Temper Tantrum

 

 

I thought I’d just throw today’s journal right onto my blog, written as though you all were not reading it.

On the news, several teens lost their lives today and over the weekend in car accidents. I found tears in my eyes just hearing about it and did more than thoughts and prayers, but earnestly got on my knees and thanked God for my family and offered heartfelt prayers for those terribly bereaved grief-stricken families who will not see their teens grow up.

Then in a matter of minutes I received a phone call from the surgeon’s office I have an appointment to visit tomorrow for gallstones. The receptionist called just to ask me to bring someone in with me tomorrow because there would be papers to sign. I feel so selfish, turning my thoughts inward when there are so many larger problems in our world. Yet, in my little selfish world as a blind person, I found tears in my eyes again, for all those with disabilities who keep on being asked to do things differently. Since this was just an office visit, not a procedure, this is unacceptable to me. As this was a message left on my machine while I was outside, I immediately called the number right back, and was thankful the office had already closed, causing me to stop before blasting the nurse. Then, I called back to the nurse’s line to leave a message and blasted her anyway. I reminded her that, according to the American Disabilities Act, it is their responsibility to make things accessible for me, not mine to make it easier for them.

Well, guess what? The nurse called me back and apologized. IN our conversation she said that everyone was asked to bring someone with them, whether they had a special need or not. I reminded her that if that was part of their protocol I would have been informed at the time of my appointment, not called back an hour later.

Now, for a funny note:  Has anyone gotten the I phone 6 yet, a rhetorical question. Well, I updated my I pad and turned on the feature that lets Siri speak with no hands. You are supposed to begin by saying “hey, Siri.” With all the electronic talking things I own, Siri keeps answering them.

It is a rainy, gloomy Monday. Just thought I’d let you know … I have them to.

However, it is time to turn my thoughts to God who will surely teach me tolerance one of these days. All I need to do is listen.

 

HOW TO MAKE A SANDWICH WITH YOUR EYES CLOSED

First of all, you must know where all the ingredients and/or condiments are kept. Otherwise, you will have to feel around the pantry and refrigerator, wasting time and becoming hungrier while you do. Let’s make a sliced turkey, tomato, and lettuce sandwich.

Open your pantry door and pick up loaf of bread from shelf where you store it. Place it on the cabinet counter top. Close pantry door, otherwise you will run into a half opened door which could cause a nose bleed, while wasting time, and becoming even more hungry.

Open refrigerator and take out sliced turkey from drawer or from where you have stored it. Take out tomato from its place in fridge, as well as lettuce. Place on counter top next to bread. Go back to fridge and pick up mayo from storage place, probably on refrigerator door. Close door and set mayonnaise on counter top.

Roll off a paper towel from roll and place it on counter top. Open loaf of bread and take out two slices. Lay the slices side by side on the paper towel. Go to cabinet drawer and take out knife. Open mayonnaise and put knife in jar to get enough to spread onto bread slices. Put the bread slice in your hand to keep from spreading mayo all over the sides of the bread down onto your paper towel, making a mess when you pick up your sandwich. Lick (I mean wipe) off any mayonnaise that might have gotten spread onto your hand accidentally. Once you have spread the mayonnaise onto the bread slice, lay it down beside the other slice of bread on the paper towel. You can put some mayo on both slices of bread if you wish. Close mayonnaise jar or you may forget where you placed the lid, thus having to hunt it, wasting more time while you get hungrier.

Open package of sliced turkey and place as many slices as you wish on top of mayonnaise spread. Close package. Wipe off with corner of paper towel and use your mayo knife if you wish to slice the tomato, being sure you slice the tomato away from your fingers. When you have as few slices as you wish, place on top of turkey slices on bread. Find a small sandwich bag and put left-over tomato inside, seal it up and place it next to mayonnaise on counter top. Open lettuce and tear off enough to top off the sandwich. Seal up lettuce head or bag. Now, place the unused slice of bread on top of your lettuce. Remember, bread slices go together in the right way, otherwise your sandwich will feel crooked and  you will not know where to start eating because there is no bread continuity. Take loaf of bread back to pantry, being sure it is sealed tightly. Close pantry door. Put lettuce, left-over tomato, and turkey slices in fridge where you will know how to find them again. Be sure the door closes.

Get a brand new paper towel or a paper plate and place your sandwich on it. Throw away used paper towel, rinse off knife, and place in dish washer. By this time you should be thoroughly hungry, as well as tired if you have never done this before. Carry your sandwich out of the kitchen, sit down and enjoy your lunch. I hope by the time you get settled you won’t remember that you wanted a pickle or something to drink with your meal.

