and. . .

mushroom ravioli in a cream sauce

road trips with a lover

New York City a couple times a year, to see art and, this being a dream, my daughter

things undone

I want to learn how to dance, really dance, like my dad used to dance. He learned in the forties. Swing?

I want to visit Ireland, France and Italy.

Write better fiction.

Submit.

Eat better.

Exercise more.

Love more.

I wish

I wish I had access to a talk therapist. I am very depressed. I have never yet had a friend who could listen to me like a therapist will, if you pay her. For years, I had a weekly therapy session and that kept me balanced. Without the ability to talk -- it was only fifty minutes, once a week -- my toxic sludge builds up.

I am so depressed that I recently ran out of food. I found myself foraging in my top cupboard at 3 a.m. to find some food to eat. All I had was tea, coffee, some year old beef jerky . . . and some old cashews. The cashews were past their sell-by date but I was so hungry that I ate them.

The next morning, yesterday, I dragged myself to the store. I think this is the first time in my life that I forgot about food. I had not done a grocery shop in nearly three weeks.

So. I am acknowledging my significant depression. There is some good news here. It is suggests that I am no longer using food to 'stuff' my feelings down.

Loma Prieta

I was in Minneapolis on the day of the big Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. My mom called to tell me to turn on the news, to hear about the big earthquake in San Francisco. My stepfather, she said, was in San Francisco but she wasn't worried. She said she could 'feel' that Ron was fine. He was. It took him a long time to make a call to mom, which is what she had figured when her instincts assured her that he was fine.

Then I turned on the news and learned that the World Series was going on in the Bay Area and having lots of folks focused on that game had probably spared a lot of suffering. I guess fewer people were out on the roads, inside somewhere watching the game? Or getting ready to watch the game, which had not gotten going when the quake hit.

They say there are bigger earthquakes coming.

Lots of times, back when I lived in the Midwest, whenever I disclosed my interest in moving to the W. Coast, someone would virtually always say "aren't you afraid of earthquakes?"

Often, when I was in CA for business trips, people in CA would ask me what it was like to be in the path of a tornado.

When I was about fourteen, some very bad tornadoes whirled through my neighborhood. Houses across the street from my parents' home were flattened. It was a bit like in the Wizard of Oz tornado, with stuff flying all around. Our house did not have a basement. Mom made us all get under the dining room table, because it was the only thing we could hide 'under'. We thought she was worried about nothing.

The next day, it was a shock to see the extensive damage but even more shocking to realize our mom had been right to be concerned.

I think earthquakes have more power than tornadoes. I don't really know. But think about the world trade center towers coming down: earthquakes can knock over many tons of steel, concrete, glass, etc. in an instant. I have never heard of a tornado taking down a skyscraper.

I kept meaning to ask folks I talk to, over the past few days, with lots of talk of the 20th anniversary of Loma Prieta where they were when the quake hit . . . but I keep forgetting.

I am not afraid of earthquakes, tornadoes or hurricanes. I am afraid I won't be loved, that's about all I am afraid of.

I carry your heart in my heart

I'm not moping about a guy, just reposting this e.e. cumming poem because it makes me happy to read it. It talks about love, which is a much bigger sky than romantic love, right?!

I carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

ee cummings

missing breasts in locker rooms

When you spend as much time in women's locker rooms as I do, you see breast cancer survivors. You see women with missing breasts. I always want to talk to a woman with one or both missing breasts, to thank her for fighting it, and for surviving.

This evening, I went swimming for the first time since my breast biopsy one week ago. Immersion in water was forbidding for one week. I specifically asked if I could swim and the doctor specifically said absolutely not. She stressed that I should absolutely not remove my bandages for one whole week. My bandages wore off a couple days ago. The week was up today. My breasts are big, moving a lot. The silicone couldn't stay put.

I am swimming these days at the University of California so there are always young women around. Also older women. I am interested to know why so many older women work out there. Are they staff and faculty? Or community members? I haven't lived in Berkeley very long, don't know many people. But I have mentioned being able to use the UC facilities to almost everyone I have talked to and, so far, I have not met anyone who realized they could join the sports and recreation facilities at UC Berkeley for less than most health clubs. The facilities, of course are world class.

I don't like to swim at night. I had to go to Palo Alto today and didn't get back before dusk. I felt driven to get back in the pool today. A week is a long time not to swim.

Anyway. In the shower, I wondered if any women in the showers or locker room would notice my bruised, scabbed, red and raw breast. I don't often look at other bodies in locker rooms so I bet most people don't look.

