A Whole "Nother"...

Well, as I suspected...I went to see the surgeon today to have him reveal my newest scar to me by removing my surgery dressing and checking to see how that scar was progressing. And...Voila! It's a cute little thing about an inch long on the left side of my major scar. It's still a bit swollen and not completely healed but the interesting thing to learn was that, yes, there was actually a piece of the tube still inside of me which was why I had that horrible infection for those couple of months. Of course, he'd already told me this when I was coming out of the anesthesia but what is the point of talking to someone when they are completely knocked out? I remember him saying, "Trish...Trish...Blahblahblahblah..." But that's about all I remember. I'm thinking now that I should get some great fabulous stomach tattoo to bring together all of my operations. I also have an appendix scar and a cesearian scar and I can only imagine what a master tattoo artist could create with those beginnings. I don't know, The Empire State...a forest scene maybe...Air Force One...

I think I must have said that last one because I watched part of the Republican debate from the Reagan library. Here's what I want to know... Was Reagan ever actually IN a library? I don't know why but I don't picture Reagan glancing through a Thackery or a Faulkner, for that matter. Let's be honest, I haven't glanced through a Thackery. In fact, who the hell is Thackery? I certainly do not want to be thought of as elitist. And have you noticed that these days? That if you are curious and you read and you want to get educated you are thought of as an elitist...Or full of yourself or greater than thou... It's crazy. What is wrong with reading and learning and trying to help the environment. I've heard people on the radio say horrible things about people who drive Hybrid cars. Hello...Is that a bad thing? It might be trendy in a certain way but it is certainly not a bad thing.

Although sometimes when I'm putting in those wacky lightbulbs that give off that kind of sickly neon light...And I fill up my Prius which doesn't take much gas and only needs to be filled every two or three weeks...Sometimes I wonder if I am actually doing anything to save the planet. What about the big corporations that are spewing gunk into lakes and into the air? Are THEY doing anything to help? Is my changing a light bulb or two actually going to save Antarctica? Is Ed Begley Jr. really doing anything except becoming a very eccentric older man? Riding a stationary bike to generate electricity. Is he insane or is he actually changing the planet? I don't know. I just don't know.

But here is one thing that I know for sure is insane...Primaries...Rudy Guiliani spent FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS in Florida. Just Florida! Fifty Million. And we don't have money to save our schools or pay our police? What is wrong with that picture? Let them do their debates which don't seem to be debates at all, at least not the kind that I saw kids do in high school...Anyway, let them do them and then send them on to the convention and let people raise their hands and vote here here or hear hear or nay nay and that will be that. Poof, we've got a candidate and then all that primary money can be saved for important things like fixing levees. Or buying tiaras. Hey honey, if you've got the money and want to buy a tiara...THEN BY ALL MEANS BUY ONE. So a little kid goes hungry for a few days. It is not your problem. Your problem is that you've got this charity ball to attend and you've got to look spectacular and Town and Country Magazine said that tiaras were in and it's not easy finding the perfect tiara and thank goodness they are not having the primaries this year so you don't have to give your money to Rudy who is a loser anyway and you can spend it on something important like looking fabulous....

I have nothing against rich people.

Nother. Is nother a word? And if it isn't, shouldn't it be? I have heard people on the radio say many times something like..."And we've got a whole nother problem." Nother. I rather like the sound of it. "Today a whole nother scar was revealed to me for the first time." Maybe I'll ask the tattoo guy to design me a "nother". A big, bright nother all over my abdoman. The Empire State Nother.

I actually think I need to write a whole nother blog entry...........................

Yo, Adrian

Okay, raise your hands if you ran out and saw Rambo 25 this past weekend...Aha. Not even a breeze of hands moving skyward. Could they not have taken that money and fixed all the schools all across America? Or how about using it to pay the real soldiers who are still in Iraq doing that thankless job. You don't hear the media talking about Iraq anymore because the economy is sexier right now and because soldiers and civilians are not dying in double digits. Hey, what's one soldier...Or two. I'll tell you what it is...It's someones daughter or son or spouse. That's what it is. You lose your house, that is sad and difficult. You lose your son, you will live with that horrible pain until the day you die.

Gee, I'm actually in a pretty good mood today. Don't know why my mind went there. Must have been Stallone and his human growth hormone face. And have you seen Julie Christie's picture in Los Angeles Magazine? She looked great in that movie, a little older, a little wrinkled, but still beautiful. But in the magazine they air brushed her so much that she actually ended up looking dead. She was like an older woman with no wrinkles or character or any indication that she had actually lived for over sixty years. And another thing about that magazine...The last twenty pages are all ads and pictures of lawyers! Twenty pages. What is that about? Does everyone in this city need a lawyer? Are they all suing somebody? It's really a horrible magazine but I saw Philip Seymour Hoffman on the cover and thought it might be interesting but with twenty pages of lawyers I really felt like I got ripped off. Hmmmm...Maybe I've got a case here.

