About Me

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I am mundane and magical, Silly and serious. I am an underachiever who suspects that someday in the eternities I may yet blossom and even fruit. I am a collector of spirits and essences, a studier of mood and nuance.I have many many faults and yet I've always been loved. I am a good friend, but I will let you go if you so desire. I believe in Somewhen. I laugh easily and cannot often cry, which I know is a Flaw. Like You, I am a work in progess.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

When I dream they are often long and epic. last night was one of those. But dark, and I am trying to figure out why. Can't I just have a funny dream? Or a sexy dream? Apparently not. I dreamed of a string of suicides taking place over centuries. They were in "America" and the site was a tree (though I only saw pale smooth but large roots and it was in a dungeon or cave. The first victims were women, and dressed in Pilgrim garb. I say victims but it was always one at a time and I say victims because like the one I remember most, a young woman who didn't want to die, she just wanted to be loved by her family and the male, brutish representative of that family was going to profit from her death. He drove her to it. And in her death I felt all of her emotions her fear and despair and longing for life to be other tan it was. And I watched her death, every moment. When she was dead, the brute missed her, because she could no longer serve his needs. It was a very long time before there was a male suicide. There were only a few of those. I could never quite get the mix of religious and political ends these deaths served, but they did serve those ends. and always someone profited.

Yesterday I got a chunk of CIS done, I need to go do more. Have to take the test by 7. I have the poetry final at 2 and I want to go to Storm the Mic tonight if I can. I say if I can because while yesterday I was starting to feel better today I am coughing deeply and feeling like CRAP again. I thought I might be getting well. Hah! Still 2 essays to write for History too, but not today. That's tomorrow. My Environmental Science professor sent me a letter about a paid internship. But it's in Oregon. 8 weeks! I'd love to go. I might broach it to Bruce, he does love it when I am gone. 8 weeks though...

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Last night was another one of "those nights" and when I had to get up I was so exhausted and drained and angry and sad and all the other emotions those nights leave me with. And, as I always do I wonder why I do this over and over, I wonder what more can I learn. Well... I ate so I can't sleep and can't even lay down because it is too painful. I went to the bathroom thinking I might throw up but even that isn't ripe, I read part of an article i started the other day. If I manage some energy and remember I need to try to relate my thoughts to the article because it gave me a little clarity. The article was touching on "ethical traps" and I am in no way cogent enough right now to give that a just description. But reading this article and understanding that what I come back  to again and again was for me the most deep and true experience I will ever have in this life (which is sad, but I believe it is also true) anyway I had so many thoughts all at once and for a minute this thing which feels like inescapable mental illness and negativity actually felt like iit had some relevance. Not like a healing thing or like I would ever get past it but I did have a glimmer of understanding as to why it occurs. I still don't think it is resolve-able, but i did at least get some useful ideas for the shell of my remaining life. I still don't understand why mylife continued after that experience. I can't think o any pressing reason why it should have but here I am and maybe there is sense or maybe I am just using more than a "fair" share of this interconnected planet's resources. The older i get the less I know but as it happen sometimes I don;t feel quite as stupid if that makes any sense. This is mish mosh. I don;t know f i can clarify at some later date. I hope to. But that idea of ethical traps is very important to me

Thursday, April 24, 2014

With this illness, whatever it is, when I eat i feel like I was cold cocked, spent some time in a hellish dreamscape and woke up with my thoughts doing slow vague ellipses fuzzily around my head. It is very difficult to concentrate. I have to go out today. I have to or flunk that flippin' class. and omg the Humanities test is not Friday (well it is but Friday is TOMORROW) I have no idea when the poetry final is. It's not on the syllabus, I looked. I just want to sleep and sleep and sleep. On a hammock rocking in a mild warm breeze smelling growing things and dirt.  

