In Which Lo Decides She Might As Well Crawl Out From Under the Sofa

Grokkkk!   Auuuukkkkk!  Qweeeesgh!
Those are the sounds emanating from the throat of this unkempt, large, moulting bird struggling wildly while being slowly strangled by her own ineptitude and wondrous powers of procrastination and denial among other things.   I have just decided Enough Already.  I must put away my disappointment, disillusionment, distress and disgust at the machinations of the insane and unkind world and Murphy's Law and raise my bod up to keep on schlepping.

It's like this.

First,  I found to my great disappointment that I am not a candidate for the new wonder surgery to implant a telescopic lens in my macular degenerated eye.  I nearly qualified but it seems that they cannot do the procedure on anyone who has had cataract surgery.  Hells Bells, as my Daddy used to say.......I can hardly believe that there is a person over 75 (condition #1) who has NOT had cataract surgery.  Well, that took care of that dream.  But, the Doctor took pity on me and decided to refer me toyet another specialist......one who prescribes glasses for low vision patients.  So how come he didn't think of this months ago?   Dun't esk.

So, after another  4 hour excruciating examination (they are all at least 4 hours)   complete with the brightest lamps known to man being shone into my eye and drilling holes into my brain and innumerable additional photographs of my decrepit  macula ( how many pictures of one's macula does a person really need, fercrissake?)  and being assigned a prescription for  some lenses that may actually make it possible for me to read AND having my bank account depleted in a horrific fashion, I finally staggered home to await the new glasses in a week or 10 days  equipped only with the most expensive lighted magnifying glass known to humankind to get m  e through the interim.  That's the disillusionment, distress  and disgusted part.

Now, do not for one moment think that I am not grateful as hell for what vision I do have.......believe me, I am.   But you know what greedy, ungrateful wretches we humans are.  We always want MORE.

And speaking of ungrateful.......I am still not recovered from the disillusionment I suffered when my usually trusty caregiver presented me with the results of weeks, or perhaps months, of her labors to carefully transcribe the illegible entries in my aged personal phone book onto stick on labels using a felt marking pen and paste them onto pages in a newly prepared loose leaf binder with alphabetic separators and everything.  You cannot imagine my perplexity, puzzlement and volcanic rage when I eagerly seized the new tome and opened it to look up a phone number only to find that,while I could actually read the entries I could not find anything I was looking for.  It was only after 3 or 4 minutes of mumbled oaths and groans that I figured out that she had organized the entire book by FIRST NAME.  Oy.

No, there was no bloodshed, nor even any harsh words.  I am a totally civilized (read hat as beaten down, defeated)  soul.  I simply asked her gently why she had chosen to do it like that and she was just as flabbergasted as I had been and had absolutely no answer.  I decided that the book, as it was, would be useful in case the dreaded Dementia struck and I forgot the last names of everyone I know.   In fact, it was particularly good when I needed to look up one of my multitudinous Doctors since they were all neatly gathered under D (though not in alphabetic order....but never mind).  We are now working on Version 2 in which I will alphabetize the labels before they get applied to the pages......sob.

And after all that I have decided to finally crawl out from under my rock and temporarily rejoin this meshugina world...........don't  ask me why....I have absolutely no answer.....God help us all!

Put Down That Damned Shovel and Stop Digging - I Am Still Here (Barely)

I can guess what some of you may have been thinking.....no word from me for weeks..no word from Gussie...not a peep from the Fabulous Finches.........ominous.

Sorry if I have worried you or if you have felt deprived.  I have been showered and overwhelmed with various varieties of dung and have not yet dug myself out.  (toss me that shovel you were using to dig the grave.....I could use it.)

I do not believe this trial by shit is going to prove fatal, but it is taking all my focus and energy so don't give up on me...... I will be back.

Just do not want you to worry.

Love,
youknowwho

Pome About a Few of the Blights of My Life

You know what I hate?  I hate Emoticons
I find them infantile
and puerile
 and ugly to boot
and that's the troot.
I consider them quite totally offensive
and reprehensive.

