You’re a Mess (But We Like Ya Anyway)

(No, this is NOT two gay guys sneaking into the Kama Sutra. It's a picture of the first two cervical vertebrae, our friends C-1 and C-2, called Atlas and Axis by the folks who know 'em, the atlas because he shoulders the world, get it? The atlas bears the weight of that big old HEAD we all have wobbling atop the broomstick. Anatomy baby! There's nothing cooler!)

Three days ago the doctor explained my recent MRI to me. “The joint degeneration in your neck is much worse!" he said with a great big smile and sent me to have an X-Ray, where one of the jauntiest guys in the business was doing the honors. I explained to him what the deal was: “Next week this doctor's going to inject stuff in there, then make me have these huge boring amounts of physical therapy. First, though, he wants to see if I can even bend my neck without having my head fall off. There’s trouble in there I guess.”

“Wo, I GUESS!” he exclaimed when he looked at the image of the vertebrae in question, that little pile of Pop Beads.

“Sucks to be me, huh?”

“What did you DO to this neck?”

I sighed. I thought about telling him I fell out of a tree like my cat did, leaving her with a limp like Walter Brennan as Stumpy the Cowhand but said nothing.

“Long story, huh?”

Later, when he had the pictures actually in front of him and let me peek at them real quick I tried to get him to SAY what HE thought looked so bad. Was it the bony growth that Osteoarthritis deposits, or was it the silly putty of the bulging discs squooshing out between the Tootsie-Roll segments of this uppermost part of my spinal column?

But darned if he would say. “We can’t say a WORD,” he told me, going all businesslike.

So I was disappointed but I'm still glad I’d made him so happy earlier. I had stood in the EXACT RIGHT WAY for the magic X-Ray eye to take a picture of Pop Beads One and Two, which can only be done by opening your mouth REALLY WIDE and holding your head at just the perfect angle because IF YOU DON'T, your lower teeth and jawbone or your occipital bone in back obscure the view by trying to get in the picture too.

But the shot he took of me? Perfect in every way. See?

Cryin’ Time Again: The Yearly Mammo

♫♫ Oh it’s Cryin’ Time Again, You’re Gonna Squeeze Me ♫♫

Hello children and welcome To Two Good Tidbits Of Info Picked Up Yesterday At My Own Yearly Squeeze-Fest.

Tidbit One: Nobody Faints After 11 In The Morning. This according to the radiology person administering the exam . “I have to warn you, I’m a fainter,” I had just told the woman as she screwed the two icy plates of that Inquisition-style vise tighter together -  but really I said this only AFTER she asked like six times if I was OK was I OK was I OK – which of course began to make me feel that I wasn’t. “Breakfast is the key,” she pronounced. “People only faint if they haven’t had breakfast.”  ( Hmmmm I thought but is that true? Because I faint in extremes of pain as when the quacky old doc in my hometown tried to burn two tiny warts off my arm with something that looked like the hot red coil of his car’s cigarette lighter, leaving me with side-by-side twin scars the size of Cheerios. I also fainted in church religiously ha ha and was heard gurgling under the kneeler Sunday after Sunday and once in the necktie department of the Harvard Coop and they dragged me by the armpits back behind the counter so commerce could continue.)

Earlier, as we stood there before the session started, she fully clothed, I as naked from the waist up as the Venus De Milo, she asked if I did regular self exams, causing me to blurt out my own sad truth, that actually? truthfully? I almost never do which brought us to….

Tidbit Two: Nobody Does the Self Exams. “Nobody does ‘em” she said matter-of-factly and just left it at that. There was no tongue-lashing, no lecture not even a sigh of disappointment at how dumb humans are, choosing all kinds of bad possibilities just because they‘re too dopey to slide their hands around on their bare skin now and then. If I wanted to get sick it was fine with her; she was dead on her feet she said, goin’ since 7:30 this morning and now it was after 5.

“I guess it’s been a long day for you,"  I said and she said “yep” and that’s all she said so darn it all and isn’t that just my luck: looks like once again I’m stuck having to save my OWN life!

oh and Five bucks if you know at a glance why this guy should be mammography's mascot ;-)

Dorks on Segways

I came to DC for the AARP 50^th birthday bash and convention Thursday night because I knew I'd get the chance for a bargain-price Segway tour. That was my secret REAL reason coming here but then two things happened: (1) I found out that a tall athletic way-younger-than-me fellow columnist shattered her pelvis riding one and (2) I saw what dorks people look like traveling in them.

So thus far I’m grounded but I’m still having fun. There are thousands upon thousand of people here in the gargantuan Convention Center, and not that many with grey hair either since the organization starts romancing you the second you turn 50. I invited my friend Pat to come with me. Her registration fee was 30 bucks and mine was just $20, so never mind that they make it ridiculously easy for you to come to this annual wingding but you also get all kinds of deals on hotels, rental cars, insurance, airfare, etc. etc. 365 DAYS A YEAR. (I read recently that 40% of the population will be over 50 by something like 2011 and how frightening a thought is THAT, kids?)

The last time I was in DC it was to sleep 30 to a room with a bunch of teenagers who jumped over every parking meter they saw and kept chinning themselves on the ceiling rails of the subway, so the company is different this time but the spirit's still great.They’ve got Martina Navratilova and Magic Johnson, Cal Ripken and the agelessly crinkly Shirley McClaine. The last two nights there were concerts by Natalie Cole and Chaka Khan and Chicago and tonight the big headliner is Paul Simon who I sometimes think is my cool older cousin so familiar is his every song to me.

