Echoes in a Hollow Space

Random quote of the day:

“Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you, and be silent.”

—Epictetus, quoted by Walt Whitman in “Samples of My Common-Place Book”

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“I don’t see why people make such a to-do about choosing a new cook. There is only one thing that is absolutely essential. I always ask at once, “Do you drink?” and if she says “No!” I bow politely and say that I am very sorry but I fear that she will not suit. All good cooks drink.”

—James S. McNeill Whistler, quoted in Life Was Worth Living by Graham Robertson

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

19 Apr
All I can legitimately talk about is my own process—in whatever. It’s presumptuous to assume everyone’s process will be the same. However, talking too much about one’s own process is talking too much about one’s self, so it’s something of a No-Win.

19 Apr
Conspiracy theory is just another form of denial.

19 Apr
I just realized I forgot to take the poem out of my pocket from Poem In My Pocket Day. But at least it’s in “my other pants.”

23 Apr
In May it’ll be two years since I last worked on my last novel. I’d say where did the time go but I know: down the whirlpool of caregiving. I was born to take care of people, apparently. My life has no other meaning. There’s just no time for anything else. I can’t help feeling much of the time as if my life, everything I valued about my life, is over. I’m so tired most weeks I wonder if I’ll make it through to the other side. There are good days, but most days I just grind it out as best I can. Some days, it just piles up. But I’m still moving.

And being free of caregiving means someone I love is gone. There’s no happy ending, as my friend Lisa says.

There are millions of people out there just like me. Caregiving is the unrecognized and unacknowledged crisis in this country

My friends tell me my creativity will come back, that everything is cyclical, and I believe them, but it’s sometimes hard to see that from here. I keep trying. “I’ll just read a chapter a day, or part of a chapter.” But something always happens. And writing from scratch? Unthinkable at this point.

Okay, enough of the self-pity party. I took the time to reread the first chapter of that last novel and tweak it. Holds up well.

23 Apr
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

tp://bit.ly/ZnFRWA 

25 Apr
Jacob’s Dream was playing in the cafeteria so I just had to tell everyone about the Lost Children of the Alleghenies: http://bit.ly/ZPZC4t 
Everyone was properly riveted and scads went to You Tube and the links I provided.

26 Apr
Back at the ER this morning. Mom got an IV of antibiotics. Now we’re waiting to see if we can go home.

27 Apr
Even in stressful times there are compensations in this world: hearing David Sedaris sing the Oscar Meyer bologna song as Billie Holliday. Laughed so hard I cried. The guy in the car next to me looked concerned, like I might be having a fit. I was. The good kind. 

27 Apr
So my printer and my dishwasher went belly up the same night.  I’m sure there’s a pattern there but I’m too tired to figure it out.

29 Apr
Leaving Mom on mornings when she’s not doing well are heartbreaking but if I didn’t leave on those mornings I would have long since lost my job.

29 Apr
I find it absolutely hilarious that Hitler was a vegetarian. Even funnier? The ardent vegetarians that try to backpedal that fact. I know many fine human beings who are vegetarians but there’s a vocal minority that do seem to have something in common with Nazis.

30 Apr
“Dammit I’m mad” spelled backwards is “Dammit I’m mad.”

3 May
I guess the house is officially mine. I’ve just had my first plumbing disaster. This time it was the 50 gallon water heater that went belly up.

3 May
John Hancock Life Insurance is dicking around about paying me the money they owe me. I guess that’s why they have cock in their name.

4 May
It’s a morning for people saying stupid ass stuff and I am not in the mood to be nice about it.

 That tenderness of a few days ago is still there but having a harder time swimming up from the cesspool.

 That’s in the nature of this process, though. If you don’t like the mood you’re in wait an hour and it may change.

8 May
Now I know what was wrong with the opening of that novel: I put a gun on the mantelpiece and never used it again (figuratively).

 How many years did it take me to figure that out?

 I really love that opening (and it works in so many other ways) so I’ll have to find a way of using that “gun.”
 Although I do seem to recall another writing truism about using that gun to murder your something-or-others…What was that again?

8 May
My old, beloved neighborhood that I grew up in, has become the Shrine of the Unknown Hipster. You may have heard of it: Silicon Beach? I literally grew up on 4^th Avenue near Rose, the very heart of Hipsterville now. I way preferred it when it was the ghetto: funky, beloved ol’ Venice.

9 May
You don’t get to be a crone just by getting older. There’s a experiential component to it. And man, is that a bitch. Which is also a separate thing from being a crone.

13 May
I’ve just come up with the last line for my novel, Carmina. I guess it’s a real story now.

13 May
Well, at least I made it down to the final 800 submissions. :-/ Probably just as well. I don’t have time for a writing career right now.

14 May
John Hancock Life Insurance, the company that isn’t giving me ma money, mistakenly informed the state of California that Mom is deceased—but only on one of numerous policies they have in her name. The others are still in force. Also, they told us a few months back that no other policies existed. Now all of a sudden they’re breeding like rabbits. Do not use John Hancock EVER.

15 May
Social Medea is the name of my next band.

15 May
I’m halfway through chapter six on the read-and-clean final of that novel I didn’t touch for two years.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch.”

—attributed to James Beard

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“Vegetables are interesting but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat.”

—Fran Lebowitz, Metropolitan Life

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“It has been a common saying in England, that a cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.”

—Samuel Johnson, as reported by James Boswell in Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it, and the hunger for it…and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied…and it is all one.”

—M. F. K. Fisher, The Gastronomical Me

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“Life is the combination of magic and pasta, of fantasy and reality.”