Two friends of mine, who shall remain nameless...Gretchen and Mimi...(Did I tell you that I can't keep a secret?) Anyway, these nameless friends got a hot dog from Cedric. And they, too, were charmed and apparently talked his ear off and he told them to come back on Valentines Day. And I am sure he was charmed by them as they are very beautiful women. I had a hot dog somewhere else this past weekend, I think it may be the salt that's attracting me, and I got sick. Even from a very few bites. Though I must admit that I have been getting sick much more than I would like these last couple of weeks. I get sick then I feel fine. Maybe that's just the routine of my life from now on and I have to get used to it.

My computer is telling me that there is going to be an "outage" at four o'clock. It's now three thirty six. That guy who came and "fixed" my computer should be shot. At dawn. With his own guns. And I waited all morning for this "expert" to come and check out the damage done for free and they call and tell me he had a flood in his house and he's out of commission for a while and would I take the other guy back? No, I said, because what I would really like to do is beat him over the head with my keyboard or this broadband router that he told me to buy and I have no idea what to do with that thing and my computer is going to shut down in twenty minutes FOR NO REASON and between the computer guy and Officer Rubbish my life is just pure hell these days.

Oh, that is such a lie. My life is fine. I know someone who was killed in an avalanche on Friday. One second he was alive, the next second he was dead. And I feel so lucky that though I've had cancer I now have life and I can hug my son and cook him soup and laugh with my friends and though I know I will die one day sooner or later, I am alive and aware of the precariousness of it all and I know that Chris, who died, was having a wonderful time until he was swept away and I hope we can all have a wonderful time before we're swept away because we just don't know about anything , do we? It is all a complete mystery.

Like this outage that's supposed to happen in fifteen minutes. Now that is a mystery. Not a profound one but enough of one to make me sign off before I finish my thoughts and oh I had something very exciting to tell you.

I have the honor of going to

I Have A Dream

Actually, I don't have a dream because I haven't been able to remember my dreams since high school but since it is Martin Luther King day I've been thinking about his speech and how you can hear it a million times and it never fails to send chills through your body and bring tears to your eyes. And even though the people in Louisiana and all the areas of poverty in our country are still getting screwed by an uncaring government, I think Mr. King would be thrilled to know that a Black Man AND a woman are running for President of the United States and one of them might actually win. Just how cool is that?

I did remember one dream I had just a few weeks ago. It was about an owl. I wonder what Jung would say about dreaming about owls.........Probably, "Who, who, who am I?"

The policeman who gave me the speeding ticket was not named Officer McCarthy. I just made that up but I looked up his name on the ticket and it's even better than McCarthy. It is Officer Rubbish!! No kidding. Can you imagine growing up with the name Rubbish? You'd have to carry a gun if your name was Rubbish. "Little Billy Rubbish, get back to your seat right now!" No wonder he didn't care if I was throwing up. The guys been tortured by his name his entire life and now he's getting back at the whole world by gleefully writing tickets. "I now pronounce you Mr. and Mrs. Rubbish." No wonder he looked so angry. "Friends, family, today we say goodbye to Mr. Rubbish and turn him back into the soil from whence this Rubbish came..."

Oh, I could go on and on but in the end...I still have to pay the damn ticket.

A guy came and worked on my computer for three hours on Saturday. And it's acting up again today. He told me that computers aren't made to last more than five years or so. That can't be right, can it? I had the same typewriter for my whole writing life before computers. Pounded on that thing day and night and all I ever had to do was change the ribbon. (Do I sound a hundred years old now? Yes. That's because I'm closer to a hundred than I am to nineteen and I can see now why people my age have always said things like..."In my day we walked ten miles to blah blah blah...I cannot believe I am one of those people now but I guess it's better than NOT being one of those people...Or is it?) Anyway, I'm pissed that the computer guy was a nice guy and I don't want to report him to his company because he just got this job and just graduated from DeVry University and was in a car accident and was a marine and is married and has guns in his house that his wife is not happy about and has a knife the size of a hari kari sword and eats hamburgers a lot and...........See, this guy was here for a looooong time and something is still very wrong with my computer and I spent three hours feeding him potato chips and I have this perfectly good lap top that he tells me is almost obsolete. Hey, I wanted to say, I'M almost obsolete. So they took out my tummy to get some more mileage out of me and they said I'd be fine 'til I dropped and they can't do that with a computer?!! No, he said, I need a new model. A more updated model. And, of course I started thinking about that man who was formerly known as my husband and his updated model. Maybe she's only good for five years. Hey, I was good for twenty five. Can't snub a thumb at that.

Snub a thumb? Can you tell I'm missing an hour of sleep.

Hey, how about those Giants? I'm a Bear fan, of course, and I was sort of rooting for Green Bay but my father's name was Eli and I love that name so any team that has a quarterback named Eli I can't ignore.

I do not believe I will be able to write for the rest of the week. But maybe I will but I don't think I will so don't count on it or worry that I'm sick because I always sort of am...Sick, that is...But maybe I'll get better. Sort of better. Someday. Maybe a week from Tuesday. Now that would be a dream come true.................

Everyday Life

Yes, Everyday Life is a play by Rilke but it is such an apt phrase for things one sees on a daily basis that I am stealing it from Rilke who stole it from God know who else.

