The Aerie
Snow finally has arrived, just before Thanksgiving as seems
appropriate, at least to me. When we moved here 28 years ago it snowed
in early November, and by late November the lake that we lived on (or,
to be precise, beside) was frozen enough to walk upon. So that fixed
in my mind the "right" time for these things: snow in early November,
ice by Thanksgiving.
I remember staring out the window on my school bus (that being one of
the few things it was safe to do on my schoolbus) as it traveled home
the day before Thanksgiving, and telling myself "Okay, the way it
works in Minnesota is that the lakes freeze by Thanksgiving."
Coming from New Jersey (where the lakes do not freeze but do sometimes
burst into flame, or congeal into a kind of petroleum gel) it was
important to learn how the new environment operated. Hallowe'en in
Minnesota was conducted under environmental circumstances that would
have had us burning furniture for heat in New Jersey. February brought
with it the surreal experience of frozen sinuses.
But the winter nights out in Bethel had stars and stars and stars and
stars.
Now, I'm not complaining! These were notable differences, but they
certainly weren't bad experiences. The alternative, after all, was to
live in New Jersey, and before that, Queens. I've always had a sense
for surroundings and environments, and that sense told me both of
those places were bad ideas long before I was old enough to understand
why on an intellectual level.
No, moving to an isolated lake in Minnesota was pure heaven, and if
bone- chilling cold was the price I was glad to pay it.
So the snow arrived, preceded as always by the meteorological prophets
forecasting the judgement day of the Winter Storm. I have long ago
concluded that these forecasts select the most disastrous and exciting
possible outcome, without regard for actual likelihood, simply to
drive up viewership.
"Paul Douglas predicted a rain of flaming pitch today dear, take your
asbestos umbrella!"
"Flaming pitch? Well let me tune in and see if that's changed..."
If Paul forecast clear blue skies and highs in the upper 30's, we'd
pretty much just accept that and head off to work. But predict a
blizzard and we tune in every half hour to watch the storm approach
like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming semi.
So Friday and Saturday were noisy with predictions of meteorological
disaster. The snow finally fell late Saturday and early Sunday, and
arrived not like a Mongol hoarde but like guests to a dinner party.
Civilized, fashionably late, and perfectly well behaved. The
four-to-six inches politely obliterated the drab tan remains of
autumn, frosting the eaves quietly and efficiently.
So we slip into another winter, hopefully a little snowier, just a
mite colder, and hopefully somewhat more upbeat than the last few
winters. By this time next winter, who knows -- maybe I won't be
broke, maybe we'll have a new president lined up, maybe there will be
no snow at all or twice as much. For now, however, a fresh new blanket
of white is hopefully a first step to erasing the grim year that has
been 2003.
[1]Last
Back from vacation, and yesterday was already sucky. Fortunately I
didn't try anything fancy like planning to work in the afternoon
following the funeral, because I was so emotionally drained that I
crashed hard when I got back home.
The funeral was awful, and in so many ways. Judy, who died Saturday of
breast cancer after a three year fight, was 57 with her first two
grandchildren on the way. Her daughter, Jody, was barely holding it
together, while her daughter-in-law was a bit more composed.
Judy was my wife's father's cousin, but had functioned more like an
aunt, and my wife had spent many of her teenaged years babysitting
Judy's kids, who are now all married.
We didn't make the kids attend as they hadn't known her THAT well (the
twins could remember her as "the lady from the weddings at the golf
course"). It would have been their fourth funeral this year, and taken
them out of school.
The Catholic funeral service itself seemed, as usual, to be trying to
console through routine, boredom, and annoyance. No matter how close
to the deceased I am, by the end I'm looking at my watch and saying
"WHEN can we get out of here?" The sermon was 95% about God and 5%
about Judy. It was as if a salesman showed up at a crematory wake and
dumped the urn on the floor in order to sell the new line of vacuums.
The priest's sermon singled out the deceased's expectant daughter and
gently scolded her for saying "It's not fair" and saying "How can you
call this a celebration?" to the priest before the service. When I was
on my vacation over the weekend I saw a woman with a T-shirt that read
"I'm blogging this." I felt the priest should have worn it when he
"consoled" the bereaved expectant daughter -- "It's alright dear, and
whatever you say I will use against you from the pulpit." After
scolding the woman for her pain, he went on to shake his holy
pom-pom's for God. I really wanted to tell him to shut the fuck up,
but I refrained with an effort. Really I'd think God could arrange for
better marketing.
