Things I am tired of right now

1. LDRs and the accompanying time zone differences that mean we miss scheduled conversations whenever one of us accidentally sleeps late, which means talking only twice each week instead of three times
2. The US health "care" system, which has decided that my thyroid problem is my fault and therefore I deserve no insurance unless my employer makes them cover me
3. My employer's crappy health insurance, which does not cover physical therapy
4. My apparently-defective-since-birth spine, which desperately needs physical therapy so I don't have another Saturday like the last one, in which I spent four hours on a friend of a friend's floor trying not to cry

Sorry. Bad week. Would very much like to skip ahead to my thirties now.

Only time will tell

It's like this.

My cat, my new best friend, my only companion here...

A routine vet appointment has now turned into an overnight stay and bill estimates upwards of $800 to $1000. The shelter that had him for the last two years never looked in his ears or his mouth, so once-treatable ear mites and a broken canine have morphed into severe, chronic infections, cysts, possible hearing loss, and severe dental problems. The kind that might involve bone infections.

And after only three and a half weeks, in which time we've already bonded to the point where he leaps into bed as soon as I glance towards the sheets because he knows it's snuggle time...I can't afford to fix these things. Not even close. Plus, they maybe can't be fixed: the ears could be permanently damaged, and his constant scratching and head shaking might never go away. (Hello, shelter? How fucking blind are you?) The teeth? Who knows. The countless other problems I haven't even listed here all add up to a vague sense of dread. What happens when this five year-old turns 10? How much should I put him through trying to heal what can't mend? And, horribly, how much can I afford to spend when I'm already scraping to get by? What corner do I cut?

I love him. I know it seems strange, having known him so briefly, but I love him already like the kind of pet you've known most of your life. Right now, he's huddled in the back of a sterile sea green kennel, wondering why I left him.

I am not leaving. I'm supposed to return him to the shelter if I can't care for him. Fuck that. They cared for him so much they sent him straight into a hospital. A few months ago, a year ago, 40 or 50 bucks would have fixed all this. Didn't anyone notice the scratching? The trouble eating? It took me two days to catch on.

I'm taking the day off work tomorrow to see if I can meet the vet, face-to-face. I need to look in her eyes and ask her about the long-term prognosis. I want to understand what it will do to him if we try. Because he's been through enough, and the last thing I want to do is heap more pain on him.

Even if that means coming home to an empty house far too soon.

From bad to worse

Twenty minutes ago: I'd just finished emailing my specialist about the thyroid, when my dad came upstairs with a thin envelope from the clinic in his hand. I knew before I opened it. Funny, I'd been dreading it for weeks without having any real reason. I read the letter and burst into tears. Yep, that's right: in the last four hours, I've allowed the full reality of my disease to hit me, my fake thyroid is out of whack, and I've learned that the one person who's helped me cope with all of the hell, both here and in England, is leaving the clinic in four weeks. I don't know if I can handle this.

Also, not having insurance? Doesn't help.

Something needs to go right soon, because for the first time I don't feel strong enough to take any more.

Feeling low, here I go

So I'm not really sure what to do here, and I'm kind of freaking out.

Ever since they removed my thyroid, my whole metabolism depends on a pill. A handful of pills, actually: little white and pink pills, smaller than a string of beads. T3, TSH, T4...these letters and numbers are meaningless to most people, but not to me. Every night, I line them up along the crease in my palm and gulp them down, like clockwork. They control my life. I wouldn't mind, actually, but the thing is that they aren't very good at their job. Everyone's metabolism is different; every thyroid patient responds to an individualized dose of synthetic hormones. In my case, regular doses don't work. We have to bump mine up, again and again, just to keep me functional. Bump too low, like we did in England, and things crash. Depression, lethargy, weight gain...Low thyroid levels pull me down a dark, cavernous hole until I can't see the surface. So I came home, and we bumped back up.

Now, six months later, it appears that the dose I've been on is a bit too high. I found out the hard way when I was speaking to a group of undergraduates today. Suddenly, an ancient symptom I'd forgotten completely came rushing back, and in the middle of my impromptu remarks, my tempo accelerated. Then, my heart started pounding. And then, best of all, I started shaking. Like, scared shitless of crowds shaking. It's not something I can control, because it isn't psychological. It's like a shot of adrenalin straight to the heart, or a quad-shot espresso slammed back, chased with sugar. It is an absolute nightmare. Four years ago, I'd reasoned away every indication that I was sick, and then I stood in front of my favorite class and quivered like the last leaf in fall. It was humiliating, and I finally had to admit that something was deeply awry.