I think that the person who invented them
or first presented them
should be forced to have them tatooed over every inch of their epidermis, both exposed and hidden
and then they should be tied naked to the back of a horse and ridden
through the downtown of every city of 50,00 or more regardless of the weather
and people should be encouraged to get together
and throw overripe fruit and tomatoes
and hurl lewd remarks and insults and threats at them
and shame and scare the  bejesus out of them.

And as for the ones people make out of innocent punctuation
they are equally silly, irritating and require eradication.
Only difference is that while being equally deplorable and unadorable
They are at least a bit more ignorable.

So I say Faugh on all who use them.....those "pictures" are for the birds....
What in the hell is wrong with words?

And for my next number
I want to see the complete disappearance of the use of  "lol"
And may everyone who ignores my plea be sentenced to eternally trying to eat an ice cream cone
in Hell.


The grumpy, rhyming Lois has spoken.

The Difficult Art of Seeing What Is In Front of You By Looking a Little to the Side

If you hang around this corner fairly often you probably know that I have been having terrible trouble with my vision for a long time.    I developed  a condition called wet macular degeneration I am not sure how many years ago and lost all central vision in my left eye in that initial attack.  I still have peripheral vision in that eye so I can find my way around a familiar room using it,  but it is not good for any kind of serious seeing    I can almost see everything I am not looking at  (if you can wrap your mind around that indigestible nugget).  A year of participating in the final FDA study of the drug Lucintas (which involved monthly visits to get a shot in my eyeball for a year......yes 12 pokes in the eye with a sharp stick) sadly though it stopped further damage it did not help my condition though many of the other people in the study had great improvement and the drug is now available.
 
At the time my right eye still had good vision though it showed signs of developing what they call dry macular degeneration....a less destructive variety but still a very bad thing.  Ever since, despite drinking gallons of fresh carrot juice and taking all the supplements known to be friendly to the eyes, my good  eye has gone steadily downhill.  Little by little the window of my clear vision shrank till,at this time, I can only see a single key on the keyboard or about 3 letters at a time in the word Microsoft....so I have to read it mic.....ros.....oft and put the groups together in my mind and hope they make sense.  At the same time, the little window has developed a mist which gets foggier each day so seeing the important stuff clearly has become a huge struggle.....a real pain in the ass, you could say......no, much worse.  Oy.  

I am not telling you this to make you feel sorry for me.  Sympathy is nice, but pity and suffering once removed is useless and a dreadful waste so please, don't feel my pain.    I have, of late, been living day to day, still able to  barely seee on the computer  because it is backlit, unable to locate the cursor unless I let my peripheral vision find a moving object,  and not sure even  how long that will last.  Have not figured out how I would live if I were to completely lose the central "seeing" vision in my good eye .......I am a fantastic problem solver,  but I have not figure that one out yet.   We just won't go there, OK?   BUT.....

A friend sent me an article announcing that the Hospital and Med Dept at UC Davis has developed  a telescopic implant which enables people with an impaired central macula to SEE by focusing the vision away from the bad spot in the center to the side where the macula is healthy.  It told of a success with an 89 year old lady, an artist, who had lost her vision and had it restored by this implanted lens.  "Holy bejeebers", I said, or words to that effect.  And of course, I proceeded to look into this immediastely, if  you will pardon my loose use of the word "look".

My plan was to somehow get on the top of the list up at UC Davis, even if I had to bribe/convince them of my worthiness by giving them all my money......(no use trying to sell my body anymore).   However, after ceasing to jump up and down and before starting the exhausting business of trying to get through to the right department and the right person at UC Davis, I decided to consult with my own high powered Retinologist to get his opinion about the procedure and, lo and  behold, I found that not only does he approve of the procedure, but that he actually is performing it right here in his clinics in Los Angeles.  Now if all that ain't a fucking miracle, I don't know what is.

