bunch of relatives in a car, or two cars and we would take an all day tour of cemeteries. We would drive on dirt and gravel roads for miles and stop at small rural cemeteries that looked like no one had been buried there for years.

We would walk around and look at the markers and hear how this person and that person was related to us. We would hear where their farm was – sometimes you could see it from the cemetery. We would hear how they died or some fabled family story about them.

Then we would get in the car and drive to the next one. Sometimes we would stop at a farm of some far flung relation, who had inherited a farm that had been in the family for generations. They always greeted us with warmth and took us on a tour, gave us something to drink and sent us on our way with a suggestion or two of who or what to visit next.

My relatives weren’t rich. They were farmers. But I also love to visit the big city cemeteries where the wealthy built crypts that look like mini cathedrals, and put beautiful stone angels and Greek goddesses on their graves. Often they put a beautiful poem or quote on the marker. Its a lovely way to be remembered, even by strangers.

spring-grove-cemetery-30796 These days very few people are quite so extravagant with their graves. I find it kind of sad. Which conflicts heavily with my first statement, doesn’t it?

Well, in the unlikely event that there is lots of money available at my death, I will ask for a bench to built. I want it be in the shade and to be designed to last for centuries. I want it be comfortable and inviting. And on it, I will put an inspiring thought or poem. And my name and dates, of course. My ashes can be scattered somewhere pleasant that my relatives would like to go on vacation, but the bench will mark my life.

Because, in the long run, who will remember me? I have no children. I will be the unremembered maiden aunt and quite forgotten by later generations. No one will tell my stories at the dinner table, the way we tell stories of my great grandparents and grandparents and parents. And even those stories will be forgotten by the spread of time.

But the stones, they last a bit longer. Its a silly human desire to be remembered. A desire of the living for something that will mean nothing to the dead. But I still want it.

Cleaning the Bathtub…

This apartment building is 75+ years old. The bathtub is also that old. It’s no longer a shiny slippery white enamel. Its got a fine tooth of many scratches from many scrubbings which have accumulated enough to create lots of surfaces for dirty to just settle in and just roost.

For a long time I struggled with it. I used every type of cleaner on the shelf, EXCEPT Comet. I was taught never to use Comet powder on enamel. But this bathtub would not get properly gleaming clean. So I started to waver on the Comet. It’s not like I could ruin an already ruined surface! That day past at least 30 years ago.

Anyway, I finally broke down and used Comet with Bleach. And then like some sort of mad woman I scrubbed my bathtub at 11 pm last night. I’m sure my neighbors though I was crazed. And it was like a sweet song of relief. Comet works in this bathtub. I was happily and vigorously scrubbing for 45 minutes last night. Its cleaner looking that it’s ever been. Significantly cleaner than it was when I moved in.

It’s clean enough that I am contemplating an actual BATH. Baths are like nirvana to me. But this bathtub always looked so gross even after cleaning that I couldn’t bring myself to soak in it. Only shower. But now!!!

Tonight, I BATHE!!!

I’m smiling like a maniac just anticipating it. I know – only a mad woman would add a boring post about scrubbing the bathtub to a series about Smiling. But seriously, I’m full of joy over this little thing.

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“There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.” ~Sylvia Plath

Listed Under Appallingly Bad Idea

The CIA’s twitter account is doing a rerun tweeting the Osama Bin Laden’s Assassination as if it were happening today.

This is so… bad taste.

This is so… dangerous.

This is so… typical of our narcissistic American Centric view.

I’m embarrassed for this country. I’m sorry that Obama is making this sort of thing into a sideshow carnival ride.

I’m continually stunned by the choices people make. People who are supposed to be smarter than this.

Dumping Syndrome ruined my recipe.

It’s a terrible thing. If you don’t know what it is be grateful. It’s about the only side effect that makes me question whether the gastric bypass was worth it. Happily it doesn’t last long. It basically makes you feel like you have a fever, you get shaky and weak and you just feel horrid everywhere. Like you are sick, in fact. In the first several years after the bypass I had it daily. I was not a good girl about certain foods, so sometimes I brought it on knowingly, but often, like today, it happened inadvertently.

I licked the extra brown rice syrup off the spoon I used to put it in the recipe. I didn’t even think about it. I just didn’t want to put the sticky spoon on the counter and I couldn’t take my eye off the pan on the stove, so I just did it. And then as I stirred my pot, I began to feel like crap. I was so distracted with my recipe that I still never thought about why. As I was getting into the crucial stage of recipe I was shaking and weak and hot and I just couldn’t do it anymore. So I finally set everything down and curled up on my bed wondering if I was getting the flu.

It took me 5 minutes before I finally realized what it was. I haven’t had it in so long I didn’t even recognize it. I thought I was sick. As I type this my hands are still trembling even though the worst horrible sickness is gone. It wasn’t that much sugar thankfully.

My recipe is ruined because in a moment of thoughtlessness I licked a spoon to avoid having to scrub a counter for a few seconds. Beware the small moments in life – they are the ones that kill you. Or your recipe.

Sigh.

Sometimes I need to be reminded that the world is not Entirely Awful.