I love public speaking, which is what makes this symptom the worst -- when I'm up there, and it happens, people look sorry for me. Some avert their eyes, and others smile reassuringly as if they think they can soothe the wild creature flying around the front of the room. This, of course, actually makes me nervous, and then my voice starts galloping like a horse unbridled.

I am about to interview in the final round of a job opening which involves a lot of public presentations, as do all of the other positions which I have a chance in hell of securing. I can try to knock the dose back down, but it will likely take months again (all after I see my doctor, which itself takes weeks). Worse, for the rest of my life I have to operate without knowing when this is going to hit. Hormone levels fluctuate, even when they're strictly prescribed, so I get to attend every presentation for each of my jobs knowing that at any moment I could blow the talk. I had no real indication that things were askew again until today! What's to stop that from happening years from now, when I'm giving a talk that really matters? Heck, I could get hired by this current place, only to be fired within weeks for acting like a frightened child in front of a major board meeting.

I'm suddenly so sick over this that I'm wondering if I should maybe stop thinking about careers that involve talking to groups of people. What can I do? Get hired by some company and say, "Oh, by the way, I have this autoimmune disorder that's been treated, but the side effects of the treatment can include adrenaline-fueled craziness in front of an audience."

I feel really, really sick. Most of the time, I manage to live with this disease without thinking about its implications on any meaningful level. Last year, I battled through some of the worst depression of my life in a new country, and I was so relieved to get home because at last, I thought, I'll get to be normal again. What the hell am I supposed to do now?

Out of words

I'd love to write something funny or witty today, but the fact is that I'm sick about the Tech shootings and tired of how people are already turning it into a debate over gun rights or a forum to argue over whether or not this was god's will.

It's a tragedy. Can we just leave it at that for now? There will be plenty left for vultures to pick over, but just shut the hell up until people have had time to process what happened.

Frack you, Battlestar. Frack you hard.

I'm catching up on BSG's first season, since I'm a new initiate this year. Can I just say that one might do better than to watch the first half of the miniseries before bed? Not that it isn't a brilliant show (and I *love* learning all the little things I hadn't known), but it's not a great bedtime story. I'm right in the middle of the nuclear holocaust now, at the point where the survivors have to leave people behind in order to save themselves.

Now I find myself sitting at a dimly lit desk while the city sleeps, thinking about planes. About how a plane isn't just a silver streak in the sky anymore. Does anyone still watch planes in the city for the sake of watching them? Are we all tracking them warily out the corner of the eye, telling ourselves we just like watching planes when we're really wondering Where's it going? What's it doing? Did it dip a little? Should I hold my breath again?

Remember when a plane was just a cumbersome bird lumbering across the lazy sky?

Now, I hate flying. HATE it, despite knowing how irrational it is to cringe every time the plane shifts. I look around, and I know who else feels that way. You can mark us by the stiffness in our shoulders, the way we fix our stares on magazines without reading the lines. I hate what happened for making me feel this way. I hate myself for not being able to stop it.

I wonder what it's like for people born after 9-11. How do they watch planes? What do they see when they look up as an engine drones overhead? Does what happened even seem real to them? It barely seems plausible to me, and I saw everything they won't air on anniversary repeats these days. I struggle to incorporate it into what I know, and yet it's touching every part of our lives, from the war we're in to the way we think about little things. Planes and border crossings. Subways and double-decker buses.

Don't ask why a sci-fi show brought this all home again. That's why it's so good. It makes you think about the things you take for granted, and about how "normal" life feels now when it's really askew forever. It isn't normal for me to think about how I'd reach CB if it all went down while we were still a continent away from each other. Nor is it normal for me and everyone I know to view a plane as a possibility. None of this is alright. We still aren't okay -- as evidenced, I'd hazard, by the fact that two hours of a well written sci-fi debut leave me here, in my room, thinking about all the facts you push aside in order to continue with everyday life.

Be calm, be brave, it'll be okay

Fuck. What was I thinking when I thought I could do this?

We haven't even been apart for two months, and there are fissures running the length and breadth of me. I can't touch him, hold him, kiss him, see him. The curse of multiple time zones means we're lucky to talk more than a few hours per week, and we usually can't help but catch each other right before bed or just before dawn.

