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I am very sensitive to light (especially fluorescent), sound, and crowds. I have to run away or put on sunglasses or earplugs every day.

The year they made me, people didn’t come with filters.

Wonderful things can come from the most unlikely places, and usually appear when you’re not looking for them. (But it has to be genuine not-looking or the universe will know.)

I’m allergic to laugh-tracks and children who make sounds. Really, I’m allergic to children who cannot yet have a semi-coherent conversation. Don’t expect me to look at your new lump of dough and get all excited. And for the love of all creation, don’t try to make me hold it.

I stopped carrying grudges because they were getting too heavy.

The only thing you can control is your reaction to a thing. (Though the first 90 seconds to a stimulus belong to your biochemistry, the rest is choice.)

I’m terrible with names. Even if yours is the same as mine.

I can laugh at the same bad joke for years (and frequently have the sense of humor of a 12-year-old boy).

Unzip before you commit. You wouldn’t buy a car without a test drive, why on earth would you marry a person you’ve never fucked?

I can never stretch enough; especially my neck.

Life is too damn short to spend any significant time doing something that you dislike. Dealing with bureaucracy and authority types is best avoided; engaging in such encounters should be rewarded and celebrated.

I can speak with great authority on topics about which I know very little.

There is no permanent record. Proceed accordingly.

I drink a couple gallons of water a day. More in the winter. I love ice.

There is no normal. Find the flavor of crazy that works best for you and hang out with the people around there. (No matter what, you are never alone. Find your tribe/community/whatever and you will find people who understand and who’ve probably been through something similar. When you reach out, it gives people the chance to reach back toward you.)

I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I’m pretty sure we’re allowed to change our minds multiple times. Why else would life be so long?

Assume I have good intentions. If I ever want to do anything mean to you, you’ll be awake, you’ll be facing me, and you’ll know why we’re there. (adapted from Firefly)

I love cats, but I don’t need to talk about them for hours.

People vary. Better to remember and embrace this than to assume everyone operates under the same beliefs and conditions.

I used to help run a nightclub. It made me hate nightclubs.

Don’t be a dick. (Apparently this has become known as Wheaton’s Law). (But seriously, who would have guessed that when Wil became an adult, he’d be totally hot?) (Also, I once saw him box Barney the Dinosaur.)

If I’ve had more than a couple drinks, I’m unpredictable. Oh, wait, actually I can be unpredictable any time, depending on the circumstances.

I adore things that glow in the dark after exposure to light; especially things that glow any color other than the standard green.

I once owned a glow in the dark motorcycle.

We currently have four animal skulls in our house (plus two more being used by their owners). One is in a taxidermied mouse dressed as the Pope.

I’ll work harder for less pay for a friend than less work for more pay for an asshole. (Unless the asshole’s project is really cool, brief, and pays extraordinarily well.)

I love vintage Vespa scooters and have been riding them since 1986.

Do not buy a vintage scooter as an investment or as a daily means of transportation unless you are prepared to throw a lot of money into a fire.

I have actual, quantifiable brain damage.

Words are important. They can also be elusive.

When you travel, your body may go by air, but your soul goes by ground and may stop if it sees something interesting. When traveling, allow a couple extra days for your soul to catch up.

I keep copious backups and duplicates of things I think are important, but have no overall system for organizing them.

Donnie Darko, Lucky Number Slevin, and Fight Club are my comfort films. If I want a good cry, I watch Moulin Rouge again. I own most of the DVDs of shows by Joss Whedon and Kevin Smith. I cried after re-watching the last episode when David Tennant played Doctor Who because I dislike that new guy and his sidekick so very much.

Listen to your gut (intuition, instinct, whatever).

Sweeping generalizations ruin everything for everyone.

Don’t say “it can’t get any worse.” I did once and was immediately proven wrong. Instead, try “it can always get worse, until you’re dead, and then who knows?” (what the latter lacks in brevity, it makes up for in accuracy)

It’s not you, it’s me.

Exactly who are “they” and how do they know so much? Also, they are often wrong.

I value consistency more than quality, so if something consistently sucks, I know not to do it.

Sleep is my primary superpower. I once fell asleep standing up.

Walking the line between brave and foolish can be fun.

The worst experiences make the best stories, if you survive to tell them.

Do you like something? Does that thing hurt anyone else? If the answers are “yes” and “no”, respectively, just do it.

Exceptions and caveats exist for everything.

American cheese has its place in the world: grilled cheese sandwiches and cheeseburgers.