Barack spoke to us by live feed this morning and 5,000 people were clapping and stamping their feet. And Maya Angelou and Quincy Jones who are having a little visit with us in the auditorium that seats like 500,000 are just plain bringin’ down the house.

I say 'are' because I’m in this auditorium as I write. 'She' just asked 'him' if he enjoyed doing Killer. He was up all night flying home from China so so didn’t quite catch the reference.

"Uh, Killer Joe?" he said.

“No NO!“ said Maya in that deep school teachery voice of hers. "I’m talking about that big album you did with Michael Jackson!”

When she realized her mistake she laughed harder than anyone and slapped her knee besides and I thought HERE'S a person that would NEVER worry about bring thought a dork and I’m just wondering now: is it too late to scare up that Segway tour before my flight home at tonight?

Long as They Don't Do it in the Street & Frighten the Horses

Today Uncle Ed and I went to our favorite place, the little pond where we both like to watch the ducks dip their heads in the water and show everyone their underpants.  We had just been to his dentist which took forever and made him grumpy (“Who gets fillings at 88”?) and I was fretting generally. I had dashed into the supermarket for some hot barbecue for him and I of course had my sad little soggy salad from the last night's dinner which looked like somebody’s stomach,  not the nice fat part you can rest your soft drinks on but the organ. (This is what Old Dave does with all leftovers: he shovels them into plastic bags. The man is great with clean-up but I do shudder to see those plastic bags, which really do resemble an array of body parts there in the fridge which sometimes look like they’re pulsing.) Now now here we were there at the pond, Ed all grumpy, me all anxious and blue, my secret favorite Bad Day Combo.

On a whim I asked him if he minded my leaving him here to look at the water while I took a very quick walk to clear my head, and on that walk which lasted all of 18 minutes I saw a sight: A couple on a bench wrapped in a Hollywood-style embrace, lips locked.  HE was ardent; kissed that girl for longer than it takes to asphyxiate someone, and with that whole head-moving-around thing thrown in. SHE was tentatively accepting, if practically bent over backwards by the force of his enthusiasm. After one mad tonsil-assaulting smooch he suddenly stopped, stood up in front of her seated self, knelt down as if to propose, then stood again quick, made his whole body as rigid as a plank and lowered himself like a man doing a push-up to land on her…. chest sort of while the whole time still kissing her and kissing her.

I had only walked past three times in the last 90 seconds while pretending not to look but I bet she felt me. I bet she felt us all, the joggers and the cyclists and the wheezy old guys with cigars.  “Watch it there pal” is what we were saying but we needn’t have worried: Out of the blue the girl suddenly brought her foot down BANG! on the pavement once, twice, three times to get her man’s attention pushed him away and in two seconds excessive adoration was put in its place: they were sitting up nice side by side and once again thanks to Womankind civilization was saved. SAVED I tell you!    

September, When it All Starts Again

David and I went to our friends’ house where eight or nine kids were hanging out.My girl Carrie was with me and her two babies too - Chris had stayed behind to catch a little alone-time.

Most of these kids have at least heard of Carrie since they're in the youth group I work with. Her mini-boys they did not know but My, were they nice to them! They picked the littlest guy right up and began conferring with him. The high school freshman invited the four-year-old onto the tennis courts for some fun. He is also the man with the musical instrument shown underneath here which he graciously allowed them both to bang away on.

One guy, the eldest of the crew, is about to leave for his first year at the University of Chicago. When he was little we all went on the kind of intergenerational family retreat where the kids typically play so hard they lose their voices on the first night. Steven was just a baby then and one whose momma had to be absent for the wholel of the Saturday owing to the fact that she was getting licensed in Air and Sea Rescue. His dad had pulled out his guitar and was singing for us all while one-year old Steven stood beside him and for a good 40 minutes wailed "P-P-P-Put it Awaaaaaaaay!”

When I look at Steve now I see this gifted kid, this writer of fugues this boy who taught himself Latin and actually won a prize for mastery over it when he took the national exam. It won’t surprise me to hear that he one day holds the patent for the Brain Self Surgery. But I also see the child of 20 months who wanted his father to stop playing for all these strange grownups and just comfort him in his yearning.

Over the years he became big brother to three others. One of them I know pretty well already through the church youth group; one I hope to know within a few weeks since he has just arrived in the upper echelons of middle school and will soon be part of this same entity. Several of these others will be there soon as well and that's the real beauty of this most beautiful month of September if you ask me: the way school starts again and here are all these wonderful young people with their kindness and their sense of fun and there fine clear vision.

Family Life - Love Among the Ruins

This is what our summer has been like: We’ve all been together every weekend and sometimes it’s been great and sometimes it’s been hard. The baby is sick this weekend and though he never cries normally he sure is crying now. His mum Carrie went running and a big golf ball-sized lump popped up on the side of her knee after. (The surprise that Fate had for us all last summer was to learn that Carries has the auto-immune disease known as Rheumatoid Arthritis, this athlete, this former Crew girl and Rugby player. Last summer she could not lift a glass of water to her mouth on account of it. Now she’s almost all better thanks to the new drugs but feels – I know she feels – that her youth is over.)

That’s Old Dave with the white hair. He still has his health and is still the strongest man I know aside from John Magee, shown here bench-pressing our first baby a couple of summers ago.

