electric mist

dragons slayed

Yep, slayed the damned thing. Won. I am sooooo doing the happy dance over here. And looking around for some margaritas. It is going to be a great weekend.

slaying dragons

This morning I am dealing with a client whose own accounting / accounts payable is so horrificly WRONG that I cannot fathom how in the hell they have managed to stay in business. Not just "stay" in business, but do multi-million $ contracts for the government. They owe me money, and I was up until two last night because all of their records are off -- some mistakes are big, some little, and I'm having to do a spreadsheet to match what I invoiced to what I got paid (the actual check, not what they think they paid me), so I can prove how much they owe. It's sort of astonishing that in this day of computer accounting, anyone would have to do this.

I managed to solve one major problem this morning (go me), and I'll get this one solved and get a check from them if I have to go over to Covington and stand there while they write the damned thing. I'm furious. Gross incompentence and each and every individual over there who has had to talk to me has gone to a private place where they are "secretly" blaming all of the other people. I don't care. Jeez.

Back to slaying dragons.

anatomy of a writing day

Now that my old horrendous projects are done and I am FREE FREE FREE to write, I sometimes find that I must be very organized or else I might just procrastinate. Not that I would ever actually procrastinate, you know, because writers just do not do that (I think there will be a penalty box for using procrastinate this many times in a paragraph.) Anyway, organization. This, I have. And because you, too, may need to be organized in your writing, I will give you the anatomy of my writing day so far:

8:00 a.m. Attempt to look human. Scare the cat. Give up.

9:00 a.m. Wow, lots of journals and blogs to read. But reading is GOOD for a writer, so this I do because it will refill the well, so to speak. Plus I might see something good to steal inspire me.

12:00 a.m. Have a diversion... get lectured by an idiot client who has made so many mistakes, when she says something like, "And the next time you work for us," bite your tongue to keep from saying, "Over your dead and rotting body," even though you secretly are planning for just that event.

1:00 Decide the phones are going to be quiet long enough to write. Open the file. Promptly start answering the next three billion calls to be placed in the unvierse, including one from a guy in Tennessee who is utterly CONVINCED that you really are his friend Brandy who he claims to be going into town to visit the next day and why are you messing with him pretending not to be his dear dear friend. (Start to feel really sorry for Brandy.)

3:00 Look at the file again. Change the file title to Chapter Two because you finished Chapter One. Wonder briefly if that counts for writing for the day. Decide that maybe you actually have to make a paragraph or something.

4:00 Wonder if there are any one chapter books selling very well these days.

5:00 Start a sentence. Form an idea, a visual image that finally FINALLY finally is a real and true breakthrough and be thrilled and then have your entire family decide that the must AT THAT VERY MOMENT have your UNDIVIDED ATTENTION because LIFE WILL END AS THEY KNOW IT if you don't hear what they did for the day.

6:00 Try not to kill family. Not entirely sure they would let me have the laptop in prison.

7:00 Look back at the paragraph, the three words that started it anyway, and start to get back on track. Realize that you are effing brilliant. BRILLIANT. All you have to do now is keep going.

8:00 That one sentence may be too brilliant to be followed with anything else. Ponder if anyone will buy the book just for second sentence. Decide that maybe, not so much.

8:01 Suddenly realize you are STARVING and you will DIE RIGHT THEN AND THERE if you don't get something, preferably chocolate, but anything really will do. Decide that you will be much better after eating.

10:00 Everyone is asleep (or at least, quiet) and you fire up the laptop and look at that lame first sentence and decide it sucks rocks and you delete it. Think maybe you just need to wake up your brain, so you go off to play a game.

11:00 Admit that WeBoggle is the Devil. Or crack. But your average standing in the game is usually first or second, so maybe it did rev up your brain. Just one more game....

12:00 Freak out that a whole hour has passed AGAIN and decide that you absolutely are not going to turn off the computer unless you WRITE SOMETHING and it has to be decent. Promise yourself chocolate ice cream.

12:15 Debate with yourself as to whether a lame list entry is really "writing" and admit, ashamed, that you really really want to open that stupid game again.

12:30 Write a whole paragraph. Breathe a sigh of relief because you really have to get some ice cream and now you can. Except... you kinda want to keep going. So you do, and you get a whole section done. (Or you lie about it in a list to not look so lame. You pick.)

1:00 Decide that snoring sound might be coming from you since you may have possibly nodded off in the chair. Give up, go to sleep so you can be awake early again and be "productive."

So, there ya go. Just keep doing like I'm doing, folks, and you, too, will be the proud owner of a finished novel before... um.... 2100.

the wonderful world of electricity

So I'm writing an entry, sweating blood, BLOOD I'm saying, because I love you all so much, and I'm working and sweating and I was brilliant. BRILLIANT. And I had saved a part of that brilliant entry half-way throught because see? Brilliant. And then the electricity goes out, but not just OUT, it goes out on the half of the house where the computer is. I can count on one hand with three fingers tied down just exactly how many times the electricity has gone out in this house due to a raging storm outside and is there a raging storm today? No. No there is not. And not only is there no electricity on this side of the house, there IS electricity on the other side, which is just confusing. So I check the breakers (which, translated, means I have my son check the breakers because I am all about delegating), and the front breakers where there is no electricity... are fine. Perfectly normal, except that they are "on" and the elctricity... not so much. We couldn't even figure out what might have thrown these not-thrown breakers because there wasn't much running on the front side of the house (my computer, my office light... and the refrigerator). Finally, out of desperation, my son goes to the back of the house and looks at the breakers there which are CLEARLY LABELED for the BACK OF THE HOUSE and finds that one which is MARKED FOR MY BEDROOM is off. And when he flips that back on, everything in the front of the house comes on. And the half of the entry left that I had saved? Not the brilliant half.

Clearly my house hates me and wants me to pay it attention instead of writing today. Which I may do because if it gets really serious and kills the freezer with the chocolate ice cream next? I may die.

the art question

One of the things that people kept asking at the Art Hop the other night when they looked at the Time Machine was, "Is this art?" I can't say that I blame them, because you know, really, it started off as a hair dryer until Carl saw something crazy in it and began modifying it. It's funny how we often get hung up on "What is art?" as if there were some sort of empirical test we could apply to any object or work and know that yes, this one is art while no, that one is not. And I think the main reason people want that sort of test is so that they don't look foolish appreciating something that someone else thinks is silly or junk. Most of us just don't want to look foolish in front of anyone.