Throwback Thursday from Journal

January 26, 2008

Stream of Consciousness

Somehow feelings that run through me seem so cold once just laid out on paper. I have spent today reading a Jan Carron book and realizing why I have not been writing.  It is because I have not been reading.  It’s easy to cover over those strong feelings inside my heart with life.  It’s even easier not to let myself feel them at all but just bury them in the days that slip through the telling of the heart’s story.  And detail?  Who cares about the tiny incidences inside one day?  How did the cold metal mailbox feel to a hand pulling out the day’s mail?  I open my back door to let Mego (my black lab) run outside.   From a business across the fence in back of me, a 1960’s folk song plays loudly, causing a slight shock-wave as it almost seems to skip right past all my ears into another time.  It was a time when people advised everybody not to have babies because the days ahead were too uncertain, but it was too late.  I remember the unrest of 1968 when Kevin was less than two months from being born and the apartments in back of our own burned to the ground. 

…

Mego runs past me back into the house and I close the door on the music and sit down in my chair to read some more, but I have to stop because my mind is too full of feelings with no words to go with them.

Where are my children?  Christi calls every day.  We’re quite a pair, she and I.  We hug each other through chain mail and phone calls and sometimes for real.  But today my children are off with their own adventures, with their own children and memories and lives, looking forward.  I sit here looking backward, gathering up memories from the past like a bouquet of bright flowers placed on the dining room table inside my thoughts.

My chair is warm and comfortable and I rest my head as I can smell those flowers as if they were five minutes ago.  My chair reminds me of the front seat of our 1955 Pontiac where I sat between Mama and Daddy.  I was twelve years old, much too old to still ride up front like that. 

But the feeling jumps away as quickly as it comes, and I scan my life as quickly as one watching it before their eyes when dying.

Suddenly I see my friends; Laverne’s face young and pretty and Belvia’s blonde hair all beautiful, and it feels like we are hugging each other someplace I have never even been.  It has no walls or shape like in a dream and I hear us laughing.  Then that hug too is gone.

“Where is everybody?”  I think in my half-awake half-asleep place in my chair.  I called Winnie at 9 A.M. but she was already out for the day.  Winnie is my most special friend, but I doubt she knows it.  What is wrong with the words “I love you,” between two hearts on this earth?  Maybe it would make us too vulnerable?  Of course a woman and a man can’t say the words to each other without being thought of as “in love”.  

That reminds me of Mac, my best guy friend.  Like my children, he is off with his wife and his own family.  I’m just his work-spiritual-email-friend who will fade away too once he retires.  I add another flower to my bouquet of memories with his name on it. 

Work has crowded out my ability to feel, to experience, even at times to care as so many experiences crowd themselves around me.   There’s no time to write them down anymore and before I can truly digest one moment it has vanished and I’m reaching backward to pull it back at the same time I reach for the next one to take its place. 

The phone rings but it isn’t Winnie.  Jim needs to know how to turn off Jaws (a screen reader).

I call Nancy, my new violin partner and make a date to play Monday evening.

Then I turn back to the Jan Carron book and let the feelings wash over me and take me away.

Books don’t really do that however, they just reach in and pull out something inside us that has been there all the time … a time we cried, laughed, were afraid, angry, confused, silly, anything. They play with our emotions and drag them from those places in life we tuck away.

 

The phone rings.  My granddaughter Taylor’s cheer leading team was disqualified because they did a stunt that was not supposed to be done in that particular session.

 

Mego’s hair is black and slick.  He won’t sit still and let me pet him on the top of his head but when I’m sad he lays his head in my lap.  I wish I could see his eyes because I know they are full of expression and as close to actually seeing love tangibly as it could ever get.  He hears those “I love you” words more than anybody and I ask God to let him know exactly what they mean. 

So finally we get around to God who covers EVERYTHING.  There is no need to interject every single sentence with His name because He’s the one who provides the space in time for it all.

The phone rings.  It’s Winnie and we will go running errands.  As she walks in the door the phone rings.  It is Margaret.  Again I see my life before my eyes as I hear her voice, but I don’t have time to talk now.

…

Margaret sounds a little sad but we won’t talk about why.  Did she know how much I love her when she left?  She’s really gone now and I believe when she was here Christmas we both came face to face with the truth of it.  Never again will I pick up the phone and thirty minutes later hop in her car for a day of shopping, food, or fun.

 

Dorsey called while I was out and wondered why I had not called her.  I wonder too.  I just settle back into my comfortable chair, turn on my book, and disappear.