It's quiet and rainy here tonight, and suddenly I don't know if I can fight hard enough to get through this. Two years? Twenty-four months of this? I feel like my whole world is coming to pieces. I'm just scared that without meaning to, we'll drift apart. We're busy people, busy by nature, most satisifed when we're flying between half a dozen tasks and events, brains chattering at dizzying speeds. When we live together, it's hard enough to "be" together for any amount of time. When we're apart? Like any couple in an LDR, we fill the hours to avoid thinking about the hurt and the loneliness -- but in cramming the waking life full, we don't let ourselves have time to miss each other. It's a double-edged sword: it doesn't hurt as much, and it's probably the only thing that lets us slog through every day without collapsing -- but it almost means we have to detach to survive. And what if we can't stop detaching? What happens when we get to see each other for a whopping two weeks this summer, and then go apart again? And again? And again? What if we grow apart without meaning to? Without realizing the space between us until it's too late?

There aren't any easy answers. It's happening to more and more people we know: if you aren't fortunate enough to share the same career interests (and, sometimes, even if you are), you may be bound for a time apart should you marry young. We knew it, and we knew it, and we knew it...but then it comes down to the wire and you realize that what we knew doesn't compare to what it feels like when it happens. But what are we supposed to do? Is one of us supposed to give it all up, which doesn't do anything but sow seeds of resentment that spring up overnight like dandelions? Is it even possible to find a middle ground where we can both do what we like without going apart for what we love?

Fuck. Sometimes I wish I could just be happy doing anything, and it kills me that I can't. And yet, I get frustrated when people suggest that this is the problem. No one ever asks why he can't give up his path. It's like it all comes down to me, the onus is on me, the problem is me. And the only one who doesn't see it that way -- even when I'm questioning whether they're right -- is him.

In the end, maybe that's why this has to work, even if it hurts in ways I didn't think were possible. Because the only one who understands me is eight thousand miles away. And I'd be a damned fool to let that keep us apart without a fight.

A little unwell

I was going to blog about maps, but I have to admit: this whole security threat has me feeling incredibly freaked.

Maybe it's because they were planning to target services that GIS and I actually use on a regular basis. Maybe it's because my family is flying here in a few weeks and will have to fly back, too, or because we are going to visit friends in California this Christmas and might have to fly out of Heathrow into LAX...which means quite possibly on one of the routes that they were targeting.

I know I should just be grateful that British intelligence thwarted the whole thing, but instead I'm absolutely terrified. As bad as 9/11 was, it still felt psychologically distant: I didn't really know anyone in New York, and there were never plans that came within a whisper of my existence. Now, my fear of flying is going to get worse. I used to love planes, but I've been nervous about flying into and out of the UK since 9/11 -- even more so after 7/7...now, I'm just hoping I can drag myself onto the plane and recognize reasonable fears instead of mistaking them for premonitions. I already white-knuckled parts of the lonely flight to and from my fieldwork, even though I knew it was silly to worry. Somehow, it just makes such a difference when it's directed at the things you use. I know it's just letting them win to change my behavior (and what the heck could I do, anyway?), but I'm just so scared.

I hate this. I hate that anyone could be such an asshole as to target entire planes full of good people going about their own lives, people with families, people with dreams.

Suddenly, I'm beginning to empathize with the Cold War generation. Could one of you please tell me how you got through this? Because I'm having trouble feeling okay with the state of the world.

Very unapologetic and possibly nonsensical rant

So I just finished watching The Constant Gardener for the second time with a couple of friends who've never seen it...and not five minutes after the film ends, one turns to the other and says, "So, are we still going clubbing tomorrow night?"

How anyone can watch that film and not sit silently devastated by humankind afterwards, or at least sit there and question everything about how you choose to live your own life, is beyond me. Like the first time, I still don't really want to talk to anyone. I just feel completely overwhelmed, and at the same time I don't like admitting it because I've been criticized in the past for being too sensitive or too bleeding heart...but what am I supposed to do? Shrug it off and go about my life thinking that it sucks, but what can I do? Shut my mouth because no one wants to hear it? Fine. Don't read this post.

You just feel so futile afterwards. The filmmakers did an amazing job with the whole movie. It doesn't preach, and yet it just fills you with this sense of anguish, this all-too-concrete realization that the way our lives play out depends in part on the fortunes of where we are born. The understanding that most of these kids, if they make it through adolescence, are going to die decades before us because because they don't have elemental things like food and education and fucking basic health care. Meanwhile here I am, bitching about how I need more this, more that, how I'll never have enough cash to buy my own house...

