Hear What They See

Friday, June 27, 2003

Taking A Swim

Grandma tried to off herself on Tuesday. It was high drama Grandma style. Nothing as messy as a gun or pills or some such. Nope. Not my granny. She took a cab to a department store (Mervyns) in Petaluma, a town about 15 miles from here. God only knows how much the fare cost. Now mind you, Grandma is mostly blind and can't see squat, but she still managed to call the taxi cab company, get herself to Petaluma, and go in to shop. We're not quite sure why she went to Mervyns other than perhaps a nostalgi for the time when she was able to drive herself over there and shop til she dropped. Which she can't do any longer. Not only because she can't see but also because finances are tight now that she and grandpa require 24-hour care and she's had all of her credit cards taken away from her and she's not allowed to charge anything any longer. She does have a knack for accrueing debt (seems to be in the genes...). Perhaps that is why grandpa's repetative worries and grumbles are mostly about finances.

So grandma took a taxi to Mervyns. There she met a very nice family in the swimsuit department. They were looking for suits so they could have a day trip to the sea to Dillon's Beach. I can picture the scene now. Grandma's ears perking up at the mention of her old digs & haunt, Dillon's Beach. Where her kids grew up for much of their adolescent life, where grandma lived well into her late 50's. I have vivid memories of Dillon's, driving there in the summer and building sand mermaids with sea kelp hair and sand dollar jewelry. The memories of my Grandma that have the deepest scent, the most heart-pulling emotions, they are all associated with Dillon's Beach and her house in Tomales.

I'm imagining my grandmother with her blind eyes in Mervyns, her veins fired with the thought of a last trip to Dillon's Beach.

"Oh my! So then you and your family are going out to the beach today, are you?" Her voice isn't wavery, she doesn't have the sound or heart of an old lady.

"Yes, well, the kids have just begun their summer vacation and we thought it might be nice to head out to the beach. Sam, stop hitting your sister with your swimtrunks." The mother has long, unstyled hair. Bohemian-chic with $150 Camper sandals on her feet.

"My goodness, I do remember the time I lived there in Tomales as though it were yestereday. It's so funny you should even be going there. My daughter was supposed to meet me here so we could head out to Dillon's Beach ourselves. I told her if I wasn't here by noon to just go on without me. What time is it now? 12:20 you say. Oh my, I am so worried we may have missed each other and now she thinks I don't want to go. It's so difficult getting old, you know. Nothing moves as fast as it used to."

"You used to live in Tomales? How funny! I grew up there until I was 17!"

"Why you're joking! You must be the same age as my youngest daughter! I bet the two of you even knew each other!"

And the Bohemian mother would be snookered therein. Grandma hitched a ride with this family, grandma & her Winnie Walker. She went with this family in their family car and rode out the 30 miles to Dillon's Beach with a family she did not know and who did not know her and got herself to the last place in California where she probably remembers having utter & complete freedom.

I was flabbergasted when I first heard what she'd done. Then Auntie Beth said she'd intended to "take a swim" but it was too cold. My Grandmother can barely walk, let alone get out there and breast stroke in the Pacific Ocean. "Taking a swim" is a very nice metaphor for a romantic-seeming way to off one's self. There is hilarity and utter sadness in this image of my grandma, pushed so far past these limits she never expected to have to reach or summit.

I called her yesterday. I told her I am taking her out to breakfast, just she and I.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 7:42 PM

Sunday, June 22, 2003

Judging a Perceiver's Perception of Judgers

We're house sitting for Jaime & Rick. Jaime is in my writing group. They live in a neighborhood that was built in the 80's & 90's. I realized this morning when I woke up how spoiled I've been living on the east side of town, the old part. The expensive part. The houses here start at about $500,000. I could never afford to live here if we didn't live with my parents. But I realized as I woke up how spoiled I've been. The neighbor's in this neighborhood are right on top of you. There was a dog barking and I assumed it was the dog, Maya, whom we are watching qlong with the house. I mean, the barking was right by my ear, it seemed. Come to find out, it was one of the neighbor's dogs. Which one? Who knows. The one right next to my ear, apparently.