I have an appointment at the end of July for a consult with him to see if I am a candidate.  The article stated that they were only performing the procedure on folks who were over 75.....I sure as hell qualify, and on the dry macular degeneration......right on again.  I even rushed to my Cardiologist to have him check me over to be sure I could undergo surgery and got a thumbs up.  To say I am excited would be ridiculous.  There is no word for the degree of hope and the degree of fear I am experiencing.  Fear only because I would hate to lose what little sight I still have if the operation should fail..... but I will find out the odds and then take my chances.

Meanwhile, if you know anyone with macular degeneration, please tell them about this new procedure.  I will post the website with the article at the bottom of this post.  After 10 years of saying "no" when people ask me,  "Can't anything  be done to help you?" it seems there is finally a YES - MAYBE answer to that question.

Do spread the word, please!

http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/publish/news/newsroom/6949

Oh, Hell.....Now There Is One More Thing I Just Don't Understand

Just a quickie today.......a plea for enlightenment.  I am confused, bemused, baffled, puzzled and perhaps even hornswaggled (if I knew what THAT meant)  and also pissed off.   I hate it when I feel like this.

After months of fuming, fretting and much wringing of the hands, mind  fraught with anxiety about the shutting down of Google Reader and agonizing over whether to try Feedly or Bloglovin and simply not understanding what mechanism had been providing me with access to all the blogs I read and follow, etcetera, etcetera, etcetra, July 1st has come and gone and I seem to still have access to my beloved blogs via Blogger.com  same as always. 

WTF??????

Needless to say, I am ecstatic over the fact that nothing has had to change for me......I do not need Feedly or Bloglovin or Whatever......tenks gott.   BUT.....
Can anyone explain to me where Google Reader impinges on my life if it does, indeed impinge?  Sigh.

Hell and damn.....I used to write these damned programs and used to understand how they linked together and how they could access stuff stored here and there......of course, that was  back in the dark ages so I am willing to admit ignorance and willing to learn.  This whole  brouhaha makes no sense to me and the perplexity is driving me bonkers. 

Please, someone......explain in simple terms how Google Reader fit into the blog world or any other world.  My gratitude will be  boundless......I might even offer a bribe.....I mean prize.

Eagerly waiting,
   Perplexed
   Bonkersville, CA.

Wipe That Look of Pity Off Your Face, Dammit.....So I Am Obesssed With the FastDiet....So??

Yeah, yeah, I know....it is pretty effing pitiful when a person gets to the point where there is so little going on in a person's life that a new way of eating takes over a person's entire  being.     Well, that person is THIS person but I don't need your stinking pity.......I assure you that it ain't just because I am too old and feeble to have anything more interesting to obsess over that I am going bonkers over this amazing FastDiet way of eating.  It is my latest Miracle.

Unless you have lived a life of  unending deprivation fearing every morsel you put into your mouth, (except lettuce) , are engaged in a constant, exhausting wrestling match with your baser self's perpetual cravings and know the anguish of never having a moment's peace or relief from pangs run wild and are doomed to go unsatisfied forever you cannot  begin to understand my current near bliss.  Like an exhausted swimmer who has  been fighting the undertow trying to reach the shore and safety  for her entire lifetime and who finally manages, with the last ounce of strength, to drag herself into the shallows, out of reach of the deadly grasp of the current, I am lying gasping on the sand slowly being restored by the hope of never having to undergo that nightmarish struggle and endless agony again.

My earliest memory was of food and it is a monumental one and  an explanation of the blight I have suffered under for 86 years.  It is as clear to me now as it was all those many years ago ......a moment of total clarity then and now.   I believe I was about a year old....maybe less.  I was lying in a tiny, brightly striped canvas beach chair in the kitchen, filled with my normal  unease, fear and general sense of dread which was my way of life.  It stemmed from the fact that at any moment my father might appear and who knew what that might portend.  My mother was busy with some task at the stove behind me and then she placed into my little hands a glorious bottle which I recognized as being the source of a  heavenly substance.  I drank eagerly and a warm glow of peace and bliss spread through my body and calmed my mind and soul.  I was in heaven in the arms of angels and I was being filled with ambrosia.  For this moment I was safe, happy and fulfilled.  Needless to say, I lived for these moments and the magic never ceased until I was old enough to somehow understand that the sacred substances that I put into my mouth and which made life bearable had a terrible price.....they ended up making me FAT.