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I had a bad week. This means that when I looked at the world and my life all I could see was disaster. I felt like I was on a short road to Dystopia.

But then the smoke curtains lift and I can things a bit more clearly. And then when I look, I can see that there is always something good. Someone good. Things that matter and are good happen.

There are always helpers. It’s a terribly good thing to remember.

So. Alabama and Tennessee.

Sigh.

In TN, there is an argument that suggests that you wouldn’t want to see a therapist or doctor who found your gender repellant. But, its a false argument. Qualified doctors and therapists do not grow on trees. They are not evenly distributed among the population that needs them. Sometimes you need expertise not belief in your gender identity.

In Alabama there is no argument in any form that does not make this law repugnant, immoral and an abomination of human rights. Its unlikely that it will withstand any challenge but its existence is horrifying nevertheless. Its one town, but it exists.

I’m feeling worn out by the hate in the world. I find the people who stand up loudest for this sort of malice are the people who claim to work in the name of “loving God” and that is what makes me most depressed. Because if that their concept of love then we can’t even agree on what love is. Where is common ground at that point?

I try to remind myself that they aren’t the majority but then this happens. And it feels so much like the majority.

When I was young it felt like the future had hope. It felt like we were moving to a better place.

And even though there are huge obvious milestones that have been met, we have these kinds of things and I feel like hate is always going to exist. We will never get past it. There will always be those who look for things to hate in the name of righteousness. We will never be free of it.

Humans…

We have are often kind and good and wonderful.

We are often unfeeling, stupid and mean.

And those are often the same person.

I follow a young couple on Twitter. The man has a life threatening blood cancer and is in the middle of having all of his immune system killed by chemo so he can get a stem cell transplant. Its a dangerous and terrible process. But happily it works quite often.

Today, the young woman was so upset she went outside and started to cry. A woman she didn’t know came up and hugged her. A man she didn’t know shouted at her as he walked by on his cell phone “Cheer up, it might never happen.” and then kept talking on the cell phone.

The man’s response was callous and tone deaf to a say to a woman standing in front of a Cancer Clinic. The woman’s response was exactly what our heroine so desperately needed the silent reach of universal support.

The man’s response was not intentionally unkind. He saw a woman crying and responded. He didn’t need to. No doubt dozens of people walked by and averted their eyes. The problem is that most of us really don’t know what to do in these situations. I certainly don’t. I am not a hugger. The thought of hugging a stranger is NOT pleasant. And what our heroine found comforting would have been uncomfortable to me. But I also would have been deeply angry at that comment made by the man.

No one knows how someone else will respond to their well intentioned support. And many of us just shrink from having to provide any because it may be more destructive than not.

Lab Grown Meat

Scientists are growing meat in labs. They are taking stem cells from a cow and then growing the muscle cells. It’s still in very early stages. But it seems like a likely solution for some of our basic problems of providing food for our future without killing our planet and ourselves.

It also seems vaguely horrific so far. Certainly if you watch this brief video it doesn’t seem appetizing. But that is to be expected. It’s early in the development, the only thing they have is tiny strings of white “meat”. It’s white because there is no blood feeding it. It probably tasteless because there is no fat cell accompanying it. It’s early. But it is a demonstration of possibility.

The implications of this are far reaching. Literally. Imagine taking such a kit to Mars to feed the inhabitants there. The fact is that if you can clone meat, you can also clone the wheat and vegetables. And voila – we have solved food in outer space.

Cloning meat will eliminate a huge amount of greenhouse gases produced by raising animals for food. This is good. It will eliminate the horrific way we treat animals in giant factory farms and slaughter houses. Fewer and fewer family farms exist anymore and with their loss came the terrible cruel treatment of animals in the name of efficiency.

But Lab Meat is also very sad to me. The food we eat is more than the cell. It’s the particular combination of cells that make it taste good. A strawberry grown in hydroponics tastes different than a strawberry grown in the ground in your garden. It’s because the plant, and therefore the fruit, is absorbing a different set of nutrients. There is also a different set of stresses on the plant, which I would guess would make the plant change slightly. Even after they perfect their meat cells and combine it with the appropriate other cells of fat and blood, the lab grown food will almost certainly lack that earthy good flavor of food grown normally. We will be missing something important to the enjoyment of our lives.

Also, because humans are humans, people with money will be able to buy “real” food and people without enough money will be stuck with Lab Meat. It is always the the way.

I don’t suppose that is anywhere near the immediate future though. I expect to be dead before Lab Meat is perfected and so broadly available. And for once I’m grateful that I won’t be around to see the future.

Allergies make me sick

I have Spring Hayfever.

Allergies.

Sneezing, Runny Nose, Post Nasal Drip, Sinus stuffiness, headache, itchy eyes.

It’s a cornucopia of hellish symptoms. If it were January, I would call it a cold. But since it’s April, I’m not sick. I have allergies.

What?

I feel like HELL. But I’m not sick?

I’m also tired all the time from a combination of allergy meds and allergies disrupting my sleep. But I’m not sick, I’m miserable.

Allergies. I’m really sick of them. dog-keyboard_mini