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

It's Finals time at school. I think I will get either an A or A- in most of my classes, but there's one I am currently at 65% in- that would be CIS, which I ardently hate. I've been ignoring work in it to concentrate on the other classes and I intended to go in today to see what, if anything I could do to salvage it. But I am sick. Many people at school are sick now and some, like my friend Rebecca who has PNEUMONIA, are lots sicker than me. This morning my illness was actually pleasant for awhile as it was giving me a heightened vulnerability to synesthesia, music was wonderful! But that wore off and devolved to just the phlegm-my cough (deep), the congestion, the exhaustion, and grumpiness....body aches and feverish sweats. I did go to Humanities but did not venture back out after coming home. I helped Rebecca who I feel protective of, in awe of, and great empathy for. But once she was caught up on the in-class assignment I went to bed. Slept awhile too. Bruce, coming in to meditate woke me up and that made the coughing start and I found myself smack in the realm of How It Feels. Again. Of all the things I know i know this is an irresolvable issue for me. It is never going to change and it's so painful and so draining. I just couldn't take it tonight so I got up, which made Bruce feel guilty I think., He got up and tried to get me to come back to bed, but I know that loop and it would hold me for hours, so, I got up and will try to study for the Humanities final on Friday. If that doesn't work I will  watch a movie. Before I try going back to bed tonight I will take Benedryl, which staved off a bout of this cycle the other night and let me get a little rest. I will drink water and think with anticipation of the poetry slam I intend to attend on May 9th after finals are OVER. I think I will come here, to this page more often because I have been in this How it Feels cycle for so long and so depressingly I don;t want to cry all over Facebook anymore. I do whine and I will do it here because only 1 person I know reads this and has the option not, to but writing is definitely a vent for me. Some people on Facebook  are close enough to me that they want to fix it, or they want me to explain and, just no. I think of this How it Feels cycle like the permanent infection Dude has. His body can wall it off for a time, but it always recurs and infections....well, they are nasty things you don't want to inflict on anyone else. So, this will be my cry space and sorry if you happen upon it.

 I am also thinking I may need to distance myself from issues I don't know how to change like politics. Man oh man! Reading Larry Schweikart again this semester really, truly upset me. I don't know how to address all the things I perceive as being wrong in the world. I think I do need to figure out some ways, but I am a little fish type person and feel my influence is more as Maude from Harold and Maude answers when Harold  asks her, "No more revolts?" She replies "Oh, yes! Every day. But I don't need a "defense"anymore. I embrace. Still fighting for the Big Issues, but now in my small, individual way." I need to get better at doing that, doing what i can do in my own small individual way and be thankful that I don't have children because the world the young are inheriting is fucked up due to power and greed. 

