The lady packed her ethereal trunks...

...and sometime on Wednesday morning drew her last troubled breath. She was a wide eyed girl at 83, always smiling and gracious, even when lucidity finally betrayed her and she couldn't remember why she was smiling. I got to take care of her for a while, greeting her almost casually at our first meeting. She was placid and friendly, and you'd never know how very sick she was. She talked about how the leaves would turn soon and wondered out loud what was for lunch. Who could've known our lives would become intertwined in a few short weeks?

The bright blue eyes and puckered Irish face are peaceful now. She attended her own wake down in New Orleans this Thursday. Then onto a memorial service in her adopted suburb of Belle Chasse. Finally, like the fallen Lincoln touring the country from the dignity of his Pullman car, Miss Charlene rolled into East Texas to her own ancestral resting place.

Renaissance Joe

US Lithograph Co 1903

S

He sits in front of me, or anybody else he talks to - earnest, attentive, gravely listening. He crosses one long leg across his knee and shifts his weight, getting settled in. A conversation with Joe is always gratifying, simply because one feels they have his entire focus, that he is completely present to the other person -whoever that might be. The mail carrier, the minister who stops by to see his elderly parents -they are all equally important to Joe, at least on the surface. Although glib in his own right under the correct circumstances, he is always careful to answer any question lobbed his way, giving it the consideration of somebody about to win a million dollars on a game show. This endearing quality also makes him seem a bit surreal, and often leads to questions about Joe which really have no easy answer.

He is one of three brothers whom I've known for many years. He is simple and appears to be straightforward, yet a closer check reveals him to be a most complicated human being. At 52, he's my contemporary and yet I always feel a lot younger than he is. Joe can rebuild an engine, play the stock market with quiet intuition, making money when others are losing it. Knead his own perfect bread or hail a cab with equal aplomb. He can play any stringed instrument with ease, and yet the playing isn't passionate. It's perfect, a solid performance, for he and his brothers have few musical equals. But there is a glossiness about the music which leaves the listener confused, maybe a little disappointed. This might be because whoever interacts with Joe encounters only a reflection of themselves. His brown eyes are mirrors of those he meets- no smoke to accompany the mirrors, for Joe is an honest man and what you see is basically what's there. But a little less,too. After losing three sons -two who were infants, dying just a few days old and expiring in his arms at the hospital. The third a teenage son in a senseless traffic accident. A wife who walked away after years of marriage-the burden of association too great, maybe.

And now , in many ways, he's a guy for whom everything is easy. Once you shut down the main artery to your heart and set the auto pilot, your worries are over. He laughs often, is unendingly gentle and is always busy. Lately, it's been figuring out how to launch a helium filled, LED blinking UFO over Springdale without being arrested. He would briefly note the ensuing chaos, then move on to something else . His brain is always alive, planning the next practical joke or building the next motorcycle in his mind.

Life is good, as long as one skims along the surface, chuckles gently and [ thankfully] doesn't have time to read things like internet blogs.

The road less taken

PDI image


October galloped up behind me again this year-it's been hectic and there have been times when I wondered about the wisdom of it all. My decisions, that is - not this being October. Like I could do anything about moving whole months around, although I've considered it.

Back in August I added the final touches on Getting Over Myself. This ego altering project included realizing that I'm not going to meet any more rich people who are desperate for murals in their overly mortgaged homes. Well, okay. I'm down with that. After all, I've done lots of things -and one of those things included taking care of elderly home bound patients for a year, when I was in my twenties.
They seemed to like me and I them. I'm a quiet person except for when I'm not and they seemed to feel comfortable around me. Couple this with my ability to talk Benny Goodman and and War Bonds -well. It all fell into place. A year later, however, I was offered a position with the local paper and found myself unable to resist the chance to write for a living -even if it was only the school page, the jail report and the occasional column. Lots of check passing pictures, local politicians shaking hands.

Fast forward to a few months ago. I decided to retake the health care course I muddled through so many years ago. This one was so hard- intense enough that I felt foolish for telling my instructor I had taken one twenty three years ago. So much had changed and there was so much more to learn it was as if I'd never darkened the door of a classroom. But I passed, and made a good grade for the course. Meantime I had accepted my first patient in decades -Miss Charlene B, who is in the fourth stage of lung cancer. I accepted the job, for our families had been friends for many years. I was clumsy at first, but I grew to love my patient. Our society was interrupted while I took the refresher course...but by that time, her six month prognosis had dwindled, seemingly.
Last Sunday was spent with her on the fourth floor at Washington Regional while her exhausted daughter slept. She is as blue eyed and pretty as one would want any 83 year old person to be. And no matter what her level of pain [ which has been considerable lately] she is always a lady. I'd like to be Miss Charlene when I grow up, but first, I've decided - I want to go on and become a hospice nurse. That's the end goal, though for a while I may have to be content with an attendant's certificate.