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OK, there’s my not-so-short list of random bits. Only slightly proofread, so if I catch typos later, I’ll probably be back to fix them.
How about you? Any truths you hold to be self-evident that you care to share?

The Schmoo, son of Safeway, was born in an apartment on 18th and Noe in San Francisco. A tuxedo baby, one of four in the litter, he was the polydactyl (seven toes on each front foot) runt and, at six weeks old, came to live with me in May 1995. We had a one-bedroom apartment, which seemed large enough to include a cat (though the addition of a cat to our household had been a subject of great debate). The Schmoo was small, pointy, and loud (typical kitten), but was also incredibly clumsy because his hard-wired cat-brain didn’t know how to cope with the extra toes. He tripped and got stuck in the carpet a lot. As he walked, he moved his front legs in sweeping sideways arcs to avoid the extra toes.

We slept in a loft bed with a hand-made, round-runged ladder. When the Schmoo was too small to cross the lowest rung (about six inches off the floor), he would cry and cry until I came down to get him. Then he’d cry and cry until I put his ass back on the carpet. One day, he wasn’t in the bed when I awoke. A couple weeks later, he was running up and down that ladder without a problem.

We kept plastic and paper shopping bags for re-use next to a hutch in the kitchen. When he was around nine months old, we started coming home from work to find bags spread all over the apartment. I’d put the bags back, he’d spread them around again. Eventually we had to store them on top of the hutch because he couldn’t get there. I tried to organize our tiny kitchen by adding a counter-top paper-towel holder. Within a day, I began coming home to thoroughly vanquished rolls of paper towels. Shredded paper towels spread around the apartment like so much (so very much) confetti.

I take baths nearly every day. When we lived in SF, the Schmoo would lay on the narrow counter that ran behind the tub. During the bath, he’d come down and drink out of the tub with me still in it. Once we moved to Portland, there wasn’t a great place for him to sit, so we saved one of the moving boxes and threw a towel over it for him to sit on while I bathed. He would lick the water that dripped off my wet fingers, or lean way over the tub to drink from my cupped hands. And after every shower or bath, he insisted on the “wet pet”. I think it helped him get rid of excess fur.

You could tell he was about to puke because he’d look abruptly worried, puke once, jump away, puke again (and then usually do it a third time for good measure). But the worried look: priceless. He could also look really annoyed: that developed when I got him a kitten as a “friend” (note: grandpas and infants are not compatible as friends).

The Schmoo loved to eat strange plastics and latex. When we’d dye our hair, he’d drag the discarded gloves from the trash and eat the fingers off them. The Schmoo also loved closets; especially the big one in the living room, where we kept our costumes, club-wear, and the possessions of a long-term couch guest. Turns out he actually liked the *contents* of that closet: he ate his way through a latex dress, a latex shirt, and a latex skirt before we discovered what all that rustling was in there.

The Schmoo loved plastic bags: some to lick for hours on end, and others for what was simply “the bag trick”. Say what you will about cats and bags; this was a special relationship. In the living room of our SF apartment, you would shake out a plastic, two-handled bag loudly, and allow it to drift to the floor. From wherever he was in the apartment, the Schmoo would come running, dart inside the bag, lay down, adjust himself *just so* and begin. He’d stretch out first one front leg, so that it was taut against the side of the bag and begin to move that section of the bag up and down. Up to hit his face, then down to the floor. Repeatedly. His eyes would be half closed and a dreamy sort of trance would overtake him as he continued to repeat the motion. Occasionally, he’d stop, switch front legs, and adjust his position so that the bag was taut, and he’d continue. Sometimes he’d do this for 30 minutes before wandering away. It was known as the bag “trick” because he’d do it every time. You’d shake and drop the bag, and he’d come running.

He also licked the emulsion off photographs, ate coffee grounds, and pissed on clothing left on the floor. 

Our tiny SF apartment was his domain, and for the first two years of his life, we had no guests, so when guests started appearing, he defended his apartment against the intruders. He trapped people in the bathroom and the kitchen with his hissing, spitting, clawing fury. On his first visit to our house, Jesse (Wussy 1), who loves cats, slept in his helmet and gloves because he was scared of the Schmoo. Most people probably remember this version of him. J (Wussy 23) met both versions of the Schmoo and can attest to the remarkable change.

His name was “Scootercat” until he turned 9 and it didn’t fit any more. That’s when he donned the title, “The Schmoo”, and wore it like a crown for the next 7 years.

