A few days ago I had cubital tunnel surgery on my arm to free the nerve which was crushed and affecting the muscles in my hand. It is something that has progressively been getting worse over time – something which I have been avoiding by pretending everything was fine, even though I have been typing e.e. cummings style without using caps for years (but not here, and not without effort), as hitting the cap key with numb, unresponsive fingers is difficult. Things have gone on this way until the surgeon told me some of the muscles in my hand are wasted away, never to be restored. He said if I did not do something about it, the rest of the muscles would follow suit and I was going to end up with a useless claw for a hand. Horrible images of becoming Lobster Woman 
instantly came to mind. With that picture burned in my brain, I finally took the plunge and decided something better be done about it. Suddenly not wanting to wait another moment, and assuming that slow and easy summertime would make this as good a time as any, I decided now is best to get it over with.
This is actually the first in a repertoire of repairs that are lined up for this year. I am probably going to be bionic by the time all of them are completed. And yes, it is a constant reminder that aging and illness and general deterioration totally sucks.
While the summer has been, for the most part, a sweet balance of sun, rain, heat and breezes, the day of the surgery, an out-patient event, happened to correspond with the onset of a major heat wave, which is still occurring at this moment. This is seriously not the best time to have your arm bandaged up, limiting the capacity to get totally immersed in water. But that is what it is, and here I sit, subsequently hibernating in the blessedly air-conditioned sanctity of the house and trying to only do things that do not require bending both arms. I actually do feel like a lobster anyway, even though that possibility has been circumvented.
Typing is steady but going v e r y, v e r y s l o w l y. This is a good time to catch up on this blog that I have not been focused on enough lately, due to a lot of other distractions, including this one. Part of me feels like I should be cleaning, or straightening, or eliminating some of the piles of stuff that are lying around here, making some progress while having down-time away from my job. Another part of me feels guilty for using my sick-time, even though I have so much sick time that I have hit the maximum ceiling for accruals and have actually lost sick time for not using it. However, my conscience persists in nagging. The Art of Recuperation is not one I have mastered…there seems to be guilt attached to everything I don’t complete, as if relaxation is a sin. But I really don’t feel like doing much of anything. I even watched television this week and just lay there in our Soporific Bed, flipping channels. Not much like the usual me at all. And there was nothing good on either. So many channels, so much crap. Really.
Yesterday I decided to get out of the house and take advantage of daytime business hours to take care of some light errands. It was my first day driving, and I figured it would be no big deal because I could keep my arm still and my hand in my lap. But I kept wanting to have both hands on the wheel, which hurt a little, especially backing up, and also, I am just extremely tired, even though I am not doing much of anything. So I got out there to take care of things and burned out really quickly in the middle of it all. I am wondering if merely getting knocked out under anesthesia has some residual effects that last a few days? Or maybe it’s just the heat……
Speaking of the ongoing heat, this morning I woke up antsy and decided I needed to once again leave the totally comfortable confines of my air-conditioned world and venture outside while it was still early, not too hot yet, and while I still had some energy. So I went to a local, annual street fair, perused some vendors, listened to some good, live music, ran into a few people I know for some idle chit-chat, sat by myself and indulged in some gazpacho and iced tea, and had a street vendor apply some mehndi (henna designs) on my one good hand…all just to kill a little time. When I was finally ready to leave, the temperature had shot up to over 100 degrees, not factoring in the humidity, and was well above that out on the open street. My arm was pounding, sweat was running off every part of me, and to add insult to it all, I had the usual, over-heated, alarming and embarrassing Tomato Face. The long walk back to the car felt endless. Heat shimmered off the pavement. I idly wondered if I would pass out. The inside of the car was beyond a blast furnace – I actually did think I was going to pass out when I climbed inside.
Upon returning home, I was one big salty, arm-throbbing, exhausted, red-faced mess. And then I had to do this modified bath thing, because climbing in the shower would have meant wrapping my arm bandage in plastic bags, and I just couldn’t deal with the time it took to do that, feeling the overwhelming need to get immediately wet.
