A November kind of thing...

It's gratitude month. That makes a lot of people go Blecccch! But not I! In fact, after today's class in Abnormal Psych, I have reached new and more wondrous levels of gratitude. We are studying schizophrenia, which affects 1 in 100 people (that's a lot, if you think about it), is incurable, and even the treatments, which are effective about 75% of the time, to varying degrees, can cause potentially fatal side effects. It begins in late adolescence and early adulthood, and can cause horrible hallucinations, delusions, and major break from reality on all levels of existence. And no one knows what causes it. How devastating is that. And I am so grateful that those I love are well and functioning, even if some of us, me included, will limp a little all our lives. There are degrees of misery that I have not known, and that makes my angst over yesterdays Political Science midterm, which I think I blew, bigtime, so not important. Again, perspective rears its head and what a mavelous teacher it can be.

The downside...

I am aging well here. That is not a bragging kind of thing. It is a grateful kind of thing. Even though the calendar tells me I should be old, I don't feel it most of the time. I can still put my panties on standing up, I don't huff or puff going up the stairs at school, there are no aches in any of my joints. That being said, I could wish for a bladder larger than a shot glass. True, I get lots of exercise on my nightly forays to the potty, but really, it's getting ridiculous. Is this worth taking a drug? I mean, I see them advertised during my soap opera everyday, at least two of them, so I can't be the only one with this little deficiency. Not to mention the aisle in (soul-sucking) Safeway with the Depends and Poise pads. That wasn't there all that long ago, was it? It just goes to show, things change, and change, and change.

Leaping into the 21st century here!

I just installed my new DSL. What a trip! The phone rang while I am still online! Is this wonderful or what! Feeling so grownup and sophisticated, I can barely stand myself. Meanwhile, Beany went home this afternoon. This was after we innocently went out the front door to get the mail, and Beany met our neighborhood flock of wild turkeys, who ended up on the roof of the new house across the street. Didn't know those big suckers could fly! So, it's just all so exciting, and yet so much calmer now that the hyper one has left. Onward.

Oh frabjous day!

That's from The Jabberwocky, for those who are literarily challenged. I have broken through the ceiling, and I got a solid A on my midterm in Psych. Not a measly, mealy-mouthed A-, but an A. OK, this is good. Now to study for the PoliSci midterm, tomorrow, where a B will be most appreciated. Politics are a sticky, messy business. How they think they can turn it into a science is beyond me. Maybe it is like Hari Seldon's psychohistory (Asimov's Foundation Trilogy), and predicated on the ripple effect through the masses. Certainly, our system is interesting, and difficult to nail down. You think you have campaign finance reform, and those buggers just wiggle through the first available loophole. Depressing. But, not today. Today I am going to jump up and down for a while, celebrating the opening of new and more vital neural networks.

Repeat after me: I am not a brown-nose, I am not a brown-nose...

I have returned from my ivory tower, once again, fired up by my higher education. We were supposed to bring in a draft of our paper on abortion, now there's a juicy issue to contemplate. I was determined to sit back and let them tear someone else's essay apart this time, but guess what? I was the only one who had done the assignment. And I did it, in bed, cold pills and Kleenex within arm's reach, piddling away on my laptop, sniffling as I went. It was not long enough, but hey, 4 out of 5 pages is better than nothing, which is what everyone else brought. I got shot down, kind of. The essence is there, just too much me in it, as usual. I do have this kind of passion that bristles Joels hackles. Then he did his usual explanation of why some of the grades on the last assignment may dissapoint us, and I got to that trembly stage of fear and loathing even before he handed them back. I thought I found the argument, and based my premise squarely there, so I was mentally preparing a defense, then I got mine and it was yet another A-, which is my grade so far in the course. Sigh. I intend to dazzle him with this next paper. The writing is not the problem. I am the problem. It just isn't in my nature to not feel anything, and that seems to be the gist of this particular discipline, to use reason instead of passion. OK, I can do that. I think.

Once again, into the abyss...