When he was 10, a new influence came into his life and he mellowed into a wonderful, loving, demanding, lapcat. Yes, he still pissed on the occasional random thing (including me!), and he vomited pretty regularly, but retrospectively the extra cleaning was a small price to pay for having such a wonderful companion waiting for me when I awoke and when I came home from work every day for 16 years. I miss that guy.

::clink:: Here’s to you, Schmoo. Thanks for sharing your life with me.

The place was 95% female. Hundreds of employees on several floors of multiple expensive downtown SF buildings populated by So Many Women. The IT department and the mailroom are where the guys hid. I can only imagine what it was like for them. There was a dress code because apparently office-bound people working for an international cosmetic company can become vicious fashionistas. Even though the dress code was only about colors (red, black, white, gray), I still felt pretty repressed.

Most of the art people and design women I met were pretty OK. The product managers were absolutely girlie-girls who squealed with delight when some celebrity (I had to look up her name online and forgot it justthatfast) was in the office to discuss her new perfume. Ahem … fragrance line. Their voices went to octaves mine did not. They actually cared about designer clothers and used cosmetics. I did not belong there. We all knew it. But I did my job and they liked that, so it was fine.

Near the end of my assignment, there was a panic because one vendor had failed to provide most of their line by the date we needed. My manager talked to Some Important Executive and they decided that the best course of action was for someone to go into one of the retail outlets and buy the missing products. I just happened to hear the end of the conversation and volunteered to do the deed. Paid time out of the office? Score!

The next morning, I hit the Union Square store armed with a 10-page (10-point, single spaced) list. A giant spreadsheet of eyeliner, blush, foundation, eye shadow, lipstick, mascara, and so on. It was right at opening, so they weren’t busy, and when I told them the mission, their commission-based eyes lit right up. All we had to do was find the stuff, get a total, and the main office would call with the credit card number. The assistant store manager called two clerks to help me. Using that immense list, we sorted through every damn display, drawer, and storage cabinet of that vendor’s products and filled basket after basket. Must have been thousands of dollars of products. Two hours into the process I got a call from my boss. There had been a change of plans. I was told to wrap it up and come in because they weren’t going to actually buy the stuff after all. I’m a terrible liar, so I politely excused myself, told them that they’d be getting a call from Corporate, and scampered my ass right out of there. At the bus stop toward downtown, I felt horrible. I worked retail in college. I knew the thrill of a huge sale and the sadness of a return. But these clerks were certain it was a final sale, so their joy was unfettered.

Later that day, my boss had to make the really hard call to the store and tell them to put it all back. She got ripped a new asshole by the store manager and told never to darken their doorstep again. I still felt so bad I nearly sent flowers to the store with an apology letter.

Shortly after that, I quit the job. I left two weeks before my contract was supposed to end, but I got an offer from another client that paid more than triple what sephora.com was paying me. Again, you do what you have to do. Despite the lack of notice (I came in early that morning, wrapped up what I could, and told them I was out of there), my boss completely understood.

Fast-forward a month or so: late September. I was at Brews on the Bay with Dave. BoTB is an annual local-brewers beer fest on the WW2 liberty ship the SS Jeremiah O’Brien (terrible site – you can tell it’s run by volunteers). BoTB is a day spent listening to bad music, drinking as much beer as you can, and climbing all over this beautiful 1940s ship. Near the end of the day, as I’m waiting for the single-occupancy bathroom in one of the narrow halls of the ship’s interior, a girl emerges. She looks a little familiar. We do the SF half-smile as we pass and the mental checklist to determine why we might know each other. I finish up and emerge to find her waiting with other friends in line.

Her: “Do I know you?”

Me: “I’m not sure.”

Her: “Do you work near Union Square?”

**In my drunken brain, an alarm goes off.**

Me: “Ooooooohhhh. No, I don’t. But you may have seen me there recently. I stick out a little in that area.”

Her (realizing it): “Hey – you came into Sephora a month ago to buy all this stuff that we had to put back!”

Me: “Heh, yeah. I’m so sorry about that. Things got complicated.”

Her: “It’s OK. The store manager was pissed, but we got over it.”

Me: “Well, tell everyone that was there that day I’m sorry and I appreciated all their help.”

Her: “No worries.”