That’s the new child, the little sickie on the far right.

And me, I’m taking the picture so I’m not in it. My health is good except my neck hurts all the time. I have a mental image of myself as the Cat in the Hat with my skinny neck making all this trouble. The discs are bulging forward, squeezed out of alignment like marshmallow between two squares of graham cracker. The shot they give you for this feels like cold death must feel as it zizzes instantaneously through all your ductwork but it helps for six months or so and I will be glad to have it again soon and I'm content.

The baby has found one of the cats now and is patting him and seems better for the moment anyway. I love watching the ones who are watching each other. That’s family life I guess, and I sure thank God for it.

Funkytown Roadtrip

The world looked so pretty and clean this morning I started to think I was in Disney World. Dogs were grinning from the windows of their master’s trucks and the early morning light made the distant hills look like big old lions rolling their muscles. “These two hours will pass in no time!” I thought as I rolled from Central New Hampshire over to Portland Maine.

Only then I began noticing that about every 100^th tree was infested with tent caterpillars whose webby nests look like cotton candy caught in a sandstorm.

Only then I saw a skinny old lady dressed in Barbie doll-style togs close her car window on her own dog’s chin. She did it slowly but she did it on purpose – pushed that button so fast to get herself some coffee it hit the poor thing smack under the jaw.

Only then I saw a porcupine who was worse than killed by the car that sealed its fate; I mean yeah it was dead but it also had this long red rope-looking thing coming out of its stomach. It looked like a sweater somebody decided to un-knit. It looked like a vacuum cleaner whose plug someone just pulled from the wall…

And all of this WOULD have really harshed on my mellow - until I passed a little phone-booth-sized structure up on blocks in somebody’s front yard, wooden, shingled-roofed, with the classic crescent moon carved into the door and in leaning against it a big hand-painted sign saying “For Sale By Owner.”

It was an outhouse of course but a new outhouse or a slightly used one? I was darned if I knew, but tell ya what, just the very thought of an enterprising spirit like that had me smiling the whole rest of the way to Portland.

Your Unit is Ready

“Hi” began the breathless email I just got. “This is Brian! I ordered your new unit and need to hear from you for confirmation on delivery date!”  So ‘Brian’ here clearly wants me to think that not only are we such pals that he needs no last name but also that I will smack my head and say “Oh my UNIT! I totally forgot I ordered it!"  Pretty cute using the word “unit” too, a generic term that applies to so many things, your conditioner, your apartment, your toupee.

Speaking of 'rugs', I had a six-foot-three, 230-pound hair-stylist friend I’ll call Huey. By night he wore leather chaps and chains and participated in various tableaux in which he dressed like a giant painted woman but by day he made things pretty. In the salon he was all you could ask for: he fitted wigs on hair-loss people like nobody's business, he cried when you cried and he could do anyone’s hair living AND dead and send them to the party looking better.

Since he was bald himself  he talked a lot about his own unit. I'd go see him and ask about his day and he would treat me to such vivid descriptions of his morning rituals I felt as if I was sitting right next to him at the dressing table in his apartment - and naturally there was lots of talk about his unit, which was strictly top drawer and got more attention than most people’s pets.

I sigh to think of him. Maybe someday I’ll have a unit too and yes I DO know the word has another meaning and no I don’t contemplate sexual reassignment surgery QUITE yet BUT IF I DID – or if I were bald, hot or needed an apartment why I’d write right back to Brian here lickety-split and say “My UNIT? It’s ready for shipment? Well here’s my home address, bank account numbers and Social honey! Now you send that thing right on out, I’ll be waitin’ by the door!”

Hot Metal, Right in the Old Eyeballs

Had an MRI last night at 10pm, weirdly enough.

Now for any MRI they begin by stretching you out like a corpse, then they seal you in a sort of high-tech coffin, then subject you to the fiercest racket you can imagine.

So into my coffin I went, joking around and saying I was sure I’d just find it funny just like I did the last time.... but of course it being TEN AT NIGHT I fell dead asleep in there, causing the technician to peep in a tiny electronic voice of alarm that sounded like it was a million lifetimes away, “Don’t move!” Jeez don't move!” Then they had to shoot the whole sequence again because being sound asleep I did move a little.

The racket IS pretty funny actually: First there’s this sort of syncopated knocking, like a kindergarten rhythm band just warming up, then six blasts of artillery fire, then a kind of electronic pocking like a person playing with one of those little wooden paddles that have rubbers ball attached to them by slender lengths of elastic.Then the whole capsule moves, with a sort of lame lurching motion, like a low-end amusement park ride. Then, it all starts again. Oh! And periodically too, a tiny image of the technician appears as a miniature angel in your coffin’s little mirror and asks, in a tiny electronic voice, if you're OK in there.

I just had my shoes and my bikini undies on under my double johnnie. Outside, David held my strapless bar, my yellow sundress and my wedding ring which is all I walked in with. Still they kept asking me if I had any METAL on, any metal at all? On me? In me? And also, Had anyone ever shot metal into my eyes?

All I could say was No. But some guy got mad at me today reading what I wrote about our nice cat Abe and how we let the doctors cut his penis off and he called me "freak" and other mean things AND HE SURE ISN'T THE FIRST TO DO SO so really all I can say about my eyes is, Not yet (and by the way here they are):

National Boo-Boo Day

Yesterday was the birthday of Crisco, Crisco being LARD , pure pig fat, and right next door to mercury in terms of being in the doghouse these days but I tell ya what: you want to make a really good fine pie you’d best dig out the Crisco.