So today I am driving along to my drip and I seem to be keeping up with the other traffic and a policeman pulls me over for going 45 in a 35 zone. Oh, come on, I'm thinking. Everyone was driving at the same speed and I'd had a bad 2007 and you are not going to make me go to one of those places where I have to listen to bad comedians tell bad jokes about cars and traffic and COME ON. But he is all business and I'm starting to get upset so I did what everyone should do when they get pulled over...I got out of the car and I threw up. Right there on the curb. I guess I AM sensitive these days and after all I did have an operation three days ago. And you should have seen his face. This is one thing he did not learn in policeman school. How to deal with a woman who is so upset that she throws up on his boots. (Well, I didn't actually throw up on his boots but I saw them there on the ground and I thought about it for a very short moment and decided against it.) Anyway, this cop just went about his business and presented me with the ticket and did not say a word about my sudden illness. And I looked at him for a long time thinking he might ask how I was feeling but he had no intention of doing that and he just handed me the ticket and told me how to go about it and that was that. I drove away, sucking on a lifesaver, and thought that we are all in very good hands if we are being protected by seriously focused guys like Officer McCarthy. Or else they are truly a bunch of sadists and you'd better make sure you go 35 in that 35 mph zone.

Okay, so today's guy in the vitamin drip room is my favorite so far. He walks in wearing three coats, a hat, carries a plastic grocery bag filled with letters, carries a huge camera case, the old fashioned kind and pulls a small suitcase on wheels. He starts talking as soon as he takes off the first coat. And he says...

"I just got back from nineteen days in Odessa."

The other woman and I exchanged a look and he went on about his trip to Odessa...IN DETAIL...Starting with every minute he spent on the airplane and that he went by himself and left his wife of two months at home to pursue her career. His wife is Russian. She makes him wear his wedding ring on his right hand. As he continued to talk I realized that this woman had married him to stay in the country and she did not want to be married to him and convinced him that in her religion everyone wears their rings on their right hand. I asked what religion she was and he said something like..."Balmudian." Ah, I don't think so. Anyway, she had sent him to Odessa to find her MOTHER...Oh, this story gets better...But of course her mother was not there so he just roams around Odessa looking for the best pizza parlors!! And then he goes on and on about pizza and pulls out a picture of his Russian wife who is "pleasantly plump" to put it nicely and he says she's a great singer and wants to be the next Britney Spears.

And this was all before he took off his second coat. All I know is that he seems to be going next to Prague to find her Uncle who is in the music business...In Prague. In the music business. To help her be the next Britney. In America. With a Russian accent.

I am telling you...Everyday life.

And then I saw...Cedric. I couldn't finish the whole dog but he didn't see that, thank goodness. I think I'm still a little tweaky from the operation. But once again he said one of his profound little pearls. I finally told him I'd had cancer. He was, not surprisingly, very concerned and I told him I was in remission (which I think I am) and he was pleased to hear that. Then he told me that he, too, was in remission. "I am in remission from something that is actually worse than cancer. I am in remission from poverty."

Wow, huh? He is from Louisiana and he said that Katrina revealed only a tiny view of what is really going on down there. And that's what he comes from. And if this is becoming just a bit too Travels with Maury, or whatever the hell that corny book was called...I can't help it. There he is. This guy with his truck and his hot dogs and his pearls and he's like one of the best people I've ever met.

Everyday heroes.

By the way, my spellcheck told me that there was no such word as Balmudian. Someone should tell that to Mr. Odessa when he finally removes his hat.......................

The Remarkable Pain

Well, today I am not sore anymore, my belly feels okay, but I am a bit woozy. Light headed. Could be the antibiotic. Could be that I haven't eaten enough in the last couple of days. Could be that my head is light. Meaning I don't have a fat head which I think is a good thing.

My friend Tone who stayed with me last weekend told me that I have to put more DeNiro stories into my blog to keep it interesting because how booooorrring is a blog about antibiotics?! So he reminded me of this one and yes, Tone was with me as a witness so you don't think I was just making all of this up.

My play, "Thighs" was playing off Broadway. Way off Broadway. Sheridan Square. And the marquee read, "Opening Tonight...Trish Soodik's Thighs" I always thought I should have taken a picture of that. Anyway, I was in New York and Tone, who was the stage manager, and I were walking down something like 42nd Street and a limo pulls up in front of us and out steps DeNiro, whom I had already spent many hours with, and he took one look at me and with just his eyes said, "Do not say a word. Pretend that you don't me. Just keep walking." And his girlfriend got out of the car and they walked away with him turning around just once to nod. True story. I am not making it up. Just ask Tone.