So… 1) you never know who you’re going to see again, even in a city of 750,000 people 2) it’s never too late to say you’re sorry 3) don’t work anywhere with a dress code because it speaks to a darker, more sinister aspect of the place, and 4) There actually are people out there who say “oh em gee!” ::shudder::

In this particular instance, our place leaves at 7am, so we arrive at 5:45. Our flight is booked on American, but run by Alaska, so once you get dropped off at the American desk, you get redirected out the terminal, down a quarter mile, to the other terminal, where you can finally get your boarding passes. Though it’s technically an American flight, you can’t check in through American (because that would make sense), so you have to do it through the Alaska kiosk. Thank the deities that we’re not checking luggage because there’s another line. We finally get our boarding passes (the barcode on the itinerary doesn’t actually work, but luckily Dave’s credit card does) and we head for the security line. We show up at the apparent end of the 100-person-long line to be directed by Helpful Security Lady to the start of this other line, which begins at a different roped off queue, which is another 100 people long. *sigh*

Fine – we take our places in the apparently correct queue, as happy as all the other people sharing our fate. Trying to be cheerful, but mocking the whole process. Shared suffering is shared experience, after all. We get to the front of the the first-10o-person queue and happily pass into the second queue by Helpful Security Lady (why, hello, again). We notice now that the initial 100-person queue has more than doubled – it now extends way past the roped-off part and down the terminal. OK – it could suck worse. Good to know.

Another people-herder, this one with a bullhorn, starts calling out that the people for the 6:50 (six-five-oh)  flight can ditch the line because they’re going to miss their flight if they stay trapped here. Bullhorn guy actually has a sense of humor. Makes his statement a couple times, then adds, “this is for the 6:50 flight *only* – if you show up here with a ticket that says 6:51, I’m sending you to the back of that (gestures to the 200+ people-long) line. Quit complaining about saving your place in line because I WILL send you to the back of that one (gesturing again at the now 200-person queue).”

The line is moving remarkably fast, considering they have only two guys checking IDs. The airport probably didn’t realize that they were going to have that many people there at that time of the morning. They probably don’t have access to the flight information and the number of passengers coming to their security check at any given time. Poor guys were downright overwhelmed. I feel bad – they look really overworked and pretty unhappy. But they were nice anyway. At this point in any airport experience, even the least bit of civility or a shy smile is gratefully accepted.

I’ve packed well for this trip. Everything that needs to be in its own tub in two individual bags as the laptop, but all stuffed into my backpack so I can dump it all out in one fluid motion. Not wearing a tiny bit of metal. Shoes easy to slip off, but wearing socks so I don’t have to partake in the nasty walk of millions of other bare feet. Ew ew ew. Not wearing a coat. Phone in the bin with computer. Only clothes in my messenger bag. Not a thing that would require me to set off the metal detector – not even once. I’m the lowest trouble girl in the queue. But somehow I get rerouted to the plastic cage of extra search anyway. Clearly I’m up to something because my bags and my metal detector didn’t set off any alarms. My hippie husband (the one sporting the natural dreads that scream “I smoke weed”) – he gets through without a problem. I think (this time) it’s because Im wearing a Redwings jersey in Sharks territory. BUt how does that explain every other time I’ve ben pulled aside for the extra search? Since 2001, I wonder how many times my luggage been dusted for bomb dust? I fly twice, possibly three times annually. But EVERY FUCKING TIME I get the extra search. And I’ve learned that if you hop up and down angrily or look even a little rushed once you’re in the secondary cage, it’s going to take them even longer to get to you to frisk you. By then, if you’re not traveling with a friend, all your baggage, computer and all, has been left unguarded at the end of the roller mill. But don’t look concerned because that means you’re guilty. Of being concerned. Or probably of simply being human.

A year ago, when we flew to Hawaii for our honeymoon, I had just happened to have hurt my ankle really badly. I was wearing a knee-high brace that enabled me to walk and I had crutches. Poor Dave was hauling all our luggage. The SFO folks were pretty nice – got me a wheel chair and rushed us to the front of the security line. But then they made me remove my brace and hop through the metal detector gate. And there was the cavity search (I didn’t know you could get cavities there). I didn’t mind all that much, because even with the extra searching, we still got through way faster. Then, later that trip,we took an island hopper on Hawaiian airlines and they didn’t make me remove my brace. I guess they really are more laid-back in Hawaii.

So, how can they possibly say that their extra searches are random? How could I possibly score the extra search every damn time? Am I really that lucky? I sure doubt it when you consider how exactly lucky I am at gambling joints; if random chance was on my side, I’d be a fucking millionaire. Puh-leese. Fuckers. I am so tired of being profiled. I can’t even imagine how it feels to be middle-eastern or even have brown skin – they get profiled more often by other people inside AND outside the airport. Mad? You bet your ass I’d be mad. One of my hirsute friends recently severely trimmed his beard because he was considering visiting his family in Texas. So he shaved. For the TSA. Not for pleasing a potential mate – but for the fucking air police.