But the bottom line is, it's art if it's art to you. Period. It really doesn't have to be art to anyone else to qualify, because your appreciation of it, your interaction with it (whether it's intellectual because it provokes thoughts, visceral because it provokes feelings, tactile because you're actually physcially interacting with it or all of the above) makes it art. (I could now digress into a very lengthy philosophical discussion here where I pull out a bunch of dead philosophers and why "art... arts (verb)" and so forth. And we could argue to the death as to whether something functional can also be "art" and whether "art" should be divided from "craft" and why and how and good god, wouldn't that be dull? And rather pointless. With a Masters in Philosophy, I would bet I could bore the pants off you right about now, but even I know it's boring to listen to a lot of dead philosophers because the whole exercise would contradict the point... that you don't have to listen to what other people think, it only matters what you think. So there ya go, philosophy in a nut shell.) (Um, not literally, I hope.)

When one of the men attending the Art Hop walked forward toward the Time Machine (laughing, seeming eager to ride it), he asked me, "Is this art?" And not wanting to sound pretentious, I said, "I don't know if it's art or not. I just know it's making a lot of people laugh, and that was the point." He nodded, smiling even bigger, and he enjoyed his "flight." (I think he went to the Fiji Islands. I also think he had decided he was 18 again.)

How can that not be art? The art of making people laugh, of transporting them, however via imagination, to another place... whether they were pretending to be elsewhere or they were simply allowing themselves to let go for a moment of their rigid "public" face and be a kid again and have fun and pretend.

I hope that today, even if it's for a few minutes, you'll go out and "art"... try your hand at something. You can be very very bad at it, that's okay. It's not the quality that makes it art, it's the effort, the interaction. You don't have to show anyone, either -- it's not a contest. But start. Give yourself a chance to do something creative. There is no "bad" here, there is only play. So go. Art a little. It'll change your world, even if for only a little while.

time travel photos

I've tried to size all of the following photos for the web so the download wouldn't be horrific... but if something's slow, y'all let me know and I'll put up thumbnails instead, or link to another page with the photos.

I think this is my favorite photo of the night:

The whole thing sits on skis, just in case you land somewhere snowy:

But before you time travel, you must first check the oil:

That's a dip stick that you can pull out (which I didn't photograph). And here's how you know when to change the oil:

Because, of course, you're reading the heads up display:

And you know you need to check your fuel before you go:

If you run low on the fuel (twinkies), the light on the fuel indicator would light up:

because the fuel pump:

would send a message to that indicator above. Once you are seated (here's Eliza):

you have to turn on the various things in sequence.... from the lights and thrusters:

and to the time travel button show above (the one with the twinkie indicator light)...

And when you switch on those thrusters, the thruster lights come on:

Some people were really surprised when they hit that thruster button:

because the whole thing suddenly vibrated. That was due to the unseen (a curtain hung over this) massager Carl had strapped to the back of the hair dryer seat:

which, when the thrusters were on, vibrated fairly heavily and the echo against the seat back made a real "engine" sound.

When the thruster lights come on, so do all of the lights around the wings and the rudder:

Which you steer while holding onto the handles on the side of the machine:

If you run into to anyone else time traveling, you can let them know you're there, too, by dinging this bell (which was surprisingly loud):

And just in case you travel really really far and have an, um, emergency, we have that covered:

Carl got everyone to turn everything on in the right sequence and then back off again in reverse sequence. Occasionally, a couple of people would start to stand up before turning everything off and he'd say, "Wait! You don't want to vaporize yourself!" and man, they'd plop back down in that seat and draw their hands into their chest like they really might have vaporized. Cracked me up.

It was fun to see how different personalities interacted with it. Some laughed and were itching to have their turn. Some stood shyly a few feet away, leaning in toward it but not-quite-brave-enough to be silly in front of a crowd until Carl would call them over. Others practically ran out the previous time traveler so they could have a turn.

The comments they would make as they time traveled were funny and interesting. I got a kick out of the ones who really turned that globe around to their very specific destination (and I don't think there was a single repeated destination for the night)... with places like Fiji (current day) and the Renaissance period (in order to get some of those antiques before they became so valuable) and the North Pole (to visit Santa) being some of the choices. Other people actually got into the time aspect, with a large number of women asking the question about if they went back, would they come back looking younger. (I told them I had started off that morning as an 84-year-old. They practically jumped in the seat.) A few people went even further to interact with the crowd, pretending to be going forward in time and telling the crowd they were getting older and older (with a couple of people in the crowd contorting their bodies as if they were now hobbled over canes). Some of them really got into the act, pretending that there were G-forces pushing them backward into the seat and leaning from side to side as they swooped through time.

Mostly, everyone chuckled and many laughed (some just couldn't stop laughing and smiling), and pretty much everyone was sure Carl was nuts, but a genius nut. Lots and lots of people asked me if he had always been like that and I could easily assure them that yes, indeed, he had. (One of our first dates was right after the semester had let out and a few of our wealthier friends were going to Colorado for a ski trip. The rest of us broke students were stuck at home, so Carl decided to have a Colorado ski party. Now, understand, this was like our third or fourth date. He went around to stores and got the equivalent of several refrigerator-sized boxes of those white packing peanuts and poured them out on the floor of his apartment, filling it up to calf level. He then rented a helium tank and we blew up about 400 balloons to cover the ceiling. We made snow angels and partied with about 30 people in that apartment until the next morning. I still find peanuts in some of our stored things.) I can't say I didn't know what I was getting into, can I? (But it's been fun.)

He's already planning on additions to the time machine. He wants to put it on a platform, and eventually, make it to where there are foot pedals on the skis and hydraulics underneath so that when you push a foot pedal, the whole thing leans to a side or forward or back. There will be a seat belt, of course. And god only knows what else. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if, not too long from now, he turns the damn thing on and it really does disappear and travel in time.

art hop

The "Art Hop" was tonight, with the grand unveiling of The Time Machine, and I have to say, it was a success. I was nervous all day, and then on my way over there, it stormed, so I imagined the worst, since the time machine was outside. It was under a tent, but the rain prevented anyone from being able to get to it or for us to turn on the electricity. When the rain looked like it was going to stop, Carl ran and bought a GFI thingie (something to prevent anyone from being shocked) and plugged it into that and then the time traveling was on.