Sunday, April 20, 2014

We had our "Emerging Voices" poetry performance last night. Have I said how much I love my class? I LOVE those people! We each read two poems, not, thankfully, back to back. I did better than I thought I would, but oh my dear God, some of the people in the class are just SO GOOD! I bought 10 chapbooks and gave one to Bruce and keeping one. I need to find good homes for the rest, but I so wish I could send the poets along too so people could have a sense of who they are. Payton read first. I was disappointed that in the class I was never in a workshop with him so I only got to hear like one of his poems early on. He won a poetry prize. One day I saw him in the Harmon's grocery store and I told him I thought he was very talented (based on the one poem he read to the class) He is an interesting mix. I get the feeling of Jack Kerouac and the midwest. He seems a little uncomfortable in his body but that if he WERE comfortable he might could do amazing things. I would not put shape shifting past him. He has an element of ecstasy and yet groundedness in his poems. He writes about strange places like Vietnam (when could he have been there? I think he is in his late 20s. And there is much alcohol in his poetry like he is trying to burst the bands and be the shaman that he seems to be inside. I don;t know that the alcohol will do it but I am betting he gets there. I went next. I was decent. Mariah went third. I love her name, Mariah. She started off the semester rhyming everything and I think it's hard for her to accept poetry doesn't have to rhyme. She is a pretty woman, blonde with flirting eyes and she writes very upbeat poetry. her beautiful eyes and smile were the closest I could get to her though, otherwise it seems that she lives in a different world than me, but one I USED to think was real. For her I hope it stays real, because she likes it there. Next was Cammie, she has some really really beautiful images in her poems but, because of shyness I think she tends to read them too fast. Last night, on the darkened stage, she relaxed and I was spellbound in enchantment. One of her poems, Balloonman she typed out in the shape pf a balloon trailing a string. It is a good poem! Talks about feeling dependent and how it feels when (sorry) the bubble burst. but her other one, which she dedicated to her grandma I found deeply lovely. It has a sensuousness and an innocence and respect and love all through it. She read so well! Kelsey J read next. She is a very talented young woman! This first poem of hers was called Casual Sex and it is good! Her boyfriend came to the reading (there were a good number of people there. i was a little sad that none of MY friends came) He brought her a big bouquet of yellow flowers. She is also a person who in class tended to rush through her readings. But last night she did not and she put a lot of feeling into them. I was very impressed that she memorized these two long poems. Casual Sex was good but the other one, Shackled, where she talks about having Achalasia was really really moving. It was the closing poem of the evening. Kelsey R read next. She looks a lot different than she writes! She looks very sweet and maternal and I do not doubt that is there but she writes as if writing is her lifeblood. Like she needs to do it, no matter if anyone ever read anything. I really love her writing! Daniel was next. My first impression of Daniel was a little along the lines of Morris the cat, Garfield with a tinge of a straight Truman Capote if you can imagine that. Over the class time I came to feel really like he was a brother of mine. Both of his poems were very heartful and he said a lot in a short space. He is also musical but I failed to ask him what he plays! he's apparently very serious about playing music though. Both of his poems dealt with pain and grief. Andrew was next. Andrew! I am not sure but i would guess him for a drama major. He is VERY expressive in face and body and he speaks very well. He didn't practice his poems in class (I think because the teacher was giving more time to those of us who are NOT performers) he is so natural in performance and so well knows what he is doing that I was surprised that he choked a little last night. He still put in 2 very good performances though. he is the one who reminds me of the trapeze artist from a childhood deck of Old Maid cards, he wears mutton chop sideburns and manages to make them look good. Josh read next. Josh was another one who I never got to hear in class. But he seemed, I am no sure, cowed? Like walking down the street people probably do not look at Josh past the first glance. Last night though I learned he has a magnificent reading voice, His poems are a little hard to understand, like they were spun in a reality I don;t quite recognize, a gentle mix of fantasy with a tnge of what we might call insane? But hearing him read last night I wanted to explore that world. After Josh there was Whitney. Ah Whitney!! Such a firecracker! When i got home and gave Bruce a copy of the chap book he surprised (and delighted) me by reading it right away and he had things to say. One was that MY poetry wasn't as bad as I think it is, nice but he lives with me.So I take that with a grain of salt. He thought Whitney had the strongest voice of all of us and if he had seen her she would have cemented that impression. He used the word for her he really only used in relation to hims mom. "Spitfire" and that she is! She is amazing! Next was Michael. Oh Michael Michael Michael!!! It is my second class with michael and everything I learn about him makes me just really like him more! He reminds me of a combination of my brother and an elf. I would have felt sorry for him having to perform after Whitney but I think he gave the best performance of the night! And that's sayng a LOT! I hope I run into michael again and again. Kelton had to follow Michael. Kelton seems shy. But last night, esecially in his second poem he absolutely ROCKED! He was being a dragon and fighting a dragon and a hundred other things i did not expect to see from him. I was WOWED! Gabby. I would love to be Gabby's friend, but I get the impression that's a hard task to undertake. Though plenty who have done it showed up for her last night. She is a black woman. She is sassy and smart and very observant and she's a perfectionist. She kept muffing her first reading last night but her response was so charming and funny and GABBYESQUE that I was almost glad. She has a wonderful voice. I could listen to her read a phone book. And she is very funny. Writes very good poetry too. Then came Joh. My first impression of Joh was something between a cat and a lizard. He is 5'5" but quite often the spirit of him grows enormous. He is deadpan and hilarious which is such a good combination. He tells the best true but hard to believe stories! He says he is half Asian (I think Japanese) but jokes that you can't see it. And I sure never would have guessed. I am really going to miss seeing Joh, Unless somehow I am lucky enough to do so again. He was the one whose Vegan ex-girlfriend attacked his car tires with a SWORD. Ad next was Missy. I fell in love with Missy on sight. She is sort of like a hippie spirit born to this generation. She is a wonderful performer but i think that's just because she is being herself. And I love her poetry! She is so deft! She was perfect last night. Tahina read next. She is also a back woman. I had this impression ( hope I am wrong) that she wished she was white. She strted the semester rhyming and writing only "nice" stuff but when she opened up oh my God she was good! and she's beautiful too. Tiny and looking like no one but Tahina. She was worried about being able to read one of the poems we had selected among the 4 she offered. It was her best but she thought she could not read it well. She sure did! She read it superbly. And that was our class except our teacher Darren. i took this this because i enjoyed him so much in a previous class. he is full of energy and enthusiasm. I love that I have never seen him in shoes. He wears thongs. He is a very good teacher. But he won't be back. As an adjunct (sans PhD) it is not worth it. That is a pity! I have had some really good professors, Dr Lewis, Dr Bringhurst, Dr Armstrong, but this guy is sure enough up with them. it's a pity that a PhD is required to be a full fledged professor.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