Then of course I got stuck sitting next to my wife's father's sister,
the bitchy aunt who grabbed everything when Grandma died and sold it
all. Fortunately I'd already extracted the upright piano from the
basement for my wife, otherwise we'd have never seen it again. I'd
brought a pocket full of Kleenex and a good thing, since the old
harridan had brought none of her own. For some reason it's
particularly annoying to lend Kleenexes to someone who is bitchy,
short-sighted and selfish, but the alternative was to have her
snuffling next to me for the whole service.
Another odd thing was the deceased's mother. Judy had not gotten along
with the rest of her family, who she considered tremendously
self-centered and abusive (are we seeing a pattern here?). So she
specified that she did NOT want her mother or sisters attending the
funeral because "they would make it all about them." Oddly enough, by
attempting to prevent them from coming, she played directly into their
hands. When Judy's mother and sisters arrived, they behaved perfectly
well: but by singling them out in advance, Judy had inadvertently made
it "all about them." When they attended, contrary to her wishes,
everyone watched them closely.
It's odd the way these family issues play themselves out even after
death.
O.J. Simpson, Fidel Castro, Yassir Arafat, Moamar Qaddafi, Osama bin
Laden and Saddam Hussein are still alive. Steve, Jody, Brady and my
dad are dead. It's a good thing I don't believe in God, because if I
did I'd have to hunt Him down and kick His ass.
After a perfectly miserable and upsetting time burying the young
grandmother-to-be, I succumbed to my own family issues and went to
visit my brother.
After arriving home Tuesday night at 10:00 p.m. I was informed by my
wife that my mother had called: Chris was still in the psych ward at
the hospital, and was telling everyone who visited that his brother
was angry with him and didn't want to talk to him. I called my mother
(who I knew would be awake) and she confirmed this, and also told me
about how Chris had almost died on Saturday when his heartrate climbed
to 210 bpm.
Still sticky with an applique of parental guilt and shame, I headed
off to the psych ward directly from the burial. After the staff
scolded us for visiting outside of visiting hours ("Yeah, thanks the
first time I heard about the visiting hours was on the door over
there"), they let us in to visit him briefly.
First of all to reach the ward we had to pass through one locked door
with a camera, down a long antisceptic hall, and then approach the
desk. Behind the desk, the snarling nurses waited to scold us, then
released the lock on the second door. Robert Blake is out on bail: my
brother is locked behind two doors. Beyond were half a dozen rooms off
a short central corridor. Wandering in that hall were a couple of
orderlies, a stumpy-legged old woman being led gently by one arm, and
Chris, wandering by himself between the stark rooms. No television,
nothing to do or see or look at, just dingy ivory walls scored with
brassy November afternoon sunlight, some beds and some chairs.
If you weren't crazy when you went in there, you would be after a day.
Chris was... not good. He was up and on his feet, and he LOOKED like
he had both oars in the water. Talking to him, however, revealed that
the oars weren't in the oarlocks, but were in fact floating away, and
the boat was adrift.
He talked clearly and in his usual half-shy, hesitant fashion and at
first he seemed okay. But then he started to talk about things that
didn't make sense. A friend, he said, had told him that the police had
trashed his apartment -- I assured him that they hadn't. The police
had told him that the apartment building was shortly to be knocked
down -- I assured him that this wasn't the case, but if something were
planned we'd be careful to pack his things and store them at mom's.
Then he started getting on to making excuses for why the police had
restrained him ("They thought I was Hispanic and tried to give me
instructions in Spanish, but I told them I'm native american, but then
they jumped on me."), what he was doing out in the alley with a sword
("I was just trying to throw it away, it just didn't go along with the
theme of my apartment"), and why he'd spent the night in the swamp ("I
was just out for a walk and, voomp, I was stuck in the mud.")
I assured him that nobody blamed him for any of those things, that we
knew his doctor should not have taken him off his meds, and that he
needn't worry that anyone was mad at him.
The more he talked, the more I understood that his world is right now
veiled with illusion and terrified fantasies.
I also got the uncomfortable sense that my role in my family had once
again been relegated to that of "external judgemental force." I'd
gotten this many years ago: when my sister was pregnant, I was the
last person that she told because she was afraid of what I'd say.