I learned after my last post that although thousands go through the whole event, probably each shop has a couple hundred or so. We had close to 500 from our best estimates. I got there an hour after it started (I was tense and Carl wanted me to chill out and go later, which was wise), and then there was the rain, and we still had a big crowd. People loved it... lots of laughter, lots of people going with the whole craziness of it. Then the news came out and taped it and it was on the 10:00 news, which pretty much made Carl's day. Two other people asked if he would do the same thing at their galleries (one in New Orleans) and Caffery's asked him to come back for her next big event in November.

I have lots and lots of photos, and I'm beat, so will post them tomorrow.

drained and... not

These last two weeks have been productive. I have finally finished with all of the paperwork for a very large (business) project that I loathed like the smell of a thousand rancid skunks, and I sent it in today to the person who needs to review it. I did more than she asked for originally in the hopes of not only resolving the problems which necessitated the damned paperwork to begin with, but which would, I hope, prevent her from needing anything else from me. I suspect she probably will, and if and when the problem ever gets resolved, I'll probably talk about the horrific experience then, but for now, I am just going to bask in the glow of being done. DONE. done done done done done. And let me just add, fucking done.

I also finished all the reams of paperwork that were required to wrap up a big Federal job we'd had, and it almost competed with the thousand-rancid-skunk award, except that at least by finishing this one, we should get the retainer the big honking suckass General Contractor owes us. We almost never work as a sub-contractor and now I remember why: total stupidity of gargantuan contractors who will not spend the dollar extra an hour to hire someone who actually knows what a "payable" is, or even, dare I hope, what a computer is. This company won this huge Federal job and approached us to bid the concrete work, and it looked so alluring and lucrative when it was first presented to us, and it was a bit like thinking you're dating someone sweet and caring and totally in sync only to find out that really, they are a demented Gollum-like creature who only wants to lure you in long enough to kill you. The job itself was complex, but they made it worse. One of the things you have to do when you do GC work for the government is turn in who your sub-contractors will be (and their resumes) when you bid; when you're awarded the job, you're supposed to stick with those subs or substitute others with equal or greater qualifications. In this case, the GC didn't -- they kept us, but they subbed others who just weren't up to par. They go into the bid process with one bid and then shop around after winning the job to see if they can find someone to beat that sub's price, thus pocketing the difference. Several times the whole job shut down because of a sub-contractor who couldn't get his act together. One time, at two a.m., the painting sub-contractor (whose job was a round-the-clock, 24-hour shift thing) dragged up all their equipment and left without notice... yeah, that was fun. So anyway, the job is done, and all of the insane paperwork is done and turned in and approved and wow, we may even get paid (which these people have a bad rep for trying to find devious ways to back-charge their subs so they can keep the retainers owed to the subs... but we've been beating them at that game since we had a heads up about their methods early on.)

So yay me. Two massive head-aches gone, lots lower stress levels.

As for the other business, the new one, things seem to be moving forward, though very slowly since the partner is recovering from the heart surgery. Honestly, I hadn't wanted to ask him anything, and we'd visited him without letting him talk about it; he still seems to think we're moving forward, though, so I guess that's good.

phone the bush

Wanna call Bush? Well, now you can. You can leave a message with a live operator who will record it. So if you want to say something positive or leave a complaint, here's your chance. (The number was obtained from a legitimate source and does work. I have no doubts that assistants or some such are who reads these, but hey, have a little fun.)

The phone number to the White House (answering service):

202-456-1414

graduation

When Luke graduated four years ago, I never actually got to see the graduation part. We were seated in the Centrolplex Theater, which is fairly large and not very good seating (it's not stadium seating), and I was behind two people who were at least nine feet tall with bouffant hair. I thought the zoom lens on the camera would be enough to help me see (and get a photo), and not only did that not help me see, but the photo was gray, since apparently my zoom lens wasn't strong enough and my flash hates me.

So this time, it was going to be different. I had a digital camera with a powerful little zoom lens, and when we got there ("there" being the Pete Maravich Assembly Center with stadium seating), everyone in the family sat up high. They could all see fine. I could not. Did I suffer in silence? No, I did not. I moved the entire three billion people in our family down to the lowest row possible (which was still far above the floor). We were in the "front" row with just a railing between us and a fifteen foot fall, but at least we could see the graduates. Sort of. There were blue caps and gowns and hair, so I suppose some of them may have been grauduates and not some prank by the school system before tossing back out children and taunting us that we would have to keep sending them to school until we begged for mercy. Everyone kept telling me, "Oh, there's Jake! See him! He's waving!" and I would look out over the sea of blue and have no clue which one was my child, which one might possibly be waving in my direction given all the tooing and froing and waving and jumping around they were doing pre-ceremony. Finally, embarrassed, I nodded and just felt like a very bad mom. I mean, what kind o mom doesn't know her own kid at graduation? I didn't know which one was mine in the nursery when he was born, but hey, they were all fat and bald and crying and I was still wonky from birth, so I had an excuse. But he's been here for 17 years now; you'd think I'd have the ability to recognize him in a crowd. But no.

Luckily, I brought a little monocular glass thingie and I used that to find him. Except I was holding the monocular and the camera (right in front of that railing over a 15 foot drop) and the cell phone rang, and it was Jake. So I'm talking to him, using my monocular and camera to try to pick him out of the crowd as he's talking to me and of course, he's down on the floor and can tell I have no clue where he was because I'm aiming said monocular the wrong direction, so he starts messing with me, telling me he's in different places other than where he is. I finally found him, the little rat, and he laughed. I was so happy to have found him, I nearly jumped up and down, but with the dizzy still happening, going over the railing featured prominently in my mind at that point, so I stood still.

The ceremony started, and I don't know quite why people who organize graduation ceremonies think it's best if all of the graduates walk in so slowly that by the time the last one has finally made it to their chair, you could have birthed, schooled and graduated an entire extra child. I kept playing with the digital camera because it wasn't taking photos of the stage area very well -- they were (big surprise), dark and gray. But I realized there was a "landscape" view on the damned thing, which I set, and voila! finally, I was getting the photos and they were well enough lit to tell there were humans in them. I was so excited by this, that when Jake got up there and they called his name, I knew I was going to get a photo. I whooped for joy, promptly smacked the menu button on the camera, which put the menu up and I couldn't get it off and back to the camera part for a couple of seconds... just in time to miss Jake receiving his diploma and I looked up to see him disappear off to stage left.