I think what really destroys me about the film is that, for whatever reason, it's the one thing that really makes me feel like I can't ever do anything big enough or effective enough to alleviate one miniscule piece of the suffering in this world. And I want to, but like so many people I'm too paralyzed to even begin. What the hell could I possibly do anyway? Rent for the rest of my life and save the rest to start yet another foundation pushing yet another solution with yet another plan that never works? Move somewhere else and be the good little developed-world white martyr who thinks that just because she "gets" the problem, she's somehow got the right to put herself in the middle of it and fight the system in ways that aren't necessarily helpful, let alone right? Sit around and moan about how awful the world is without doing a damn thing about it because I can't think of anything that feels ethically okay?

I just keep thinking about fate, fortune, timing. Why I'm here, why someone else is stuck in a brutal world they didn't ask for. Why everything I want to say comes out sounding cliched when what I'm feeling is anything but. It tests my faith, this knowledge that so many people in the world are screwed from the day they're born. What kind of god would do that? What kind of world would allow it? What the hell is wrong with us?

Being a martyr's no good. If you don't get killed, you burn out, wind up sacrificing everything for nothing, a grain of sand tossed by the storm. But the whole reason we seem to need martyrs is because we can't develop the collective will to do something about it, to each move one brick and rebuild the foundation. Instead, we sit around looking at the bricks, muttering about the bloody bricks, grumbling about how someone should do something about the bloody bricks but how there's no sense in throwing your back out because what good would it do if all you did was put one more brick down for a stupid project that will never be completed?

I just don't know what to do. About any of it. If I look back and feel like I never did a damn thing about it, I don't think I could accept my life. But what am I going to do, and why haven't I started yet? Look at me: I'm a bloody student. Whoopee. I supposedly have all this great potential to change the world because that's why I received this bleeding scholarship, but what am I supposed to do with that potential and how on EARTH can I even begin?

The worst part of it is that I don't think I'm going to find any answers to those questions. I just hope I don't waste all my time thinking about them instead of just slogging forward and hoping somehow, some way, I'm doing something that actually matters, something that actually remedies even one iota of everything that's wrong with the world.

Unbelievable

Three fractures above and below the fetlock, including a fully shattered long pastern (we're talking 20+ pieces here), plus one dislocated ankle...and our boy is out of surgery and eating. Eating! I can't even tell you how remarkable this is for a horse, but trust me: the fact that it's happened at all is worth celebrating. It will probably be a few months before he's officially out of the woods, because horses don't exactly like to lie around recuperating, nor are their bodies built for staying still (it's actually quite hard on their internal organs). There's a nasty condition called laminitis that can occur in the other foot if he spends too much time on it, but still. This is better than any of us expected.


That's a Derby picture there. If you're curious about what happened in the Preakness, just check out his right rear leg here.

I'm not posting the picture here because the bent leg is pretty upsetting to some. This is less graphic to look at than a couple of the in-race photos, however, when everything around the fetlock (ankle) was pointed at a 90 degree angle from the leg.

Oh my God

Barbaro just broke down in the Preakness. And I'm alone in my hotel room and don't have anyone to cry with here.

Awful, awful injury. They're doing x-rays, but I don't know...looked like he shattered his right hind ankle. Gotta love slow-motion replays.

Goodbye, old friend

I can't believe that the Paper Cat is gone. P-Square won't be the same without this gem of a stationary shop. Robert Jamieson contributes today's eulogy.

The Paper Cat was the only stationary shop in town open past five on a Friday afternoon in December, when we were scrambling to find giftwrap for a last-minute donation to the Virginia Mason giving tree. I remember being completely enchanted as soon as I walked in the door. The atmosphere was uniquely Seattle: warm, laid-back, inviting. The shop was small but brimming with gorgeous paper, stationary and cards. I vowed I'd return in the spring to buy one of their beautiful journals...and now, it's gone. Like so many other local favorites, it fell victim to indifferent new building owners and obscene rent hikes.

Look, Seattle: I've been to Dublin. You do not want to end up like that, a soulless city that caters to tourists instead of locals. A new array of shiny buildings and expensive boutiques can't replace what we lose when we tear down the old churches, defoliate P-Square and drive out the mom-and-pop shops. For once, can't we decide that we don't want to be like everyone else? I want to come home to a city I remember.

