Beets!

Beets often terrify me. I don't mean to say that I have an irrational fear of beets, because that isn't the case. I don't tremble in the produce department. I don't struggle to hide tremors of terror as I rush my cart past the cans of beets—pickled, sliced, diced, or whole—in the canned vegetable aisle. I don't make the sign of the cross, the evil eye, or any other superstitious act of protection when I walk past a garden that may or may not have beets stealthily growing in some dark and mysterious corner. No, what ends up scaring the bejeesus out of me, nearly every time it so happens, is what happens after I have eaten beets. And digested them.

The first time I was concerned. I looked into the bowl of the commode and there was a string of red in the water coming from...you know, and there were specks of red, too. In the next “movement” the whole stool was red and I was really concerned. I figured I would wait one day and then go to the doctor. That night I had one that was more purple than red and I realized, what the hell, it was beet juice! I had enjoyed a lot of beets and the coloring was working its way through my system. A relief and a good laugh.

Well, time goes by and you forget these things. I did, anyway. The other day I made some fresh beets along with some stewed beet and dandelion greens with garlic. Yummy. But, there, the next morning, my fears returned. I had colon cancer. My intestines were rotting and falling apart in my body. My stomach wall was shredding. I had internal bleeding. You name it. I stared in horror.

And then I remembered: Oh, yeah. Beets.

Brackish

I'm the first to admit that there are times when I'm less than anal where bathing is concerned. Some days a good face washing and maybe swipe at the hair seems quite adequate. Some days I wake up feeling grimy as hell and nothing short of a good scalding will suffice. But often a quick shower amounting to little more than a good rinsing is the extent of my morning bath. Soap up the head and let the runoff do the rest. Rinse, dry, we're good.

This morning I went on a bike ride and then took my touring bike to the grocery store for some shopping. I got home and started putting together the big lunch for the kids. When everyone showed up I decided I had better rinse some of the stink off of me and headed off to the shower.

I thought today would be a "trickle down" clean up. Wash the hair and let the suds clean on the way down...that sort of thing. But then I looked down and noticed a brackish stream flowing away from my feet. Now, I know what brackish means. I know it's not what I mean here. It doesn't mean a blacky browny color, a color water flowing from your body should not have. But, hey, this is my blog and today brackish is a blacky browny color, a color water flowing from your body should not have. (And, yes, I know blacky and browny are acceptable names for dogs but not adjectives.)

Anyway, once I saw the dirt stream flowing from my feet (I was wearing sandals while riding, so that's not too unexpected, is it?) I decided to take a full on soap up everything and scrub it down approach. With everyone coming over I certainly didn't want to come out of the shower and still have everyone think I'm a sweaty, salty, unpleasant mess. Wait. Salty. Unpleasant. Fetid. Stale. Distasteful. Hmm. Maybe brackish is the right word after all!

MedicAlert?

Returning from a recent trip to Michigan, my luggage was routed to London Heathrow and held up in customs. No suitcase for me for three days! The main problem with this is that I had decided to stick my CPAP machine in my checked bag instead of carrying it on with me. Oops. But, finally, at 1:08 in the Ante Meridiem, my bag showed up on the front porch and all was well and accounted for.

The day before my luggage was returned I was talking to my mother. My sister-in-law had a mild stroke and we were discussing her condition. We talked about my brother's poor health, my mother's ailments, her husband's ailments, and so on. This is the general course of our conversations: Ailments and the shortcomings of my siblings. I suspect it's the same conversation my brothers and sisters have with her, just with a few name changes.

Eventually we got around to my trip. Since I had been to Michigan, where I'm from, the inevitable end of the conversation was wondering why I haven't visited her in the middle of nowhere, Raccoon, Kentucky. As usual, I deflected it with the assertion that she is welcome to come visit us any time at all, but never has. Round and round until I mentioned my lost luggage.

Lost luggage is a fascinating thing, especially when it ends up in a different country. When I mentioned that the only reason I was really concerned about the luggage was because my CPAP was in it, I had to explain what a CPAP was, a breathing machine eventually cleared it up. Turns out my sister-in-law had one for a while. Maybe. That depends on how well my mother understood what I was talking about.