You know how it is. Other people's defects are just soooo glaring and easy for me to see. My own exist in this perpetual murk. However, I get clues from what spins me out about other people. Clever how that works, right? So, yesterday, I went to my very spiritual AA meeting, where all the spiritual giants of the Program meet. It was our first day in a new venue (we got the boot at our old one, by the winery that rented the back of the building, how bizarre is that), and I was feeling kind of disoriented anyway. I brought all my goodies, the cream cheese Danish tray, the muffins and a huge bowl of strawberries, just gorgeous. Beany and Boo were with me; I didn't want to leave them home to bother Janet while I was gone. So I parked in a shady place somewhere on the south 40, carefully guaging that it would stay shady for at least the next hour and a half, rolled down the window and popped the poptop. No sooner had I settled in my seat and this woman comes up to say I'd better be prepared to check on my dogs in a half hour, the sun will move. Gee, you think? Not the first time I have been admonished about how to treat my dogs. And, unfortunately, not the last, because instead of saying MYOB, I defended myself. Old behavior. My whole life has been spent defending my actions to someone, usually my mother, but could be a husband, too. So, this week I am working on not being a wuss, beginning with telling this woman, how sweet of her to think of me, now don't ever do that again. We'll see how that goes.

Deep thoughts...

I had one of those dreadful nights, awake for a couple of hours in the wee hours. Usually equally dreadful things parade through my head, like should I call my mother and the state of my finances. But last night I got to think profound thoughts courtesy of my midterm study guide, things like "tricyclics work by inhibiting the reuptake of serotonin and norepinephrine by the presynaptic neuron". Now, that's an impressive thought. Also jockeying for consciousness were such weighty ideas as refutation by analogy and political socialization. I don't know how any of this will further my intelligence, but it is less threatening than my bank balance at 2:30 AM. In the end, I thought about how dispassionate critical thinking seems to be, dry, dry, dry. But politics are ever so juicy, and current therapy techniques no longer require that stonefaced detachment, but are actually seen more efficacious when filled with positive regard. There's another wondrous postulation. So, perhaps there is a benefit to these midnight meanderings, allowing stuff to bubble up that normally just sits on the back burner and simmers.

He's baaaack!

The Bean in visiting for a week. Who is the Bean, you ask? Beany is Boo's little buddy who lived with us when we lived in the house on the edge of the world. My partner got custody of Beany by virtue of being joined with him at the hip. Little guy just loved the mad-man artist, sitting by him on the bench in the garden, sleeping at his feet when he stood at his easel, even rode in the canoe out to the mouth of the river to pick up interesting bits of driftwood for creating cunning little sculptures. Art-man has gone to Maui for a week to paint plein-air and restock his gallery there, so we got the Bean. Now I remember why I didn't fight for custody. Beany is a terrier mix, translate that to terror, yappy, hyper little bugger. Town has him all flummoxed. He jumps up every few seconds to bark at something, some perceived little noise or twitch. Good news, though. He figured out how to get in and out the doggy door in the back, and bad news, he does it ten times an hour. I have now crawled around the backyard and stuck my nose everywhere he could and ascertained that there are no holes in the fence through which he can wriggle, and yet I still worry. This little guy is used to roaming free and wild up on his hill by the sea. Five more days. Just five more days, while I am studying for a midterm (another one), writing a 5 page argument for Critical Thinking, and a term paper for Psych. Right.

Crazed and confused...

I turned in the dreaded term paper, which is probably going to get shot full of holes and oh well, progress not perfection. Now to work on study guide questions for 75 question midterm tomorrow, then 5 page paper on abortion rights for Critical Thinking, 7 page term paper for Psych5, and another lengthy study guide for midterm in PoliSci, and I am thinking of pulling the covers over my head and remaining there forever, or at least until this semester ends. What was I thinking? This is nuts, and I don't even have a full boat; I'm only at half mast. OK, it's doable, I think. I hope. Just keep putting one foot in front of another. I may not be speedy, but I am reliable. Right.