Likewise, Chris seemed to be afraid that I was going to render a harsh
judgement. Since I've never actually done these things with my
siblings (well, with the exception of not talking to the guy who
knocked up and abandoned my sister until many years later when they
were engaged), I am guessing that my mother has projected her own
self-criticism onto me, and then conveyed that to my brother and
sister. It would fit with the overall theme of her life in which she
invents an outside reality out of whole cloth, and then lives by it
without regard for actual reality.
Anyway we could only stay for a short time with Chris, and I certainly
felt odd wearing all-black in that all-white environment. I drove home
in a black funk, got undressed, and laid down again in bed and slept
for several hours. It was the only way I could think of to deal with
everything I was feeling on top of all the demands that work is
placing on me now that I'm back home.
Today's margially better, and I'm getting ready to head out the door
for work. But I dread going back to visit Chris in that horrid place,
while at the same time I think that I ought to go and be supportive.
I need another vacation.
[1]Last
Well, I needed that like I need a fucking hole in the head. Oh, the
stress! Good thing I start a vacation tomorrow...
So yesterday I'm on the phone with a client when my cell rings. Caller
ID says it's my mother, which is pretty unusual: she's never called my
cell phone before.
I let the call go because I'm talking to an important client, and I
grab her message when I'm off the phone. My brother is missing.
My brother is four years younger than me physically, but has a
learning disability and is about sixteen years old mentally. He's
pretty high functioning, really -- he lives on his own, holds down a
job when he can get one, and dresses better than I do (I have all the
fashion sense of a clam).
But several years ago he suffered his first psychotic incident.
Unfortunately he's smart enough that things like insults and abuse
bother him, but he's hasn't got the vocabulary and other tools to
allow him to verbalize and work out things that frustrate him. So
instead stressful situations make him obsessive, and he works himself
up into a state. In this case, he got to the point where he was
constantly talking to himself, and started hearing voices and
hallucinating.
Well, that time a couple of years ago, the agencies involved
mis-handled him and ended up locking him in a psychiatric ward for a
couple of days before our mother was notified of the situation. Being
locked up was very traumatic for him.
Recently he got a new job after a long period of unemployment.
Apparently some of the people on the job have been abusing him,
calling him names and stuff. And he worked himself up into another
psychotic state. On Tuesday morning at 2:00 a.m. it took three police
officers to restrain him after he woke the neighbors by beating on the
trash dumpster with a decorative sword (18 inches long with an edge
like a butterknife, but he was lucky they didn't shoot him).
The police dropped him off at the hospital and ordered a 72-hour
evaluation, which the hospital completely ignored. They just wanted to
get him out of their E/R, and called our mother at 4:00 a.m. to have
her come pick him up. So she knows nothing of the 72 hour hold, and
drops him off at his apartment.
At noon his social worker arrives to take him to a psychological
evaluation, and my brother panics. We're guessing he was afraid that
he was going to be sent back the psych ward. After waiting until the
caseworker left, he grabs his coat and disappears.
Three hours later my mother gets off work and learns he is missing,
she calls me. So I head up there and my cousin, my sister and I start
searching. In the dark. We search fields and forest until my coat is
clotted with burrs, we scoured strip malls and shopping malls, no sign
of him.
So, hoping that cold and hunger will drive him home during the night,
we head to bed.
Oh, such a wonderful sleep I had! It was as restful as running up a
flight of stairs, and as soothing as Brillo toilet paper. I woke up at
7:00 a.m. and called my mother, and she told me the TV stations were
there and helicopters were overhead. Then I woke up and realized I'd
been dreaming of calling my mother, and I called my mother for real.
No sign of him.
So I'm thinking okay, scan a photo, start printing off posters, and
I'm just setting about to do this when my mother calls back.
My cousin had gone in to the Catholic School where she works that
morning, but she just wasn't comfortable working. So she went to the
school chapel and prays, saying "Where should I be?" Then she got in
her car, drove to my brother's apartment building, followed a trail
that was invisible in the darkness last evening, and spots a small,
dark lump on the edge of the swampy pond.
It was him.
He had indeed fled the building, and ignoring all logic and reason he
had fled in the straightest line he could, away from the building and
the social worker. He made a beeline for the middle of the pond.
Twenty yards from shore, three feet from the water, he started to
sink. He struggled. And he ended up buried in mud up to his armpits.
And there he stuck, all night long. By the time our cousin found him
he had taken off his jacket, because hypothermia had left him feeling
hot.