I was talking with a friend this morning and I described the feeling of the man formerly known as my husband leaving me as "one remarkable pain." She thought using the word remarkable was interesting. But I could not really think of another word that would best describe how I felt at that time. It was remarkable in that I had never felt a spiritual pain so deeply. A wound in my soul that, at the time, felt like it would actually kill me. And I thought I would never, ever be able to get rid of that pain. And then I got cancer in the same place I had my soul wound and you just have to wonder, don't you? Is there any correlation? How can there not be? And now both wounds are healing and with one wound I am left with a bit of vomiting and no sugar and with the other I am left with a bit of scar tissue that is slowly being covered up by the healthy tissue until I can almost not feel it anymore. It's funny how quickly one adapts. So I don't eat garlic. Chocolate. So I sleep alone. Cook meals for one. It is not so bad. I can rub my own feet. I can change a light bulb. I have the love of my son. Of my friends. I think it was that feeling of being safe, of finally finding a home that could swallow me whole and let me swim around and make mistakes and learn as I dog paddled in circles, trying to figure out this thing called love......................And when that home was split in two and the water spilled out onto the carpet with me as a beached dolphin not sure whether to try and get to the shore or try and swim out to sea by myself, I just lay there for a few months in that remarkable pain.

But I chose to swim again and though I'm sometimes not sure where I'm going and certainly unsure where the waves are taking me, I am trying to enjoy the journey and leave the remarkable pain behind to be swallowed up by seaweed and hopefully sunk with the heavy weight that it carries to the very bottom of the ocean...............

The Golden Glubs

"And this year's winner for Best Actress in an overwrought autobiographical drama..."

Me?!! Are you kidding? Me?!! But where's the red carpet? Where are all the photographers? The media? I just have to accept this honor all by myself in my very own living room?

Yes, Trish, you do. Take another pain pill and stop complaining.

Okay, I am not complaining. My surgery went well. Today I am feeling the pain of stitches in my belly. But I do feel that the infection is gone and when I finish the antibiotics I think I am going to feel like a new woman. Oh God do I want to feel like a new woman. Or maybe just ANOTHER woman. Someone else. Like...oh, I don't know, Julia Roberts maybe. She seems awfully happy. Last night post surgery I watched La Vie En Rose. The Edith Piaf movie. (The actress is amazing.) But Edith had just an awfully rough life and I'm watching her age and she's all bent over and taking pills and I stood up to go to the bathroom and I was all bent over and about to take a handful of pain pills and I realized that La Vie En Rose is a great movie to watch when you're feeling sorry for yourself. You think your life is bad? Oh no. Check out Edith's life.
Or Judy Garland's. Talented, tragic women. And they seemed to end up with the same eyebrows. None. Pencil brows. I guess the lesson is that if you find yourself drawing in your eyebrows with a pencil then you know it's curtains. You are dead meat.

But here's the thing. I think I'm on the road to recovery...Again. Feel a little shitty today but it's already almost two o'clock and in Antarctica I would already be asleep so I'm thinking that tomorrow will be much better. And who knows about the day after that.

There is a movie out now called "Teeth". It's about a young woman who has teeth on her vagina. Don't we all?

Vagina. Why is that word so hard to say? Aren't you embarrassed just reading that word. Penis is not so bad. Vagina is hard. Penis is easy. Didn't Laurence Olivier say that? Or was he talking about comedy? And can you tell I'm on pain pills? One, actually. I am not one of those writers who can write stoned or drunk or on anything except vitamins so this is a first. And why am I talking about vagina? Maybe I took a viagra by mistake.

Change the subject, Trish.

Right. Have you seen the poster for that Terminator TV show? It's a girl with only the top half of her body. Wires are coming out where her...bottom half would be and her top half is naked and her breasts are covered with her long hair. Sickly erotic, I suppose. And it's on BIG posters. Golly gosh in my day young men would sneak a Playboy and check out the breasts but the girls had bottoms, although demurely covered. Now they don't even have bottoms. Just wires. Who needs a bottom anyway, I guess.

Oh my goodness, I seem to be on the same subject, sort of. I wonder what he removed during surgery? True story, they did wheel me into the wrong operating room at first and I almost spent the rest of my life without a kidney.

Aha, well I see I do not become a Faulkner when I write while I'm a bit high. Or a Fitzgerald. I just become stupid. Maybe tomorrow I'll mix my pain pills with a little scotch. Or is that a guy thing? Maybe I should cut my hair off and wear frumpy skirts like Gertrude Stein. Now she had a bottom.

Sorry. I will come back tomorrow when my mind is out of the gutter. La Vie En Rose is La Vie En Rose is La Vie En Rose....................

Uganda and Beyond

I met a young woman today who had just come back from Uganda and was putting together her photography exhibit and it was quite obvious that life had been treating her well and it was exciting and hopeful and I am so draggy because of this open wound that I didn't even have the energy to shout out, "FOR GOD'S SAKE, CALM DOWN! HORRIBLE THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN TO YOU SOMEDAY. I CAN GUARANTEE THAT BECAUSE THEY HAPPEN TO EVERYONE! AND ESPECIALLY ME. CAN'T YOU SEE THAT I DON'T FEEL WELL? HOW CAN YOU BE SO HAPPY."

And then I realized that I was feeling just a little too sorry for myself. That my inner voice had gotten out of hand. To want someone who is having a good time to NOT have a good time is so wrong and petty. Oh, I am such a small human being. And getting smaller.