Welcome to the world, little term paper...

I have just birthed my first term paper, an awesome tome on Proposition 76, just possibly the most dry and boring, not to mention mind-boggling, initiative to come down the pike lo these many years. Even the experts couldn't understand it, and the Governator has virtually abandoned any effort to foist it off on us beleagered voters, well, except to threaten to raise taxes if we don't pass it. Anyway, it was a breech birth at best. And I am all tuckered out and would now like to ensconce myself with my dog, and his visiting buddy Beany, in my soft-as-a-cloud bed with a steamy mystery novel and a large cup of hot chocolate. But, nooooo. I have to keep truckin'. There is a study guide from hell for the Psych midterm Thursday, a thousand page article on abortion (that sounds really exciting) for Critical Thinking and other very exciting projects to do, like clean the bathroom and rake the leaves that have fallen since the last raking, it never ends. OK, off to make some tea, and think about what to eat for dinner. My life. A thrill a minute.

Welcome to the 21st Century!

Back in olden days, in the little house on the edge of the world, we had to wait 2 months to get a phone line. One or the other of us spent half of every workday down at the little store, hunkered down under the pay phone, pleading with or threatening the phone company. Finally, someone came out and ran a line from the pole down on the highway up to our house, and voila! And we were really, really grateful. Now I am in town, and I went to CompUSA yesterday to try to get info on networking my laptop to my PC. Somewhere in that seven year sojourn in the boonies, I became a techo-dinosaur. When I told the friendly compu-geek that I was still using dial-up, he gave me this look of such incredulity, I thought he was going to faint dead away. As a result, I am now about to have DSL installed. Gee, I hope this will be one of those painless transitions, free of angst-ridden, hand-wringing moments of self-doubt, like the ones I experienced as we waited and waited and waited for a telephone, all those years ago. I am used to dialing up the Internet, and flitting around the Web like a fly on uppers.

Welcome to the spin cycle!

School is gearing up like mad. I have a paper due in Critical Thinking on Monday, a term paper in PoliSci on Wednesday, and a midterm in Abnormal Psych on Thursday. I have actually started working on all three, and will be doing that for the next few days. No time to relax after, either, as another term paper is due mid-month, and another midterm coming, too. It has made me question why I thought this was such a great idea. It is all about just putting one foot in front of another, no time to sit by the road and watch the wildflowers grow. So, I ply the vicissitudes of Proposition 76, debate the efficacy of using animals in biomedical research, and wade through substance abuse and eating disorders. It is an intricate dance, and it is amazing how things overlap here. Ideas just keep perking and let us hope they do not upset any of my teachers. I really want to do well, or at least the very best I can do. It is challenging, to say the least. On to homework, a fruitful way to spend my time. I expect to bloom any minute now.

Just give me back my hour...

Now I understand why college students protest. They teach them such interesting things. Like, since the Republicans have been in power, the rich got a lot richer, and the poor got a lot poorer. The oil companies announce record profits, while I struggle to fill up my tiny Ford and consolidate trips to the grocery store where I am paying more for celery because the truckers have to pay more for their gas, too. It has reached a level of idiocy. All because of the morons in the heartland who are afraid Bruce will be able to marry Jeremy and adopt a baby. Or the scientists will use an embryo and create a cure for Alzheimer's. It's the frigging dark ages, people! Let's all bury our heads in George W's sandbox, which is right next to his set of toy soldiers that he is playing with in Iraq, like those are not our precious children. I want to go on record that I never voted for that Bozo, or his father. But then, no one I vote for ever gets elected anyway. But at least I vote. Hell, just give me back that hour you stole from me in April.

The trouble with thinking...