All Creatures...

Folks back home probably know about Mooie already.

In another demonstration of the benevolence of humankind, someone hurt this four month-old puppy bad enough for vets to euthanize her on the spot. The story is back in the news after Pasado's Safe Haven (one of our best animal rescue agencies) blew the whistle on the investigating agencies. They deny they've botched efforts to find the perpetrator, but it sounds pretty questionable, particularly since this is precisely the kind of crime that indicates the aggressor is capable of doing equally brutal things to other people.

The photos at Pasado's are terrible, but maybe posting them will catalyze people to lobby en masse for action. I won't post the direct link, but you can visit their website here and click on the banner at the top if you're inclined -- it's hard to miss. Poor baby girl. If you have a pet, would you cuddle it for me tonight? I feel the need to reassure something that most of us aren't monsters, but my resident flock disdains any contact with humans beyond what's needed to scatter breakfast on the ground. I can't say that I blame them.

All at sea

In the interest of keeping this blog honest, I'm determined to post when things aren't going well, either -- at least to the extent that I can, as I'd rather not annoy any of the academic powers that be.

So, things aren't going well this week. I'm sick and my back seems to have gone out (I feel like there's something stuck in my throat, except there's not. It's lovely after a full day). Anybody know a good cure for sudden-onset exhaustion and an upset stomach? I'm pretty sure it's a virus and not psychosomatic, as I was completely fine until yesterday afternoon. I'm also feeling completely adrift personally and academically. It's official: the mid-term first-year blues have arrived with a vengeance, and I'm having trouble doing much beside sitting at my computer reading the news. I feel completely befuddled and behind, like I'm on a treadmill that never advances closer to the goal. I've been playing the Jamie Cullum song that gives this post its name, and I just keep dreaming about setting sail and leaving all of this uncertainty and frustration behind...but then reality kicks in, and I realize I'm no clearer about my future than I am about my present, and suddenly I just start to feel like a big, once-promising failure.

Hm. That's really all I can write publically, which is unfortunate. As soon as I'm in a better mood, I'll regale you with tales of Guy Fawkes Day (fun but frightening). Right now, I just keep alternating between wanting to curl up in a ball and wanting to get on the next plane to Seattle. Sigh...

Hold on, hold on to yourself

Hold on, hold on to yourself
'Cause this is gonna hurt like hell...

The blogger community lost a tremendous presence this weekend. If you read "Mom's Cancer" when it was available online or followed her family as they worked to help her recover, I'm sorry to report that she passed away on Saturday.

Please visit the site and take a moment to remember her in whatever way you can - for anyone who ever knew a cancer survivor or was one themselves, this is an irreplaceable loss.

So, that post I don't really want to write...

It's strange how easily we can deny the obvious. When all the facts lie bared before our faces, we suddenly focus on the shimmery horizon beyond them.

These are the facts I don't want to see, the ones that render me mute whenever an opportunity arises to bring them to the surface, the ones I wish I could shove back in the shadows:

1. My dog, Leo, is 13.
2. He is deaf.
3. He is going blind steadily.
4. He doesn't always know where or who he is. This is the only fact that could be fiction; it's impossible to tell, but that vacant gaze shows something.
5. He has a condition that's making him slowly, incrementally, agonizingly lose the function of his back legs. It's bad, bad, bad.
6. On Emergency Vets, they euthanize animals who exhibit symptoms like his.
7. Watching him try to lie down without putting any weight on his back legs makes me sick.
8. Having him look right through me makes me sicker.
9. There are days when he is scared, anxious and in pain. His vital organs might be fine, but nothing else is.
10. Sometimes I think he is only holding on because we can't let him go.
11. I don't want him to die.
12. I really don't want him to die if I'm not in that room with him.
13. Sometimes, when I come through the front door and he doesn't raise his head, I feel relieved. When he wakes up, I ache.

Ever since vets diagnosed him with cancer a few years ago, Leo hasn't been well. Surgery excised all traces of his disease, but it also sapped his energy; ever since, things have been deteriorating.

Leo is the first -- and only -- puppy I've had. I remember watching him steal a full head of romaine lettuce off the kitchen counter when he was a few months old; he triumphantly dragged it outside, all the way around our deck to the front of the house before exuberantly tearing it to pieces. Ever since, he's chosen lettuce over kibble and banana over beef.

