Five

Truffle as a kitten

Yesterday was Truffle's fifth birthday. While for the most part, I anthropomorphize my cat, who probably doesn't regard me as prey only because I provide him with easy access to food and water, I don't celebrate his birthday. We don't make him wear an annoying hat and sit around staring at candles while we sing to him. I did wish him a happy birthday, even though the only word he seems to understand is "outside". I carry on lengthy conversations with Truffle, his part as well as mine, and try not to act surprised when his behavior contradicts my version of his words.


Most of our conversations lately involve the impending arrival of a cat brother or sister from the local animal shelter. While Truffle promises me, using my voice, that he will be kind to the new arrival, I know exactly what is going to happen. He's going to try to eat it. Truffle is as territorial as a gang lord. It took him only a few hours after his arrival at our house to establish himself as top cat.


When hubby first proposed going to the shelter to select a new cat, I asked him what his plan was if the cats don't get along. His response was "They'll just have to get along." Yeah, chief, I'll start circulating the memo. Finally when pushed he decided the new cat could be an outdoor cat if need be.  Well, I told him I needed a plan, not that it had to be a good one.


Not getting another cat is not an option for hubby. Five is not just Truffle's age, but the maximum number of cats we've had at one time. Until Truffle's arrival, the only time we had a problem with a new cat was when the neighbor's cat adopted us despite all four of ours taking a dislike to him. When the neighbors moved and left Imp behind, he became our outdoor cat. When Imp died in a struggle with we don't know what, maybe a possum, he was replaced by Poppy, who became a favorite of the older cats immediately.


So hubby naturally concludes that it will be just as easy this time. I don't know where he has been the last five years of Truffle's life. I have a plan of my own, though. It involves a very large water pistol. If that doesn't work, I still have that gift certificate to the day spa. A spa day for mama while the fur babies battle it out on hubby's watch is my idea of a plan.

On the Mend

At my latest doctor visit, I got the happy news that my foot is mending well. I'm allowed out of my boot and in regular shoes for several hours a day, starting with two hours and working up to six by time I next see the doc in August. I'm also allowed to be on my feet on a fifty-fifty basis, half an hour up and half an hour resting, so I am now able to do my share of the laundry, cooking, and cleaning. I still don't feel ready to drive my car, which has a clutch, so I am housebound unless I get a ride, but hubby is good about that. I also don't feel ready to carry anything much heavier than the laundry or my iPad or dishes to and from the table, but other than showering, driving, and exercising, I've resumed normal activities. The wheelchair went back yesterday.


I've been thinking about a plan for resuming exercise. I had been meeting with a friend at the mall once a week to walk, and once my foot is completely healed, I think I'll resume that first, maybe starting with just one lap. Little Old Lady Exercise Class is going to require a few modifications, too, starting with going just one day a week, not two, and avoiding the moves that require me to be on my toes, or on one foot unless I'm leaning against the wall. The instructor won't complain; she expects us each to adapt the moves to what we can do safely. I'll work my way back up to two times a week as I feel ready.


Weight lifting will probably be the last thing I add, starting with lifts I can do sitting down, like overhead presses, biceps curls, seated flies, maybe even seated good mornings. It will probably be many more months before I'm deadlifting again.


Despite my lack of activity, I have as of today lost close to six pounds since May and seven since March. At this rate, it will take me about a year to get down to the mere overweight range, but one thing experience has taught me is that no matter what you are doing, in a year's time a year will have gone by, so you may as well make the most of it.

Heroes

Recently, on the blog The Slactiverse, mmy wrote about her mother, a woman whose life sounds extraordinary. Mmy concluded by saying, "Being a hero is not a zero-sum game. The fact that my mother was exceptional doesn't mean that your mother (or your father) was not. I welcome reading comments from readers about the heroes in their lives."


The problem is, my family is somewhat deficient in the way of heroic relatives. My family is somewhat deficient in the way of normal relatives. My family runs more to, well, a charitable way of putting it would be "characters". 

Take my Grandma D, for example. Grandma was a woman of enthusiasm. She loved Friday night wrestling. She loved Friday night wrestling so much she had two autographed pictures of her favorite wrestlers framed and hanging on her living room wall. I was in college before I knew they weren't relatives back in the old country.

She was also devoted to her favorite soap opera, All My Children. She carried on a running commentary on the action, in Italian, as she watched. Despite the fact that I never learned Italian, I usually had a pretty good idea of what she was saying. The gestures helped.