I took a picture of my one henna-painted hand while it is still pretty fresh. The hand is resting on top of my drum (which, at the moment, I cannot play and won’t be able to for a number of weeks), but I think it looks rather festive. I am back in A/C hibernation now. I think I am going to watch television. Hopefully something good will be on. One can hope.
g to myth, the twin founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, rested under a fig tree.
pedigrees and personalities. I could spend hours engrossed in the fantasies of my little horsey world. One of these horses was a jointed model whose legs would “walk” when you scooted him along the carpet. If you pushed on his withers, his head would drop down as if he was grazing. His body was made of chestnut-colored plastic, with a flax mane and tail that you could comb. He came with a saddle and bridle and a little horse blanket. I had made bandages for his legs out of toilet paper and tape so he looked like a polo pony. I named him Buck.
middle for the turtle to bask on, some gravel on the bottom, and a little green plastic palm tree. What she had named it now escapes me, but she kept it in our shared bedroom, which had taken on that reptilian smell that turtle bowls tend to get when they are not too clean. The turtle itself had started to get some kind of moldy green fungus all over it. Because of this, my sister had decided to wash the turtle and scrub the slime off it’s back with a toothbrush.
decoration, there is a gold medallion with a dragon on it. There were large, outdated Chinese pin-up girl calendars in a few of the rooms.
ced it out on the back porch until I could find a home for it. The next day I discovered that the Significant Other had placed the Jesus in the barn window, facing back towards the house. Every time you looked out from the kitchen or walked outside, Jesus was looking back at you, watching. Eventually we found Jesus a new home.
harm away? Nobody I spoke with had ever quite heard of this. While I found it curious and a little spooky, the SO easily dismissed the package as no mystery, convinced that whoever did the construction on the bathroom merely finished his lunch and then conveniently built his trash into the wall. He says it’s done all the time. So much for romanticizing.
bowl.
icked into action, ran out and bought another blue Betta to replace Stanley. The thing is, nobody wants to tell her it’s not the real Stanley, but I can’t imagine how she will not know. This faux Stanley is a radiant blue with almost a turquoise hue to him. His fins are long and luxurious. The original Stanley was almost anemic by comparison. I will be interested to see if she will realize right away that something is a bit off.
was already up and had discovered that Petal had vanished. I explained the situation. She was at first a bit taken aback, then rather philosophical about it. She named the new fish “Petal-too” and embarked on a lengthy, very chatty discourse about the new fish (“Honey! Grab the video camera!”).
wheeled, wire laundry basket who makes serious business of sorting through the trash as he takes his time with each item. There is the lady on the bicycle pulling the cart, who will show up in the dark, aim her bike’s headlight towards the “goods” and then fervently dig through everything. There are those who take it to an even higher place, driving right up next to the pails to quickly toss the refundable bottles and cans into their cars. Sometimes they come as a team, so one drives while the other collects.
this point it’s not worth the gas to drive over there to do that for the small amount we have. I also realize these people are doing it because they must need to. Given this, I have tried to make it as easy as possible for them by separating the cash bottles out neatly so they don’t have to dig through the bins and cans – even going so far as to put them in their own little six-pack cartons and placing them out in front of all the other trash. This way they can clearly see them from the road and just scoop them up, avoiding extra work and allowing them to move quickly on.
rough until almost the end of November.
us chicken, which walked up to the edge of the pavement, backed off, and then bobbed up again as the traffic whizzed by. Everything in this chicken’s own yard appeared just fine; there was probably nothing across the state road that it really couldn’t get at its own place, at least nothing that seemed risking its life for. I was too far past it to see if it actually attempted to cross, but that chicken probably did not have much of a chance if it did.
like shiny black beads of onyx, looking worried and vulnerable. My first response was surprise. I didn’t exactly say “Eeeek”, but I froze for a few beats there. Opening a kitchen drawer and finding a mouse will usually catch you off guard. Following this discovery, I suggested that we move them outside. I mean, this was a kitchen drawer, and cute as they were, I didn’t think it was a very clean situation. But Hikey said “Let’s leave her alone until the babies grow up and leave”, and he shut the drawer. OK, I know, that’s kind of weird, but that’s how he was and it was his place, so that is what we did – it just became part of the fairytale, little country mice living in the drawer of the magic cottage. Svengali spoke, I stayed quiet.
children’s home-made Christmas ornaments decimated by mice who gnawed through the storage box in the attic, which has enraged me. The spines of books chewed. In one place I lived in, I could not find my favorite gauze shirt from India. Eventually I located it – the mice had pulled it out over the top of the lower drawer and dragged it to a hidden space under the bottom drawer of the dresser and turned it practically into lint, creating a beautiful Mysore patterned nest out of it. I have read that they have the capacity to make themselves almost flat in order to squeeze under a closed door. They proliferate and they are a nuisance. I don’t care how cute they are, they are still rodents. Cats can help, but we had dogs. Hikey was not into traps. You can imagine the field day they were having in that cottage.