When he was just a baby, he caught kennel cough, and we slept beside him on the kitchen floor as the husky gasps racked his tiny body.

In the 2001 earthquake, when I panicked and screamed for him to get in the downstairs bathroom doorway with me, he flew down the stairs roaring, every hair on his nape elevated, trying to kill whatever was scaring me. This is the same dog who wagged his tail and silently watched teens steal pumpkins off the front porch.

Traces of my dog remain, but they are fleeting and come with greater infrequency. For awhile, I didn't know if he'd make it to my wedding -- but when the day came, he was 10 years younger and pranced across the grounds like a king. Still, it took a lot out of him; the heat made him a little sick, and after he came home he slept for a day. I think that was one of the last times I saw my dog. Now, he's frequently underfoot, crying at nothing...and I realize he's probably doing everything he can to ask for his release.

I feel like a bad person because the part of me that knows he's slowly dying wants to be sure he dies in my arms. I don't want to get that phone call some evening. Of all the things making me anxious about our trip, this one might be the worst. It's unspoken, but we all know what we see. And I can't handle the thought of being away when he goes, or of letting him linger because his body won't die. The thing that scares me most is that he could live another two, maybe three years, and they would be the worst years he's ever endured. I'd always hoped he would die in his sleep, but I don't think that's going to happen. His heart is good, but he can't stand long because he's too stiff: why ask him for more? If this were a relative, a friend or me, I'd long for a choice to end the suffering...for Leo, we have one, and as much as I don't want to let go, it would be wrong to keep holding on.

Sometimes, I think dogs run away to die because they sense their owners can't ever let them go. I don't want to push Leo to that brink. He's given us his entire life: it's time for us to repay that gift as best we can.

So, we'll talk to the vet and then to the family. It's worse because lately, he seems better: he goes on longer walks, perks up when we're around, and responds to our commands. But there's a suspicious growth getting bigger on his eye, he's tripping over one front leg a lot, and I keep wondering how long his rebound will last. Right now, the family is in denial. I can't even talk to them about it without making them upset -- I will never show them this post, and I hope they don't find it. I'm worried that their insistence on his health will persist until something really bad happens. I'm worried that I'm overreacting. I need a sign, but all we have is instince -- and our instincts as a species are so damned lousy.

Before too long, we'll probably take him for one last car ride. God, he loves car rides. Deep down, I know this is the right thing to do, that we probably should have done it months ago. But it hurts. An empty spot by the steps where he used to sleep. Rugs we don't have to vacuum every week because of his incessant shedding. It hurts so bad to say goodbye, but I can't live with the knowledge that we're the only thing holding him back.

Circling the drain

I'm tired of feeling like my entire life is on hold. I'm tired of waiting for the big event at the end of the summer. I just don't care anymore. I'd rather be there and be completely overwhelmed by what's happening than sitting here by myself for another endless day, circling the runway without landing. I'm tired of feeling like nothing turns out the way you want it to. I'm tired of being depressed, upset and cranky around people I love. I hate feeling like I don't have enough time to spend with them when it's all that matters. I am tired. So, so tired. Crying would be a nice way to get out of it, but I can't. The level of apathy I've managed to work up is alarming. Entire days, wasted. Hours on end, frittered away trying not to think about everything that's happening. I hate being depressed, but I'm not sure what to do about it right now. Hell, I don't even know if I am depressed, or if I'm just having a normal reaction to all the crap going on. It's not just the move - it's the friends relocating, the pressures of a frighteningly rigorous grad program, the family support system I can't imagine leaving, and the job sucking away my husband's time and focus. Yeah, that. I wish the powers that be understood how little time we have left together. I wish I could just accept that this is the way things are and get up in the morning without feeling the need to sleep an hour late. I hate even having to write this - it makes me feel like I'm a failure somehow, like I can't cope well enough. I'm just not happy right now, at least not like I should be. I wish I was.

America. F--- Yeah.

You know, it's not the macrolevel policies, the bloviating political bigwigs or the embarrassing international behavior of the country that really get to me. It's something much smaller, something relegated to the shadows and gutters of our national consciousness, as embodied by today's grocery store trip.