Our cousin called 911. Men from a nearby business hauled forth sheets
of plywood to make a walkway. When the police arrived my cousin hung
up from 911 and then she called my mother. Who called me.
It took twenty or twenty five minutes to extricate him from the mud,
and his temperature after a (relatively warm for November) Minnesota
night spent in the swamp was about 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Five minutes
after he was extracted, a freezing rain began to fall: presently it's
snowing.
The family all gathered in the emergency room a couple of hours later,
and after a bit of a wait they let us in to see him.
The E/R was caked with mud. His clothes, in two plastic bags, must
have weighed thirty pounds. He was lying on a gurney under blankets, a
complicated combination air mattress and hair dryer thing blowing hot
air in between his body and the blankets. But he was awake and
apparently alert, at least he could respond to questions with a yeah
or a no. He was shivering, which was also a good sign, as it showed
that his body hadn't given up trying to warm itself.
Barring unexpected organ failures, it looks like he's going to be
okay. THey didn't have to open him up, or give him a warm water enema,
or route his blood through a heater, so he wasn't as bad off as he
could have been.
He was extraordinarily lucky. Yesterday and last night were above
freezing, whereas last week it was below freezing for several days.
And while unemployed he had put on a bit of weight, which served to
help keep him warm. And then of course there was our cousin, and her
apparent bit of divine intervention (says the staunch atheist).
Retrospect is frustrating. All three of us had searched along that
shore multiple times. But after leaving the hospital my wife and I had
to drive over and see where he'd been. I could see that while I had
been within shouting distance of him (and believe me, I can shout
loudly and was doing so last night), I hadn't looked far enough to the
left. None of us had. Still, I kick myself that I didn't look harder,
I was within yards of him.
But even when once or twice I had considered him "running out into the
swamp" it seemed the least likely thing he'd do. It seemed much more
likely that we'd find him sitting in a McDonald's or a library. And of
course, when I was shouting for him along the swamp, he was probably
asleep or unconscious: he had not slept at all the night before.
But he was found, that's all that matters, and he looks like he's
going to be okay.
My cousin left us in the E/R, saying she had better get back to work
before she got in trouble.
"It's okay," I told them, "just tell them you were busy saving
someone's life."
[1]Last
I'm freezing!
We're sitting here at the piano teacher's house, and I've apparently
found the Cold Corner. Across the room my kids are starting to nod off
at the piano due to being too warm, but I'm sitting here with my toes
numb.
The cat keeps on trying to strike up a deal: he'll warm my lap, in
return for being allowed to pierce my thighs with needle-sharp claws
whenever he pleases. I actually took the deal for a while, but I
realized that my laptop will do the lap-warming thing without spotting
my slacks with blood. So I figured I'd dash off an entry in My
neglected journal.
So two kids' pianodown, one to go. The teacher is planning on leaving
for "a gig" immediately after this lesson, and now her bandmates are
rolling amps and speakers out the door. The open door. To the outside.
My blood is starting to gel in my toes, and my knuckles creak when I
type. I figure if I wasn't typing, I might just solidify.
But this is the GOOD piano teacher, so it's worth it. She's our third.
The first I got off our cafe bulletin board, and she was nice because
she came to the house -- which was an immense plus with the young
twins and an infant we had at the time. But she taught only the very
basics: hit the keys, kids. And she had no interest in recitals. But
after a few years the kids still couldn't read music.
So we switched to a woman from church, but she was from Edina. From no
recitals, piano lessons turned into ALL recitals. Now, I'm of the
pragmatic school of recitals, myself -- they're good for occasionally
focusing the kids attention on their work. But we found ourselves
going to recitals every other week: at the MacPhail school of music,
at a church, etc., dressed in our best clothes.
At the MacPhail recital the kids performed on a little stage. They had
been required to build dioramas depicting their songs, and these were
scattered around the room. People wore furs. It was all about acting
snooty and putting on airs than the music. I hated it.
Then we hooked up with the latest. She lives in a small, (somewhat
chilly) inner city home, and you can tell at a glance that music is
her life. The living room is dominated by a well-used upright piano,
and unlike ours is not competing for space with a television
entertainment center. There are maracas on the cluttered bookshelves,
a painting of a keyboard, amps and speakers on a rolling cart, a
guitar in a case in a corner, and even the decorative knickknack on
the wall is a tiny working two-stringed musical plunker.