Jaime has two kids. Both under the age of 10. She stays home and takes care of them & the house and Maya and she's heavily involved in both of her childrens' schools. I was going through her cupboards trying to cook, as I had volunteered at church to do the "social hour." I don't know about other churches, but the Catholic church that I went to all throughout my childhood never had any kind of social hour after Mass. It was just the Body of Chrict at Communion, and that was it. A flat, tasteless communion wafer and not even a sip of wine. At this church, which is Protestant, everyone gets together afterward and eats and drinks and talks. It's nice. Most of the people who go are older, quite a bit older. So Dave & I are like the young whipper snappers. But I always make something to take. This Sunday, however, I volunteered to cook and set-up and clean-up. Which brings me back to my original point. So I was cooking last night at Jaime's house. And of course I'm going through ever cupboard to figure out where everything is. It usually only takes one look at a kitchen to determine (according to personality type) if someone is a Judger or a Perceiver. I'm a Judger. That means that I get a kick out of organizing the hell out of everything I own or do. That means my tapes, CDs, records, DVDs and sometimes even books are all alaphabetized. It means the bowls in my cupbouards get stacked according to size, and there is a place for everything. It means when I cook, I do things in a certain manner and almost always the same way unless I make a mistake and then I have to improvise, which I can do, and I can do well as a matter of fact but the ability to improvise has little to do with the fact that I'm a Judger, but that a story for a different day. Being Judger means I often makes lists, even if they're only mental. It means I do not respond to the world spontaneously as a FIRST response, altho again, because of other aspects of my personality, I can be spontaneous if I have to. But PLANNING is a Judger's middle name. Perceivers, on the other hand, do not have a strong sense of organization for the mundane. Perceivers can organize, but it tends to only be for those things that of the most importance to them. They may be extremely organized in the workplace, for example, but at home their office looks as though a paper bomb exploded. Cupboards, in other words, are a place to put things, but do not need to be organized. Cupboards serve the purpose for putting and concealing, not for being neat and tidy, like your average Judger will do, whether or not they cook. Jaime is a Perceiver. I am a Judger. I am swimming around her kitchen last night looking for this whisk or that spoon, and without even thinking, without even really being able to control myself, I immediately began organizing. Small bowls into big bowls, little pots into larger pots, spoons go with spoons, forks go with forks, etc. etc. This is the front that is the back, fromt face frontwards. Perceivers must look at a Judger's kitchen and be absolutely overwhelmed by the responsibility intrinsic in using that kitchen. They must feel themselves seizing up and feeling hopeless because a Judger's kitchen by default means you have to know or remember where everything you use goes. It cannot just be put back in the cupboard, because there is a certain spot in every single cupboard or drawer for every single pot, pan, utensil, bowl, cup, saucer, plate, vase, glass, machine - that exists in a Judger's kitchen. On the flip side, a Judger would look at a Perceiver's kitchen and not know where to start because the logical place for a thing may not be where that thing resides. The lid to the teapot, for instance, might be in the drawer with the spare candles & silver polish not with the teapot itself.

What is the point of this whole digression into kitchens & personlity type? I guess more than anything, I just realized, if people just knew about personality type, we might avoid all sorts of misunderstandings and pissing matches about how thing should be done.

Dave's a Perceiver. I'm a Judger. Need I say, things in the kitchen usually get done my way...

Ha.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 2:10 PM

Wednesday, June 18, 2003

viagra & italian cheeses

This getting up early to trot m'arse around in the morning is sooooooo irritating. I know, I know, this will eventually be like second nature to me, but at the moment it just feels like a big boring cow cud. But, whatever. I need to stop complaining and just do it. Like Nike. Ya. That's me. A real just doin' it kinda Nike advertisement.

Dave's been Mister Hunny Hubby since school's been out. Washing dishes, doing laundry, making breakfast, walking with me. It's weird. When things are going well, I never have a desire to write about them. It's only when things feel like utter crap that I want to sit and bitch & moan. I guess because the good times feel so stable, so what's the point of writing about them, right? That seems kind of screwed up, though. I don't get it. I'm trying to remember the last time I was deliriously happy. Did I feel like writing? Did anything I wrote about feel like it had any "energy" behind it (what a buzz phrase - "that writing has real energy")? I don't know. I don't even know if it really matters. It just struck me that I can get all into writing here or for my writing group when I'm being the Angst Queen. Maybe it's because misery gets so much more media buzz than happiness. I mean, you can't really make any money off of people's happiness, but you sure as shootin' can off of their misery. Drugs sell so much better when someone's unhappy. Need to feel happier/less emotional/more secure/less constipated/more virile/less intimidated/more decongested/less headachey/more symbolic/less invisible - Hey! There's a drug for what ails you! But if you're ALREADY happy. Well, that there is whole different ball of wax and there ain't no nothing that no body is going to sell you or have you inject or ingest with food & water or snort or anything else that a person would take to want to change that state. I mean, if you're "happy," you usually would like to sustain that particular high as long as possible and interfering with it means making it end. Anyway. So maybe that's what writing is, then. A drug. An altered state that a person, who is essentially clean, can go to. I'm such a wuss, I don't do anything. No peccadillos for me. Just writing. Well, and probably food. Specifically chocolate & marzipan & italian cheeses. My food choices are particular, dammit. If I'm going to ingest the calories, they may as well be quality calories for heaven's sake. No weird flavored Oreos or Kraft macaroni & cheese for this chica. My food had better be all about Rolls Royce & Maserati.