It was also Chinese Lovers Day, Editor Appreciation Day, and National Best Friends Day, though I didn’t make a pie or love any Chinese people either. I did get to thinking about Chinese Handcuffs which like a lot of things (Iraq, Viet Nam) are easy enough to get INTO but a whole harder to get OUT of.

I didn't do much about National Best Friends Day either except annoy the socks off my designated best friend/spouse talk about your Chinese Handcuffs. He was annoyed because he had JUST TOLD me that TVs with DVD players in them suck on account of how the DVD part breaks and then were are you and what did I do but directly disregard his advice and go buy that very thing. He hates it when people fail to take full advantage of his sagacity. Especially when it’s his moron wife who should know better but what can he do? Even if on nine levels I test his patience like you wouldn’t believe on that tenth level he finds me irresistible. (Smug smiley face goes here.)

But I guess I DID celebrate the day a little cone to think of it in the sense that I file my column on that day of the week and so appreciate my editors afresh on account of the crazy mistakes I bad make in my typing, especially right at the last second before I press “send.” Once I was trying to tell about this teacher who liked the kids and was liked in return but what did I end up writing instead ? “She licks the kids and the kids lick her” and no spell-checking program on earth would ever find that gaffe. It takes an editor, right? And so for the zillionth time THANKS GUYS and here's to boo-boos all around. Now let’s eat us some pig fat and catch some nice Olympic swimming!

Here's the pig fat: OH ya!

Viva Viagra?

OK, you want to know why we resent you guys? We resent you because all the best creativity gets directed to your needs instead of ours. Take the names of the various sexual aids: YOU get a name like ‘Viagra’, which sounds like vitality with a little agriculture thrown to help sow those life-givin’ oats of yours. You get ‘Levitra,’ a name deriving from the Latin word for ‘rise’. I see the Levitra ads and all I can think of is the ladder on a fire truck cranking slowly and sturdily upward. You get ‘Cialis’ which sounds like “See Alice,” because there's just no TELLING what Alice might be moved to do in the face of your powerful display of manhood!

Now look at the names of the products they have for us. Is there a ‘Honey Blossom’? Or a 'Heaven’s Gate’? Or a ‘Nectar of the Goddess”? No way babe. What they have for us is something called  ‘Vagifem’, a sipping straw-size syringe-like thingy that carries at its tip a tiny payload of estrogen to be catapulted boink! against the cervix and left there to do what it can do.

Vagifem, Gad! Can there BE a worse word?

Plus men also get perky jingles like the “Viva Viagra!” one. They get romantic commercials where chicks soaking in hot tubs reach out to link pinkies with these about-to-be-proven-tireless partners, commercials where some pliant gal with shoulder-length hair swoons prettily in the arms of her big strong man, EVEN THOUGH HE’S IN THE  POWDER-BLUE TUX HE WORE TO HIS PROM 30 YEARS AGO HAR-DE-HAR-HAR. Even at that he still seems not at all dorky but cool and fun and ironic, a life-of-the- party guy who's not about to let a little e.d. get him down!

All this do guys get, and we get .......Vagifem -  and why? Because they think we’re lightweights? Sissies? Fems ourselves?  Just a bunch of fems with vaginas? And who named THAT body part you ask? Who but the men of Ancient Rome and guess what it means in Latin? It means “scabbard,” as in the sheath for a sword.

Yep, sheaths to their swords are our bodies to them, holsters to their little pistols, this part of us that is most complex and intricate through which all must travel to get here, this wondrous part named and defined strictly in relation to the male, walk-ins welcome,  step right up, open 24 hours a day, we’re here to serve ya.

I say we rename THEIR products with the same unromanticized bluntness and how's this for starters:  How’s  ‘Penissimus Maximus’ and the slogan can be “It’s Scrotally Awesome”?

Revolt of the Powerless

Little kids are so sweet the way they repeat their parents’ phrases. A while ago I was sitting with a little girl two who really REALLY wanted the toy that this seven-month-old beside her was clutching, maybe because it wasn't even a toy so much as totally delightful AID TO RELAXATION, a sort of wee vibrating robot that looks like this:

She just WANTED this gizmo. Bad. And so said “I’m sure the baby would be happy to share that with me.” She'd heard this phrase from her parents evidently and decided to give it a try -  and just like that the thing was buzzing away in her hand and she was smilin' to beat the band.

The trick in life, children,  is to manipulate reality with words, just like she did: say a thing and hope that the saying will make it so. I know it's a scam I personally have been tryin' to run for like 50 years now.

But what would happen if little kids turned the tables and used those powerful suggestions on us their keepers? We say to them “Shall I check your hair now?" meaning 'Shall I drag this painful metal-toothed comb through your tender scalp looking for nits?' We NEVER say "Would you like a bath tonight or should we just say the hell with it?", NEVER ask “Would you LIKE me to find the tenderest hairs at the  nape of your neck and rake my fingers through them?” Oh no. It's all false choices we offer them, like those personality tests that ask if you’d rather have your nostril hairs pulled out one by one or be thrown from a third floor window.  “Should we take the lice-comb to you first or start the evening's activities by scouring your bottom with infernally stinging baby wipes WHILE GRASPING YOUR TINY ANKLES AND HOISTING THEM HIGH ABOVE YOUR HEAD? “

What I worry about is when the tables turn at which point “Will that be paper or plastic?" won't exactly be the choice that they're offering us.  More like “Mom? Dad? Will that be the pillow over your face or an overdose of Nyquil?" when we’re all 110 and they’re 80 and sick to death of us.