That little matter of bigamy, however, was not really her fault. She thought her first husband, the father of her oldest three children,  was dead when he disappeared during the first world war, so she married my Grandpa and had three kids with him. Then she ran into her first husband. Whoops. And yes, she should have divorced him, remarried Grandpa properly and done something about the kids, but you needed to know my little Italian Catholic grandma. Living in sin was one thing, but divorce? 

Then there's my other Grandma, Grandma F. Compared to Grandma D, she was rather tame and colorless. Like Grandma D, she was an immigrant to this country and spoke mostly Italian. Like Grandma D, she had a large family, seven children, although only one husband. Like Grandma D, she was an excellent cook, only where Grandma D made simple to eat dishes like homemade ravioli, Grandma F made challenging foods like artichokes, and crabs (in the shell) in a red sauce served over spaghetti. I loved her crab spaghetti, but I've never been brave enough to try cooking it myself.

Grandma F was more into fashion and household decor than Grandma D. During the depression, the family lost the house Grandpa had bought in Brooklyn to foreclosure. Grandma just went around the block and bought another house in her own name which they owned until she died. It was a three story Queen Anne with a wraparound porch and a bathroom with cobalt blue fixtures. She kept a large glass goldfish bowl filled with strawflowers on the dining room table, and a flock of pink plastic flamingos in the front yard, next to the three-tier aggregate fountain. Unlike the cotton dresses Grandma D wore, Grandma F favored crepe with beading around the neck for Sunday wear. I get my fashion sense (or lack thereof) from Grandma D but my decorating sense (or lack thereof) from Grandma F. 

In honor of Grandma, even though it's not pink 

Grandma F, however, strayed from the Catholic faith. When she developed Parkinson's disease, she and Grandpa became involved with faith healers and became Pentecostals. I don't know if they got into speaking in tongues, since they spoke Italian and how could I tell, but Grandpa did love to sing hymns. Loudly. All day long. Despite being tone deaf.

Grandpa also took my nearsightedness as a sign of lack of faith and kept telling me how if I only had enough faith, my eyes would be healed and I would not need glasses. I tried leaving them off when he was around and just squinting a lot. Grandpa D was a whole lot easier to be around. He kept chocolate bars in his pockets for his grandchildren and otherwise left us alone. I really wish I'd appreciated him better when he was around.

So that's my gene pool. I grew up and moved halfway across the country to a spot where pink flamingos are the mascot of the  Spanish Town Mardi Gras parade, people eat crabs in the shell, if not in spaghetti sauce, the welcome signs at the state line are in a foreign language, decorating your living room with not just pictures, but the color scheme of your favorite sports heroes is seen as a reasonable thing to do, where the Pentecostals hand out Jack Chick tracts to the Catholics on Mardi Gras, and people drive around with bumper stickers that say, "I'd rather be casting out demons".

I'm home.

Safe Driving in Louisiana

The following is a story I wrote in 1986 or so for a short story contest run by Louisiana Life magazine. I didn't win anything. If I remember correctly, they chose 24 stories to run one each month for 2 years, but the magazine folded after 2 or 3 months. Since the story was written 25 years ago, there are some details that may be hard for people to relate to, but yes, people still had milkmen back then, Joy Browne had not been replaced by Dr. Laura on the radio, and Robin Leach had a television program called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Construction on the Interstate, alas, is with us always.

That was the name of the driver's manual I had to study  the first time I got a Louisiana license: Safe Driving in  Louisiana.  I thought it was named by somebody with a sense of  humor or either a basketball fan or possibly just somebody who had never been on I-10 at rush hour, but I passed my written test one point higher than my husband (now my ex-husband and I bet that was when the trouble began, with that test). I surrendered my New Jersey driver's license and joined the ranks of other Safe Drivers in Louisiana and if that makes you laugh, it should.

  

 Actually, having both family and friends scattered through at least six states I have had ample opportunity to notice that the two things everybody is convinced of are that (1) his state has the worst drivers in the country and (2) his state has the most crooked politicians in the country.  I mean there may be someplace (like preserved at the Smithsonian) a person who brags about how courteous the drivers of her state are or how  well governed the place is but I have never met this person and I don't expect to either unless it's as the result of a two car collision.  

What brings on these jaundiced thoughts is that I am once again stuck in traffic on the Interstate, the same Interstate they just spent four or five of the most productive years of my  life widening so that people would not get stuck in traffic on the Interstate.  If you live here in Baton Rouge you know what  I mean and if you don't you probably know what I mean anyway because the other thing no one ever says is how fast road construction projects are completed at home.  Of course, the nice thing about being stuck on the Interstate is that at least a deer is not going to attack my car, at least, not likely.  