just a copy of a facebook post

We had David Lee, Utah's first poet laureate in class today. We were required to buy his most recent book, Last Call, and when I first picked it up and started a poem I mistook it for a variety of Cowboy Poetry. Not to disparage Cowboy Poetry, but I sure underestimated Last Call! We heard him read a couple of his poems and he has a wonderful reading voice. In the poems he read he used a very regional dialect which was quite startling when I began hearing the meanings and implications (which only proves me to be sort of a bigot) He was subtle and funny and in today's class, well, David Lee was splendid! I had a really good time. He claims to be an introvert but he is expansive, funny and answers to questions you ask him meander in unexpected but worthwhile places. And he told stories too. One was about waking up on a table in the presence of a large and somewhat surly nurse. He'd had a heart attack with neurological causes and he had died and had an NDE, But there he was back in this world and the nurse was telling him they needed to implant a pacemaker and he was telling her no... he didn't want a pacemaker and she was telling him that this would happen again, that his brain would tell his heart to shut down and next time they might not be able to bring him back. And he told her it was his brain and his heart and his life and she finally left, fairly steaming he said (but much more poetically) Later she came back and she asked him why he really didn't want a pacemaker and he burst out "Because Dick Cheney has a pace maker and i don't want ANYTHING in my life to be like Dick Cheney. (He really hates Dick Cheney) unbeknownst to him his doctor was in the hall and piped up with "I accept that" He told stories on Frank Herbert that made me laugh, he called them asshole stories I do believe, but they showed a human sure enough. And again, funny stories. He read other people's poetry exquisitely but not his own. He LOVES John Milton and recognizes that most people do not. He told us we should read Lycidas as an example of a truly beautiful poem. He read from Campbell Mcgraff In the Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys, and from Maurice manning's Common Man and The House on Breakheart Road, by Gailmarie Pahmeier. he reminded me of a friend I've never met in person, Cameron MacLean, sort of. Someone asked him why he writes poetry as opposed to some other form of writing, she thought maybe memoir... He talked a lot about that prefacing it with a statement akin to, don't be shocked, I know this is incendiary language in Utah, but I am a Socialist. He ranted against capitalism (made me glow, he did) he talked about being forced into the Vietnam War which he did not agree with and being wounded to the point of disability, then coming home, using the GI bill t get n education and beginning to write seriously at age 27, He said most writers don't make much money and poets especially don't but poetry is his mistress and that is what he loves and he is not in it for the money. He talked about writing to an audience, in his case a very narrow spectrum but about writing truly to those people, the ones that can hear you. I had a totally enjoyable afternoon. He is a very good extemporaneous speaker, but the BEST thing for me was in little details that show me the best part of myself, squelched and silent and scarred thought it is is at least still in there somewhere and I might not be able to keep up in a conversation with such a person but I sure as Hell can appreciate him. And that little spark of a me I sort of remember, I am happy to see any evidence of her any time.


Sunday, April 6, 2014

really drawn right now to hearing NDEs. It brings an obvious question- is someone in my life about to die? Of course that's not the only possibility but also of course I think about it. Wondering if that's so, if it's me. It seems people in my family die "young" in a lot of cases. And I have been going through this really intense introspection about my life. Some things are haunting me. Today it is Cherie. Also, Dude, for the last few days has been coming up and laying his head on my leg or just touching me gently. Not afraid of death per se. I am afraid of pain and of loss. Also regretful of some things I have done or not done.