Actually, I AM getting smaller. Today for lunch I ate one shrimp. Without sauce. One. A shrimp. One shrimp. And then I started thinking...What if I become really small? Pocket sized. Like Tom Thumb? Or Stuart Little? And I'd have to have a little mouse door to get in and out and I'd be chased by cats and terrorized by rats and I'd have to vie for little crumbs on the floor with my dog and my shoes would be way too big and what if my hair stayed the same size that it is now and didn't shrink with me and I was just a bunch of hair running around the living room and the sound of the vacuum cleaner made me screech with horror but nobody would hear me....................................................

Okay, that was insane. I really need to get rid of this infection. It is sucking the life out of me. And the brains. So Monday I go in and they operate and they take out...Something. Maybe they'll take out my pettiness. Hey, maybe they could replace that with William Faulkner's work ethic. Certainly no harm in asking.

So I sign off for a few days. Don't worry. Be happy.

Just not TOO happy.

Was It Something I Said?

I went to an Al-Anon meeting last night because a friend of mine is working on his sobriety and I wanted to be supportive. I walked in to find it was a Men's meeting. I was told this by two slightly strange gentlemen who quickly walked up to me as I entered the cozy room to warn me that there might be questionable language used but that this happened every once in a while that a woman showed up by mistake and they allow you, as a member of the opposite sex, to attend the meeting just one time. One of the men left and I continued talking to the other man and after about two minutes he reached over and grabbed, I kid you not, A GAS MASK!! which he proceeded to put on the bottom half of his face and without missing a beat he continued talking to me about Al-Alon and life and this meeting and I was standing there thinking My God, this guy really does hate women.............

And finally he took a breath and told me he was allergic to perfume even though I don't usually wear perfume except for very special occasions which I didn't consider this to be one of those occasions so whatever I smelled like was me but I guess this poor guy just couldn't take it. I felt like I was talking to a creature from Pluto which is actually no longer a planet but I must say I enjoyed our somewhat muffled conversation.

Anyway, these meetings are very private and you're not allowed to talk about what went on inside of the meeting and I will respect their wishes only to say that for one night a week I do wish I could be a man.

I am blue these days. I don't want to wear it on my sleeve and I hate to kvetch and I'm pretty sure it's the infection but I just feel slightly shitty most of my waking hours. Can you tell?

I was asked by a reader to reveal a bit more of the DeNiro part of the story. Because, truthfully, who really wants to read about someone being blue or turning blue or throwing up and wounds and IVs and it's obvious that the title of this blog is ROBERT DENIRO in big letters and of course I did that on purpose because who the hell would really care about ME but if you put DeNiro in front of my name now that's interesting. I have gone to a few Hollywood parties and I went to one where I felt like the Wallflower from the Poconos and I ended up just sitting on a couch nursing a glass of champagne (ah, those were the days) when a couple of people sat down next to me and we chatted and they were so very bored with me and I can't remember exactly how it happened but I blurted out, "I slept with Robert DeNiro." And suddenly I was interesting. Oh, it's such a great ice breaker.

But right now, feeling the way I do, it's hard to imagine that I ever experienced that exciting bit of life. Not just sleeping with someone who became famous but running around the earth with no care in the world, no thought that one day there would be big bummers thrown at me to keep me from smiling and keep me from eating an orange or a clove of garlic.

"Trish, stop it right now! Stop feeling sorry for yourself. At least you ATE an orange once. And plenty of garlic. Just SNAP OUT OF IT, dammit!"

Okay, you're right. I have soooooo much to be thankful for. Cheesecake and chopped liver, for one. Or two. Who knew that my grandparents who always encouraged me to, "Eat! Eat!" would be the one's with the recipes for recovery.

Maybe I need a gas mask. Yeah. It was one of those masks that crazy people on bicycles wear. You know, where you breath out of both sides of it like Darth Vader. A gas mask. Hey, maybe that's what I'll wear to my next operation. A gas mask. And a pair of red shoes. I'll tell the anesthesiologist I slept with Robert DeNiro. She'll think I'm important. She'll take good care of me.

Or she'll think I'm completely nuts. Or possibly very BLUE.....................

What Is With Her Ears!

First of all on a happy note in an otherwise slightly dark day...Cedric the hot dog man (and boy is he more than that) gave me a big hug and a kiss today upon seeing me. Oh my gosh he is such a tower of positive energy he practically glows. So he asked me where I was going and I told him I was going home to try and write a......................novel...................( I am barely able to say that word because it seems so wrong or like I'm kidding myself or something highly neurotic.) Anyway, Cedric said in his inimitable style..."Nothing to it but to do it."

"NOTHING TO IT BUT TO DO IT!!!"

Why can't I think like that? Simple and straight to the point. Why must I jump up and down and feel sorry for myself and look things up on the internet that are meaningless like traveling to somewhere I don't really want to go to and all just to keep myself from writing that.......... novel................I have got to harness some of Cedric's secret powers of living. I am way too cynical to read a self help book but if Cedric published one, I would be the first in line to have my copy signed.