January 27

Now it’s past midnight, on Christi’s birthday.  I really hope she likes her gift.  I kiss my beautiful black Labrador’s head and turn down the heat.  The air blows from the vents and touches my face making it feel sunburned.  Jonathan and the pool thoughts splash a smile across my lips. 

Soon I will work eight hours, go to a meeting at church and then celebrate my girl’s 37^th birthday.  In three months it will be Kevin’s. Maybe I’ll write an entry on his 40^th.  

Mego's Tribute

My trainer called to tell me I was going to get a black Labrador guide dog.  “I don’t especially like black dogs,” I thought, but had sense enough not to say.  On Friday of Memorial Day weekend 2002, the trainer, Kathryn, delivered nineteen-month-old Mesaad (pronounced meh-sod) to my door.  He had been born in Florida and was raised by a fourteen-year-old as part of a 4H project.  My now retired eleven-year-old Golden Retriever, Holly, was spending the next two weeks with my friend Margaret so Mesaad and I could get acquainted.

“You don’t look like a Mesaad to me,” I told the new black dog.  “The first thing I am going to do when the trainer leaves is change your name.” And I did.  (We will call him his real name, Mego (pronounced mee-go) from now on. 

Probably if somebody had told Mego he was fixing to get a fifty-something-year-old owner he might have thought, “I really don’t especially like older women.” 

So we spent our first weekend together.  We didn’t fall into instant love like sometimes happens with dogs, but we decided to see what happened. 

What happened was that on the very first day we were to go to work, I held his harness in my hand, stood a second, then put my left foot out and said, “Forward.”  He stood his ground.  I tried again, no movement.  After three tries the trainer said, “Pop the leash.”

“What?” I thought.  “He doesn’t like me and now you want me to correct him?”

“Pop the leash,” the trainer corrected me.

I did as instructed and Mego started walking as if he was going to the vet. 

It took almost the entire two weeks of training to get him to walk at a nice pace, do what he was told, and at least pretend to like it.  Then Kathryn left us.

Mego seemed to perk up when Holly came home, and I knew at least he had a friend to love as we got used to each other.  Every day we went walking and walking and walking.  Mego did everything I told him to do perfectly, yet something was wrong, and it wasn't with the dog.

One morning I took Mego outside and in the bright sunlight I looked into his eyes as closely as I could and believed I saw something in there, something sad, and it broke my heart.  I felt tears in my own eyes as I realized I had expected him to be just like Holly.  “You can’t help it that you are not Holly,” I told him.  You don’t have to be.  You just be Mego and we will just see all the things Mego can do.”

Some of the things Mego could do: 

Clear a bed in one leap as he chased my grandchildren through the house or hotel room;

Make Polly Pockets disappear;

 Open a loaf of bread with a single claw in a straight line from top to bottom,

Eat all the bread almost as quickly as I could get from one room over to stop him;

Dance on his hind legs when I told him to do the Mego dance;

Unzip a suitcase and pull out his food, or find any other dog’s food anywhere;

Understand and jump up because church was over when the pastor said “Amen”;

Part the waters of over a thousand souls and get me out of church so quickly I didn’t have to speak to anybody—whether I wanted to or not;

 Shred a rope toy and swallow the shreds until he had to have surgery;

Open any door just slightly opened, or push it open if it was going his way;

Open every trashcan I owned, until I bought all of them to work with a pedal;

Find my purse no matter where I might have put it down;

And put up his ears when I said the word “Listen.”

Mego and I grew closer than Forest Gump’s and Jenny’s peas and carrots.  It never occurred to me to second guess him when we walked.  Once we were at a shopping area and I was lost in the large circular space in the middle.  Streets, cars, stores, sidewalks, and people were in all directions.  Literally I found myself going in circles.  Finally, in desperation I said to Mego “Just FIND something!”  I knew if we got to any store in that area I would have an idea where we were and could get anywhere else.  He definitely took me to find something…  PetSmart.

I taught him places in the gym, such as “weights” for the resistance training, “tread” for the treadmill, and “my machine” for the elliptical.  I would go down the weight machines making comments at each one.  There is one in which you raise your hands up over your head lifting the bar, which is the hardest for me to do.  Several times I called it a “nasty machine.”   One day we went to the gym and everything was changed around.  I was surprised when Mego could still find the treadmill and the resistance training area, although the machines were not in the same order.  “I wonder what they did with that nasty machine,” I said almost under my breath.  Mego started pulling me as though I needed to hurry and get out of the way of something.  He stopped at the machine with the heavy bar to lift up.  He was named “Super Dog” at the gym and often at other places by people who watched him work.