the coffee pot to reheat it for Hikey the next morning, I guess it boiled up the mouse with his coffee. And Hikey drank all of it. Mouse coffee.
oothpick. All legs and ribs and a late bloomer. That was me. 
mostly in the middle. As my arms and legs are long, I am starting to take on the build of a spider. I have incrementally managed to artfully camouflage the rolls for quite a while, but cannot anymore (see 
alked in the door, the Significant Other gave me what I imagined was almost a wicked smile before immediately opening a large bag of blue corn tortilla chips and a container of salsa….. and began to indulge right there standing in the kitchen. I didn’t even have one minute of respite before the temptation began. Demon.
either side. Aside from the lack of privacy, I find this fence to be tasteless and depressing. It’s the kind of thing you would see around a vacant lot, except that it’s lower. It practically screams “junk yard”. You would almost expect a couple of Rottweilers to be hurling themselves at it with bared teeth.
mostly obscure the chain link fence between us, to enjoy a glimpse of her world. 
o enjoy it. It’s often so noisy that it disturbs the neighbor on the other side of our house. In addition, their little dog, who is actually very sweet, tends to pee through the fence onto my plants. I have been laying plywood against the fence where I grow vegetables to protect them. Lastly, when I look out the window over the kitchen counter, I have a nice view of their garbage pails.
keeps mysteriously disappearing off of it. I have a basic cell phone with a conventional keypad and am very slow on keeping up with all this texting that everyone seems to be doing now instead of making voice calls. Not up to speed with the latest tech stuff, I wasn’t totally sure what an iPad 2 was, beyond knowing that it has a touch screen and is like something out of The Future. 
nd even laughed) the conversation has swiftly moved on to the next concept or topic. Because of this, I usually will not chime in with a comment; when I do, I have often found that I have entered the dialog with a total non-sequitor. A couple of beats behind, I am out of synch – I have missed the conversation bus. The blank stares, the occasional smirk, the looks between others, or worse, being totally ignored as if invisible tells me so. Because of this, I am now usually a passive participant. Because of this, I am on the outside of many social situations.
disconnected by “Never Mind”. 
avigate. Big parties don’t work well anymore. Places with constant, loud music or crowds are no longer fun. I get lost in busy, chaotic scenes. Given this, there have been a handful of people who have graciously, either consciously or unconsciously, shown incredible patience, tenacity and creativity when we are together, and who continue to seek out my friendship, regardless of the extra efforts it might require. They have been willing to work through or overlook the frustration. I thank those who have easily slipped into the habit of rephrasing amid conversation, or those that step forward to make things clear when I am looking a little lost, and those who offer help or give cues before I have to ask for it. I thank those people for their kindness and for being real friends, for it lets me know that our relationship is valued. You know who you are.
I was such a brat.
and din.
photos of myself. After such rude and irrefutable proof, there followed the panicked realization that I have let my hair go for waaaaay too long without a hair cut and it has become a bit outrageous.
But today, I suddenly looked in the mirror and realized it had to come off – immediately. It has reached the point where from behind I look like a geriatric “Cousin It” when I wear it down. When it’s up, the effect is somewhat like a fountain of white spray sticking out of the top of my head. I realize I have been wearing scarves and hats and elastic bands in my hair for months.
in my Cousin It Phase distress, she literally cut about five inches off it and seriously thinned it out. When I looked on the floor, the remains of my hair lay there in a giant heap which resembled an animal; kind of like a dead possum, or at least a possum playing “possum”. But when I looked in the mirror, I could still see a woman with a massive amount of hair on her head.