And by the way, Andy, my blog takeover pal, actually found Cedric and ordered some very spicey dog and called me while he was chewing and gave it a full thumbs up although next time he said he would not order the extreme spicey dog. I, personally, would order a simple dog with the works. Just for starters. And give yourself a few minutes to sit at one of Cedric's chairs and chat. You will not be disappointed.

Today I had my pre-op exam and the drawing of the blood was grueling but I got through it and I was lucky to have about twenty minutes with Dr. Miyakawa to talk about life and death. And I realized as I left that I was much more comfortable with death than I am with life. I need help. And I'm not even kidding about that. I am all set to die, have no problem with death. It's living I'm having a hard time with. I do think that part of that is my infected wound. I cannot wait to see how I feel when that thing is gone and over with. And I have got to get out of this house and I don't know if I mentioned this before but the man formerly known as my husband only took his clothes and LEFT ALL OF HIS STUFF HERE. I probably mentioned that but it's been almost a year and a half and I am sick of looking at it and feeling like a storage unit. Why, you ask? Why didn't I do something about that sooner? Well, I should have but I did have cancer so I got a bit way layed. (Or wailaid or how the hell do you spell that and what the hell does it mean?)

So I'm sort of in a dark Sylvia Plath mood and I think it's the wound at least I hope it is but I did observe something interesting today. A couple came into the vitamin drip room. Around seventy I would say. He with a bad hair dye job and she with a face lift that did some serious Dumbo damage to ears. Her face was all fucked up and it made her ears look enormous! I cannot imagine that she had them fixed to look like that. Unless a Circus Vet did her face lift. Anyway, thank goodness they were a couple. They had come all the way from Orange County for her drip. They sort of hated Orange County but all they could afford was Leisure World which he refered to as Seizure World. But the one thing they did like was taking Fox Trot lessons. They went on and on about it and he suddenly got up in the middle of the drip room and showed us the proper posture and moves for the fox trot. And one woman was trying to read and one guy was sticking his fingers in and out of the holes in his sweater and this dancing guy kept dancing and it was sort of amazing to not even think that there might be people in the room who wanted to relax and spend their drip time in some type of meditation. But I liked his dancing. He had very good posture. The fact that he tripped a few dozens times could happen to anyone just learning the steps. The fact that the Dumbo ears seemed to get red with some sort of sickening erotic anticipation made me a little sick to my stomach but I'm sick most of the time anyway so why connect it with her ears?

Anyway, I'm already hoping that 2009 is a better year. Do you think that's being much too much of a pessimist?

I just don't know. I just don't know......................

I have to have another what?................

Oh sure, there you are with your positive outlook and encouraging comments telling me how fabulous this year is going to be and that there is such a thing as karma and I am so overdue and you just know that everything is going to be coming up roses and you will not believe what I have to do next Monday..............

But first...

I want to talk about forgiveness. So I was reading the paper yesterday and there was an article about a woman who was in the death camps when she was ten and she was there with her twin sister and Dr. Mengele loved experimenting on twins, which he was doing with this poor woman and this woman received a letter maybe twenty years ago from an SS guy asking for her forgiveness and she gave it to him and said it felt like a weight was lifted from her shoulders. And I, being the selfish self centered person that I am, started thinking immediately about the man formerly known as my husband and if I could ever forgive him. Nazis... my husband... my husband... Nazis. Come on, I thought, if this woman could forgive people who did not give a shit about her as a human being and a CHILD then certainly I could forgive someone who let go of a family and left me for another at a very vulnerable time in my life. There is no comparison. Be reasonable, Trish. The man formerly known is not, after all, Mengele. Surely I could forgive.

Ah..............Nope. Can't go there yet. And of course I realized that that woman was so much more of an enlightened human being than I could ever be. I love to hold on to my petty little anger. Don't you? Oooooo, it just makes you feel so good to have someone you don't like, someone you can celebrate when they're going through a rough patch. Someone whose life might occasionally be WORSE THAN YOURS. That is how petty and unformed I am. I don't know, I try to be enlightened. Forgive. Try to love my enemy. But my little nine year old nasty girl self keeps whispering in my ear, "I hate you Susie Collins because you're pretty and you're perfect and you're really good at volley ball and you hurt my feelings because you won't invite me over to your apartment and I hope something horrible happens to you."

And then Susie just goes on with her lalala lovely life and you're holding on to all of those bad feelings that just eat you up inside and turn your eyebrows grey and I am so impressed with that woman who forgave the Nazis. I'm going to save that article.

Okay, remember the feeding tube? The supposed cauterization? WELL I HAVE TO HAVE ANOTHER STUPID LITTLE FUCKING OPERATION NEXT MONDAY. Because the wound has been infected for over two months and there might be a small part of the tube wrapped around (get ready for this) my intestine! And it's only the seventh day of the new year. Why on earth did I let myself believe that things would be a breeze after the first!! Maybe it's my attitude. But no, that would mean that the world has something to do with ME and I know I am but a speck of dust in the universe so I guess it's just a bit of bad luck that has surrounded me for the PAST THREE YEARS. Like that kid in Charlie Brown who walks around surrounded by dirt.