In fact what I think is we should fork over all our foot massagers, head ticklers and heating pads RIGHT NOW - and  maybe, just maybe, they’ll let us live.

We're Reading Your Thoughts (and We Want Some of That Wine)

Is there a Poltergeist at this vacation house I’m wondering? Because two things: (1) I corked this bottle of wine and the cork kept popping out – shooting out hard and flying five, six feet in the air; and also (2) there was this thing with my TV set..... We had a rainstorm the other night, see, that was so severe it trapped me in the supermarket. FOR AN HOUR AND A HALF I was the only dope in the place.. “Dude, the Parking lot is a TOILET!” said one of the kids working there as he looked out at the rain drumming and the wind howling. It was too: a world of water was circling this one large drain just like when you flush. Another kid finally went and got me an umbrella so to help get me to my car without drowning but the water went all the way to my calves as I fought my way there and then home.

Then when I finally got there, well let's just say I’ve OFTEN thought if Old Dave were ever hit by lightning he probably wouldn’t notice; at least he wouldn’t react in a big way. And he looked ok, meaning he wasn’t all googly-eyed and radiating, but SOMETHING sure as heck happened here because: The computer is history. Ditto two TVs. Plus, the cable is out. AND,  the phones are dead.

It’ll cost us big to replace this stuff if we replace it all and I just couldn’t deal with that thought right then. I kept thinking "If I can just sit down in front of this last TV that still at least turns ON and if I can get its DVD player to work, I'll be OK."  Because I had such HOPES for this vacation week - about how I was going to watch all these episodes of The Wire and finally file all the family photos from 2001 on. I was so hoping the week would be like that. It’s what I pictured all summer long: the peace, the quiet, the chance to sort through things and watch some fine drama uninterrupted. (sigh) I had such hope…

So I poured myself some of that feisty wine, popped in the DVD of Episode 5 Season 3 of The Wire and well, see for yourself: the RIGHT hand part of every shot appears on the LEFT hand side of the screen, while the LEFT hand part appears on the RIGHT so you have to mentally rearrange what you're seeing like someone with dyslexia does (and this happens whatever DVD you put in.)  Also, there’s this one giant black bar that runs vertically down the screen, and another that runs horizontally across it so that only about 60% of the picture is visible.... See?

The TV is in our bedroom and in this shot below as you can see by the reflections on the screen but here’s what’s eerier still - even more eerie than that wine popping its cork every ten minutes. In fact It’s as if the TV can READ MY MIND because here's what appeared, black bars and all just as I snapped the picture:

V

V

V

V

V

V

I did: I had such hope for this vacation... And now I have some tingly fear besides.

A Whiner Whines

I feel grouchy. I just drove ANOTHER hundred miles to get back to my real house during this my vacation week because this dumb fancy phone of mine broke and they had a new one waiting for me - IF I came home to fetch it and I’m sorry I did - because the foolish NEW phone turned out to also be so defective I couldn’t even open the battery compartment and charge it up and had to spend 45 minutes on the line with some guy in Texas at midnight. And now here I am at the lake again forced to hang around the front door like some cocker spaniel all day so that when they DO go to deliver the thing they can get the signature which they absolutely require … And I wouldn’t mind but see the SUN just came out here and who wants to be inside  waiting for some dumb doorbell to ring under those circumstances? You want to be OUTSIDE and I don’t care what they say about sunhats and the bad moles and a bulging left-cheek gland due to right wing melanoma, when I’m here and it’s my vacation week and the sun is shining I’m like this little guy here; I want to be out there on the deck too, just CATCHIN’ THEM RAYS !

Pony in Here Somewhere

Old Ronnie Reagan used to tell the story of the optimistic child who on Christmas morning finds a pile of manure in his room and excitedly cries, “There’s a pony in here somewhere!”

He was an optimist himself, old President Pompadour and I’m one too. An optimist and a romantic. Wasn't it my notion that our seven-month-pregnant girl would just LOVE a 1500-mile trip by train to Florida which turned out to nearly put her in the hospital? “The sun is coming out, I can tell!” I’m always chirping in the midst of hellish downpours. Or, “Look at that lovely lone hawk tending its young!”- and it turns out to be a vulture eviscerating a bunny.

Yesterday on the highway I spotted two horse trailers up ahead and entered a whole waking dream in which I saw again my horse-riding days at Camp Fernwood: pictured the warm flanks of the beasts as we rested out little knees against them; the feel of leather and horseflesh; the exalted pride I felt when I learned to sit a canter and leave no daylight at all between bottom and saddle.

I kept almost catching up to these two trailers, though they rode on well ahead of me, disappearing always over the edge of that next hill. Lovely roans and palominos, I pictured. Nickering and swaying I all but heard and all but saw, and imagined those muscular haunches.

I got to where I thought I could smell them even. Thought I could just glimpse their manes flowing out in the breeze; their wonderful fly-flicking tails - until after about an hour when I caught up with them both and they weren’t horse trailers at all. They were two flatbed trucks carrying eight Porta-Potties.

Porta-Potties!  just like the one that naughty kids pushed onto my car the winter before last on New Year’s Eve! Porta-Potties, dang it all!