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Poor Bruce, he came in to meditate. I was trying to rest, I cannot get untired. I cannot get uncold. Of course i thrashed and choked and even when I went to do something about that it didn't work. So I got up but now he's up too. I told him to to go back and meditate that I would stay away but he won't. Pretty sure I shouldn't have looked so close at my own damage. But, it is NT like I haven't seen it before. What's new? How long will I be stuck in this place? I read a tale of a "NDE" posted by a friend who surprised me by posting it. I sobbed. Good God, I cannot feel just ONE way either, it's like being pulled many ways at once and it's pretty disgusting, but in the NDE story there was beauty and even hope. But as it said, more or less and sort of like Douglas Adams, there is only Now an wherever you go there you are, but it seems like it would be a very great relief to go somewhere and scream till it was all gone
Pretty subdued today. Yesterday was a day to review my life. I had material for a poem I was thnking of writing, something along the lines of This Is What it Feels Like and I will say, I tend to write from my darker moments not the lighter ones and spending that time reflecting yesterday has left me actually physically weak today. I don't think i will end up writing the poem. It's impossible to get all the tangents an nuances, but toward the end of the day I had a thought that filled me with awe and amusement. By the time I moved to Salt Lake I was about as dead and detached as a person can be. I had no deep immediate ties. Only the vestiges of family too. I had written off a love relationship years an years ago and I am an introvert who does not approach people, so I figured I had time to read or watch tv or drive from home to work and back until the body finally caught up with the rest of me and died. It was on the way back from work one day when that changed. I did nothing to change it. In the less-than-half-a-football-field distance from my car door to my apartment door I was conversationally approached and ended up spending a good couple hours I reckon talking to a stranger I had barely noticed before. About all kinds of things. And while this was a little scary it was interesting. I never expected it to happen again but he HAD said I will see you around. I thought that was the usual phrase. How surprised was I when he knocked at my door. Now, this was not like a romantic encounter in the usual sense of romance, but really it was much more romantic looking back. He became my friend and we talked and talked and listened an listened and how he would have thought to look at a pretty much dead person or how he to a great degree brought me back to life is worth studying. People who know Miles might or might not laugh when I say that being with him was like being with my best concept of God, it was free, heart opening and fun. And it was deep. And every once in awhile I smile to think he never said goodbye and maybe that means we might run into each other again. Miles could find a person in hell and ask if you were ready to blow that joint.

Friday, April 4, 2014

Vivid dream last night. I was on some cross country trip with my (dead now) brother David and my (dead now) cat Iggy. I don't know what the purpose or the ultimate goal of this trip was. Mostly the car was the maroon Buick I currently drive (Bruce's dead now mom's car) I know we went through either North or South Dakota and the car broke down as we drove into Philadelphia. Suddenly it was Bruce's Subaru, and I was driving it and we had to get it off the road. David left me in a part of the city that didn't look too good, and i went into what looked like an abandoned house because suddenly it looked like it was going to snow. The house was actually a group of connected houses and I didn't think they were really abandoned so I was nervous. I remember green "turf" carpeting in one place. A man approached me and I was really nervous and feeling guilty about being in someone's house but he was so nice! In fact throughout this dream strangers would come, even though Iggy was being really feisty and unfriendly but all the strangers were the nicest people you could imagine. I kept wondering when David was going to come back because a light, very cold snow falling and for some reason it seemed to me that that snow, if it got heavier, could make it so we'd never see each other again. PJ woke me up by pressing her 90 pounds of Bulldozer luuuuuvvvvvv onto me, putting my entire upper arm in her mouth and squeezing gently, flea biting (and often catching skin so that hurt!) rolling her body all over mine bruisingly and licking my face to the point i could not breathe. When she does all this her eyes are so calm. It always cracks me up. That was a strange dream.

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Bruce is meditating, and I am just listening to music right now. That and drifting in thoughts. I have a lot of school stuff to do. I thought I had a big paper due Saturday, but it's actually due the 11th. I still want to try to do it tomorrow though because I have so much else to do and I am working Saturday. (And Sunday I think I am going kayaking. Unless it's cold. And it has been surprisingly cold lately!)

I've been intensely and uncomfortably emotional lately and I don't know what the root of that is. Is it hormonal? Is it a mid life crisis? Maybe I am gonna die soon and something in me knows? Maybe it's just stress and anxiety over not knowing what career path to try. Frankly just the thought of a career path fills me with anxiety, so that could be it. It's been both pitiful, sort of funny and it makes me want to examine my life and personality very closely. Oh I have been whiny and cry-y. I hope that ends soon.

On the other hand, I talked recently with a friend and she told me something that didn't really hit me with full impact then but it is becoming more and more important to me. I don't want to write the details of it because i know I have a tendency to tell things as I explore my own life that other people might not appreciate me writing about. But the gist of what she told me is making me see that life is short, and death might be final and I just want to be nicer and more caring, more open and direct. But some of those things are hard for me. That idea of being nicer is the one that i am really thinking about right now. I am a pretty nice person but I can be selfish and this incident is impressing on me the importance of not seeing people as roles or symbols or functions but as people who (because i do have that belief in "reasons" have entered my life for some reason. I think about that too. Is that belief laughable? Might be. But while I have amended my idea about many beliefs and practices that particular belief that everything somehow matters has endured. So my goal is to try to be more receptive and listen more carefully to what others say to me and to respond from a better place than I have beem. We shall see if i can do this.