But it's not like the bad luck that poor woman had during the Holocaust. Or the people in Darfur are having. Or in Kenya. I know that. I am so lucky in so many ways. I just have to look at a picture of my son that sits on my desk and I know how lucky I am. I think it's just this......I'm Jewish...I complain. I whine and I complain. I am not complete without a complaint. Now that I think about it, I realize that's why Jews stick together. Who else would listen to such whining for four thousand years? Oy, I hate my nose. Oy, I'm way too fat. Oy, I need some land. Oyoyoy.

Thank goodness there are some that break the cycle and learn how to forgive. So I'm having another operation. So I'm getting more stitches in my belly. Surely, I can handle this with a smile on my face. Surely, I can do this without complaining.

Yes, I am going to break the four thousand year old cycle of Jewish girls complaining. Yes! That is what I am going to do.

But first...What the hell should I wear to this next operation? There is like absolutely nothing in my closet............................

A Very Special Episode

This is my one hundredth blog. When a TV show does it's one hundredth episode they always call it..."A Very Special Episode". Or if some main character is going to die on the show or get married or have a baby...They call that A Very Special..............................Of course, nine times out of ten when a show has been on the air for a long time and the lead couple has a baby it either means the show is on it's way out or it certainly will have "jumped the shark" when the baby is born because babies are not funny and no one knows what to do them on a TV show. You'll notice that Raymond and his wife were barely with their kids because how could they bicker and argue and have problems in bed if the kids were around. And anyway, TV kids tend to be way too precious. You just want to smack them. They are these little kids who talk like Letterman because the writers usually write them to sound like adults. "Hey mom, I've got a top ten list. The top ten reasons why I don't want to go to school today. Ten, because Billy Franklin is going to be there and if he shows me his wiener one more time I'm going to throw up..."

I have no idea why I wrote about TV kids because I was thinking of what "Very Special" thing was going to happen for me because I am writing the one hundredth blog. And the answer is...Oh joy of joys...I'm going to get my wound cauterized today. Now isn't that special? Remember, many moons ago when I had cancer and I had this feeding tube and then they took it out? Well, that resulting damn wound has been bothering me ever since. And oh I just can't wait to get that Novocain shot in my stomach again before he pours some science fiction type stuff on the wound to YUCK, get ready for this............CLOSE IT UP. Yes, I have had a hole in my mid section for the last two or three months and to say it's not pretty is an understatement. Not that anyone is looking at my belly these days except the people I swim with and they have been very kind not to remark on it except for a little girl in the summer whose eye level was just about at my belly while we took a shower and she was mortified. There is that Frankenstein aspect and it was very hard for me not to walk, with that little girl staring at me, like Boris Karloff and grunt and lurch back to my clothes. Instead, I covered my wounds with my towel and tried to act like a normal person. But when I left I smiled at her and she ran to her mother in horror. I don't know. Kids usually like me. But I guess I usually have my shirt on when I meet them.

Oh do I wish that there was some sort of alternative something or other that could cauterize the wounds to one's heart. People always say things heal with time and I always wish that time meant five minutes or maybe eight. But it means YEARS and when you get to be my age you want every minute to count and you don't want to feel the bad stuff anymore because it's too damn tiring. And if you only have a finite amount of time left why would you want to feel the bad stuff at all...If you had the choice.

AND I CAN'T EVEN DRINK!!

Here's a tip.....Do NOT buy a French cheesecake. It looked good to me when I walked into the French Bakery and pointed out La Cheesecake and paid quite a few francs for it but then I got it home and almost the entire cake was made of whipped cream. Oh, that is so French. And maybe I'm just a fat eating Jew because I really love those deli cheesecakes that are mostly made of cream cheese. (Or is it, creamed cheese? Or is that creamed corn?)

.................I think I'm nervous about that novocain shot. That's why I'm rambling. I don't know what I'm saying anymore. And this is my one hundredth blog and it should be special. So I will leave you with this..

Did you know that in 1913 Henry Ford poineered the assembly line, Thomas Mann published Death in Venice, the first Charlie Chaplin movie was screened and Richard Nixon was born?

Now if that isn't special I don't know what is................

Just As I Thought.............

I hate to say this. I don't want to bring anyone down. But day three of 2008 just sucks.

BUT

Hey, I got two good days out of it and that ain't bad. Here's the thing...How many of you go to a therapist? Raise your hands...Aha...Well, I just got screwed by a therapist (not literally) and I took some advice to heart and it was the wrong advice and I KNEW it was wrong when he gave me this advice but I was vulnerable and I listened and boy do I feel like a fool. And it's not even MY THERAPIST. I don't actually go to a therapist though I think I probably need one because it's only day three and already I feel like I'm falling off of the earth.

I don't think I ever mentioned that I had a nervous breakdown when I was about twenty one. I sat in a bathtub in New York City and let hot water in and cold water out everytime I'd feel chilly. And this lasted for THREE DAYS. Hot water, cold water, hot water, cold water. And then my dad came and got me and we rented a car and drove to Beaver Falls Pennsylvania to see my sweet Russian grandparents and my grandma took one look at me and said, "Vat's da maddah? You don't look so good, shveetheart." (Actually, she didn't sound like Humphrey Bogart but I'm not sure how to spell what she sounded like.) And then we drove to Wisconsin where I went to therapy five days a week and worked for headstart and tried to figure out what the hell was happening. And it took about nine months but finally it dawned on me...MY MOTHER! That was the problem.