Oh, and by the way you SFO security fuckers, you made me miss my traditional “I made it through security” bloody mary. So I had to have two on the way back.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Before posting this to the interwebs, I decided to give the airport folks at Seattle a chance to redeem their SFO brethren’s actions. Wore the same clothes and this time I even put my phone in my bag to go through the x-ray machine, so the only metal on me is my wedding band. I pass the metal detector without a beep. AND YET the woman on the other side of the archway says, “I’m going to need to pat you down. Please raise your arms.” **SIGH** And I assume the position reserved for gangsters. I break the airport code and actually ask, “what did I do wrong?” Her answer: “Your shirt is too baggy.” I took it a step further and said “but there’s not a dead fish under here.” Puzzled look. “Oh, um, you see, Redwings fans have a tradition of smuggling octopus under their jerseys into the arena during the playoffs. So they get searched there a lot.” She’s done feeling me up, so just dismissed me with a vaguely disgusted look. As Dave and I hobble away from the security area, shoes still untied, he points out that I broke the cardinal rule: say nothing to those searching you. They’re like cops: the only correct answers are “yes sir/ma’am” and “no sir/ma’am”. My protestation: I just want to get through this process without getting the extra search. I suddenly remember the actions of one of our favorite agencies: NUDE SUITS. Next time I fly I’m wearing a leotard and a tutu. Possibly with a tiara. Though Dave points out that this might draw even more extra attention to me. Really? Heh. At least then I’ll have yet another fantastic story about our domestic flying adventures. And I’ll provide some extra chuckles to the people traveling around me. And who couldn’t use a laugh while dealing with all the intrinsic BS of flying these days?

PS: There should be a law against putting infants on regular planes without notifying the other passengers. Especially when the infant and the parent all have colds. That’s just common courtesy. Also, there should be “baby-friendly” planes with a happy little place for them to squeal and coo at one another. And the parents could make those high-pitched baby noises at them and make encouraging noises when the baby takes an extra good shit. Airplanes could even put in those retractable walls like they do for first class. Baby class. I’m a fucking genius! I should design airplanes.

A lot of people I know use Facebook. Most of them use it obsessively. I thought it was OK, briefly, but all the poking and super poking and ninjas and pirates got boring fast. Plus, my high-school best friend/worst enemy finding me and wanting to chat? Ack! (Brief pause -> Delete message.) I stay on FB because my family likes it. I tried dragging them over to LiveJournal, and they just couldn’t get the hang of it. But FB? Even your brain-damaged cousin can understand it, plus, look, a farm! Shiny and simple wins their vote. And, just as they don’t know about this blog, they don’t hang out in my favorite bar, Twitter. (The bar metaphor came from the awesome Havi [she's @Havi] who also once said, “lowering the bar makes it easier to reach your drink”.  She has a degree in clever metaphors.)

Then when I talk to real-life friends -  those with whom I’ve actually shared a physical drink, or slept on their physical couch, or held their physical hair back while they puked? Most of those don’t do Twitter. Some do, but most do not. They don’t see the need, when they can barely keep up with Facebook (exactly!). Some say that they can’t say what they want in only 140 characters. But that character limit is exactly why I love Twitter.

In the morning, when I have only enough brain to scan the headlines, but no longer receive the newspaper, I go to Twitter. As my tea is steeping, I hit the twits. (OK, yes, I do scan my email inbox in case I may have just won a million dollars, but I don’t really read emails first.)(And yes, I like to call them twits because it amuses me.)
Twitter is small – it offers digestible bits of information that I can tune into without commitment.
It’s not a whole news story or blog post. It’s not making a huge statement that will make my hair clench before I even shower.
It’s wee bites of things that are happening to and for people I know all over the world.
It’s not shouting.
In this era of information overload, it’s a great way to ease into the day. Don’t use it? Don’t try talking to me before my second cuppa tea.

*****************

PS: I use NetNewsWire for reading RSS-enabled blogs – and that comes third in my daily reading. I link to the app here because you might not have tried it and I think it’s fantastic.)