I had to explain why I need it, that I have sleep apnea. We went back and forth as I explained, and re-explained that sleep apnea means you stop breathing in your sleep and then end up snuffling and snorting and jolting yourself (and usually whoever is in bed with you at the time) awake. The CPAP blows a gentle stream of air down your nasal passage and keeps your airway open, allowing you to sleep peacefully. It takes a bit of getting use to, but once you use it for a while, you wonder why you didn't get one sooner. It makes a big difference. You're less tired during the day. You're more alert. You find yourself actually remembering things you would have forgotten before. And, in my case, I'm sure Joan likes it a lot more than even I do because it allows her to sleep through the night without me waking her with my obnoxious restlessness, tossing and turning, and breathing issues. As an added bonus, the quiet whisper of the air from the machine acts as white noise that helps her sleep even more. I can go to bed and sleep through the night and never even really move during the night. It works pretty well.

We talked a while more about my grandchildren. (Weird. I have grandchildren.). She wants some more pictures. My brother has a computer and the internet so he gets to see all of the photos I post on the web using Picasa. He tells her about them. She thinks I'm sending him photos and wants to know when I'm going to send her some. So I'll be spending some time printing out photos for my mother.

And then she says, "So, do you wear a bracelet?"

A bracelet? What the hell is she talking about? Now, non-sequitors are not unusual in these conversations, but this one is a bit out there. "A bracelet? Why would I wear a bracelet? What are you talking about?"

"You know, a medical bracelet."

"You mean a MedicAlert bracelet?"

"Yeah."

"For what?"

"You know, in case you fall asleep somewhere."

I kid you not. This was her line of thinking. If I use a CPAP I might fall asleep somewhere and not wake up or some such thing.

"I don't have narcolepsy! It's sleep apnea. I'm not going to just fall asleep somewhere and lay there until someone finds me."

But then again, given my history of when and where I have fallen asleep, maybe she's not so far off the mark. Maybe I should look into it. Maybe they have a bracelet that reads something like If found sleeping, make comfortable and leave be. Have a tasty treat available upon waking. Yeah, there just might be something to this after all.

Grrl Power Poem?

Maybe I'm developing another personality. Maybe I've been possessed by Judy Blume (who, I believe, is not dead). All I know is I woke up with this in my head, in exactly this form, clear as the tolling of that proverbial bell:

I could write a pretty poem, too.
If I was more like my sister.
If I was less like my friends.
Yak. Yak. Yak.
Beautiful girl. Beautiful girl.
Yes, I am.

No Forest To My Eye

I just returned from a brief visit to the old stomping grounds, northern Michigan. While there we drove by some "managed" forests, some in a state of recovery, in a sense, because they at least had some undergrowth, but most in that sterile, artificial system of straight, orderly rows of tall, narrow pines limbed high enough not to interfere with logging equipment. Some of these are the result of the old clear cutting methods preferred by most logging companies. Some, the product of the newer "modified" clear cuts that are supposed to leave room for other species somewhere in the mix. While I know we're never going to eliminate the need for wood and wood pulp in any foreseeable future and recognize and, on some level, support the use of managed forests as a somewhat sustainable option to simply moving along to older "virgin" forests to fill that need, part of me still cringes when these tree factories are referred to as forests. Forests are wild places; these are nothing of the sort. So I'm working on a poem about it. Here's the current version:

No Forest To My Eye

Woods, maybe,
This managed thing,
This uniform place,
But certainly no forest.

Cut down the old growth,
Grade it, plow it,
Remove the rocks and stumps,
The heart of it.

The dog is no more wolf
Than these trees a true woods;
Yet does the dark arboreal past
Lurk in and haunt a forest's dreams

Like the running packs
That hunt and leap
Behind the lids of
Twitching, sleeping dogs?

Even rows and perfect spaces
Undergrowth cleared and
Harvest ready. Tagged
And color coded. Forests.

No. Forests don't leave you dizzy.
Forests don't walk the straight path,
Domesticated and tame.

A Poem About King Kong (?)

Tonight on AMC (Seriously, AMC? Yes. AMC.) they are showing the 1976 Dino de Laurentiis remake of King Kong, starring Jeff Bridges, Charles Grodin, Rene Auberjonois, and, oh yeah, Jessica Lange. The movie had an impact on my young, impressionable mind. I decided to write a poem about it....

King Kong

I'm thirteen years old and Jessica Lange has changed my life forever.
A Black Velvet Girl pulled from the sea, wet and pure and flawless.
Her smile has opened my eyes to a world of imagination,
An imagination that won't quit for a lifetime.