We're housesitting in the Maple Leaf area right now, a north Seattle neighborhood where homes are slightly more affordable than their centrally located neighborhood. (Read: you can purchase a 2-bedroom for under $400,000 instead of half a mil.) Consequently, it's populated predominantly by young homeowners, minority families and elderly residents from the area's half dozen retirement centers. It's more diverse and less affluent than most of the neighborhoods just north of downtown.

As a result, you can walk into the local grocery store on any given night and actually see (gasp!) people from multiple age groups. I love Seattle, but we aren't exactly teeming with diversity, at least when compared to other places I've visited or lived. Or, maybe we're diverse but fragmented...but I digress.

I turned the corner to the produce section and heard a clattering to my right. Before rows of dully waxed apples in faux straw-filled crates, an elderly man was wrestling to place his foldable walker beneath his grocery cart. He was extremely frail and gaunt, stooped from the back to the shoulders like the bow of a weighted fishing pole. Arthritis had wrenched his knuckles and fingers into sharp angles. He was alone in the middle of the brightly lit section, pushing at the flat skeleton of his walker as it dragged against the floor. All around, people passed by with baskets in hand. No one even glanced at him.

I helped him move the walker onto the bottom of the cart, and we went through the awkward routine that always follows. Thank you, even though I feel worse because I needed your help. At least you noticed me. You're welcome, but I'm a coward because I'm not going to ask if I should stay to help you shop. I'm sorry. For everything.

I don't think there was anyone waiting for him outside. There's no way he could have driven a car. The nearest bus was a block and a half away, and it only ran every half hour after 9pm.

You can call me a bleeding heart, but here's the deal: I wanted to cry when I left, and I've been thinking about him all night. I hate the way we treat our elders in this country. They nurture us and prepare the way for our success, and we thank them by leaving them to die unnoticed and alone. If you're rich, you'll hire personal caretakers who can help around the house, and you will pay off your mortgage before you have to stop working. If you're like everyone else, you'll be lucky to escape the dank hallways of dismal nursing homes; you'll be living pretty well if you eke out a living off food stamps and long bus rides to the grocery store.

(Coincidentally, there's a very powerful piece out right now, written by a physician whose father is going through the end of his life. You can find it here, but I wouldn't recommend reading it if you are feeling at all down, or possibly if you're going through something similar. It's a tough read.)

I wish our culture placed greater value on family connections. I don't see any political leaders on either side who campaign vigorously to help families care for each other in their twilight years. No one with power advocates extended leaves of absence for people who need to help their parents or grandparents, nor do they offer tax breaks so families can hire nurses' aides to help. So we're forced into nursing homes, hospitals and hospices while our families suffer the combined mix of guilt, burnout and exhaustion. It infuriates me.

If anything ever happens to anyone in my family, I will do whatever it takes to be there for them. It scares me to think that might not be enough - I might lack the finances, medical knowledge or emotional wherewithal to see it through. I wish things were different. Seriously, if I ever miraculously publish a book that sells, part of the earnings will go towards services for the elderly. We're all going to be there someday, even a handful of the high and mighty who think they can buy their way out of anything. If for no other reason than pure self-interest, you'd think we'd want to change the way we value our predecessors.

One of THOSE days

Make that one of Those weeks. I'm in a terrible mood right now, alternating between "turn on the waterworks" and "kick the crap out of whatever's available." Right now, I think I'd prefer the latter. This whole summer has been an exercise in frustration: I start out with simple personal goals, accomplish none of them, scale them back, continue to accomplish nothing, and so forth. I can't even spend time with people I care about because our schedules have all gone to hell. Add in one uncomfortable bike mishap (ah, the joys of striking one's seat with great force), and I'm liable to wither anyone who makes eye contact.

I took a long walk tonight after sunset, trying to clear my head. Part of me wanted to keep walking, to see where I wound up when dawn broke over the Sound. Running away from my problems never sounded so good. I also thought about going to a bar for a few drinks, but being solo is never a great idea, particularly since I'm likely to put a pool cue through anyone who says anything smart right now. Somehow, I don't think the Gates people would appreciate if if I skewered a lewd member of society. Kelli got it right: half of me is thrilled about what lies ahead, and the other half couldn't be more dejected. Self-imposed schizophrenia: I wouldn't recommend it.

Grumble. Sorry to be the grinch of the evening. Hopefully, things will improve...sometime? At least until then, I can watch my Daily Show highlights.

Light a candle tonight

Please consider lighting one tonight for an online friend whose mother is very ill. To read her story, visit www.momscancer.com. Thanks.