She's very patient with our youngest, and very calm even when it's
evident that the kids haven't attended to all their lessons. She's
affable but firm when it comes to teaching. Really quite a lucky find.
I remember the ambiance of the Edina teacher, with her spit-and-polish
recitals and air of snootiness, and I much prefer having the kids
learn from a woman who simply plays around the cat when it jumps up on
the piano bench.
Tonight after lessons and dinner the twins are going to be staying at
the park building a block from our home. While I'm happy to see our
family getting some use of the park (don't get me started on our lousy
park), I'm a bit leery of the event itself. They're going to be
playing in a LARP.
LARP stands for Live-Action Role Playing, game, or as I once would
have put it, "playing pretend." Apparently one of the fellows who runs
the park's after-school program is a Dungeon Master, and the kids have
spent several afternoons as elves and dwarves and what-have-you (or
what-are-you?), and that's all well and good. But now they're going to
be in this building with this Dungeon Master, overnighT, and I have to
confess I've got a little anxiety.
It's a shame, too. I mean, it should just be a nice little event, the
kids can go have some fun. Instead I'm worried about gropers and
perverts and such rude nonsense. So I'll be heading over there
beforehand to scope the place out and pretend I gather some idea of
who these people are who are going to be with my kids. But in the end
it comes down to crossing my fingers.
I had never heard of LARPs until I found myself writing and running
one three hours after arriving at the U-Con roleplaying convention
back in 1999. But at least I've had five years of writing and playing
in LARPs to suggest that the kids should have a good time tonight.
Meanwhile, my own LARP participation is a week away: on Thursday
morning we hit the road for Ann Arbor Michigan and the U-Con
convention. I've still got to write up the game that I'll be running
there. I've winged it in the past, but mostly when running a game in
concert with my friend Joe. I'll not only be running this game myself,
but I'll be running it twice, back to back. So I figure maybe I'll try
to give it a bit more structure, and maybe make it so that it runs as
a continuous game across both sessions, just in case anyone stays for
both games.
Of course, I'll have 12 hours in a car with two other Tekumel gamers
to really polish it up. But the kids want to help me test it too, so
hopefully I'll have some time to work on it tonight and tomorrow, and
run it for a bit on Sunday. However, I could wing the entire thing and
it would go, if not "well", then at least allright. I wouldn't need to
freak out in advance. Not like when I ran the LARP in 2000 and really
stressed out! Heh.
[1]Last
Did you know it's election day? Do you know who is running, or for
whom you would vote? I sure don't. For being a democracy, we sure take
little enough interest in the process. I suspect more people know that
David Letterman missed his shift on The Late Show than that it's an
election day.
I'll probably wander over and cast a random ballot, just to do so.
Working is like pulling teeth today. Part of it is that I have so much
stuff to do I can barely think: I start thinking about one task, and I
panic because I'm not thinking about the other thing. So of course I'm
writing a journal entry instead.
What I'm not writing is my [1]National Novel Writing Month entry.
Nanowrimo, as it's called, is an annual project to encourage people to
write a novel in a single month, about 1500 words a day. I'd sure like
to participate, but I haven't been able to so far. Too stressed out to
be creative, too much work to do to focus on plotting a novel.
Next week I take off for [2]U-Con 2003, the annual nerd-fest that I've
attended for the last several years. It's supposed to be
pressure-free, but I made the mistake of signing up to run a game and
now of course I'm getting performance anxiety. If I can get over the
work-hump now in front of me I might even be able to start preparing
my game: to add to the stress, mine was the first one in the Tekumel
track to sell out. No pressure, no pressure -- Joe Piz will simply do
rude aikido things to me if it sucks, that's all. Nothing wrong with
that, I can survive being tossed across the room...
Of course, I have to run the game twice. Not sure if I can survive
being tossed across the room twice. Might have to cry like a girl
again.
Okay, well that's next week. Today I have to do a proposal for Client
X, write a report for Client Y, write a timesheet and a report for
Client Z, update my resume, finish assembling my contact information
for my PI license, write the final report for Client Z2, clean up my
office, work on marketing, and arrange several meetings. And send some
followup e-mails to people I met with last week. Oh, and I have to
contact Client Z's sysadmin who keeps not returning my calls. And
arrange a meeting with my totally brother-in-law and his security
administrator.
Plus whatever else I am forgetting.
To work!
[3]Last