That old adage, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me" is a crock of shit.   Names hurt like hell.  Pudge, Fatso, Baby Elephant, Big Fat Cow all pierced me to the quick, drew invisible blood and created wounds  some of which took half a lifetime to heal.  Even before I ever heard of the word Diet, I was already suffering conflict with every crumb that I put in my mouth.  Food was not only a delicious pleasure but was my friend, comfort, sedative and pain killer and yet I knew that each crumb would only end up making me pudgier, fatter, clumsier, uglier of form and generally more despicable.  Not a happy predicament.  My only salvation was also  my enemy.

And even after discovering Diet and Exersize at age 11 and losing 35 or 40 lbs. life was just one long, unending struggle, either of constant deprivation or failure to maintain my diet and the hard won losses.....a wretched burden of despair, defeat and guilt.  I gained and lost the same 10 - 40 lbs. periodically for the next 60 years and each time it became harder to lose an ounce until the process just stopped working altogether.  Let's see now.....I figure I must have easily lost and regained more than 700 lbs during my lifetime..  Pretty damned impressive but all for naught.  Sob.

During most of my young and middle years I did manage to maintain an acceptable weight........between smoking and dieting when necessary I kept  an uneasy truce with the problem.  Then I went thru menopause and quit smoking at the same time and immediately gained the 40 lbs I had  been so laboriously holding at bay for most of my life.  When I reached the estimable age of 80 I just gave up the useless struggle and decided to eat whatever I wanted for whatever years were left to me and to just accept waddling as a means of locomotion.  Sadly, a broken hip and worn out knee joints just made everything more and more difficult, but I did not see that I had much choice.  Dieting did not work and I could no longer even exercise on the treadmill or stairclimber......I could just about make it tottering  to the potty and back a few hundred times a day (yes, that has become my my exercise.)  Fortunately, each time  I have reached the top weight my body had decided it wanted to be, I did not gain any more but I was still doomed to drag around, carry, raise and lower and live with  that damned 40 lbs. and the older I have gotten the harder it has become.  The operative word has  been  "hopeless".

And then, suddenly, an amazing ray of hope  appeared.  I read about the FastDiet or the 5:2 Diet in which you eat whatever you want for 5 days of the week and do a modified fast of 500 healthy calories on the other 2 days (not consecutive) and, aside from the possibility of perhaps losing weight, I liked the premises underlying it.  (  the studies show that it may not only make you lighter and healthier, but protect you from Alzheimers and dementia and increase your longevity as well)  Since I had nothing to lose (except for that damned 40 lbs) I decided to try it for one week and, by all  that is holy, at this moment (the beginning of week 7) I believe it may have changed my life. 

To mention just a few points, I seem to no longer fear food.  I no longer struggle against monstrous cravings.  (I really never experienced hunger.....just cravings).  Food, when I do eat it, actually tastes better. I have little to no trouble with hunger on my partial fast days or any physical discomfort.  I actually feel energized and at peace with what I am doing and it is an unbelievably lovely feeling.  Since I am not distracted by my food insanity, the fast days have enabled me to peer into dark  corners of myself and see clearly the process which has cursed my life and, in seeing it I seem to be able to change it.  Holy Moly, as they say.  I never expected to be able to solve this particular part of what I call my madness.  I still am not over the surprise and delight of it and, though of course I know too well that this may all be a dream and I may revert tomorrow to where I was, even this  brief respite has been a true  blessing and a fascinating experience.   After repeating the same  words to myself during my whole life....Give up the food  crutch, Face the fear, Accept Death from starvation, etc. etc. etc I seem to have finally been able to not just talk it  but DO it and after taking that deep breath and  stepping off the cliff I found I did not fall and crash. The edge of the cliff was an illusion to trick me into staying in the same old comfortable/uncomfortable place.   Like all the other difficult lessons I have been able to learn, this is one more case where intellectually knowing the solution and being able to incorporate it and put it in to practice are tantalizingly close yet far apart.