I'm two for two on the sucky mom thing. Grrrr.

At least he's done and it's over and he's graduated. Whew.

national debt

Want to see how much debt we're racking up? Go here to see it. Hit your F5 key to update it. Also, the US Treasury Department corroraborates that figure here.

I'll have a tree with those fries...

So late yesterday evening, when Carl got home from work, having been clued into Skippy-the-evil-twin's arrival, he offered to go get take-out for dinner. I opted to go with him instead to a local hamburger dive place we frequent. It's an extremely casual place. When we went out, we realized his work truck was blocking the car, and instead of moving things around, we just hopped in the truck and headed off to the restaurant.

Usually, the place isn't terribly crowded, but we'd forgotten it was Friday night. Nary a parking spot to be had at first. Carl was easing his truck through the lot and everyone, and I mean, everyone stared at us. It was like they had never seen a work truck before! And they all kept moving out of our way, like we were going to mow them down, and we were barely creeping along. We had to circle the building and try again, and by that point, a couple of people were leaving, and a couple of other cars were about to get the parking spots... only when they saw us, they sort of looked afraid and they stopped and waved us on into the spot. Which was just weird.

Which we were commenting on when I got out of the truck first and turned toward the rear of the truck and cracked up laughing. Here's why they were staring:

(That photo was taken at dusk when we were home, so it's not great quality.)

The limb was from a neighbor's tallow tree which overhangs the fence; he never prunes it... partly because every spring when the limbs get so low, they end up getting hung on Carl's work trucks and getting ripped off, and so hey, why bother spending money on pruning.

At any rate, now I know why everyone was a wee bit afraid. He was tempted to keep it hanging there all day, just to watch people's expressions as he drove to work.

squirrels and such

Otto made me laugh with his squirrel story (in the bottom half of that entry), and man, I needed a laugh today.

skippy, the evil twin

Skippy, my evil twin, showed up today. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

I could not sleep last night. Thunderstorms rolling through, scaring the dog beyond sanity. At some point past two I fell asleep, only to dream of something URGENT! MUST DO NOW! And I'd wake up, all adrenaline-rushed, ready to go to battle, then realize it's 3:28 and I could sleep a little longer. Only to dream again of something URGENT! Then at five, the phone started ringing with various employees wondering if they were going to work today, what with the freaking continuous thunderstorms still raging. And there was JUST enough time between each call for me to doze back off, only to start the URGENT!! dream again and have the PHONE ring again and by 5:30, if you had handed me an Uzi, I'd have mowed down half of civilization. Or at least, the damned phone.

I have been edgy all day. (Imagine that.)

So, yeah, Skippy the evil twin. Here. For a while, it seems.

the new Louisiana Quarter

Pooks wondered below in the comments who had earned the Mardi Gras beads hanging on my shelves.... and that answer is deceptive, because I did. But they were given to me by someone who was on one of the major floats one year, and not in the traditional way of earning beads. For those who don't know the traditional way, I present to you a rendering of the "new" Louisiana quarter:

(I did not create this image... it's floating around via e-mail.)

the time machine

Last fall, I was sitting here minding my own business, when Carl came home. He had that look in his eye, the one that said he had brought something home from a job or had stopped at some flea market somewhere and I should probably brace myself. He loves to stop at oddball places, and with him criss-crossing the state occasionally, he has ample opportunity. Sometimes, I don't so much mind -- I have some neat things on my shelves from some of his "finds" and I enjoy that sense of childlike discovery he has for all the little weird things in the world. I'm pretty sure he's not going to grow out of it (he's 44), so you know, I go with the flow. Sometimes, he brings home incredibly strange things which sit on my shelves and people don't quite know what to make of them (which is okay, too, because they are often surprised.) For example, I have these items on my shelves:

That's raw silica; in case you've never seen it up close:

It's the ingredient in cement among other things.

One day he brought home this:

That's salt from the salt domes beneath southern Louisiana. (Yes, there really are gigantic salt domes below the swamps.)

Then there's this:

That's a slice of rail -- from a job -- and the restroom sign below is a flea market find.

You probably won't know what this one is, and I'm rather embarrassed to explain it:

And another view:

(It's the tool used to castrate a bull. I'm not sure why he brought this home.)

So the day last fall when he came in with a grin, I was pretty sure I was in for something odd. When he had me stay in the office so he could hurry out and get the item, and then I heard loud thunking as he dragged it into the kitchen, I knew I was in trouble. He had brought home one of those old-fashioned hair dryers -- you know, the kind women used to sit in at the beauty shops, with the hood that hovered over their heads, blowing out hot air. The chair is black vinyl with gold flecks and the damn thing still worked. He somehow thought I was going to swoon at this one, and I promptly removed it to the garage.

Which did not deter him one bit. Before I knew what had happened, he had started adding onto it. There are wings now, people. And a rudder. And lights. Lots of strange lights. And it now vibrates when you turn it on. There are switches which do strange things. He dubbed it, "The Time Machine" and has had a ball getting people to sit in it. The next thing I know, we were in a local gallery and the owner mentioned this big "art hop" that she was having, and Carl told her that what she needed was the time machine. He started describing it, she was laughing and looking at me to see if he needed to be put away, and before I knew what had happened, she had decided he was right -- she would have the thing at her gallery for its "grand unveiling" as one of the draws to her shop.

Now, I had assumed this was relatively harmless. I keep asking him if he realizes it really is a hair dryer. Secretly, I was hoping that she would at least have ten or twenty people show up to this art hop thing -- I'd really hate to see him disappointed. But realistically, I was bracing myself to console him when Carl went back by the gallery this week to answer the owner's questions and to find out what we need to do to set everything up.

Turns out, this isn't just an art hop for her gallery -- it's a whole mid-town celebration. There are something like twenty galleries and it's the type of event that's advertised in the newspaper, radio and TV. They're expecting thousands of people to go through that gallery. They now want me to take digital photos of anyone who wants a photo in the time machine. There's going to be a tent for the special time machine event, an unveiling and, I'm told, lots of wine. (I suggested that we put up a sign requiring a three drink minimum before they even enter the tent.)

I was going to post a photo here, but he went to Wal-Mart, Michael's and Home Depot last night and bought a few other things to add to the time machine. There's an old-fashioned lunch box (because you know, when you're time traveling, you might want to pack a lunch.) There's a globe. There might even be dry ice.