My classes for Certified Nursing Assistant [ CNA] begin in January, and I'm dreading them while looking forward at the same time. I'm doddering, rather middle aged and have little short term memory these days. But I have decided to do this thing, even if I have to test twice. This afternoon I walked into the hospice facility when they have moved my lovely patient, and knew right away that this or some place like it was where I was needed. I'm still somewhat in shock, because it's been some time since I've had a real epiphany of any description.

Well, now.
Thank you, Barrack Obama and George Bush and whoever else has sent our financial future hurtling through space . Because of your treachery and arrogance, one tiny, almost invisible yet fine thing has solidified in the life of an ordinary person. Otherwise I might have never realized. I wouldn't have been forced outside my comfort zone.
Painting is my first love, but I feel as though another part of my reason for being here is waiting to be discovered, too.

New Life Through Your Firestone Credit Card

I'm confused by this photo, though duly impressed. Does this mean there are 'hot boys' inside? Or is this chrome limo advising all 'hot boys' [ or even luke warm ones ] to climb in and take advantage of the air conditioning?

I can't even begin to know what this means, being so far out of the loop. The Extreme Money Bunny is not a frequent visitor here and as a result I am often ignorant of how to best spend my money. Are people demanding on a routine basis that their cars spell things out in chrome now? A brave new world with such people in it... what do such folks want their cars to say, anyway?
I am just happy to have my much humbler [ ancient] PT out of the shop, with a shiny new fan unit, guaranteed to actually cool the engine off - as God intended - by shutting itself on and off, thanks to a new thermostat. Last week the sound of frantic coolant trying to re-enter the reservoir sounded like hailstones pounding my hood in. I was a mere 55 miles from home and managed to take it all in stride, though it sounded a bit like the Four Horsemen rounding the corner, to me anyway.

My car is not glamorous. Bits of the blue are dinged by callous people in parking lots who slam their car doors into the nearest vehicle, cackling into their cell phone. Thanks to a gravel truck, it also has a cracked windshield.
Look at the showroom beauty pictured above and imagine some chewed -up bits of walnut hull, [ squirrels sit in the maple tree out front and spit at my car during appalling rodent contests, apparently.] a bit of brake dust on the passenger side hub and a dingy Union Jack sticker on the back rear window.

From the time I drove it off the Chrysler lot [ with 12 miles on the odometer] it has used more oil than a Sherman Tank. After all these years, I don't question. I just top it off on a regular basis. If I continue the synthetic oil, maybe [ I am told by helpful males close to the project] I can get another 100,000 miles. I've loved this car and will drive it until large hunks of it fall off in the driveway, but...next time...I loves me the Toyota pickup truck , in some festive, pearly, irridescent colour -sort of like looking into a puddle at the gas station.

Patrick Swayze was more than a fine dancer and handsome leading man. He was quiet, strong and knew who he was as a person. He wasn't showy and tended to stay out of the limelight.

I will miss this courageous fellow Texan for lot of reasons.

SO...you wanna be a Ho

That's right. Need to purchase a home to use for your new...ah... 'Performing Arts ' enterprise? Don't worry about those pesky taxes. We can get around that..you want to employ illegal immigrant 13 year olds as working girls?
In the words of this video taped ACORN acountant...."no problem".

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,548827,00.html

This amazing news is somewhat darkened by Joe Wilson's apology, which hit the president's desk before dawn. Nice try, Joe, but it would've been better to keep your mouth shut rather than grovel later.

At Rest In Glendale

I heard earlier this morning that the much refrigerated, overly gawked at remains of Michael Jackson will finally have a home in Forest Lawn this sundown.


It dawned on me that I had visited Forest Lawn Cemetery back in the 1980's. We went just to see the Pickfords and Flynns and remains of other famous folk...it's a serene and beautiful place , filled with my second favourite tree [poplar], gentle knolls and always a little breeze blowing in the open spaces. It also helps that the phenomenal Walt Disney is buried there, too.

I didn't know back then that the man who would someday be my closest confidant and political sparring partner has an older brother buried there - way back in 1955. James was 15 years old and the light of his parents' life. They went on to have other children, but on this little rise in the real estate in the middle of two busy freeways- yet silent and far way from them - James would always be brown eyed, good natured and a mystery to the brothers and sisters who came later. A family enigma, the absent tie breaker in every squabble, whom they still wonder about.
My significant other is pleased his unknown brother is buried near the endearing Jimmy Stewart. It seems right somehow. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington is not only one of Mic's favourite movies, but his bashful, wonderfully accurate James Stewart impression is possibly why I hooked up in the first place.
I never get tired of being called 'Virginia'.