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

I've had a lot of personal thoughts on my mind lately, and they've really worn me out. One tangent has been Bruce's mom. Her birthday was March 30 and I found myself thinking about her a few days before that and since. Before I went to Florida where I ended up helping her through hospice, a situation I NEVER would have expected to find myself in, I'd only met her in person once. She came out to stay with Bruce and I for awhile the year before she died I think it was (I am bad at timelines) Bruce was nervous and I was terrified. His mom was like a Southern Belle and had a lot of expectations of what I should be like. I don't think I was many of those, if any. She herself was an extremely clean woman and I cannot say housekeeping has ever been my strong suit. Plus, she was fiery, dramatic and given to doing things and causing scenes I couldn't really imagine. I was really pretty scared. When she came I could almost see thoughts, but graciously she didn't express them. Mostly. When we'd go out to eat, which we did fairly often during her visit i learned how particular she really was and I would bring a tall stack of ones, adding to whoever served her a dollar for every infraction of courtesy (my perception). Some of those folks got some whopping tips. But to me she was very kind. She appreciated little things and I came to relax and find a lot I really liked about her. She loved to be catered to so I catered when I could. This was mostly little things, go get her the paper and a doughnut in the mornings, play cards. Bruce and I took her to Mesquite to play Bingo (she LOVED Bingo) I stayed with her and she had about 4 sheets going and was watching mine (I'd never payed bingo before except at home when I was a kid) She would wear her jaunty little cap and bright red lipstick an she had a whole caddy of markers (a gift from Bruce, mostly Elvis themed) We stayed a night in Mesquite and she wanted to stay in our room which made me uncomfortable but ok.... In the middle of the night she sat bolt upright in bed and yelled out, "Good GAWD! Does she always snore like that?" We had our own on subsequent outings. We took her to see Bryce Canyon and stayed at Ruby's Inn, in adjoining rooms. In the middle of the night I heard the faint sound of an alarm clock going off. It was faint but I wondered who would leave the clock going off like that. Eventually it dawned on me that it was coming from Inez' room. I thought no one could sleep through that sound right next to their head, so I woke Bruce up to ask him what we should do. we decided to call her room and so we did. No answer. For a long time. By that time we were thinking she had died in the night and we went to the front desk to get someone to open the door. Well they had keys for the door sure enough but she had latched the thing and apparently they did NOT have a tool to unlatch it. I wanted them to break a window but they would not do this. We were all conferring outside her door listening to that alarm for a long time when suddenly Inez sauntered forth in a nightgown and a beanie wondering what all the fuss was about. But she was frail and we cut the trip off short as she fainted 3 times on us. I took her to the emergency room in St George but they didn't do much. We thought it might be altitude related and so she flew back to Florida a little sooner than expected.
 Inez loved to have fun and Bruce was really happy when one day she called and said she was going on a Bingo bus trip across several states. We were excited for her. But she fainted on that trip and her daughter had to drive several states to go get her out of the hospital. Back in Florida she was in the hospital again very soon. Bruce wen down when the situation started seeming pretty serious. Inez had move from her beloved Virginia to live right across the street from her daughter Yvonne, but although they each wished to be close it seemed impossible. In fact after I got there I think they were both glad they didn't need to interact as much. I knew neither of them wanted it to be that way, it just turned out always to be hurtful. Bruce was always his mom's favorite. He is 15 years younger than Yvonne and Inez always wanted a son. the difference in how she treated them was night and day. Butd  she is a masterful button pusher and Bruce an she would go round. he  would call me and tell me how frustrated he would get dealing with her and be very mad at himself for not being as patient as he thought he should be. He offered to stay in Florida with her. He really would have stayed for the rest of her life. I was really surprised and think it was the most unselfish thing she ever did when she told him to go home to me, to go back to work and take care of his family. I really thought she would want him to stay. ""Send LeAnn", she said, "She has a heart". It was very like Inez to say something like that.

So I flew to Florida. Inez was in the hospital again when I got there so I got to meet Yvonne and her husband Fred. I really liked them. I had no idea what i was doing. But Inez was definitely glad i was there and from the first day I could tell the nurses were too. She was a fairly imperious and stubborn person, but for some reason when i was there she was much more cooperative. the nurses started ordering meals for me so i would stay.