And then, double-dang, if it didn't start pouring out, and all I could think of was me at 59 years of age, old TT, and one saucy song from camp days too: "And there was Grandma (ba da da DUM) Swingin' on the Outhouse door!"

Jiggling Eyeballs

No sleep the night before last. Forced to try old trick of hanging head off edge of bed while watching old movies upside down. Ten minutes of Deborah Kerr with hairdo like a Chia Pet’s and am out cold. But whoops deadline day so up at 5 to write with manic panic. Break at 8 to bring ill-fitting clothes to tailor Bob who cut off his ponytail. Needs to attract the ladies again, says. Uses internet, says. Finds it all quite the task since main thing you need to find out fast is, Are they fat. Says you take 100 women over age 50, only six are attractive.

Am entertained if offended for the sisterhood. Then Look at watch. Cold sweat starts run down sides. Race home, coffee up, resume madly writing then oops it’s 11. Column done and filed but 87-year-old uncle sitting in his apartment for an hour waiting.

Go get him. Buy food for our quick day-trip/ field-trip north to the summer place. Score food for the journey. Stuff cats in their carriers, pop ‘em in the car. Get gas and drive 90 miles up I-93, making wider loop for sake of scenery. Take wrong turn off 104 seeking yet more cows and horses; 45 minutes extra for scenery more dubious. Bladder distress for cats, man 87, woman over 50 wondering could she could POSSIBLY be one of six if she wets her pants.

Get to the lake at last whew, ahead of every other family member. Within ten minutes husband arrives. Then chef daughter Annie. Then daughter Carrie with spouse Christine, stroller, bibs, young'uns. One person gets sand in pants. One tried eating rocks. Uncle has couple belts. Carrie and Chris cook up youth foods. Carrie hops in shower in sports bra 'n bikini briefs, one child at the knee and one in arms. I feed Uncle. Husband David inspects beach sand for squirrel BMs. Annie produces 15 golden-trumpeted squash blossoms from farmers market, begins stuffing with ricotta cheese to bread and deep-fry. Uncle and I can't stay. Drive 90 miles south. Drop him his apartment 9:35. Tear to the mall before 10, hoping to get busted phone looked at, hopefully fixed. “This little machine is DEAD" says gum-chewing tech at Verizon Store. Store closing now, grill coming down; no more Blackberries like this in stock anyway.

Wobble homeward, thinking of them all at summer place. Iron for reasons unknown. Turn out light midnight so as to be up at 5 and back on the road by 6 to do child care with Auntie Chef Annie and Dave while Carrie and Chris leave kids behind to go to a wedding. 6:30 now, late again here. Eyeballs jiggling. Headache and back pain. 6:45, get in car. Picture family all still sleeping, old guys fishin' in cove. All this Just 90 miles to the north. Be back up there in no time. Picture sun just warming deck and loons up and off for breakfast.

AWAY FROM HER & THE CAT SHAMPOOS

I’m away from her now, home again in Boston, and my big sister Nan is still in Florida; still in that Boy-in-a-Bubble world that this MRSA infection has put her in, where she can’t even take shower on account of the crucial porthole the hospital opened up in her arm. Since her week-long stay there in mid-June she's only been allowed to have little kitty-baths  - and this in a household where the real cat showers daily.

Nan and Chuck designed their bathroom in such a way that instead of a curtain the shower has two walls made of chunky glass tiles, which the cat scaled one day to oversee Chuck in his ablutions. Now Chuck is crazy about this animal and so “asked” him if wanted a little spray to the face and what do you think, the cat loved it. He now BEGS for out-and-out shampoos, complete with an Irish Spring lather-up to the head and ears. It must be like getting massage for us humans, or even massage with the special dessert thrown in for the folks who go in for that sort of thing because this cat just adores Chuck now, and follows him all over the house thanking him and licking him and sleeping in his truck when he can't get at his lap.

Nan named the cat when he first wandered into their yard as a homeless kitten. Duke she dubbed him, like they called John Wayne because little as he was he had that certain leadin'-with-ma-big-wide-shoulders-style swagger - or anyway he had it before a kitty stroke a couple of springs ago rearranged his posture some. Now he wears his head in this permanent cocked angle so now Nan calls him Two O’Clock. “Hey, Two O’Clock!” she’ll call out when he slinks by. The cat pays her no mind though; he’s too busy following Chuck, hoping for more shampoo and lap-dancing.

If you read the post underneath this you know that I went down to Florida to help Nan and Chuck as they weather this summer of Nan's sickness. This past Monday she let me go with her to the clinic that houses the Hyperbaric Chamber she must lie in for two hours every day because its oxygen-rich environment promotes healing in her foot, the site of this grievous infection. The thing looks like a big Tylenol capsule and she eases into it after the handsome tech Brian takes her vitals. On Monday he closed the cover and there she stayed, for a little over two hours before the doctor undid the dressing and looked at her poor foot, which even inside the bone is infected with this highly resistant staph infection capable of claiming your toes, your feet, your limbs and even your life.

I meanwhile sat stunned in the waiting room. I looked at the big live oak tree outside the window, wearing its Spanish moss like the torn lingerie the young Elizabeth Taylor wore in all those movies where she was for sure SEXUALLY AVAILABLE but strictly in that violet eyed upper-class British accent way.

I looked at the other clients waiting their turn, the woman who gave birth ten days ago and is one big open wound in the C-section area and so has to come have that seen to, poor dear, falling asleep in her chair.