Another paper is fomenting in my fertile little mind. It is the third time I have written this paper. I read the second draft in writers' round table in class and it got shot full of holes, although it was "very well written". Thank God for small favors. Who would have thought that I would fail at arguing? I was born to argue! Look at the mother I got dealt! Taciturn, mean, vitriolic woman, unhappy person no. 18,756,291. Maybe the problem is that I gave it up for lent, about 16 years ago. I just decided not to defend myself any more. If someone liked to argue, I just moved along, leaving them in the dust. There are so many wonderful people in the world. Why hang out with the pickles? And my Critical Thinking teacher is one of those. Well, sometimes I don't get a choice. I am learning so many things in school that aren't published in the catalog. That is the amazing truth about life. You go to school and expect to be able to conjugate verbs and solve equations, but also learn the vicissitudes of dealing with difficult people, a skill I seem to lack. Must run. So many things to think about, so little time.

The wheels on the bus go round and round...

I have this shuttle thing all figured out. First, I park where I can make a quick turn down the ramp and out of the garage, in pretty much the same place every day. Otherwise, I wind up plowing up and down the aisles of cars, pushing that little thingy on the automatic opener, waiting for my buggy to honk at me and reveal itself in the sea of vehicles. Then I stand patiently in line, sometimes schmoozing with the campus police person they station there to continually remind us where to park, like we haven't been doing this for 2 1/2 months already. There are three shuttles running, all with very different drivers. One is the whippet of a woman, very sharp around the edges, and constantly furrowing her forehead, worrying about her charges. She drives the bus with the low overhead, and though she always warns us to be careful, I have bumped my head more times than I care to admit. Then there is the gray-haired, burnt-out bus driver guy, who hates driving a bus almost as much as he dislikes all of us. He never even grunts when I say "thank you", which I always do, nevertheless. And then there is the big, happy-go-lucky Juan Valdez clone who plays classic rock. I just love it when I get to ride with him. We all bounce along with the Eagles or the Doobie Brothers. Very cool. And good news, they managed to keep the service going till semester end. Super.

A walk in the park...

Taking Boo for a walk is a little tricky. First, you can't let him know he's going until right before you walk out the door. So I sneak back to lock the back door, always a challenge to remember, and stop in the kitchen to fill up the special Boo water bottle, and get a plastic bag and 3 paper towels, aka the Boo poo bag and Boo poo picker-uppers. After palming my keys and sunglasses, it is safe to clue him in and reach for the leash. At this point, he becomes this crazed demon, all wriggly and squeaky. Once out the door, he charges ahead, like he knows what direction to go. Boo doesn't like to walk on gravel, and part of the path to the park is not paved, so I have to continually pull him to keep him from jumping off the curb into the 40 mph traffic on College Ave. It is a talent to decipher during his inumerable stops if this is the one that will produce bodily functions or merely a moment to savor the bodily functions deposited by other dogs. One can hope that there will be no deposits requiring retrieval until the last leg of our walk. This never happens. And once he has made a deposit, it is not wise to ditch the poo bag too soon. Boo likes to do his business in installments, hence the multiple poo picker-uppers. So, by the time we reach the park, we are usually already toting a bag of Boo poo. There's all kinds of excitement in the park for Boo to comtemplate, especially other dogs. Guys on bikes can be a little intimidating for him, and there is always a kid who gets all gooey over the Boo. He bears up under all this admiration, well, admirably. He gets a drink out of his special Boo bottle that comes with a drinking trough, $4.98 at Lillian Vernon, and then its time for the second installment. By the time we round the corner of our street again, he is all tuckered out and lagging behind me, panting. We return happily to deposit the poo bag in the garbage, and Boo returns to his post on the bed where he can survey his kingdom in comfort. Another day in the life of the Boo.

God bless Jane Austen...

I watched Pride and Prejudice last night. God bless public television for these classic movies. This one was made in the dark ages of black and white films and starred Greer Garson as Elizabeth Bennett, and Laurence Olivier as Mr. Darcy. I found it stilted. Honestly, even the most carefully cultivated sense of propriety must sometimes become eroded with passion! There people behaved like silly children, even the parents, so that when the younger Bennett daughter ran off with the scoundrel soldier, it seemed no more than a 3rd grade field trip. And what a waste of Olivier’s talents. He was best in films like Wuthering Heights, where he could smolder with barely reined-in lust and fury. Here, he barely stumbled over his love for Lizzy, and she gave him the barest moment of bloodless pondering before declaring her turnabout affection for him. I am looking forward to the newest version, due out very soon, hoping that passion will erupt somewhere in this mess of civility. At last, something worth re-making!