I was a contrary child. Best way to get me to do something? Tell me not to do it. Before I left for college, mom told me to be careful and please please please not to try this one drug. Of course, that’s the first thing I looked for. If she said not to do it, it must be good, right? (It was definitely interesting, but I’ve gotta wonder if she was just recommending against it because that was the “right” thing to tell your kid or if she had actual experience. I suspect the former.)

That’s probably the reason I’m enjoying the Dance thingy. The right way to do it doesn’t really exist and even people who’ve been practicing for years can still throw themselves off balance. Being off balance has been my modus operandi forever. After I had the stroke, the doctor asked me if my balance was uneven. “More than before?” I asked. (Yeah, even under the worst situations, my odd sense of humor remains. I suppose it’ll die when I do.)

But when you start exploring all these get-yourself-back-after-a-tragedy methods, they talk about being grounded and being centered. After a little research on how our bodies work, I found that it’s a literal thing – our inner ear dictates our ability to judge where we are in relation to the planet and gravity and everything. Understanding your place in all of this madness and owning your own space is related to the reality of actual balancing in this world. And I’m off. Maybe you are, too.

Quite a few things I read have lately talked about being normal and how there is no normal. Every person has issues (stuff, stuck, triggers, whatever you want to call them) and no one feels normal. Ever. We’re struggling to fit into a nebulous place that doesn’t exist, except in our heads. (And probably our hearts, too, if you want to get all hippie about it.)

The more I consider this current thread of “there is no normal” and my observations about my off-balance-ness, the more I think that I’m heading the right way. Dave has this theory that when serendipitous things start happening, it’s the universe’s way of letting you know you’re on the right heading. I like to believe him.

You look down when necessary to avoid a nasty chunk of sidewalk or the errant pile of poo, your injured ankle begging for attention, but you don’t look too long, lest you seem weak. Don’t limp. Don’t appear vulnerable.

At least it’s early – only a couple of hours after sundown. The real players aren’t up and about yet, only the rookies and the truly desperate. You can cruise by them before they realize someone has passed.

You listen to your internal narrator dictate the countless events that have led to your acute awareness now. You curse it as silently as it speaks, asking for some quiet in which to complete your journey. The slight scent of human urine enters your nostrils as you see a building “leaking” – you exhale quickly through your mouth – another survival method testament to your long existence in this environment.

You pass the street that acts as the border between the bad neighborhood and the good. You quicken your pace just a little. Here, it’s OK to look rushed – it’s less likely that you’re being cased. You can enter a store and not worry about the other clients. You overhear, “once this satanic government is gone, we can get married” from people in line and realize you’re actually not the most crazy one present. And that gives you comfort, even as you again silently tell your narrator to shut-the-fuck-up.

Home – the familiar stairs and signs and smells. The cost-you-a-thousand-dollars today cat greets you at your apartment door. He represents more than a week’s pay, but his presence is worth it. You really can’t put a price on that homey feeling. Of that furry greeting.

Home and safe, the internal narrator finally shuts up. You make a pizza. Watch some BBC. Calm down. It’s good to have a home. You take a few minutes to be grateful and then you can rest.

Before 1990, I was always writing. Letters that friends would never see. Really bad poems that only an adolescent mind would commit to paper. Documenting hanging in the coop yard with the chickens. Notes to pass in class. Later journaling college angst and romantic musing. Lots of questions, few answers. More wondering ifs and whats. Stories about the monsters who hang in your peripheral after staying awake too long. Becoming friends with the monsters by turning them into cartoon characters who had shifts. Just doin’ their job.

In 1990, I was at a party. Suddenly, Potential New Boyfriend (B) warns me that Probable Ex-Boyfriend (E) had showed up at the door. I scampered to the closet with several beers and my best friend (Y). We giggled. We drank. We waited until E would leave. B came to the closet with two bits of news. The first was that E had left the party. The second, B gravely delivered, was that E had broken into my car, taken my journal, copied several pages, and distributed those pages at the party. B pointed out that the pages intended to incriminate me actually revealed that I had feelings for him and he was delighted. It’s been nearly 20 years and I can’t remember what the other pages had said.

Instead of staggering after the Probable Ex, we finished our party and I slept over at B’s place. When I awoke in the morning, I collected Y from the nearby bedroom and we went on a rampage to recover the lost journal. We started wtih the guy who had helped copy the journal. He lived with B, so it was a quick jaunt across the hall to terrorize him. We ransacked his room. Demanded details. At the time, Y and I could be quite a force. This guy revealed that E had the journal, so we hopped in my car (now with a broken back side window) and went to E’s apartment. We burst in and demanded the journal back. He was sitting on his bed in the tiny studio and at one point he started to get up and Y drew back her arm to punch him. He sat back down. He pleaded with me to talk with him about us. He defended his actions because he needed to know what I was thinking. I maintained my “give me my fucking journal back right now” stance. Eventually he removed the journal from under his mattress and handed it over. I demanded the copies. He said he’d passed them all away at the party. Without another word, Y and I turned and left.

