All the Ladies in the House

Character dolls are done, except for waiting on a shirt for Lore. Still no Stellar Repo that I can envision well. I like Avian, the leader of the bird planet where Stellar was raised. Got good use of a piece of white fake fur! And mangling the cloak worked out to be the best garment solution - just turned it inside/out and tattered it some more. I won't make Stellar's BFF, the gas giant because, well how do you make a jellyfish that will stand up by itself? Can't make it yet, but I have some ideas. Sold a load of old Barbie stuff to clear my mind. At the end of every flurry of activity related to writing the stories is just that: writing. There is no substitute for sitting down and doing the work. I've run out of excellent creative excuses. Give me another day, and I'll have another list. Writing a list is writing, right?

Patriarchy on the Windowsill

I awoke today from a dream saga that set me sitting on the side of the bed, wondering what the heck just happened. This was a trip through decades. There were pieces of my life story, but it felt like an everywoman journey of struggle and pushing back. Against hostile bosses, thwarting spouses, patronizing colleagues, indifferent others – and I was awakened forlorn. Sitting on the edge of my bed in despair and confusion. That's not my normal setting. I can hit the reset mood button just as all women have to regularly in a world with entitled masculine energy paramount. The long dream felt like a trip down memory lane through the centuries, the way female humans have experienced it. I had to shake it off, and it was lucky to talk with a friend who called. I use humor as a survival mechanism and it works most of the time, but the conversation was necessary today to rise out of the melancholy. There's just some shit that's not funny. Humor comes from that pile. Humor is the other face of tragedy (which explains those theatrical masks, although separate isn't entirely accurate.) I made a commitment for next Sunday to go to a standup comedy coaching thing in Ypsilanti at The Mix. Caregiving is a rich environment for comedy. At the core of my caring comedy/tragedy is a golfball with 10-27-96 on it. It's the day my father got a hole in one. It's the day I was diagnosed with cancer. For 10 years I've lived with this golfball on the windowsill. You can see that when I'm struck with the date, I use my soapy hands to try to obscure the day. It took me 7 years to work around that pain of understanding that his pleasure trumps my pain: the crux of patriarchy. I switched the date to the back – he switched it to the front. Yesterday I noticed that he 1) managed to find the permanent marker without asking where it was, and 2) used it to write the date anew on the reverse. Rotating the ball won't help now. Doing some standup comedy, overcoming that fear, definitely will. And maybe it will help some other women, too.

Three Story Life 2014

Another Caregiver Ninja week featuring ambulance, hospital stay, care coordination and a diminishing sense of who and where I am. Seems that each crisis is easier in the coordination of, and harder in the emotional aspect. That isn't what I mean: it feels like I'm untethered from Self and drifting farther away from help and safety. Think Gravity with better underwear. We had that talk about DNR with my father and maybe we're closer to discovering what he really thinks. Specifics were discussed. Yes, 911; no vasopressor and intubation. Disturbing to find out that regardless of what is on file at the destination hospital, staff will go through the steps one by one. My own end of life preferences get in the way. Dad takes a myriad of meds, has had surgeries and procedures and dozens of machine tests. My journey is different. Three stories of end of life emotions, tactics and the overwhelming experience of it all. I told Dad his job for the future is to appreciate. Each day, the color changes, good meals, a fine night's sleep, calming memories, warm socks, hot coffee, a returned phone call. I'm trying to take my own advice.

How Did I Lose The White Rabbit?

Today we have 65 degrees in Michigan. Tonight we'll plummet to freezing. Tired of waiting for real spring to stick around, I decided to put out the forsythia in front of the dollhouse, and a little late, the Easter eggs and baskets as well. I have a box of seasonal decorations, and not there is the White Rabbit. Also not on the grass in front of the house is the White Rabbit. How can I lose a white rabbit? If I had picked it up to put away, it would be in the box. It's not. Nor is it on the floor under the dollhouse. Not hiding in the bushes. When I started looking for the hole in the landscaping, and heard Grace Slick singing "one pill makes you larger, one pill makes you small" I decided to step away from the Missing White Rabbit. In a little while, I'll be laughing. I think. I hope. Go ask Alice.