When he was two or three-years-old he went with my son’s family and me to Disney World.  He sported a pair of Mickey Mouse ears all through the park and never complained.  He rode with me through the haunted House, and sat in the front row of Indiana Jones, never fearing when the explosions and heat seemed to be very real.

As Holly grew weaker, Mego could often be found lying beside her, washing her face and cleaning her feet.  After she left us, he always did a little crooked step every time we passed a Golden Retriever on our walks.

He rode on the floor at the bulk head of the jet when we flew to New Mexico, leading me to and through the terminals as though he might be the pilot.  On vacation once, he knew where his water and food were and he could find our room from anywhere.

One Christmas he wore a Santa Claus suit for the children at church.  Another Christmas he wore angel wings and laid at my feet as I sang in the Christmas cantata.  Every Christmas he waited for the family to leave and then stood at the closet door where he knew Santa had put his Christmas gift.  Before gifts were placed around the tree, his place to sleep was on top of the tree skirt. 

More than anybody Mego loved me, but he also loved Dr. Berry, the vet who took the rope and other things out of his tummy.  He loved all my friends and knew which ones he could count on for a stolen bite when we went out.  He loved all my family and especially my mom, who I could never get to stop feeding him fries. He was always ready to jump up quickly when he knew we were going somewhere, or even if he just thought I was about to move to get up.  Although he loved people, he always acted like he was just with ME when entering anywhere, never trying to steal the show, yet it always happened anyway.

If I watched TV he laid on the hearth in the summer time or against the couch in winter, just so he was close by.  When I worked he laid against the side of my computer desk.  At night he slept on the foot of my bed for over ten years, until arthritis set in and he could not jump up anymore.  We had to stop taking long walks then, but I always took him when I went with someone in a car.  Finally people noticed his limping and told me I was being mean to my dog.  Dr. Berry recommended a medication to try, and that medication gave us two more years of limited walks together.  I had put in for a new dog so he could retire and rest when he was twelve, but I worried because I knew he would never be happy being retired.  He was fourteen on October 19, 2013.  He was beginning to have a lot of stomach issues.  In December this got much worse and Dr. Berry and I did all we could so he could enjoy Christmas.  He fell right into the season, claiming the Christmas tree skirt for his favorite resting place, and going to Lexington to see Mom on the 31^st.  I found out that I would be getting a new guidedog on January 4, 2014.

Vivi came into Mego’s and my lives on January 4, 2014, about 2 PM.  It was a Saturday.  Mego had not done the Mego dance in months, but he did it then.  Vivi is as white as Mego was black and they did seem to fall into instant love.  However, in just a day or two after her arrival Mego began being sicker than ever with his stomach.  Ironically, Vivi began vomiting.  On the night of Tuesday January 7, Mego became so horribly sick I had to get him back to the vet first thing Wednesday morning.  Vivi’s trainer was in town and I was supposed to be training with the new dog.  I had watched Mego lie beside Vivi’s kennel every time she was put in there and wondered just what kind of conversations dogs might be able to share. 

To make the story less painful than it was, just let me say that Mego had a large tumor on his spleen and on Thursday I went with him to the vet for the final time.  I felt like a traitor, a murderer, and most of all heart-sick and grief stricken.  My trainer realized this and went to work with other people while I tried to heal.  Tears still fall as I visit the time.  If Mego were lying beside my computer desk right now he would come over and lay his beautiful black head on my lap to let me know everything is all right.

…

Vivi comes over from lying beside my computer desk, licks my leg from ankle to knee, arm from elbow to hand, then turns around and gets a toy to put in my lap.  You may not believe it, but the toy she chooses is the last one I gave Mego, his Santa Claus from last Christmas.

Mego smiles down at me from his picture.  His ears are up, his eyes are shining, and he and I do the Mego dance in my heart.   

…

“And we’ll fly across the mountains past the skies to Heaven’s doors;

Only God can find a way to make a heart as beautiful as yours.”

(From Holly’s, and now Mego’s, guide dog  song Find the Way).

Where Do You Go

When your mind wanders through paths and finds no flowers, where do you go?

When one baby step feels like climbing a tower, where do you go?

How can you pick up the words that you said,

The unkind things that live in your head,

That keep you from peaceful sleep in your bed;

Where do you go.

When every hour is just seconds counting, where do you go?

When the little things to do in one day seem like mountains, where do you go?

And all the words you can’t replace

Are only thoughts to take up space

That cannot find a hiding place,

Where do you go?

Go to a place like a little child where everything was real.

Ask God to come and meet you there, and then believe He will.