Just shows to go, folks....apparently we are never to old to learn.....sigh...oy vey, what next?
I want a sabbatical first.

Ode to an Old Friend

Another blogger recently wrote a very touching  blog about the recent loss of a long time friend of 43 years.

It got me to thinking about my longest ( living) relationship......a friend I have known, loved, hung out with, laughed with, cried with, shared with, disagreed with,  traveled with, caroused with, grown up with, grown old with.....all of the above in spite of the fact that we have been separated by 3000 miles for all but the first 15 months of our relatinship ( not counting the many times we have traveled together and traveled to be with each other).  Some day I may tell you a lot more about this friendship, but I have just realized that my frugality,my refusal to part with any beloved thing I have collected over my lifetime and my tendency to hoard the good stuff and not let it go sort of slops over into my relationships.  I do try to hold on to the good ones.  Just 10 or 12 years ago I still had 5 or 6 friends whom I had known for more than 50 years.   I have lost all but 3 of them to death over recent years, but  it sort of shocks me when I realize that my newest close friendship was engendered about 35 or 40 years ago.  Oh, I do have some newer, younger friends, but they are not quite the same as those others that have been part of me  for 50, 60, 70 years.  Even some of my lovers remained friends long after the flames of passion died down......quality lasts after lust and passion have ridden off into the sunset. But, I digress.....I was intending to tell you about my Oldest Friendship...... Stel.

I remember like it was yesterday that morning in September of 1940 when Sylvia Shahinian (my then oldest friend since age 9) and I climbed the steps to Shaw Jr. High School in West Philadelphia and Syl suddenly stopped and hissed, "Be careful....there's that girl".  What girl, I asked.  That new girl who lives on our street.  Why should I be careful I asked.  "She wants to be friends with us", Syl said.
I did not see that as a problem so I disengaged my sleeve from Syl's grip and sauntered up the steps to the new girl.  "Hi", I said.  "Hi", she said. and so began my very long association with Stella.


That was  more than 73 years ago and I have just paraphrased Bob Hope's old song, "Thanks For The Memory", hitting some highlights of this rare friendship and I intend to sing it to her........yes I will. Since she adamantly refuses to have anything to do with a computer since she retired as head of the Reference Dept of  the New Hampshire State Library, I will have to make a CD and send it to her.  Only Stel and I will understand all the references. but I am really tickled with it and will share my lyrics with you below.
.
I hope she will get as big a kick out of it as I have gotten developing it.   I guess I had  better hurry....neither of us is getting any younger.  Where did I put my pitchpipe?

Some may consider it maudlin and sappy, but I stand by it  proudly.

Thanks for the memory
of Paris long ago, trips to Mexico,
Stomach pains and hurricanes
and sharing Guillermo
I thank you so much.

Thanks for the memory
My only Broadway show
was Kiss Me Kate, you know
The transit strike caused us to hike
Manhattan high and low
I thank you so much..

I loved your father and mother
And had a huge crush on your brother
And you were a friend like no other
I felt lucky to be
close to your family.

So thanks for the memory
Las Vegas was such fun
I taught you 21
T'was in the Golden Nugget
Can't remember if we won
But thank you so much.


Second chorus

Thanks for the memory
of cruising Norway's fjords
we've toured and dined like Lords
and Frisco was two inches, and my wagon was a Ford
I thank you so much.

Thanks for the memory
San Miguel was so hypnotic
Our villa was exotic
The trip to Guanajuato
Showed that Don was Don Quixotic
Oh, thank you so much.

Many's the times that we feasted
I don't think that we ever fasted
And look at how long we have lasted
We've had great fun, for more than 71 (years, that  is)

So thanks for the memory
of music near and far
Guillermo played guitar
and Pete and Joe swung sweet and low
and look, here we still are
I'm awfully glad I met you
Stella darling, you're my Star
I thank you so much.