And I brooded over the thought of what it costs to come here: a whopping $4500 per session and even with Nan's insurance she still has to pay $150 per. That will have been five days a week times ten weeks and well, you do the math.

And yet still she smiles and makes her funny remarks. She introduced Brian to me as "the Crypt Keeper" for example. He didn't mind. He gets her. He just smiled his nice smile and undid the blood pressure cuff around her little arm. "Wave to your sister," he said and she did that and he closed the lid and the session began.

Recipes for Healing

THIS IS NAN ON THE LEFT, WITH COUSIN ELEANOR

I’m in Florida, the land of scooting lizards and drinking water that smells like a swamp - only here at my sister Nan’s house Nature is banished. Her husband Chuck saw to that: he built this place five years ago and all night long the ceiling fans turn in rhythm with the comforting rumbles of the seeming dozen of systems all working to keep thing cool, dry and varmint-free.

The two of them were five years into their marriage when they came here. Chuck’s beautiful wife Betty had died of cancer and Nan’s high-energy husband Tom had died of a heart attack. Tom was one of the only two men I have ever known who would smoke while downhill skiing off the trail. He also would eat six raw hot dogs, chased by six-hard-boiled eggs, chased by a pint of ice cream. Nan and their 15-year-old daughter Gracie suffered so much when he died, as did the four wonderful kids from his first marriage all in their 20s, that tender and precarious decade.

Now Nan is suffering again: For the third time in four years she has a MRSA infection and this one is bad. She wants me to do a kind of 'public service' column about MRSA and I can try to do that as soon as I get home to Boston, but right now it's 8am and I'm sitting in this lovely tree house of a home on the bayou and the fans are turning and Nan is quietly infusing herself with the killer antibiotic Vancomycin, the only drug at all shown to be effective against this methycillin-resistant staph infection.

She has an opening in her arm where the PICC line enters, then heads north, then south again and straight to her heart. (The abbreviation stands for Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter.) It’s very important that that site remain clean and a wound care specialist comes every day to look both at it and at her foot, where the infection began. It’s in the bone still, even these seven weeks into treatment, and everyone is praying she can keep her toes. At one point they thought the foot was even a goner. At its worst Nan says it looked like a shark had bitten her. It was raw and open, pulsing and red.

She wouldn’t let me come until now. “I'm fine. I have Gracie,“ she emailed me the one time. “I have Chuck.” But every single day she has to go for what could end up being nine or even ten weeks to lie for two hours each time in the Hyperbaric Chamber which is said to speed healing. And then there are the doctor’s appointments. And Gracie couldn't work from this house forever. And on the phone once Chuck said in a very small voice, “I’m just having a little trouble with the meals."

So I got on the plane the second Nan gave me the green light. I here came Thursday at 4:00 and I will leave tomorrow morning at 10:00 and in that time I have made a Chicken Cassoulet meal and a heart Meaty Loaf meal; an old-fashioned Roast with Pan Gravy, and a Baked Ziti that would feed a dozen; a hot Pear, Pork and Arugula Dish with Walnuts and Bleu Cheese and a Chopped Broccoli Salad with Bacon Bits Cheddar and Red Onion. Yesterday I went to the Winn-Dixie and bought ten Tupperware containers and today I will start freezing it all, because they have barely made a dent in it, natch.

It’s funny though: I’m just looking at this list to see that that while the Pork and Arugula Salad is a new favorite of ours everything else has meaning: The Roast with Gravy and the Zesty Meat Loaf were our Mom’s specialty. My girl Annie-the-chef told me to make the Baked Ziti and sent me down here with the recipe that bears her quirky stamp (“Mix the whole mess up in a bowl...”) The Chicken Cassoulet is our cousin’s Carolyn’s specialty and the Cheesy Broccoli Salad is Cousin Eleanor's. I’m pretty sure Eleanor herself is coming at the end of August. I know Cousin Sheila arrives in just two weeks. My girl Carrie is sending a CD and a book down. And faithful-hearted Cousin Mary Lou calls and calls, expressing love and compassion though Nan is too weak yet to tackle a phone call.

Dodson is a beloved honorary son of David and me and he might as well be son to Nan and Chuck too for how they love him and his new bride Veronica - just as much as we do. They came here to Tarpon Springs from Sarasota just for the day Saturday and just sat with us on our couch. We are all on the couch it feels like. We are together in spirit, and hoping for our miracle.

Watching the Watchers

“Pull Me Up,” which is what I called this week’s column, is about vigilance; about who looks out for the one who’s looking out for the rest of us.

I am married to Mr. Vigilance. Personified. When we travel I’m all the time talkin' to little kids in the food line or jokin’ around with the smokers in that walled-off leper colony of a cement room they’re forced to use.

Not David. David is practically testing the instrument panel on the plane. He lies awake the whole night before a trip and worries. Boards the plane and worries. Lands and worries.

It’s not because he’s a seasoned traveler and I’m some neophyte. For the last 23 years I’ve been flying all over the map, comin’ in to Tampa when it’s 93 degrees and soaking with humidity to be on some dumb magazine show for 90 seconds; screeching in to Tucson and taking a wrong turn in the desert at midnight; climbing into some little rental car just as dusk is settling over some godforsaken rustbelt city whose newspaper I’ve made arrangements to call on…. Wherever I am, I just look at my little map and set right out, full of delight and happy expectation, assuming some stranger will take care of me, get out of his car to draw me a better map than the one I have; offer to lead me to my destination even because this has been my experience. I expect cheery good will on the part of the universe if not big affectionate pats to the head.