Even if your place was sad, He doesn’t mind the rain,

He will stay through all the time until you smile again.

When your mind dances through woods of raindrops, where do you go?

When you reach the summit of towers of rocks,   where do you go?

When people don’t understand who you are,

How did you ever come so far,

You look like an ant but you shine like a star,

Where do you go?

When the colors of flowers light up your life, where do you go?

When the simplest of words make the song seem so right, where do you go?

When people tell you that you are naive,

Just because you do believe

That every day should be  Christmas eve,

Where do you go?

Go to that place like a little child where Jesus shines His light,

Sing a simple song of praise that burns throughout the night.

Be a troubadour of life that all will want to know

How can they be just like you; tell them where to go.

Higher Learning

Higher Learning It was in my mid thirties when I got the bright idea of taking a few college courses to help jump/start my creative writing passion. Somehow I found myself taking things like algebra/trig, philosophy and sociology, to name a few courses. If it had not been for my fifth-grade son, a nice neighbor down the street, and a campus tutor, I would still be in algebra today. One semester I signed up for gym and asked a fellow student where the gym was. She gave me the generalized details and then said the usual “You can’t miss it.” “Want to bet?” I thought,” after roaming around campus for an hour. My sociology class, which I took because surely it would be easy, wasn’t. Back in the day there were no I pads or other tablets to make things a little easier to manipulate test booklets, so my professors gave my tests to me orally. This could be highly embarrassing when I did not know the answers. After my first midterm papers were handed out I turned around to the girl next to me and asked her what was the grade on my paper. She hesitated and almost whispered to me that it was a D. Next in that class we all went to the library to watch a classic movie which we were to be tested on afterward. The professor forgot the entire movie was in French with English captions. Another D. How was I going to pull a passing grade out of this class? Those of you who have taken a class in sociology may know of a time when you were given the assignment to do some deviant behavior. Most people in the class did things like trying to give away homemade cookies on the mall, or going into a fancy down town church with jeans on. Probably today people would be much more skeptical of a free cookie and jeans in a church might do nothing more than cause a frown to appear on the usher’s stiff face. I tried to talk my professor out of this assignment, assuring him that unintentionally I seem to do deviant things all the time, such as wearing one red and one black shoe shopping. He promised me an A if I could think of something extremely different to do. The largest and closest mall to me at that time was Crabtree Valley. I shopped there often, so often in fact that I knew it backward and forward. So, one day Kevin, Christi and I went to Crabtree. They were probably eight and eleven years old at the time, and could not believe their mom was going to walk down this mall backward. As I began my deviant walk they crossed the mall to the other side so no one could tell they ever knew me. Evidently people parted behind me to let me go smoothly on by and I heard some comments about the crazy woman walking backward. Over half-way through just as I got to the door of Footlocker, three boys jumped out and said: “Boo!” To be sure I got the A I walked down both sides of the mall backward so I could look across and see where I had just been. When I went to that other side Kevin and Christi changed too. Finally it was done and I was already thinking about how to write the paper as I phoned for a taxi. We all went outside Hudson Belk to wait. My head was spinning as I couldn’t get thoughts of that walk out of it, just as the cab pulled up. The children jumped in and I sat down. Once upon a time the Yellow Cab company had a few cabs with an extra large space in the back where you could put a very large parcel. This time the large parcel was me, as I finally realized I was sitting on the floor. We all started laughing, not only from my crazy walk, but because I sat on the floor until they told me to get in and sit down. This little incident was carefully written into my descriptive sociology paper as I had told the professor I did deviant behaviors all the time. And, yes, I got an A on the course.

Smile "Lines"

Grandma-Me series

SMILE “LINES”

Where is the rooster on my coffee cup?

He used to be red with touches of yellow and plumes of feathers painted alive by a famous artist.

His large bright eye watched me as I ate.

Sometimes my finger traced the feathers on the top of his head as my mind looked somewhere else.

He must have flown away then;

And he took my conditioner with him.

Where is the soft glimmering untangled hair I used to wash?

It would wave and rise like a halo around my shoulders.

Now it tangles like the words I cannot remember, that will be back when I least expect them,

Reminding me of yesterday’s song.

Where have my dancing shoes gone?

They twirled and skipped and ran like the wind;

They never stumbled on the steps of my dreams.

They are probably spinning through spider webs or hiding behind folds.

“Grow old gracefully,” you say

From under the plastic surgeon’s blade.

Instead I close my eyes and see

That daunting rooster laugh at me.

Wearing a halo of words on his head

All of thoughts I have not said.

  I laugh too as I pick them all up

And put them back in my coffee cup