I didn’t write for a few years. I moved to San Francisco in 1992, and in 1994, Crystal, a pre-op MTF I met while playing pool, told me that I should pick a different kind of book and begin journaling again. (I was really fond of the particular style of notebook I used to use and my Crystal thought that the reminder of the incident was based on the actual appearance of the notebook.) So I bought a fancy red journal. Wrote a simple paragraph daily for nearly a week. Put the book away and didn’t write anything personal for another several years. I was snake-bitten. Worried that if the current BF (B from 1990) read the book, he’d misunderstand. Despite his assurances that he would never read it, I just couldn’t start.

In May 2003, my friends were all abuzz with this new LiveJournal thing. Used it to chronicle the absurdities of life in the city, to share pictures, and to send party invitations. I asked my friend to send me an invitation (at the time you needed one to get an account). I started using the LJ to share my little snippets of experiences and thoughts. Learned the importance of filtering my words to avoid misunderstandings. Learned not to post when drunk. Learned how to journal again without actually saying anything too personal. I was writing, but at one-tenth the honesty as before 1990. And people thought I was brash, despite my conscious holding back. Yeesh – if they thought I was bad now, what if they knew what I was actually thinking?

I started sharing pretty freely. Documented my breakup with 13-year-long relationship with B. Made friends and filtered enemies. It wasn’t the great american novel, but at least I was writing. In 2007, I had a stroke, and was warned by a friend with government experience to lock everything down. Apparently if you post pictures of yourself scuba diving in Aruba, the gov’t could use that to deny claims. I culled my accounts, dumped my various online journals (I did lots of cross-posting) and was quiet once more. Post-stroke, I became a much nicer person. I no longer had energy for all the anger that once sustained me. I started meditating. I distanced myself from former friends who couldn’t see the nicer me – they’d (probably a little jokingly but still painfully) tease me about having gone soft. Once again I feared the tedious conversations that would come from misunderstandings.

My head is a very busy place. Always has been. Journaling used to be my therapy – to get my brain to STFU. For years I languished, with half-remembered stories crowding an already busy station. When I got a laptop, I started a bunch of stories that never saw anyone. That never got finished. When I’d get a new computer, I’d sometimes move the stories and sometimes leave them behind. In 2008, I’d started reading several inspiring blogs while I recuperated from the stroke. I started thinking again about starting a blog for public consumption. I got a couple of new domains and had WordPress installed (one for personal and one for work).

Gah. I felt sick. It felt like I was suddenly staring at an enormous white sheet of paper and everyone in my life and on the internet was staring at it waiting for something to happen. That’s lasted for several months. I started more stories that lack endings, more memories dredged from the depths of my time away from writing. And I’ve been waiting for the right post to present itself. I don’t know that that will ever happen.

So, I’m starting here. With the simple story of why I stopped writing. And this time I’m hitting publish because of some awesome post that I’ve since lost track of. Scared to death, but I’m doing it anyway. Spell check and then done. Forgive the grammar and typos.

Perhaps someday I can hit publish on a post that lacks disclaimers and qualifiers. Today is not that day. But it’s a start. (Great – now I’m humming that “put one foot in front of the other” song. Yes, my internal DJ is a bitch.)

Rant
If you have any experience with the US healthcare industry, you know that it both sucks and blows. Part of the downside to a free market and capitalism is that everything is for sale and nothing is given. The way the system has worked me is this: I’m in my early forties; I had a decent job and was a contributing member of society; and I had a stroke. Now, I’m eyeball deep in debt, struggling to get back into the workforce, and working to overcome a few new disabilities. No, I’m not retarded and luckily I’m not all that damaged. If you were to meet me now, you’d probably never notice anything that made me look like a stroke survivor.