Be very afraid.

of hearts and hospitals

When you turn into the drive for Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, the red-bricked buildings built maze-like over the years remind you that they've been there for almost forever, and there's a feeling of calm. I don't know if it's because it's designed with courtyards where, when you're inside looking out, you're looking into the thick interlocking branches of white oaks or if it's something about the sheer size of the complex for such a relatively small city that comforts and reassures. Most hospital corridors assail my senses with smells of sterile concoctions or pine-scented freshly mopped floors or that perpetual antiseptic smell of near death, but today, the corridors -- particularly those just off the parking garage -- smelled more like the fresh rain still drizzling outside.

We wound our way to an information desk, asked where the heart patient's families waited while the patients were still in surgery, and then wound our way further along the corridor, zigging right then a quick left and down a long hall until we finally found the private waiting room. We recognized a couple of the people and I worried that we might be intruding -- we're friends of the patient, and didn't really know the family all that well. But the patient is the new partner for the business venture I'd mentioned in entries below and he's been so much a part of our extended family, it seemed the right thing to do, to go and wait and hear how he was.

He had learned a last week that he had to have open heart surgery. A part of his heart had died and somehow, some vein had taken over the responsibility for pumping the blood... which turned out to be so rare, that even the specialist they had flown in had only seen one photo of a heart which had done the same thing. The problem was, it wasn't doing the pumping very well, and his blood pressure kept dropping to near fatal levels, so there was no choice -- it had to be repaired. When Carl talked to him yesterday, he explained that his heart was now as big as a soccer ball. A soccer ball. It's supposed to be about the size of a softball, and it was swelling and working itself to death trying to keep up. The surgeon was going to cut out all of the dead stuff, graft some veins and skin from other areas and essentially rebuild the heart, along with a couple of other things I just didn't quite catch.

We were there in time to hear one report from surgery that everything was going well, and we waited another hour until it was complete and the surgeon came out and spoke to the family. During that hour, there was much laughter and cutting up as the various kids told tales on their dad and some of the crazy things he'd done in his lifetime. Now, I lived with a crazy dad (crazy = southern, ornery, pain-in-the-ass), but their stories made my dad look like he was a laid-back, zen-loving, Prozac-popping zombie, and I was laughing until I had tears. It's nice when you discover you're not the only one from crazy, you know?

At any rate, the surgeon came out an hour later and explained that everything had gone extremely well -- he'd done four by-passes, rebuilt the heart as mentioned, and the couple of other things that still went over my head, but the gist of it was that there was much improvement already in the rate of blood flow and pumping and barring any post-surgery complications, they probably gave him a completely new lease on life.

The walk back out to the car was one of relief and amazement; the things they can do now. Wow. And as we left, there was a short break in the rain.

when angels cry

One time when I was in high school -- I think maybe I was in the tenth grade -- my brother went missing for an entire afternoon. I had just gotten my license (the legal age for that was 15 at the time) and I was responsible for driving us back and forth to school, but I couldn't find him. He was supposed to have met me at the car after the bell, and when he didn't show up, I went looking for him. Our small school backed up to a lot of rural farmland, and once I had gone past the baseball field without any sign, I went back into the school and called my mom. He was two years younger than me and a pretty small kid who was trying to play football -- a good kid who wanted to please, and he really wouldn't have just wandered off. A few hours later, my dad found him unconscious; he'd been beaten and left in a ravine a few acres behind our school. His eyes were swollen shut and he was heavily bruised, but there were thankfully no broken bones or severe injuries and he recovered quickly from the physical wounds. My world flipped upside down in that moment, because I realized how fragile he was, how fragile our family was, and we could have lost him. I had held my breath while looking for him, and sometimes, when I remember that moment, I find myself still holding it. There is a sense of shock and horror that scars so deeply, it never really goes away.

He wouldn't tattle on who the culprits were -- maybe it was a misplaced machismo, or maybe he suspected he would get more of the same from friends of the bullies, I'm not sure. I do know that I figured out who the culprits were and I'm sure my parents had to have known, but I'm not certain what -- if anything -- was done.

Nearly twenty-five years later, I can still remember the fear of having lost him and the outrage at the bullies who did that to him. I remember the feeling of helplessness and frustration and of wanting to find a way to lash back at the bullies, at wanting to find a way for them to understand that they didn't just hurt him, they hurt an entire family. It lasted for years beyond the bruises and welps. In fact, it formed who he became, because he didn't want to be a victim; he began taking karate and then, once he was a blackbelt, he started teaching through the local park system. He grew into an amazing man whose students love him, who went on to win the International competition in sparring (in Panama), whose philosophy with his students is to teach them to be strong and know how to defend themselves, to never be the victim, but he also stresses that they never be the bully, either. He's done more to change lives for the positive instead of letting that day in the ravine define him for the negative.

But the bullies, I will always remember. I will always feel a certain amount of loathing for them and for their families who had to have seen what they were becoming and did nothing to change it or stop it. Had they bothered to apologize, I doubt I would have felt it erased what they had done. I abhor cruelty. I don't understand it, I don't think it's funny (when it's done in prat-fall types of reality shows), and I don't ever want to be associated with it.

And now, we are the bullies. There have been many blog entries about Abu Ghraib and the torture, and many more about how there is no honor, and most are far more profound than I can manage to be. What I think about -- beyond the shame of our nation -- are the families of the people in those videos... both the victims' families and the bullies. For every one of the bullies, there is a mom somewhere whose face is buried in shame, who had been proud to say that their son or daughter served their country with honor. For every soldier who created the humiliation, there are countless others who served with them honorably, whose names are now associated with atrocious crimes. There are people who are fathers, mothers themselves who are serving, and one of the few things they had to hold onto in this protracted "effort" in Iraq was that they, at least, were serving honorably, and all of that is trashed. For every one of those people tortured, there are wives or sons or daughters, mothers, fathers, cousins, friends who will not forget. Who will never forget. If I can remember after 25 years the fury in my heart at that moment of finding my brother, how can we expect a simple, "oops, no one was watching, sorry" attitude to calm the fury overseas?