 

Yes, I did say a deer and I know what you would be thinking if you saw me now, an ordinary middle-aged lady in an ordinary silver hatchback that there must be at least ten of within three miles of here, that I don't look like the kind of person odd things like that happen to but this did.  I was up on Highway 61 heading back from Wakefield on a job and not  expecting much in the way of trouble except the radio fading  out just as Joy Browne was getting ready to tell that woman with the two-timing husband what to do about it like it always does  although of course I knew what she was going to say, she was going to say "I know this is very painful for you but you can't change the past you just have to think about what you want out of this marriage for the future and be very specific about it", like she always does which is why I don't listen much to Joy Browne anymore but I did then and whenever I had to go up to  Wakefield WJBO would fade in and out like someone just learning  to play the accordion so that was the most trouble I was expecting.  

But I was on the Spillman road heading back to 61 when  this deer came running out of the woods and hurtled straight at  my car and of course I swerved to avoid him just as he leaped  to avoid me with the result that he landed right on the hood of my car and put a dent in it and I wound up in a ditch until two nice men in a pickup truck came by and pulled me out.  This was  not the car I have now but another one that I finally replaced with this one when the air-conditioner broke down in the hottest part of the summer which is the only time they ever do but it was time for a new car anyway what with the old one having 125,000 miles on it and the dent from the deer, and the air-conditioner would have taken more money to fix than I wanted to think about although of course so did the new car. I don't know what happened to the deer: he ran off somewhere and the two men couldn't find him.

Anyway, stuck here in traffic I don't expect another deer to come flying out of nowhere but the other drivers on the road worry me some and besides, I just want to get home.  Ever since I took this job as a representative for the PrettyGoods home decoration and gift supplies people I have just about lived in  this car and come the end of the day I've had enough of it.  If  you haven't heard of PrettyGoods you have probably heard of  something just like it: we pounce on some unsuspecting housewife or even working mom and convince her that she and her  buddies can have fun, do their Christmas shopping and beautify their homes simply by having a PrettyGoods party at her house with all of said buddies drooling over the merchandise and   whipping out their checkbooks eager to buy.  Of course I don't quite put it that way in talking to her because of course the PrettyGoods people have dreamed up some pretty little speeches  for us gift and purchase counselors (they really call us that,  they really do, gift and purchase counselors and the first time  I heard it I burst out laughing and it was almost the end of my career as a PrettyGoods gift and purchase counsellor before it had even begun, but I managed to convince the personnel lady I had asthma so that was all right.) Where was I? anyway, oh yes some pretty little speeches for us GPC's to memorize and they coach us on how to say them so it sounds like somebody just talking, almost.    

    

Target Practice

It occurs to me that when I post about my husband, I may seem unduly critical. I don't mean to sound critical. Florence King once responded to criticisms of her book Southern Ladies and Gentlemen by saying that she does not stereotype people, she just "points them up", the way Betty MacDonald "pointed up" country people in her book, The Egg and I. I like to think I just "point up" my husband.

Still, it is more than time I pointed up his many virtues, instead of his endearing faults. What started me thinking about his many virtues most recently is the Bruno Mars song, Grenade:

I’d catch a grenade for ya (yeah, yeah, yeah)
Throw my hand on a blade for ya (yeah, yeah, yeah)
I’d jump in front of a train for ya (yeah, yeah , yeah)
You know I'd do anything for ya (yeah, yeah, yeah)
Oh, oh
I would go through all this pain,
Take a bullet straight through my brain,
Yes, I would die for ya baby;
But you won't do the same

The first time I heard this song, I wondered how often Mr. Mars was likely to be called upon to catch a grenade for his girlfriend, as opposed to say, picking up his dirty socks, or maybe even running a load of laundry. Sure it sounds romantic to promise to catch a grenade for your lady fair, but that's not the kind of promise that can be easily tested. If he had said, "Honey, I love you so much that I'd even carry your purse for you while you try on clothes at the mall", she could reply with something like, "Does Saturday work for you? Because I need a new dress for your class reunion next month." That'll weed out the talkers from the doers. But what do you say to someone who promises to catch a grenade for you? "Let's go see if they have any at the Army Surplus Store"? No, the extravagant promises of the type Mr. Mars makes are the sort that sound impressive (if you're 18) but are useless in every day life.  