Anyway …
I was really lucky. I’d been working for years and had amassed a decent amount of state-funded disability credit. (It’s not freaking welfare, fer christsakes, I’ve paid into that fund my whole life and then I got to get some back. Go me.) I’d just finished up a gig at an advertising company and was on COBRA from a minimal-medical coverage deal. It wasn’t great, but it was something. Then the disability money got tight so I stopped paying for the COBRA coverage, and then it turned out that because of my (say it with me now) preexisting condition, I couldn’t get health insurance. I talked to a specialist and he said that there were a couple of companies who might cover me, but it wouldn’t cover the one thing that was likely to put me in danger, it would cost more than $500 per month, and it would max out at about $75K annually. Just for reference, my initial two days in the ER and subsequent eight days in the hospital rang in at just over $100K – not counting all the weird little bills that you get from, say, the lady who wheeled my bed from one room to the other, or the one who tapped my veins every day at 6am. Those cost extra.

So I became the master of financial assistance forms. I have paperwork of biblical proportions for all the places where I could apply. And some of the bills started to go away. Others went to collections, but since I own nothing, I have nothing to take or put a lien on, so the debt collectors just lined up in the “do not answer” category on my phone. I even made a couple laugh when I actually did answer and told them “blood from a turnip; get in line.” I’ve always thought that there was no one more free than the person with nothing to lose. It’s definitely an attitude that’s helped.

I did get to tap into my social security fund – now that’s something! Everyone says that by the time my generation gets to retirement, the social security fund will have dried up. The joke’s on them because all you need to do is have a near-death experience and you can get those dollars back today. Since I was on disability, and applying for financial aid at every hospital, most hospital administrators said I was a shoe-in for Medi-Cal (that’s Medicare or Medicaid in the rest of the country, but in CA, we’ve got our own little bureaucracy). But my helpful case worker at our local office said that I made too much money on disability to quality for Medi-Cal. To qualify for the complete coverage, you have to make less than $600 per month. A year later, she amended her statement to say that while I didn’t qualify for no-cost coverage, I might qualify for partial coverage. But she’d have to figure out what that might be and she’d get back to me once she’d crunched the numbers. I’m still waiting. I do give her voicemail a call once a month to make sure she’s not dead, but so far, nothing.

The real pisser is that if I was under 18 or over 65, before my societal usefulness had started or after it was over, I would quality for complete coverage. I read a really inspiring story while hanging out in some waiting room about a five year-old boy who had been on life support for four years, completely funded by Medi-Cal. This thing, that had never established itself as a fucking person, was getting a full ride for a life that hadn’t even started. Oooooo – talking about that will get my pulse racing (which is good, really, because I need the blood shooting through my arteries really fast to avoid those pesky clots – the doctor says lots of salt is good, too).

But wait, there’s more.
One of the hospitals rejected my financial assistance request because my disability payments were $10 over the allowed margin of error. HealthySF, a local program, denied me coverage because I’m on federal disability so, they say, I should be getting Medi-Cal. Are you sensing a theme here? It’s one of frustration, and I’ve often thought that death would have been easier (don’t worry, I already have the world’s smallest violin, and I’ll definitely turn it up). My frustration is echoed again and again in friends and family, each with health and financial problems. Lara and I were having cocktails the other week and I suggested we should start a “damaged girls” club. A once-a-month meeting to get drunk, bitch about our stuff, and swap ideas and resources.

It can’t rain all the time
I keep living because I have the hippie husband and the wonderful grandma and a few friends that make the living worth doing. And though the last 19 months have been a nonstop laugh riot, I have something to live for and someone to do it with. After the stroke , most of my regular doctors agreed to see me pro-bono or for a discount until I could get back on track. Dr. Quintana, who I met the day after the second stroke (the first time they’d finally correctly diagnosed me) said he’d continue my treatment at no charge (which turned out to be not quite true, though he has talked a heart-monitor company into letting me use their service and equipment gratis). Wendy, my therapist, from whom I’d graduated, started seeing me again, weekly and for free, to help me through the rough patches. And I graduated again. People really did step up and help, and most of them are still my friends today. Which rocks.

For more opinions and news, check these out:

• Michael Tomasky is an editor of Guardian America – he has a bunch of posts relating to the recent healthcare activity – on the GuardianUKs site: Michael Tomasky’s blo
• Catherine Arnst is a senior writer for BusinessWeek. Here’s what she has to say about how much more we spend and how much less we get compared to other countries.
• The Washington Post website has a whole section dedicated to following the story. Who doesn’t trust the Post?
• If you don’t trust the Washington Post, maybe you’ll like The New York Times better. Here’s one from them.
• For balance, let’s let the right check in. Here’s Ryan Ellis’ point of view.
• And who can forget the religious folks? You know they have stuff to say.