When Facebook came along, my kids told me it was just for college students to connect, that it was much cleaner and mature than what was happening on MySpace, and that was where they would now be communing. I was relieved. I was told No Parents Allowed. But slowly it seems everybody has jumped on the FB boat. I resisted for a long time, until the desire to be connected to what was going on with my kids from afar found me finally caving in and joining the masses, albeit with privacy restrictions and blocks in place.
lecturing my children to show sagacity; sharing stories about weirdos and stalkers and human resource departments doing a search on job applicants, about employees who have not used sound judgement in their posts or photos and the repercussions of such, all to drive home the point. For example, if we were considering hiring an applicant and discover that he is flipping the bird to the world in his Facebook profile picture, there is a good chance there will be serious reservations about employing someone with that attitude and lack of maturity.
but I wanted to try it and see what it was about. I shared this experience with a group of other travellers in the middle of the afternoon, sitting in a sunny public cafe filled with people having tea and coffee. A man came to each table with a little bucket and tongs and put the flavored tobacco and coal into the bowl of the hookah. He would occasionally come around to turn the little log of tobacco to make sure it was still burning It was tasty, as tobacco goes – like apples! – but my first smoke after decades made me a little light-headed. It’s not a habit I will be picking up – you won’t be finding me frequenting any hookah lounges in the future. It was a kick. I urged my friend to take a picture for the archives. Subsequently, it was posted with the rest of the travel pictures in my FB album as part of the experience, with a little caption beneath it explaining what it was, and forgotten.
ust have “friended”. I guess she was enjoying my travel photos. And she showed her husband. My direct supervisor, who supposedly is blocked from my albums, also saw it and highly suggested I remove the Misleading Photo, which I did. Then I had to contact other friends on FB and ask them to please remove any Possibly Offending Pictures. Because even if I am not “tagged” in the photo, it’s still out there. It’s me. And I am an administrator and a professional……of sorts. Misleading Photos can create all sorts of Perceptions. And I think that stuff is out there forever, isn’t it?
about my new friends and their lives, to be part of things, was at times daunting and exhausting. Having enough trouble hearing English, trying to communicate in Turkish was interesting. I carried around a small phrase book in which I pointed out words in as much as attempted to say, often pantomiming rather than speaking. When all else failed, I had a little note to show that said I could not hear well (Benim işitme pek iyi değil). This was especially helpful in the hotel and airport, as well as with merchants. People were understanding and kind. Because I cannot hear a motorcycle or taxi roaring up behind me, a couple of these younger friends also took me under their wing (unasked) and steered me across streets of insane traffic madness. I felt like an old granny as they looped their arms through mine and rushed me across. I am not that old, really!!! But I was glad for their concern and support.
the next room for the last week and a half (at least), where things have rotated in and out of it, chosen and then discarded. What’s worse, it is filled up to the very top. What every happened to the free-spirited me?
oon as I hit “Send” I knew that it would be me. As I exited off the freeway and cruised down the ramp, they answered my call and told me I had won Chrissy Hynde and the Pretenders tickets. I wasn’t the one going to the show, but it was still exciting, and it was a first.
ds to a dinner celebration in her honor. I watched the mother/daughter interaction – their body language, the way they moved around each other, their inherited mannerisms, the way they looked at each other….their dance. Seeing this young woman together in the same space as her mother, so similar and yet not the same, the contrast suddenly manifested itself as quite clear. Suddenly I saw the “outer” K, and then myself, for the true age in years that we have become, parallel to our timelessness. Another piece of who we are. It was a brief moment of dawning comprehension and I actually felt our place in time make a shift. It really is all relative.
thought our gushing friend’s idea was terrific, and so we all decided to get together the following month. But when the next month rolled around and I tried to set it up, I discovered this was just lip service, because every weekend was met with varied excuses. The month following that produced only more of the same vapid response. Finally, I gave up asking. It was really too bad, because meeting friends over food, especially people you don’t have a chance to see often when life just seems to get in the way, or especially when you tend to avoid social situations, is a rather nice connection I think. It was an idea that was shot down before it began. I was disappointed, but I have to say I think it’s their loss.
Classic American. Nouveau Cuisine. Japanese sushi. Thai/Chinese fusion. Indian. Tapas bar. The list of what is out there and a mere few blocks away is impressive. Some of these places we have returned to, some we have decided not to return to, and some are yet to be discovered. We have visited both the established and the brand new ventures. A routine seems to be evolving.
acoustically uncomfortable and we have decided the noise level is too much, so in spite of the good food, we will not be back to those – at least not at that busy hour. My friend tells me that there is actually an acoustic rating given by restaurant reviewers, but I don’t think this feature is occurring in our area yet, although I think it is a wonderful idea. We have discovered a couple of restaurants that are expensive but worth it, and some that are not.
daeja's view 