It's 1976 and I'm sure there is something important going on,
But I can't for the life of me care what it just might be:
Jessica Lange is wearing a cut-off top that promises everything.
And she's this close to slipping into the ocean.

I immediately understand this creature's obsession.
I saw her on the pedestal of offering; I would have grabbed her, too.
I'm sitting in a theater watching a monster movie,
But the monster is not the one on the screen--

I've been struck and I never saw it coming, never considered
Anything could overshadow and render irrelevant
The awesome and terrible power of King Kong.

It's OK. I Understand.

To my friends who believe they cannot vote for Barack Obama, I want you to know: I understand. I truly do. You see, Barack Obama is intelligent and thoughtful. He is articulate, literate, and sincere. He understands his shortcomings and not only seeks the council of others, but listens to it. In short, he is the complete antithesis of all you have come to expect and admire in a President. It must come as quite a shock that someone of such characteristics should wish to serve his country in this way. I understand your suspicion. I know it scares you that someone might want to rock the boat. Someone might want to change the status quo, possibly even change the paradigm. I'm sure it's quite frightening. It's so much easier to stick with what you are familiar with, even if it hasn't really been any good for you or your country. Change is scary. I understand.

I realize you have become quite comfortable giving up rights and freedoms and weakening the Constitution because you believe it doesn't really affect you. I'm sure you believe that little "preemptive" strike and all of the chaos that has arisen from it is not only justified but somehow necessary, even though all independent sources (and event the Pentagon, GASP!) have agreed that this action was unwarranted and has only undermined our security as a nation and also our standing on the world stage. I understand. It's easier to believe what "they" tell you. I understand, I really do.

What a sigh of relief you must have expelled when the candidacy of John "McFriends" McCain was confirmed! No longer would you have to worry about change. Here was a chance to not only elect someone who would keep the same policies moving "forward," but, heck, he's a good friend, too! Of course, I would think (heaven forbid!) it would be better if he could decide just what it is he stands for. That seems to shift from day to day.

Part of the problem, my friends, with John "McFriends" McCain, is that, well, my good friends, the real John McCain died several years ago. Yes, friends, it's true. The last time he went through a campaign it was simply too much for his creaky old heart and he passed on to Valhalla. But, my friends, don't despair, the Republican party was able to create a modified clone using DNA from the original John "The Maverick" McCain, George W. Bush, and an extremely obedient and passive lap dog. It's really a marvel of science, which is really saying something for a party which eschews science so readily.

So, no hard feelings. I know how hard it is to face the future. However, I encourage you to embrace change and take a chance on the future. Let's move toward a future where America once again holds itself up to a higher standard and no longer says, "Why should we lead the way? No one else is doing it." Let's look to a future where America once again stands up and says, yes, we can (Wait, is that Obama's slogan? Hmm. That was unintentional, seriously.). When America sees the world out-competing it by manufacturing vehicles that get better mileage, have better warranties, and have higher levels of quality and performance it shouldn't say--as it does these days--"It's unfair, we should impose higher import taxes on those other cars!" No! America should say, "Oh, hell no. This won't stand!" And then they should flood the market with efficient, cost-effective, electric powered vehicles and alternatives to petroleum fuel to generate that electicity. They shouldn't whine and moan and say, as our President himself has done, "It's haaarrrd!" Of course it's hard! You think it wasn't hard to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade--in the effin' sixties?!?! Give me a break.

So, yeah, I understand. But get over it. Get over it and do the right thing. Horatio Alger is a myth. You are not going to be a rich CEO anytime soon and you are not going to benefit from all of the corporate welfare this administration has shoved down our throats. It ain't going to happen, friends. Quit thinking that if you elect a Democrat we will all live in sudden poverty where everything you have is taken away and given to poor brown people. This President came into office with a few trillion dollars in surplus. This surplus, coming from a Democratic administration, has been squandered until we are billions and billions of dollars in debt with several billion dollars a month going to feed the war in Iraq (unnecessary, unwarranted, and having nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11 or terrorism or anything else that might have been justified). This administration said the war would pay for itself and would result in really cheap oil prices ($20 per barrel, as a matter of fact). You see where that has gotten us, don't you? You're now paying approximately $3 more a gallon than when this administration came into office. And it's not going to get any better if we continue down the same path. And believe me, John "McFriends" McCain is exactly the same path--or worse.

I understand, yes, but I've changed my mind on one thing: It's not OK.