summer so far

Just wanted to check in before I go on vacation. Yes, it looks like vacation is really going to happen. Yay! This trip is what Jif wanted for his 50th birthday, and I have feared I wouldn’t be able to participate, but I will. Summer has been pretty good so far. LG has been in day camps, most recently a debate camp. We went yesterday to see what she’d learned, and it was so exciting. She has a natural talent, we believe. She’s not so sure she’ll pursue it further. It’s tough, as a parent, knowing where that line is between nudging a child to develop natural gifts and stepping back. Watching kids debate was highly entertaining. One boy, who had “R” trouble (kids with R twouble melt my heawt) was so cute. He kept saying, “I win this debate, because my awguments aw the most pewsuasive and impowtant!” LG seemed very scholarly, arguing against offshore oil-drilling, right up until the time she countered an opponent with, “Birds don’t fly well when their wings are covered with oil!” Perhaps not intellectual, but by gosh, I defy you to prove she’s wrong about that! Jif and I just looked at each other and nodded, eyebrows raised, as if to say, “Can’t argue with that.”

I continue to struggle with WTF. I did see a new doc, and had some new tests. It’s all sort of on the fringe of traditional medicine, and it’s a little frightening, frankly. I’ll write more about it in a couple of weeks. For now, I’ll just say it is a (thin) ray of hope about a possible diagnosis and treatment. Please continue to pray for my healing, and for clarity and wise decision-making regarding the treatments that are being offered. My next appointment is in late August. I do thank you all for your expressions of concern, your leads to more info, and your prayers.

I’ll tell you about vacation when I get back. Hopefully with lots of photos. We all SO need a break from the day-to-day. Thankful we can take it. In fact, it’s all about being thankful. This morning I had trouble getting down the stairs, and it is very easy, especially early in the morning when WTF is raging, to start thinking about being a sick person. But I said, no, I choose not to think about being a sick person. I choose to call myself a blessed person, a person who can go on a wonderful vacation with people she loves. This is my constant discipline and occupation, friends, this pushing aside the ill thoughts and magnifying the blessed thoughts. You’d think I’d be good at it by now, but I’m not yet. It seems I am being given plenty of time to master that; like kids with disabilities get extra time on tests. I’m special that way 😉

Big hugs to you if you’re still coming around.

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With my mind on the funny and the funny on my mind

Cannabis sativa.

The subject comes up with some regularity at the agency. One of our intake forms matter-of-factly asks about drug usage. It’s kind of tricky, though, knowing what to call it. The “cool” name changes every few years, have you noticed? In the sixties, before I was old enough to understand much about it, I heard references to it on shows like “The Mod Squad,” where they’d call it “grass” or maybe “reefer.” By the time I was in high school, and had seen a bit of it (and yes, smoked a time or two), it was called “pot.” Even then, it was mostly vicarious smoking on my part, since the idea of smoking anything smaller than a ham has never held much appeal for me. (Now, if they made a bacon cigarette . . . my life may have gone in an entirely different direction.) But yea, I hung out with the “heads” for a while. (What are the “heads” called now? I don’t know. Ohlord, what if they’re just called “high school students”?) And a few years later, my contemporaries “smoked dope.”

Today, if I ask a young client about marijuana usage, I call it “weed.” Because that’s what the kids in this area call it. I learned this from the following recent exchange with some clients:

Mom: I am tired of you disrespecting your Grammy!
Angie: And I am tired of my Grammy smoking weed!
Me (this is unexpected news): Uh . . . how often does Grammy smoke . . . weed?
Mom: Not that much.
Angie: Every time her friend Betty is over, before they go to bingo!

Alrighty, then.

So, yea, we try to discourage, or certainly not encourage, the smoking of weed, there at the agency. Except the other day, I had this earworm, this snippet of a song stuck in my head from channel surfing and pausing on an old episode of Earl. It was a Snoop Dogg song, covered by a bluegrassy band called The Gourds. (Video and audio NOT suitable for children or discerning adults, but it was the cleanest video I could locate, to um . . . go with the dirty lyrics . . . )

So, I’m there with that earworm, just the chorus:

Rollin’ down the street, smokin’ Indo
Sippin’ on gin and juice
Laaaaid back,
With my mind on my money and
My money on my mind!

And I’m aware of doing this bobble-head dance, this back and forth and side to side with my head, while I’m straightening up the magazines on the shelf in the waiting room . . . and I hear a giggle, and it brings me back to the present, and I think for a panicked second . . . was I? Was I humming? Ohdear, was I SINGING? And I bobble my head around to the side and see these two black kids, 11- or 12-year-old boys, sitting in the waiting room, laughing their faces off at me, and I’m all, “ohno,” like I’m rollin’ down the street in slow mo, and they’re still laughing as their counselor beckons them down the hall to their appointment.

I felt like I had to say something, so I said, “WHAT?!” in what I hoped was a clean and sober, authoritative voice, and they just laughed more and fell against each other and the wall, and I called after them, “JUST SAY NO!”

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Family Violence Goes Hi-Tech

“Daddy, are you going to beat Mama up tonight?”

“Yes, but only after I beat you.”

“NO!!!”

“Yes. Come over here, it’s time.”

“NO!!! I won’t let you beat me. I will beat you.”

“You don’t stand a chance.”

“If I come over there, will you let me kill you?”

“No! But you can kill your mother.”

“You people are crazy. I already beat you both down. I’ll do it again, too.”

Don’t make me open up a big can of Wii on your ass.

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