There are two showers at the Haas Pavilion locker room with shower curtains. A very young woman used one of those when I was showering. For a time, it was just her and me, but several other women were showering when I was done.

One year, when I was an undergrad, I lived in a dorm that used to be an all male dorm. The all male dorms had group showers on my campus but all the girl's dorms and the other coed dorms where I had lived before had separate showers. I was very self-conscious being naked in front of other coeds. During my entire senior year of college, living in the dorm with group showers, I never once took a shower when another female was in the shower. I typically showered in the middle of the night so no one would see me naked.

That body self-consciousness seems to foreign to me now. I barely notice other women's bodies when I shower in public and I never think about my own.

Once in a great while, someone might bring a child into a group shower setting. I have had the impression, sometimes, that a child is quite surprised, maybe uncomfortable seeing me naked. I have sometimes felt like the women who brought the kid(s) in expect me to behave differently but I don't. I have a right to shower. I am not going to cut my shower short because a woman thoughtlessly brought in a child who doesn't actually belong there. I swim when it is adults only, when no one under 18 is supposed to be present. I don't have to accomodate kids.

Once, in Mountain View, a woman with a small day-care group of children, about six toddlers, decided the public resetrooms adjacent to the pool were unsafe. This was absurd. The pool had some restrooms that the public could enter from the park, without going through the locker room. Those restrooms are 'safe'. As safe as public restrooms can be in Silicon Valley, right? But she decided that her gaggle of toddlers, after playing on the swings, needed to be 'safer', needed to use the inside restrooms.

To get to the 'inside restrooms' you had to walk right through the showers. Not just through the locker room, but the showers. Plus you had to walk past all the women in the whole locker room, all in various stages of undress.

I loved the look on that daycare teacher's face. She was aghast that she had brought those six kids inside to use those toilets. She didn't complain. She explained.

The lifeguard should not have admitted those kids. A little slip.

This evening, showering next to me, was a woman who looked a little older than me. One of her breasts was gone, with a long scar across her chest where her left breast used to be. I wanted to thank her for healing.

I miss bread

I have never been a big sandwich fan. I always thought sandwiches kinda boring, although I sent my ex-husband to work with one most days. He always got a dill pickle. He liked sandwiches, I swear.

I can't control my diabetes these days. I am injecting insulin. I just raised the amount. Still, my blood sugar rises. My doc just told me that some scientists think that by the time a person is diagnosed with diabetes, their pancreas is functioning at about half steam. I was diagnosed in 2002. My pancreas is not doing its job.

Even when I go on a protein fast, eating nothing but greens and protein, my body creates glucose. My doc opines that my body is forcing protein into carbs. That's not fair. It's not supposed to do that.

It is very hard, to not eat carbs. I challenge anyone who thinks it is to give it a try. Your body starts craving carbs. And then, if you do eat some, and you will, because you can't avoid them and the body needs some, the cravings take over.

I don't crave sweets. I crave carbs. A slice of stale white bread would do me. In fact, I ate a piece of rock hard stale white bread a few days ago. I came upon a frozen loaf of bread, pulled it out of the freezer to toss it. It had been in there for months. Suddenly, I couldn't stop myself, I wanted a piece. But it was hard, dry. So I nuked it for ten seconds. And it stayed hard. And, goddess help me. I ate it anyway.

It had no taste. It was all dry, hard, tasteless. Like cardboard. But inside me, it gave me what I wanted. A carb buzz.

I am so ready for this life to be over. My dad never took care of his diabetes. He died at age 62 from complications of diabetes. He totally didn't have to. He used to say that his life was dull and empty and it wasn't worth living if he couldn't have some pleasurable food. He didn't eat like a crazy man. But he ate donuts. He probably also had sucky cholesterol.

Although, I will say this about low carb eating. Once, about ten years ago, I followed the Atkins diet and lost some weight. And when my doc did some lab tests, my cholesterol was fantastic.

I am ready for something to happen to take me away from myself. I am sick of me.

new anger

The anger was sharp, searing across my whole being. It startled me, continues to startle. There is a kind of beauty, like I had come upon a deep, magical cave lined with crystals but instead of light crystals, the cave is lined with staggeringly beautiful, shimmering, mesmerizing, dark ones.

It was like I came upon a whole new chamber of my being. I anticipate being absorbed by this anger for awhile, as I try to discern what it portends.