And then I was all better and I was in Madison Wisconsin and I went into the Commons and there was an LA Free Press, a very groovy sixties newspaper and I saw some friends in the paper who were in a play and they were starting a theater group so I found a guy I didn't even know who was traveling South and I went with him as far as I could go, then I got on a train and went as far as that could go before the tracks got flooded so then I got on a bus that went to downtown LA and then I got on a city bus which dropped me off on Robertson Boulevard where my friends were starting the theater and I walked in with my little suitcase and that was that.

So I guess I had a therapist years ago who got me to the great "My Mother" epiphany and I truly believe therapy can be a great help but they, like doctors or teachers, are all just human and they are not always right and you just pray that your surgeon does not make one of those human errors while he's got you cut open on a table. And a therapist has your head cut open sometimes when you are really a mess and they can accidentally put your brains back in all scrambled up and you walk around thinking, hmmmmm, I'm doing everything just like I always did but I don't feel quite right and you may or may not realize that this person you trusted has actually made a huge mistake and you are paying for it with your life. Oh, it's a long story and you know I want to tell you but just know this.............I didn't listen to my heart...My intuition. Stupid. And though I know the year of the shit (in small letters, you will notice) is over on paper, I have to make sure that my head is convinced that it's actually really, really over. And I think I was actually convinced of this until someone (a therapist) whispered in my ear..."I think you're going in the wrong direction to find happiness" so I changed direction and found myself, to my surprise, back where I had started months ago. AND IT WAS AWFUL.

But I am turned around now and I'm once again on the right road. And I think January one and two will repeat themselves in some way as the months appear and sometimes January three will rear it's ugly head but I know I will not be getting into that bathtub again and I am waiting for that new epiphany to strike so I can get on another bus and be driven to life's next great adventure, whatever that may be.......................

So?

Okay, I don't want to run out the front door and scream for joy just yet because I am sure that it would immediately start to rain with much thunder and lightening and a branch would pop off a tree and fall directly onto my head and I would be skewered instantly...

BUT

I did wake up yesterday morning feeling pretty damn.........GOOD. Yes...G...O...O...D. And positive and almost, dare I say it, euphoric. Now I know that is actually a very bad sign because how good can one actually feel on the first day of a new year when we all know that that day is really just like the day before and the day before that but in our heads we hold that day up as a new beginning and we make resolutions (which I have never done for new years because it seems that I make resolutions every day like "I promise to wash my face every night even if I'm tired" and we know that is never going to happen and I am going to go to bed with a dirty face almost every night of the week) but still it's THE NEW YEAR and we tell ourselves that everything is going to be just fine (if things were bad in the first place which, if you've read this blog, you know THEY WERE!) but then I wake up on January first and by golly (always wanted to say that) I FELT GOOD. I felt like maybe I was going to get a break...For a few days. So I'm going with the good for right now and I am not going to name this year because I've got to feel it out first but I do know this...

THE YEAR OF THE SHIT IS OVER. Hoorahhoorah! And I am hoping, oh Lord am I hoping, that this will not turn out to be The Year of the Crap because I am not sure I would make it to Spring nor would I want to. So good it shall be for as long as it lasts.

And the best...The very bestest thing happened today, on the second of January. While I was having my vitamin drip I talked to a beautiful girl named Natalie who was born in Mexico and is of Middle Eastern decent and lives in France and sings and is just here for the vitamins drips because she's not feeling very well and is weak and the time flew and we dripped and then I walked out the door and there was...

CEDRIC THE HOT DOG MAN. I was so excited I practically skipped to his cart and his back was to me and I tapped him on the shoulder and he turned around and gave me a huge smile and said he was so glad to see me. AND...He told me he liked my outfit!! Oh my gosh, it isn't even an outfit it's a sweater and jeans and it's only the second day of January and I got a compliment from Cedric my idol. I am sure I am going to be hit by a car at any moment now because life should not be this good. A compliment! I am not an animal! (A reference, by the way, for those too young to have seen it, to a great David Lynch film, Elephant Man.) Anyway, learned more about Cedric...He was in the Navy and this truly handsome guy is 42 which is much closer to my age than I had imagined but still too young for me but the best part is he is going to try and have regular hours. So, those of you who live in LA listen up. Cedric and his truck will be there Tuesdays through Saturday from around 11 to 4. He will be in front of Best Buy on Olympic and Corinth in West LA just east of Santa Monica. He told me he went to a Veterans New Years Eve party and it sounded like he went alone so for all you thirty/forty something year old gals out there I would say RACE over to get that dog.

So, I am not crossing my fingers, I am not going to stop looking for lightening bolts or waiting for earthquakes but I am going to remember the first two days of 2008 with great fondness and I am going to try and hold on to that feeling and find it whenever I need it and I am also never ever going to change my "outfit" for the rest of the year.