We had some really tender bonding moments and some incredibly bad ones where i wanted to fly home right that second. The nurses changed so often it did not seem like they even read her chart. She was supposed to take a pretty big handful of pills and she was supposed to do it with a nurse present. I asked the nurse if i could just monitor her because the problem an what eventually led to inez' death was that she was unable to swallow. Radiation for breast cancer and for a sinus cancer had ruined her ability to swallow. Eating was agonizing for her and she really liked to eat but it took a long time and she choked much if it back up. She was ending up in the hospital so often because she would aspirate the food into her lungs causing pneumonia.

I am getting a bit tired of writing now and did not mean this to be a full chronicle, but inez and I went through a lot together. One night, fresh out of the hospital, I thought she was in bed and woke up to sounds and found her scrubbing her immaculate laundry room in the middle of the night. I tried to get her to go to bed but she wouldn''t. I did and at about 2 a she came into my room angry as all get out an demanded to know whether i was just going to lay there in bed or whether i was going to help her. I told her it was the middle of the night and I was going to lay there in bed and so should she. (I WAS exhausted, there were a million stressful things to do every day and I was hoppin) The next morning she called me into her room and told me she wasn't feeling well- she asked for some pepto bismal and her inhaler and I brought both. She asked me if i would hold her and I did. It was such a naked moment. but I knew something was more wrong and so I called her health care nurse who advised me to call 911, which I did. Off tto the hospital again I decided to take a shower before I followed her thinking I would arrive very soon after and I did. But not before she threw a raging fit in the hospital and tried to refuse treatment. They told her she was having a heart attack and she would not believe them. When I got there she calmed down and let them begin to treat her but they Baker Acted her anyway and nne of us really wanted her to know that. It meant she had lost all rights to her own decisions and if there was anything that would be unbelieveable and terrible to Inez that was it. She was in and out of the hospital all the time. she hated being in. The doctors put her on oxygen and I would explain to her but unless I monitored her constantly in the night I'd find her with the canula off or she, attemoting to walk around would get all tangled up in the tubes and then distressed that she needed to be untangled. And she could have a terrible mean streak- One day I literally told her she was the nastiest woman I had ever met in my life and felt terrible for saying it but it felt true. Later she broke my heart when I told her one day that I was having bad menstrual cramps and felt terrible so that if I snapped at her I didn't mean to and she looked at me, her blue eyes as innocent as a baby's and said, that''s how i am too. There were the more amusing blowups, such as when I tool her to Walmart for shopping and medication on a pretty good day and she was riding on of those little carts and I said, "Inez! you need to watch out for people, you're going to hit someone" and like a totally willful child she said, "They need to watch out for meeeeeee!" In that same walmart she was opening bttles of pills, I know she was just trying to see if she could swallow them but I was telling her she couldn't just open the bottles and put them back and she tried to sneak away on that cart and do it anyway. People were walking up to me telling me I was a saint. I knew i damn sure wasn't. But we managed t get home and I managed to care for her and she managed not to eviscerate me. There was topless chili... she was trying to teach me how to make chili they way Bruce likes it (a painstaking process- he says he could taste the love, I believe him) and she was refusing to wear a top. (I notice that a lot of the end of life people I met in /Florida had an issue about wearing clothes) But she had health care appointments and refused to put on clothes so I told them we'd have to do it another time. It was always a balance of what she wanted and what she needed and I was constantly wondering if i was doing right by her. On day, she mapped out activities for me and got imperious as only Inez could and I fnally broke and said, "Inez, I am not your slave" "You're not good enough to be my slave she said, and oh my god, she meant just that!" that has become a family joke. Bruce says he would have said, "Ad what makes you think I have any desire to be your slave" but I was just fightin shock and anger in that moment. On the contrasting side Yvonne asked me one day if I'd like to go swimming with her and Inez said, she is here to take care of me, not to go swimming with you, she can't go swimming. I was stunned. It was pretty much a 24 hour a day job but I was shocked that she would say that. After yvonne left, Inez surprised me by apologizing immediately, and asking if i really wanted to go swimming. She said she just felt like she needed someone to be with her and she didn;t mean to speak to me like that. she really did need someone to be with her. there are so many memories of hot times and tender times I have.

What I was thinking about was that family is not so muc a matter of blood. t is a matter of need and nakedness and who finds a way to be there, no matter what, for the people they count as family.