Saturday afternoon at the movies...

I had one of those marvelous encounters yesterday with an old friend. We met for lunch at the world's best Chinese restaurant and schmoozed our way through walnut pineapple prawns and orange sesame beef. Lots of catching up to do over the oolong tea. Then we mosied over to the theater, not the mega-multiplex where one can see Texas Chainsaw Masacre IV or Barbie's Dream Adventure, oh nonono. We went to the smart people's theater, where instead of your brain getting pumped full of fluff and feeling all cottony afterward, you actually get to think about what you saw, and you come out enlightened and enriched with a brain bursting with new thoughts. In other words, the theater that plays the independent films, or the ones the big studios make as acts of contrition for the rest of the tripe they produce. My choice, and I was really dragging my friend to see it, was Proof, starring the divine Gwyneth, along with Anthony Hopkins, Jake Guylenhall, and Hope Davis, who was less white-ratish in this film than I have ever seen her. It was about the fine line between genius and madness, a great cinematic subject in my book. Actually, I think it could have been a better work with better editing, more tension-filled, but all in all, it satisfied my need to feel that I can entertain and elucidate myself all at the same time. We walked out with smug smiles to the parking lot full of vintage Volvos and new hybrids, passing all the other smart people on their way for their helping of intellectual grace.

Everything old is new again, Part 9776

Well, they have resurrected Zorro, again. Man, he should have been embalmed decades ago, after the really lame TV series Disney did with that actor who later became Will Robinson's father in Lost in Space, which they also did a hokey rehash of a couple of decades ago. Guy Williams, that was the dude. The original Zorro was Tyrone Power, and there was a guy worth paying to watch carving Zs in everything and everybody. Then there was a movie serial, one chapter a week, usually 15 in total, then the TV series, then more movies, including George Hamilton as Zorro, the Gay Blade, admittedly original but still, blah, Zorro. And that dear Banderos chap, well, he is yummy, but wasted, just wasted in another black masked-man epic. But that is not the really bad news. They remade The Fog! I actually own this movie on DVD, an honor I reserve for only classic trash, and this movie was right up on the top of that list along with The Thing and Curse of the Demon. Jaimie Lee was at her scream-queen prime, starring right along with her mother, the queen-mother of horror since her outing at the Bates Motel. Which reminds me, remaking Psycho? Give me a break.

I'd like to buy a vowel, please.

I walked through the Coop yesterday on my way to class. That's the student dining room on our campus, also known as the Student Cooperative. There was a foursome playing cards and I thought, how erudite, they're having a 9 am bridge game. Not so, they were playing go fish. So much for the superior intelligence of college students. I played go fish with my brothers when they were 4 and 6 years old. In fact, my poor beleagered mother taught me to play casino when I was 5 to divert herself when she could get both those little brats to sleep at the same time. As we grew up, our hall closet got filled up with board games like Chutes and Ladders, Monopoly, Life, and my personal favorite, Sorry. Sorry was particular fun because you could screw up your opponent's game with spectacular aplomb, and I was certainly into that scene with my little brothers. Later, my grandmother taught me to play Canasta, with three or four decks. That was really dandy. My mother took Risk away from us kids; World War III would rage in our living room every time we played it. And I went through a period of addiction to shows like Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. Those are events most fun when shared with another addict, jumping up and down on the couch, yelling out the answers to impress one another. Well, I am just a little competitive here. OK, I am a lot competitive. It runs in my family. Our holiday poker games are still thrilling when I can sucker my now old fart brothers out of a big pot. At penny-nickel-dime, it is never very much money. It's all about rivalry. It never ends.