I think some of those bullies went on to do decent things with their lives. One of them married and later became a deacon at a little church. Years later, I was invited to a program at that church and I didn't know the guy was a deacon there; I remember that even though I was an adult by that point, even though he had changed, even though there had been worlds of good done... I walked in and suddenly felt myself freeze at the sight of him and the memory of him as a bully overlaid everything else he had become. I saw him through his worst actions. That is how the world will see us. It does not matter how much -- if any -- good may have been done in Iraq. We don't get a "get out of jail free" pass just because we did a few good things. We can't justify being a little evil if we've also done good. We can't point fingers at a dictator who's done evil things and then turn around and do those same sorts of things and expect anyone not label us evil.

When we have a political and military hierarchy who spends the time since discovery passing the buck, trying to find a way to dilute the blame, trying to spin, we have lost any moral center we may have had as a country. When there is no one who says, "I should have led them well, and I did not," the center is rotten and it cannot hold. And the world will never forget.

I never knew there would be a time I would be ashamed to be an American, but I am. I am sorry for the things that were done in our name. I am sorry for the military who are truly good and who did good things, because they have been harmed for the rest of their lives. I wish I knew how to change these things today. The world will never forget. And niether will I.

turning corners

It is the end of an era around here; Jake has taken his last final, has turned in his last book and will graduate on the 17th. My baby is finished with high school. I sit here at my desk, both happy at the moment, and sad. It's been a difficult road for us with his learning obstacles (dysgraphia, ADD), and frustrating for him. I've seen moments when he just couldn't wrap his mind around the unfairness of it all -- there are people in his class who have the common sense and the IQ of a blade of grass, but they memorize well and so do well in school, whereas Jake, with a high IQ, struggles. But that's life, I suppose. There will always be an obstacle of some sort, and he's won this round. On to the next.

I feel a sense of joy and relief that this part of my life is over. No more having to get up super early to make sure that he's up and off to school. He was pretty good about taking care of himself in that manner, and rarely overslept, so it's not like I absolutely had to do that... but old habits die hard and I knew that he did sleep like the dead, so I might as well get up and make sure rather than lie there and wonder if he heard the alarm. Still... not going to do that for college. (What do you want to bet this child tries to take all afternoon classes?) No more worrying about whether or not he's going to make it through school. He will either do okay in college and get a degree, or he won't. I don't think college is for everyone, and have a lot of family and friends who are very successful without college, so it's not necessarily a benchmark of what's going to happen in life.

This is a line drawn in the sand of time marking before and after, marking a moment of transition, of moving on into adulthood. I'm grateful for that line, for the freedom it brings to me to know that we made it this far. I'm sad, too. Because gone is my little boy, the chubby cheeked, big smiling faced imp who regularly crawled into my lap for big hugs, who brought frogs into his room so they could play, who loved to run faster than anyone around him, whose face lit up with joy at the simplest things, like a surprise popsicle on a hot summer day. I wish I could have those memories alive around me, just one more time. To see both boys running into the house or wrestling together, or staking out the perfect place for the perfect fort. I crane my head because I hear something, and it almost sounds like laughter under a blanket tent in their room, and if I turn that corner in the hall, I might have to duck to avoid the (paper) "grenade" lobbed at me, amid one of them laughing and the other one shushing, and then me dropping down, sneaking up on them, and attacking (tickling) them. If I turn that corner, they will still be there, just like that, twelve and eight, having packed a picnic lunch from the kitchen and hauled it all the way to the tent (their bedroom), because they were going to be gone for a very long time. It I turn that corner, they will still want me to sing them to sleep, not yet having decided they were too old for that, or for me reading to them, or simply snuggling. It is the thing about being a mom that people can't really tell you when you start out -- that every time you turn a corner, it vanishes behind you, and one day? One day, you will turn a corner and they will be gone and grown and living their own lives. They don't tell you that, and even if they had, it's too hard to understand until you're sitting at a desk, wondering where the giggling's coming from and you realize, it's just a memory.

wisdom teeth fun

Amanda mentioned Wednesday that she was going to have to go with her husband when he gets his wisdom teeth pulled, which reminded me of when I went with Luke for his. I have never laughed so hard in my entire life. If I had had a camera / DVD recorder there, I would have made a fortune on the recording.

For starters, you have to get a mental picture of Luke as a sandy-blonde kid. Who is somewhat prone to liking to be in control. All. Of. The. Time. (I cannot imagine where he got that from.) (oh, hush.)

So, it was his senior year and he had just finished wrestling in state, where they had all decided to dye their hair blue to show team spirit. Unfortunately, they didn't use anything remotely resembling proper hair coloring (and I was afraid to ask what they did use), but whatever it was, it constantly ran in rivulets down their faces. (And let me tell you, you just do not intimidate the other wrestlers when you look like a melting Smurf. I'm just saying.)

Blue hair. Which would not wash out. Luke decided that he would simply bleach it back blonde prior to going in for his wisdom teeth extraction because by this time, he was tired of looking like Skinny Smurf on Crack, and the blonde dying began. And what do blue and yellow make, boys and girls? If you answered, "Green," then you are one up on my very bright and I swear, he is in college, son.

When we arrived for the wisdom teeth extraction, I was thinking that you just could not get any sillier looking than having green hair. However, afterward, I discovered that yes, indeed, you can. Because I had completely forgotten about the drugs they would be giving him.

They gave him an IV of something to deal with the pain. I do not know what was in the shots that they put in the IV, but whatever it was, Luke apparently could still feel the pain after two entire syringes full of the stuff, so they went ahead and put in a third one. (Luke is not a huge guy. They put in enough pain killer to stop a freight train. You see where this is going.)

The surgery was over rather quickly and the nurse called me back there to sit with Luke; she expected him to be waking up quickly and to not be in any pain because of the IV. I think she thought I would be very concerned and anxious and nervous because you know, this was surgery after all. And I think I was all of those things until I walked into that room and saw him sitting in the chair.

People. His little cheeks were so swollen and puffed out with cotton gauze, he looked like squirrel who had stored all of his nuts and a few of his neighbor's in his cheeks for the winter. A green-haired squirrel. I held a straight face until the nurse left, and I waited for Luke to wake up. Which he did in just a few minutes. His head lolled around, his eyes were sort of going in separate directions (so he looked like a squirrel on crack) and then... he tried to talk. With all of that cotton in his mouth, he was so freaked out by the fact that he could see double of everything, he just had to talk. Except... well, muffled cracked up squirrel, mouth full of nuts, green hair.