Linda's Little Book of Caregiving

Informal. Unpaid. Caregivers in the United States, whatever the statisticians call us, number in the millions. Statisticians love numbers and percentages. 29% of the population. 66 million people. Any organization that keeps track does so based on self-reporting. My estimate is closer to 100 million people engaged in caregiving. I'm not sure surveys administered to caregivers, when identified, are accurate for this reason alone: caregivers think of the persons receiving the care before they think of themselves. And caregivers may be prone to underestimating the amount of daily living activities they perform, when they report at all. I participated in a Wayne State University graduate student's survey via telephone interview. I started crying 1/3 through because I could not keep it straight who the survey was about. I kept answering on behalf of my father and brother. Me! I'm the caregiver. Adding to this loss of self are workshops that claim to be for caregivers, when the session is actually about the caree. Remember to have an extra handbag for when mother loses hers is not about the caregiver. These misrepresented sessions add guilt to the stew. One I attended was displayed on the library sign "Caregiving." 2 hour session, and with 20 minutes left, I raised my hand to ask when we were going to get to the part about caregiving. The moderator was surprised. Really? Later, looking at the handout, it dawned: the session was put on by an assisted living facility. It wasn't about us at all. A friend and I went to an inaptly named Caregiver Conference a couple years ago. Some of the workshops were about the caregiver. But the booths were about paid assistance, products for the caree, not the carer. Paid in-home health work. Stand-in bathtubs. Handrails. We were dismayed. No booth offering free neck and head massage. No gifts for caregivers. No booth just thanking us for doing what we do. We pledged to have a booth the following year, but do we describe ourselves as a nonprofit? When we can't sleep we look at the internet for caregiver help. We know it's a loving job, doing [your higher power name here] work, but we still can't sleep, we're losing our hair and our strength, and damn it, when is it about us? Ah, well, we read that caregivers have health issues. Some are predeceasing their loved ones. And site after site reminding us we're unpaid. We don't give a flying fig how much our work is worth. We do care how we can keep our selves, our sanity, and a modicum of independence. We need to know we have sisters who are struggling to maintain well-being. We are who this book is about. All those big numbers, personalized. Me, my friends and the gallant tired carers who need to know we're not crazy. Or alone.

A Three Story Life: Another Christmas

Holiday season. Coming off a cold, I got slammed anew by a nondefined malady that I choose to call passing my evil twin. I was asleep for 2 days. My father left a note on the dining room table the second day that he was at the Hyundai dealership getting his whoozit what-iffed, and Scott was asleep upstairs. I found the note on the third day. I assume Scott woke up, because he was there at dinner tonight. The tree's not up, nor do I personally employ the Christmas elf that has put the tree up for the last 7 Christmases. That after having shopped for, and bought the artificial tree. I have not shopped once this year. I think I may not. I hate shopping. I don't even like to pick up takeout. I thought the smell of evergreen was missing, so I bought some greens, and they are now dropping needles on the valet. I'll throw them out soon. They do not smell like evergreen. After doing dishes for the 3rd time today, I decided what I want for Christmas. I want the whole house cleaned top to bottom. I told Dad. Nothing will happen though, until I acquire a cleaning crew, organize a day when we can be all out of the house, get us all out of the house, and pay the crew. Be a problem-solver, Linda, my friend says. Fine. Do the research, find the crew, get the schedule organized. Put up the tree. Get, make or steal gifts for my own giving and my father and brother to give. Wrap same. Seems I've been sick at Christmas time more than once in recent years. Maybe the holiday hooha makes me sick. This year I'll promise myself again that next year I'll be somewhere with a beautiful fire, a hot drink, a few good books and only squirrels and deer outdoors for company, and all of us grateful, grateful, grateful.

Stellar Repo: Excerpt One

"Lady Pierpont. This man is not your husband."

The woman opposite the desk glanced wide-eyed at the man seated next to her. "You're sure?" Her voice cracked like thin ice. The whites of her eyes gleamed.

"No doubt."

Lady Pierpont vibrated. Her long painted nails flicked the tiny tablet in her hands open. Closed. Click. Click. "What do I do?"

"That's a job for counsel, Lady Pierpont." Stellar Repo leaked breath through stretched lips, gazing at her new client. Thinking.

"Lady Pierpont. May I call you Mabel? Mabel. The suit is a pseudomorph. Oscar Pierpont has been replaced molecule by molecule. You've heard of imaginal cells? No. Anyway. He is a new thing. His apparatus is the same. He may or may not have some remnant of who he was banging around in there. But mostly he's an empty shell named Lord Pierpont. Do you understand?"

"But how?"

"How is not relevant. Irreversible. He is. Gone. You are united in connubial bliss with - let me be blunt - an astoundingly wealthy cypher."

Stellar squinted at the shell in the suit. Thinking. Diagnosis got her so many marks. Standard guild stuff. Next steps billed several degrees of magnitude more.

"Lady Pierpont. Mabel. Were your needs being met?"

"Sorry?" The click click of the tab stopped.

"How long are you married?"

"Fifteen years."

"You are much younger than Lord Pierpont."

"Well. Yes."

"And sex?"

"Uh."

"I see. Mabel. Think. Blank page. No peccadillos, preferences, predilections. All new gear."

"Uh. Oh!"

"Indeed."

The two women stared at Lord Oscar Pierpont. The man with no preconceiveds. A new thing.

"Well. Mabel. On your way then. We both have work to do. Will you be paying with credit? Or marks?"