Mr. Mars' other complaint about his girlfriend, besides her unwillingness to make suicidal gestures on his behalf, is that:

Should've known you was trouble from the first kiss

Had your eyes wide open, why were they open? 

This is just a guess, but maybe she was checking for incoming ordinance.

My husband, on the other hand, is not given to making extravagant promises. This is what he does. When we first met, I had a job making home health visits, and a car in its death throes. I had known him for about a week when I mentioned I needed to rent a car to make a home health visit because mine was in the shop. He immediately loaned me his. We spent the rest of the weekend coordinating schedules so we could get the health visit, his grocery shopping, and my grocery shopping done, not to mention getting lunch and going to a party together that night. By the end of the weekend, we were like an old married couple. 

Then he repaired the broken clock on my oven, and exterminated a carpenter beetle that was making a hole in my front porch.

He didn't stop doing helpful things once we were married, either. Twice he made the twenty mile round trip to bring me my extra car key after I locked myself out of my car. Then he bought me a magnetic key holder for the extra key.

And since I broke my foot, he has done all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, chauffeuring, and pet care. I never doubted for a minute he would.

For that matter, I don't doubt that if it came right down to it, he'd catch a grenade for me.

He just won't sing about it. 

Boldly to Go

My husband has been watching a lot of Star Trek: Enterprise reruns lately, and one of them today had a scene in which the Enterprise crew was for some reason ordering from a drive-through restaurant on what seemed to be modern day Earth. It brought to mind episodes of the original Star Trek and Star Trek, the Next Generation in  which characters somehow time travelled back to 20th century Earth. Thinking about this, I realized that in all these episodes, the characters were able to speak 20th century American English. There didn't seem to have been any change of accent, idiom, or grammar in the intervening three or so centuries that would have caused the problems in communication you might have if, say, an early 18th century speaker turned up on your doorstep one morning. It's not just that they could make themselves understood, as I'm sure our hypothetical 18th century time traveler could, but that they sounded like everyone else around them, except for one TNG episode in which our time travelers wound up in the Old West. One hundred years backward in time, big difference in language patterns, 300 years forward, no change. 

I brought this up to hubby. "Well, you can't have everyone on the show speaking some unknown language, " he said reasonably. "You have to do the show in English."

"I know that," I replied. "It's just odd that they never have a problem communicating in these time travel episodes."

What's even odder is that in three hundred years the world of the Enterprise crew doesn't seem to have developed any new idioms. Oh, true, they have jargon related to the craft itself, like "warp speed" and "dilithium crystals", but not any figures of speech that we don't use today. Even expressions that have become catch phrases for us, like "Beam me up, Scotty" and "Resistance is futile", are only used literally on the Enterprise. Consider how quickly something like "Resistance is futile" became a catch phrase for viewers of the show. Unless human nature changed drastically in 300 years, why wouldn't it have become a catch phrase for Star Fleet members and the wider society they were part of? 

Besides, I don't think today's English would turn completely unrecognizable in three hundred years, just that it would change. For one thing, it's possible that grammar would simplify even more, and that grammar forms like "she busy", "hisself" or "theirselfs" would become standard. Also, more foreign language words, particularly Spanish, could make their way into the language in 300 years time. Of course, back in the late 1960's when the original Star Trek made its debut, these trends may have been difficult to foresee. It's not surprising we didn't see episodes with dialog like the following:

Kirk:  ¡Hola, Spock. Have you seen Uhuru?

Spock: She busy, Captain. I can he'p you?

Okay, maybe that wouldn't work. I can understand the writers not wanting to tackle the problem of depicting linguistic changes when they were already trying to depict plausible changes in technology, social mores and fashion. I just wish they gave an occasional indication that such changes will occur.

Because they will.

(For those wondering about the title, in the mid-1900's, English teachers were strict about split infinitives.)

Just Desserts

When I was a child, I was unusually thin, so much so that I was the subject of frequent teasing. When I reached my mid-teens, I gained enough weight to be slender rather than skinny, and by time I reached my mid-twenties, I was convinced I was overweight. I weighed 115 pounds at 5'3", but what body fat I did have concentrated in my abdomen, an omen of things to come.

Now I am obese. The term, at least in its medical sense, does not offend me. I weigh almost 40% more than the upper limits of the ideal weight range for my height. For someone with a family history of heart disease and a personal history of hiatal hernia, diverticulosis, high blood pressure, borderline high cholesterol, a balance disorder, and mild osteopenia, that amount of excess weight is risky.

