jury duty and tweakers

I was summoned for jury duty last summer. I finally had to do it this month. In Yamhill County the service commitment is for a month. I have to check in four times a week to see if my juror number is up. 78. It was. So I rescheduled all of my meetings. I am a very busy woman, you know. They called numbers one through ninety. I'd guess about fifty of us showed up. Of that 50, the first 18 were seated for voir dire. As a Grisham fan, I was thrilled at the opportunity to be in the room for this part. It was an all white jury for a black defendant. A black man accused of impersonating a police officer. In Yamhill County. Now, if you know my lilywhite neighborhood, you'd know, first, that a black officer would stand out like a sore thumb. It would be a fool's errand to try. So we have a fool at best. Guilty? I don't know. Maybe it was Halloween. Anyhow, I didn't get to the box. The judge empaneled his twelve from that group of eighteen. But there is hope yet! I still have to call in for the remainder of March. That was Thursday. Friday morning I woke up to find my work laptop had been stolen out of my(unlocked) car. Feckin' tweakers. It is a strange feeling to be robbed. I did the same thing when my whole truck was stolen several -- many -- years ago. I kept looking for it. As though I would somehow misplace a whole truck. Friday morning I kept opening each area of the vehicle, certain it must be there and I just missed it. It wasn't. I called work to see if it was in my office, if I'd forgotten it entirely. Nope. I finally gave in and called the Yamhill police. Andy and Barney. They told me the whole neighborhood had been hit. The thing is, there were four years of thinking on that machine. Four years of my brain. Was a time when I printed everything anyway -- didn't trust the magic of the computer to keep forever safe the nuggets that occasionally find their way to my fingers. Lots of work. I am crushed. Which I just now typed as cursed. Maybe.

tracy's last birthday

I am so sad. I am so so sad that I am losing my friend and yet, and yet, and yet, it was and still seems to be, a tough relationship for me. Tracy brought me to my first AA meeting, thus, saved my life. Nothing short of that. She carried a clear message and embodied that phrase, "Whenever anyone, anywhere, reaches out, I want the hand of AA always to be there." Tracy, though, across our 35 years, has been one of those female friends whose suns rise and set on the attentions of men. The remaining space, head and heart, for female relationships, is carried by those of us on the other end. I used to feel resentful that I had to carry the friendship alone. I got over it a long time ago, but as her diagnosis has landed and time is short, it surprises me that she still, in the face of death, is more concerned that her most recent lover dumped her. Ah well. I have tried, twice now, to be in her presence and get the shit said that I have a need to say. I want to thank her for saving this life, for showing me the way, for allowing me to stand on her shoulders. It seems, though, that I will not get to say these things unless it is in a letter. And maybe that is how it should be. At the same time as we are losing Tracy, Cooky is losing her shit. Last night was Tracy's last birthday party. It was a pretty big shindig at the Mark, the old hotel where I used to be a motel maid. My great claim to fame is that I made a bed, stood up too fast after making it, and nearly fell backward out the 9th floor window of the honeymoon suite. Anyway, Cooky is, naturally, devastated, and it seems to be exacerbating an advancing dementia. She is falling apart. So, for me and for Kurt, the party wasn't happy. It was hard. Tracy had the spotlight, that thing she most craves, and good for her. I am delighted that she takes such evident joy in a big party. Once again, there were a thousand people I knew but didn't know, and no opportunity for intimacy. I saw many people I love, and chatted and drank lemonade and there wasn't enough food to go around. Shona had to make an announcement. I did get a cream-puff. I eventually saw an old friend, of both Kurt and me. As we caught up, I left Kurt to chat with her. He began the story of Nicole, the one that rips his heart apart, the one in which I play the evil stepmother. "I have to choose between my wife and my daughter." That little bit of fiction finally came clear for me. I have said, and have no regret for saying, that I can no longer live with Nicole. It stresses me out to the point of illness.

immortalizing

My work place, my "community" has been blessedly stable for the past two years. As time has passed in relative ease, my little gray-headed dominoes have been lining up, waiting for the first one to fall. He fell. I'll call him The Thinker. I loved him because he said I was the smartest person he'd ever met. How can you argue with that? He'd asked me, prior to making that statement, what plans we had as a company in the event "the big one" hit. On the West Coast, or Left if you're worried about language which I usually am but not in this case, "the big one" is an earthquake followed by a Tsunami. I told him that, in addition to a loosely held agreement with the Catholic Church next door which would likely be flattened as well, we had three days of water and dry food, plenty of flashlights, batteries and sleeping bags for staff who do not run out screaming to find their own children and do the noble thing: endure the end of the world together. After I told him that, I told him the truth. We'd do the best we could. If I was there, I wouldn't leave and if I wasn't there, that I'd get there if I could. But sincerely, we'd be on our own for a bit. The Thinker thought about all that. "Does it scare you?" I asked. He shook his balding head and smiled a crooked smile. "No. I think it scares some of them." He referred to his compatriots. I agreed. "I'm just looking forward to beachfront property." I picture the sea leaping across the coast range and coming to rest at the edge of my back yard, complete with soft sand and sculpted boulders. TT was a vocal democrat. He and his wife and tablemates built towers of white paper medicine cups and stuck hand-crafted American Flags glued to toothpicks in the top cup with "IMPEACH" written boldly across the little flag. The idea spread to the next table. It was a terrible mess. I loved him. But The Thinker had a stroke. When this happens, we send folks to the hospital. When it gets a little less dicey, the hospital sends them to what we loosely and erroneously call ad "skilled care facility." What we used to call nursing homes. They have changed little since I cut my teeth on the type of human care that would become my life's work. My life's work. When TT was ready to come home, or back, because it isn't home, is it? the nursing home gave us a call and we trotted out to see if he was ready by our standards. I don't know what I was expecting. What I found was my dignified and brilliant friend naked, in unimaginable pain, writhing in a bed stripped of sheets or blankets. Was he ready to come back? No. But we busted him out anyway. (Annie, remember Alvina? Another story for another day.)Anyhow, we got him back under our care, finally got his pain under control, and he was able to die in relative peace. I am stunned at our capacity as a nation to trade lives for money. His insurance is paying at minimum 850.00 a day for this absence of care. A. DAY. We couldn't, my wonderful nurse and me, find anybody who gave a shit enough to get him some pain meds. I can't stand it. So TT went to heaven -- that's what I call it. I don't care what you think. Then my Catholic lady went away. I'll just call her Mary - she'd love that. She had been living in my Assisted Living section for a couple of years and is really old and frail. Her beliefs are more important to her than most. I guess it is faith. I'm not Catholic and not a fan, so I'm never really clear about faith/belief. ... By way of backstory, the property of the AL borders the high school practice field. Each morning, Mary would call to me from her spot in front of the fireplace. "I'm dying," she'd say. "I know," I'd answer. "I get a vision every night," she'd grin. "A firey cross." I'd nod and smile. "Does it frighten you?" I'd ask. "Oh, no!" Her eyes crinkled merrily. I use that hackneyed phrase intentionally. Her eyes crinkled merrily. They actually did. "Oh, no! Its from God." Okay. So I'm thinking she's losing it. She tells me this same thing once or twice a week and I think, well, if it isn't frightening or uncomfortable, then I'm good with it. Until I talk with the evening shift women. "Its the lights on the practice field," they tell me. Turns out there is there is this huge bank of lights that comes on every evening and lights up the world. How sweet she thinks it is for her. When her son moved her away to a smaller and less expensive care home, my heart broke. Her greatest concern was whether her vision would transfer with her. That's two. Seven more are on hospice. It is winter in memory care.