—Federico Fellini, I, Fellini

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

1 Oct
I have bookmarks from book stores that have been out of business for twenty or thirty years. They’re raggedy and limp, but I haven’t the heart to throw away the last vestiges of places I loved.

2 Oct
I was up half the night with stomach crud. I just can’t get a break lately. I’m feeling better this afternoon, escaping the heat under the peach tree. As is often the case in SoCal we’re having our hottest summer weather in September and October. Really looking forward to real autumn.

4 Oct
The sign spinner at the corner of Admiralty and Via Marina whose specialty appears to be dropping the sign.

5 Oct
Just shifted around my retirement funds. I still can’t retire before OhGodI’mSoOld but at least it felt like progress.

5 Oct
It’s mostly on TV and in crime books that people need Big Motives to murder. In real life they murder for a pittance.

6 Oct
If it’s Ye Olde Anything Shoppe you know it’s going to be terrifyingly quaint.

7 Oct
The Simpsons do the Mayan prophecy: “The world will end in 2012 and it will be Obama’s fault.”

8 Oct
I’m trying to live my creative life not asking favors of anyone since I haven’t got time to return them, but sometimes it’s very hard.

9 Oct
I love my habits more than I love my health.

10 Oct
Just when you think you’ve learned a few things, that maybe you are a grown up after all, your Inner Five Year Old reasserts herself and makes you the fool. Hypothetically speaking, of course. I couldn’t possibly be talking about myself.

10 Oct
I asked my 91-year-old mother if she wanted to read up on the State Propositions before voting. She said, “No. I just want to go and vote for Obama.”

10 Oct
A mega-billionaire/hypocrite threatens to lay off employees if Obama is re-elected: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ceo-workers-youll-likely-fired-131640914.html  The Koch Brothers threatened to do the same thing: http://bit.ly/PxPWMx

10 Oct
Mercy me. A printed hardcopy book from a reputable house in which passed got confused with past. The world is not what it was

11 Oct
Mom on the Ryan/Biden debate: “Who is that young putz?” Me: “Congressman Ryan.” Mom: “He’s an arrogant little s***.”

Mom on the debate: “This is a good debate. Joe Biden is kicking butt.”

12 Oct
Mom on a debate she’d like to see: “I want to see Michelle Obama debate Ann Romney. Michelle would clean the floor with her.” In case anyone wonders, my mother adores Michelle and doesn’t think much of Ann Romney.

12 Oct
Lindsay Lohan is voting for Romney. I rest my case.

12 Oct
I was home with a bad stomach, sleeping. I kept hearing helicopters circling and circling, usually an indication of a celebrity arrival at LAX or a big accident somewhere nearby. When I finally woke up out of the half haze, I realized that today was the day they started moving Endeavour from the airport.  It’s traveling right through my ‘hood, starting about six blocks from here. I was too sick to go out, but I watched it for hours on TV. So weird/weirdly exciting to see all my familiar landmarks on television. “Oh, there’s my Starbucks. There’s Mom’s doctor’s office. There’s my local Del Taco,” and etc. Here’s some of the “live feed”:

Watching Endeavour on mute now. Does anyone enjoy the endless patter?

Now I know why they laid down all those steel plates on Manchester.

The shuttle is inching past Jet Car Wash.

The shuttle is approaching Randy’s Donuts, that giant donut you see in every montage of L.A., at the corner of Manchester and the 405 freeway. Apparently, Randy’s Donuts made special Space Shuttle Donuts which they can’t sell today because the city asked them to stay closed for crowd control issues. I guess there’s always tomorrow. (And Toyota paid them for the use of their lot to film a commercial, so it’s not a total loss.)

And now the shuttle is waiting be towed across the 405 by a Toyota truck while they film a commercial. Toyota have been big contributors to the museum (millions, I hear). If my stomach wasn’t bad I might go buy one of the commemorative donuts tomorrow. But as a friend pointed out, donuts freeze really well.

13 Oct
On the way to dialysis this morning while traveling on the elevated 105 freeway I saw the shuttle’s tail and back in the distance as it moved along Manchester. No shuttle on the return drive to dialysis. It’s turned north and disappeared, alas.

I told my pharmacist that I saw the shuttle and she thought that was neat but added, “I want one of those shuttle donuts from Randy’s.” Yes, as does everyone else in L.A., apparently. I’d swung by Randy’s earlier to see about those special but the line was down the block so I kept going. Only a three and a half hour window to get my errands done before I have to pick Mom up again at dialysis. At least I’m not sick this morning.

Donut Quest 2012: Mom and I stopped by Randy’s at 2:30 on the way home. No lines, but they’d sold out of shuttle donuts until Monday. How did they sell out for tomorrow already? The bakers went home for the weekend. I’m hoping they’ll recognize they’ve got a little gold mine there and keep making them. I’ll keep trying. We now have a nice stash of non-shuttle donuts in the freezer. (You didn’t expect we’d leave empty-handed, did you?) I’m glad to report that Randy’s isn’t just a tourist attraction. They make good donuts.

14 Oct
This morning I was singing “I Kissed a Kitty and I Liked It” to Min and she was all, like, “Yuck, ick!” But she purred as she said it.

14 Oct
Today I got to clean out the pigeon coop that hadn’t been cleaned in a year. I bet you’re envious. I won’t let it go quite so long next time. A half hour shower didn’t seem long enough.

14 Oct
The hazards of sitting in the fall garden: my favorite chair was infested by a nest of baby spiders. I didn’t know I could still move that fast.

15 Oct
It’s probably a bad sign when you start writing a negative review halfway through a book. I’d never post it without finishing. Still.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“When I invite a woman to dinner I expect her to look at my face.  That’s the price she pays.”

—Groucho Marx, A Night At the Opera

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.