The nurse stepped in and started explaining the things I would need to do when he got home and he was steadily trying to talk, trying to make consonate sounds around the gauze and over-emphasizing each one, as if more enthusiasm would help me to understand. He kept motioning to the TV, groaning out, "dooooooooo... doooo uhhhhh emmmmmm," and the nurse was busy trying to talk and then he lolled his head and looked at me and then jumped backward, startled, fear in his eyes because now there were two... of me, and he kept twisting his head, cutting his eyes sideways trying to figure out which one was real. He was reaching out for the wrong one when I just lost it, and started giggling so hard, I had to ask the nurse to give me a minute because I just couldn't listen to the instructions.

It got worse as we tried to get him to leave. Because he saw two of everything (two thresholds to step over, two curbs, two car doors) and he keep holding up two fingers, bellowing out around his cotton, "dooooooooooooooooooooooooo" and every step he took was a GIANT step, feet lifted as high as his knee to step over whatever it was he thought he saw on the floor.

In the car, he was so freaked out by the fact that there were two of everything around us, he kept wanting to take the steering wheel because he was certain we were going to crash. Which got funnier because he kept grabbing at the wrong wheel. And trying to explain, the entire time.

We somehow got behind a bus, which really confused him because apparently, the way the images overlapped, the "bus" he saw was only the solid middle part of the over-lapping images and that middle part wasn't big enough to hold a human.... so when it stopped and let some people off, his arms flailed out to the sides as if he was trying to steady his world and he somehow said (around the guaze), "Dose are weally (really) skinny people!"

I almost never got him from the car into the house by ourselves because he was high-stepping every step and landing each foot three or four feet in front, almost doing a split because he'd misjudged the distance and he wasn't entirely sure that the evil me wasn't taking him into some pit seven layers below hell. At one point, later, when he was supposed to be in bed, I found him sitting in front of the mirror in the bathroom looking so very forlorn and confused at the green locks. He kept saying, "Somedoby dib someding to my haired, momma. Somdoby dib someding to my haired."

"A forlorn, freaked-out, green-headed fat-cheeked squirrel on crack did that to you, baby."

"You led a quirrel in da hoube? You mean momma."

Yup.

e-voting insantiy

So when you vote, you'd like to know that the voting system is fixed, right? And after such a huge problem in 2000, you would think that four years later, we'd have a system and safety precautions in place to guarantee that something as simple as voting would be done right. Right?

Well, no, not exactly.

Quoted:

"On a spectrum of terrible to very good, we are sitting at terrible," Aviel D. Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University, told the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. "Not only have the vendors not implemented security safeguards that are possible, they have not even correctly implemented the ones that are easy." [emphasis mine]

How in the hell are we four years later with no real improvements nation-wide? We can invade not one but two other countries, we can give billions of dollars to rebuild said countries, but we can't allocate and spend enough money in a timely manner to make sure that our President is duly elected?

I think we should expect big problems next election. Since things are not fixed, and there are no real back-up plans in position, and no real accountability in place, you can bank that at the next election, it's going to get very ugly unless Kerry just wins by a landslide.

Here (Louisiana), we've had the electronic voting booths for a long time. (That's what happens when you have a state that is widely known for its polling corruption -- so much so that the federal government had to step in and mandate a change.) But even those don't make me feel terribly reassured because there were articles floating around after the last election about how easily enough those booths' totals could be manipulated by the people who owned the software, and, in the case of one of them breaking down, how those votes could just be erased. I think the software vulnerability alarmed a lot of people at the time, and after the news reported it, I'm sure most people thought it was being fixed, but I don't think it is (or even will be).

When this country is sitting on its hands again after the next election -- fighting over whether or not the Supreme court should get involved again, with no real leader, we're going to have to ask ourselves just who is winning this war on terror; how can a leader who professes to be against terror not make sure that the transition of power (or re-election to power) is done without jeopardy and without impunity?

You know, I find it so incredibly ironic that we're spending millions / billions of dollars "making sure that other countries have a democratic process" (yeah, right) and the same party in control of that is completely ignoring the fact that, as it stands, we don't have that here at home.

cured (ahem)

The doctor pronounced me "cured" today, except for, you know, the dizziness and fuzzy-headed-ness. They are actually better, and I think that's because I quit taking the medicine she gave me. In fact, I had felt so much worse Friday and Saturday, I was getting a bit depressed. I forgot to take the medicine Sunday... and felt better. Then just didn't take it yesterday or today, and am way better.

She couldn't really explain that. She's pretty certain that I had the inflammation of the nerve thing, and the medicine should have helped, but oh well. At least I feel like I have a few brain cells back in play.

The damndest thing keeps happening when I drive by a plant nursery. (Or in the case of when I was sick, forced my son to drive by one.) The car stops there and all these plants just magically jump into the back seat. I cannot explain it, but whoa, there they are. Freakiest thing. Happened again today.

mothers must be judged...

You know, I did the entry below about people with their minds so open, their brains have fallen out, but I also meant to do one about people being so frigging judgmental, and then I saw this entry from finslippy and cracked up.

the future of blogging

There's been discussion (and I've come a little late) about "The Future of Weblogging" where the author, Nico MacDonald says:

"Irrespective of its provenance, it is certainly a wonderful thing that many more people are able and have chosen to be self-publishers. However, we need to encourage more people to be journalists. Journalism involves actually interviewing people, doing thorough background research on a subject, presenting a rounded and dispassionate overview, and reasoning through substantive arguments."

To me, this is a bit like someone walking into a room where a bunch of cats have been lounging and chastising said critters for not having their band uniforms on and being in line for the parade. Not ever going to happen, was never the intention, and the person making the assumption needs to re-examine both their conclusions and their motives.

Several bloggers rebutted the point, from Apt. 11d, to Oxblog to Matthew Ygelsias, to my favorite description so far, Allison Kaplan Summers' funny description of blogging as casual sex.

The author of the article bases some of his suppositions on the fact that there was a BloggerCon at Harvard, where the "best and the brightest" of the Blog Community would "schlepp their WiFi-enabled laptops" and report on the con as it progressed -- something the author touts as being significant because so many people are doing it. He refers to "leaders" of the blogging movement as the "blogerati" and urges them to, essentially, herd those cats.