I have another kind of family history, too. The pattern that I followed, slender childhood followed by extreme weight gain in adulthood, is standard for my family. Although my siblings weren't as skinny as I was, all but one were slender as children. Now the four of us who were slender/skinny children are battling overweight, while the one brother who was fat as a child is now of average weight, and has been for most of his adult life. 

Not only am I obese, but my body follows the dreaded apple shape, the one most disposed to problems like diabetes and heart disease. I look like a beer barrel with feet. My extremities, on the other hand, are still slender. If I had as little body fat on the rest of my body as I have on my arms and legs, I'd be hard put to pinch an inch anyplace. 

Of course, I have tried to lose weight in the past. No, I succeeded in losing weight in the past. I have lost enough, on separate occasions, to make myself a twin. I'm good at losing weight. I'm just not good at keeping it off. I'll stay at my goal weight for maybe 6 months, and then the pounds come back, bringing friends.

It's not that I follow fad diets where you eat 3 grapefruit skins and a handful of coffee grinds, either. The closest thing to a fad diet I followed was the South Beach Diet, and I'm not sure a diet consisting of lean meat, whole grains, vegetables, small amounts of fruit and dairy products, and unsaturated fats counts as a fad diet. I still eat lean meat, whole grains, vegetables, and unsaturated fats. The problem is, I eat cookies, ice cream, candy, fries, processed meats, and saturated fats as well. If you remove all the junk food from my diet, what is left is 6-9 servings of fruit and vegetables, more veggies than fruit, 1 or 2 servings of whole grains, 1-2 servings of low fat dairy products, and three servings of protein, frequently chicken or fish, on an average day. That's usually how I lose weight: cut out the junk, reduce portion sizes on what's left, and increase my activity level.

Then I start to miss cookies, ice cream, candy, processed meats, and saturated fats. I try to ease a few back into my diet, like 2 cookies a week, or maybe one small serving of ice cream. Pretty soon it's two cookies on top of the ice cream, with some caramel syrup on top of that. 

When Dr. S, my foot doctor told me I may have broken my foot, possibly while exercising, I discussed these concerns with him. I was exercising because I wanted to lose weight and strengthen my thinning bones. I had discussed the exercise program with my rheumatologist, who was all in favor of it. I told him I realized that the excess weight I am carrying put stress on my feet and exacerbated my other problems as well. 

I had to go back the next day for him to give me the results of my X-ray. That's when I found out that I had a fracture, in a bad spot, and needed to be off my feet for oh, maybe twelve weeks.  I asked if someone could call my husband in from the waiting room so he could hear the news, too. 

John, recalling my previous ankle fracture from 8 years ago, asked why I kept breaking bones. Dr. S summarized our conversation of the day before as "obesity and osteoporosis".

"I keep telling her she needs to lose weight," declares my loyal husband.

Really? Up until then, hubby had suggested I lose weight maybe twice. Most of what he says that is weight related goes like this:

"Do you want to go get donuts later on?"

"Do you want some ice cream?"

"I'm making cinnamon rolls. Do you want some?"

"I thought we'd go get Mexican (pizza, barbecue) for dinner."

"I bought you your favorite cookies."

Perhaps there is a version of the Rosetta Stone somewhere that translates all those statements from husbandese to "You need to lose weight" in English, but if so, no one has found it yet.

Whether there is or not, I need to lose weight. Not because my husband wants me to, not because I'd look better, not because of societal prejudice against fat ladies, but because I'd feel better at a lighter weight. My feet, knees and hips would hurt less, my stomach would burn less, and I'd be less likely to injure myself if my wonky balance makes me fall down. I could walk around the zoo, the park, and the arboretum and look at the wonders around me instead of looking for the next bench to sit on.

The problem I have is, that when making decisions about food and diet, it is so hard to separate health, appearance, and social acceptance as motivators. It's hard to agree that yes, I am a lovable, worthwhile person at my current weight while struggling to weigh less. It's hard to agree that prejudice against fat people is just as obnoxious as any other kind of prejudice while trying to turn myself into a thin person.  I feel like I'm letting the side down. 

I need to learn to look at food in a simpler, more logical way. Vegetables aren't a penance for sinning heavily in a previous life, they are plants with vitamins and minerals that I need to be healthy. Cookies, cakes, and ice cream aren't special rewards that I have proven myself unfit to deserve. They're just desserts.