Anyway. Maybe that's what the writing habit is for me. A drug to inject in the system to stave off the overflow of misery. Seems reasonable, I suppose. Speaking of writing, I'd better get my butt off to my writing group.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 6:20 PM

Tuesday, June 17, 2003

I am a pooped camper this eve. Dave and I got up at 6:15 this am and went for a walk. I hate getting up in the morning. I can't believe I used to work out for 3 hours a day. I was someone else then, not me today. Now I can barely go for a 30 minute morning walk without feeling like I have to go to bed at 6:00pm. Fat lot of good it did me. All I wanted to eat at lunch was ice cream. Soy Dream Green Tea Organic ice cream. I know, it sounds grody but it really does rock. It's whacky, which is why I guess I like it. But I wanted ice cream lunch. Now I want cherries. Those big, fleshy ones that are perfect this time of year when they're in season. I think now I'm going to snore at my computer instead.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 6:11 PM

Sunday, June 15, 2003

Writing in New Scientist (September 24, 1987), Edward Harrison observed: "Human beings of all societies in all periods of history believe that their ideas on the nature of the real world are the most secure. ...Like us, they pity the people in the earlier ages for not knowing the true facts. Unfailingly, human beings pity their ancestors for being so ignorant and forget that their descendents will pity them for the same reason."

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 2:13 PM

upsy daisy

I've been sick all weekend. It started on Friday when Jeff and I had sandwiches from broadway market and shared a bag of some new kind of potato chip. I hardly ever eat potato chips. I may never again. Chips didn't make me sick, some flu bug did. But hot damn if getting vomitty doesn't make you never ever want to eat some things again. At least for me. Because I abhor getting sick. I got home late Friday night, after 8:00. Working my ass off becuase mom is a stresscase and I feel like I've been a flakey office manager. So I worked on the marketing lists and calendared everything in Outlook for at least the next few months. Felt very salf-satisifed that I was doing something. But pissed because it was Friday and I was STILL at the office. So I made myself go home. Tired. Trying to get the picture straight in my mind of mom breaking down and crying at her desk, sobbing about watching her parents fall apart. Mom never cries. When she does, it's disconcerting and surreal. I always, when I was younger, wished she would cry. But now as we're getting older and I have no frame of reference, I don't have a clue how to react to her emotions. She's never really had them before. Not the strong sort, anyway. Only the acceptable Kodak kind. I was always the rogue child, throwing tantrums and screaming at the top of my lungs when I got upset or hurt or ignored. She spanked me in the parking lot of Safeway once when I was about 6. Who knows why, some 6-year old infraction like whining, perhaps. I started screaming and sobbing so loud after her hand hit my heiney, a woman hissed at my mother as she walked past with her grocery cart, "Parents like you ought to be reported to the police." Mom was horrified & embarrassed and I wouldn't shut up. Looking back, if she had just stopped telling me all the time to STOP or if I had ever seen her cry herself, I might have stopped crying or tantruming or yelling a lot sooner. But now, at 33, I don't know how to react, so the only thing I know how to do is work harder. So that's what I do.

And then I got sick with some flu and threw up all night. I felt sick after lunch, like a rock below my sternum. But not fluey. Then Dave & I ate Chinese and watched SLC Punk and all hell broke loose. I resisted for 5 hours. I hate getting sick. But I finally couldn't take the fever & aches & nauseousness any longer, so I gave in. I felt better but it wasn't over. I got sick again a few hours later. I slept all day yesterday, just drinking ginger ale. Dave got me some rice crackers, so I ate a few of those and downed some ibuprofin. My head still feels like it is full of razors. But my body doesn't ache anymore. Thankfully. Now it's just my right kidney, same one that sent me to ER about 2 years. I have this horrible fear that when I am in my mid-50's they'll tell me I need a kidney replcement. Don't ask me why. I'm psychotic. But it hurts today.