The problem here and elsewhere in this discussion (other news articles, not the other blog entries noted above) is that there seemed to have been some sort of a priori assumption that bloggers wanted to report on the world, or at least, on their small corner in some objective manner. And while that may be true of many and may have been a motivation for so many issue-based blogs to have sprung up, I think the discussion is running counter-intuitive to what's actually happening in the online world and how that is significantly changing society. Sociologists have got to be having a coronary trying to figure out ways to corral this emerging culture into any sort of study that would help them decipher just what the heck all these bloggers are up to and how it's affecting the world, and as MacDonald says later in the article, journalism has often been referred to as the first draft of history. The problem is, I think the a priori assumption is wrong. I don't believe many, if not most, bloggers want to report on their corner of the world objectively -- and, in fact, don't want to report per se, but want to connect... on their world with others... subjectively.

This is a fragmented world, and for the first time in history, I think we have achieved something unique -- we are both global and completely isolated. We live in a time when we can not only drop bombs on another country, but we can read what the people who are hearing the bombs being dropped think and feel. There no longer needs to be spokespeople for a disenfranchised group because that group can now find like-minded others and form a loose community online and speak for themselves. (I'm thinking in the specific about moms who blog, but I have seen numerous other "categories" of blogs which would fall into the "disenfranchised" description.)

What the blogging world is doing currently is forming communities, global villages. And the future of that movement will profoundly change everything from politics to how laws are made to what's for dinner, because of access. I don't just want to know what someone thinks of Bush or Kerry; I want to know how what Bush has done has affected their lives. I also don't just want to know how politics has affected them, but parenting issues and love and loss and humor... because it's a form of communication that we crave far beyond journalism... and we get it in fiction. Books and movies. Welcome to the new world entertainment, the quasi short film, the blog.

Think about it... why do you go into that dark room to watch a film with dozens / hundreds of strangers? Why experience TV in a group? Why read and discuss the book? Connection to other lives, other ways of being, other choices and consequences. It's a way of sampling what others think and do and feel, safely, vicariously, and with rich detail. It's a way of getting to know the human experience more profoundly and taking away from that act knowledge not only about the other, but about oneself. It's the joy of being able to live one's own choices and lives and simultaneously, hyper-living through others... it's a way of having more than just one experience of the world. It's probably as close to making each of us as omnipotent as we're ever going to be.

MacDonald calls for a few improvements to the blogging software in order to solve what he feels are the drawbacks for blogs -- he wants better categorizing, better keyword searching, better ways to prioritize the credibility of the blogger, or maybe their "importance" in the blogging world (which again, just misses the point because if the disenfranchised are blogging, who the hell gets to say who's more important?)... and I'm sure software techs are already on top of this wish list. And like Laura in Apt. 11d or Allison in Isreal, I think the expectations of what the blogs actually are should be kept less pompous -- they are what they are -- commentary. But I do think it's commentary that's going to change the world, and rapidly. We can debunk myths faster, find out salient details faster, connect with people in other countries, faster, report on relevant political maneuverings, and so on. We can also share cultures more (from recipes to hobbies to stories) and be changed by those interactions. I think the ultimate blogging changes aren't going to be to the software per se, but to the portals, the hubs, that we all join or link to -- the global villages we form. The gestalt of these are the new journalism. I predict that there will be a near future where we will have the video blog -- the easy-to-download / view picture of the world and we'll all be so accustomed to the video intrusion into our world, that having our images online will be the norm -- the mini movie / short blog of life. (Much like the cell phone is today, and its innovations of the video messaging.) And we will want to see the others we've connected with online; we'll want to watch them bake that cake or show us the pollution or point out just how much taller their baby has grown. We will be neighbors from across the world; and neighbors look out for neighbors.

ghosts and justice

I hadn't really paid attention to the news yesterday or today, so when I clicked on Eliza's entry for today and saw where they'd caught a new serial killer here, my heart stopped a moment. I saw how Eliza had known one of the victims and then I clicked through to the news story and there at the bottom of the page were the names of two more women he's confessed to having killed, and when I saw Mrs. Ann's name there, my heart broke and I sobbed.

When I was first married, we moved into a house across the street from Carl's grandmother, "Granny." We adored one another, but more than that, we were in a lot of ways a lifeline for each other. She had been widowed just four days before Carl and I were married, and when Luke came along, he gave her something to live for. I was twenty years old and suddenly thrust into a city where I knew no one, in a neighborhood of all these industrious career types, where the only "young" (meaning under 30) woman on the street to have kids was the one next door, and she was usually high and spacey, so there wasn't much in the way of companionship there. I was going out of my mind for converstation, for feeling some sense of connection to the real world of adults who could hold conversations, and Granny would often call me to visit. The special treats, though, were when her best friend, Mrs. Ann, was there.

Mrs. Ann was tall and gracious and had the bearing of a "genteel" southern woman, and I mean that in the best possible way. She had a very quick wit and great smile and you know, I had probably visited and had extended conversations with them for months before I even realized she had been born without much of a left hand. It was mostly a nub, and you really wouldn't have guessed she had anything wrong because she never let it slow her down. She always looked beautiful, and she always did as much as anyone around her -- probably more. She painted, played the piano, but most of all, Mrs. Ann specialized in making the people around her feel loved and wonderful. No, seriously, I cannot tell you how many times I would feel like complete dreck, and with baby spit up and god-knows-what-else clinging to my clothes, but I could walk over there with the kids to have a coke, and while the kids played around us, Mrs. Ann would always manage to find something to say to me that both lifted me up and felt absolutely real at the same time. She made me feel smart and okay and even a good mom, which was a seriously impressive feat, because I hadn't even babysitted for kids before I had one of my own and I think I made every mistake a mom could make. Twice. I enjoyed her, but it's more than just that in a casual sense of the word... I loved those lazy conversations in the deep afternoons, with the sun dancing through the screen onto the porch and the fan softly blowing and how I sat with these two women who were at least 50 years older than me and we still connected on dozens of levels as women. They made me see beyond the here and now, beyond the spit up and the diapers, beyond my own small world and problems and we talked about hundreds of things, from art to politics to books. It was my first real experiences of cross-generational connections, and it made me feel happy.

When she grew fearful of break-ins at her own home, she moved into an elite "retirement" type of place, even though she was still at full capacity. The day we heard she was murdered there was such a shock to us that even now, ten years later, I feel an incomprehensible grief, because someone so sweet and kind and good was ripped from the world in such a horrific way. (The article says there were ritualistic mutilations, but whatever you're thinking, think ten times worse.) I hadn't seen her nearly as much those last few years; she wasn't driving as often, both the kids were in some form of school, life got even more chaotic. But honestly, I missed her.

I still do.