David must just expect something else, though we don’t talk about it at all - maybe because he’s so busy looking after me. I say this because I..... lose things; I drop things; I walk out of the kitchen thinkin' I’m done in there for the next five hours, totally not noticing the six-inch flame still doing the Hula on an empty burner. And there’s more: Once I put a five pounds of flour down the garbage dispose-all, causing it to become instantly constipated. Once, while easing the baby into her carseat I put my purse on top of the car, off of which it instantly slid the second I accelerated, to be  picked up by a Bonnie-and Clyde style couple who the cops then gave lights-and-sirens chase to through three towns in central New Hampshire…

The other day was a real low point though: the other day I came trotting down stairs with my Innisbrook tote bag just as David was getting ready to leave for work. “Oh nooooo!” I shouted with dismay because inside this nice leather shoulder bag that he had won at his latest golf tournament everything was suddenly soaked.

Patiently he set down his own pile of stuff and took it from me. Out came the diary and the daybook, the three New Yorkers and the Time magazine, the nectarine and the cell phone,  all of which I clucked and mourned over and tried to dry off.

“WHAT have you GOT in this bag?” he was just exclaiming – until he came upon the full cup of coffee that had tipped over inside it.

“You put COFFEE in a tote bag?”

"Oh hmmmm... well I thought I had sealed it.”

Then he turned the whole thing over to shake out the pencils, the gum and the pacifier, the toothbrush, the carrots and the lip gloss – and found something that embarrassed even me: a half-eaten ice cream cone, the cone part anyway, now a soggy blob of waffley goodness still wrapped in its protective paper napkin.

He cleaned it all up anyway and handed it back to me after like ten whole minutes, and I couldn’t understand why he was smiling.

“Wait, I made you late for work - AND your hands smell like coffee and rotten Maple Walnut,” I said. “Aren’t you mad at me?”

“Nah” he said.

“Really? Why not?”

“Because the kids and I are gonna have a REAL laugh over this one!”

How grateful am I for the one who watches over me while in my manic way I attempt to watch over the whole known world? Really grateful - of course.

And hey: getting laughed at behind my back is a mighty small price to pay.

So thanks for all the vigilance, Davey Dave… NOW WIPE THAT SMILE OFF YOUR FACE!

The Angle of the Dangle

Smith College the 1930s:Fire Drill/Escape the Burning Dormitory Trick

These gadgets were still in use when I got to Smith, just moments before college kids everywhere exploded into the flesh-baring, headband-wearing joy of the youth movement.

The girls in the picture are just 18, whether they look it or not. That’s when you had to do: take the Escape from Your Burning Dorm Room test as a freshman just a few weeks in. They look like they’re trying to hang themselves eh? Some of them look like they’re even OK with the idea.

I used this title just to be fresh of course but when I first typed it I wrote “angel” instead of “angle” which made me wonder if I should call this 'Angels in Danger', or maybe 'Angels Descending' and there’s my problem right there: I never know who’s going to be talking when I open my mouth, either that nice girl with the white gloves who started at Smith in 1966 or this crazy person who in talking about life with small children says the word 'penis' twice in front of an audience of kindly women in beautiful sundresses.

That’s what I did yesterday when I was the speaker at a luncheon put on for the members of the Winchester Boat Club. I guess there were 125 of 150 of them there, all in lovely sundresses and little shawls. Out of respect I wanted to dress beautifully too and at first put on a few killer outfits only to think Who are you, the bride? What is this, a short story by William Faulkner? I stopped then and called darling Ryan Dunn to wake him up, Ryan who helps me with much of my business life- only being just 19, Ryan was of course still sound asleep with his cell phone off. I thought “Be calm Terry.” Also “DON’T be a show-off with these fancy outfits" and so wore black slacks and a blazer and looked instead like a matron in a women’s prison but that was ok; we are meant to set self-consciousness aside are we not?

I really was getting a little panicked now about who would help me lug in the all my books which I had been graciously invited to offer for sale after the talk. I called Ryan four more times, then dialed up his dad at work who called their famous neighbor Bob Bigelow who walked straight into the house, straight into Ryan’s very room adn yelled TERRY MAROTTA NEEDS YOU AT THE BOAT CLUB GET UP I'LL GIVE YOU A RIDE and if you don't think getting yanked into wakefulness by a six-foot-seven former Boston Celtic isn't scary, well talk to Ryan.

The day went great anyway and the women laughed as I talked about all the fun we can have in life and also how we might die any day, all of it mixed in together as is usual with me. It's just my standard mode of expression I think, Funny With Death in it, Deathy With Fun in it. And right at the end one of the men that works there came shyly up for some small talk.

He told me his wife is about to have their fourth child who was pretty sure coming early. He also said that his dad had just died and his mom was feeling a little rocky and when he said that his own voice caught just a little. He ended up choosing the book with all the comical stories about small children in it and also the collection whose central message is that that OK sure maybe everything does die but then it all comes back again if you look at it the right way. Then he and his men helped Ryan and me get all our stuff back into my little red minivan and we drove away and the skies opened and the rained drummed like crazy on the hot asphalt and I felt about as happy as a person can feel, with angels descending all around her.

(and this is Ryan, who finally woke up and was wonderful)