Oh ya, the caretaker, Tila, quit on Friday.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 2:10 PM

Sunday, June 08, 2003

Closing In

Grandma doesn't like the new Fijian caretaker that mom found for them. Grandpa is back in the hospital, diabetic seizure, I think, but the majority of his consciousness is spent worrying about finances, where the money will come from. Grandma purses her lips and squares her jaw, trying to find a way to finnagle her way out dealing with a stranger in her house. Bethy told me today when she came over to use the computer that Tila, the caretaker, was making grandma a fishtail and fish head in a frying pan for her lunch. The idea of my grandmother eating the opposites ends of a fish for lunch is so comical & sad at the same time that they almost cancel each other out. When Bethy told me, I just stood there, blinked, said, "Oh." Having Tila living with them has taken away the need for me to cook for them so much, but I don't know, now, that that's necessarily such a good thing. But then you come against the problem of not stepping on Tila's toes by taking over meals again since she's supposed to be cooking for them as well. Jaysus.

Grandma gave me her book last week. She finished it awhile ago, before she had the stroke that struck her blind. Her novel is thick, housed in a purple binder. I read the first few pages. The writing is not totally "authentic" but the story has some potential. It's my latest project in the long string of projects I tie to myself like fishing line dangling lures. But I have this idea that if I can edit & embellish, do this novel with her before she dies, I can somehow keep her close forever and ever before she's ...~SNAP~...gone. I don't think she'll make it to see any kids I might have. And the thought of my kids not ever knowing her like I have, well, it just sucks. I want to know who my real grandfather was. I want to know how she met him and where he came from and if he really was Jewish and if he was married and if he really died or did he really have another family somehwere else, my half-aunts & uncles, cousins & grandparents. I want to know these things and it would seem like now would be the time to ask, but how to get the first word out, the beginning of the first question, I don't quite know how.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 6:42 PM

Saturday, June 07, 2003

weighty matters

There are times when you think a lot about a thing because it sticks to you like someone's discarded Hubba-Bubba on the bottom of your cheap rubber sandal from Payless. You may not know much about that thing of which you are thinking, but still there is a niggling finger in the back of your brain that will not leave your grey matter alone. Nor your heart. Nor your lungs, even. Breathing becomes difficult and heart palpitations can be a somewhat common occurrence within the ribcage. I felt that way when I heard about & met the girl named Robin in Fresno. The small one. Fragile. Anorexic.

But see, there's a discrepency between my thinking and the reality of what occurs within the mind/heart/lungs of Robin. I see her, touch her hand, smile at her and my heart nearly gives out with the weight of my inability to understand. Side-by-side: Blonde & fair, small, thin, introverted and shy compared to my dark Hawaiian heft, extroverted & unstoppable. Appearances show us at opposite ends of the color spectrum.

It is always more difficult to express, precisely, on any kind of page, what feelings and confusions zing through the bloodstream within my body. Words are the only tool I have at my disposal to attempt to describe the mess of emotions that flood my veins every hour/minute/second. I took up a more focused interest in the camera to derive another medium in which expression could be captured. Color. Light. Shadow. Seconds caught in a lens. Exposed. But it's a bumbling art upon which I still don't have a grasp. It is new to me and my grammar is stilted and kindergartenly. So I am back to words. An art, at least, within whose language I am familiar and comfortable. Within whose language I can claim more than a cursory proficiency. But it is not always adequate. And it is not always beautiful.

I came home from Fresno tired. There is something about having to necessarily be in front of people because of a role that has been assigned to you by social stricture versus being in front of people by choice. I have no qualms about putting myself in the spotlight, but I also step out of it when I want to. When you're required to be in the spotlight, the antennae at full extension, there's a hyper-sensitivity to the very air, and sound becomes intensified, sometimes high-pitched. I never intentionally put myself in situations where I am lit and focused upon where I cannot detract the attention away from my physical presence by using humor or wit. I have cultured my extroversion to focus the attention to my personality and away from the body I find unbearable. I learned this trick a long time ago in gradeschool when I realized for the first time that the babyfat wasn't going anywhere and no one in my class thought it was cute.

Peel back the skin. Remove the fatty layer. The veins of blood are red with that exposure to air. Type-O+. I imagine Robin has the same blood type as me. I am in a horrendous car accident, serious trauma, need a blood tranfusion. Robin's blood staunches my flow. The thin lines of her save my life. I imagine these scenarios, improbable and highly detailed, because they impart a bigger picture in which two opposite ends of the color spectrum can still step lightly on the middens of a common ground.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 1:32 PM

strike it

Posing Matron du Jour
(moiself made the rosy bouquets; beauty, no?)

I've been going about the business of getting the pictures back from the trip to Fresno . Of course, my idea of "cool" wedding pictures has little or nothing to do with what other people might consider "proper" wedding photos. But that's usually the case with me anyway. What else is new.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 12:23 PM