Two weeks ago, I wrote several paragraphs. The computer ate it (ok, I deleted it in error and could not fish it out of the soup) and when I tried to reconstruct it, found that “FUCK IT” was pretty much all that came out. That telll you how things are? Sorry. But here it is, July 4 as I write this and I’m going to try again. It’s going to be in the nature of a list. I don’t like the fakey cheeriness of “count your blessings” as it belongs, in my life, with the fakey cheeriness of “when god closes a door, blah blah blah” or the phoniness of “pre-published writer.” Sorry, but I hate that. I hate affirmations. I hate visualizing, I hate the concept of “saying it will make it so”. It won’t, you know. I don’t visualize world peace (though I have, I admit, visualized whirled peas, as the alternative bumper sticker suggests) and I don’t do well thinking positively. I tend not to hold a lot of higher beliefs, and tend to avoid proselytizing for any cause or belief. I do appreciate this stuff in other people at times, but it just strikes me as too ESTy. You might remember Werner Erhard who founded EST whose contribution to fighting world hunger was to offer “the Hunger Project” which suggested we all think about world hunger and that would fix it. Yeah. In random order: 1. “Avenue Q” was lots of fun and I’m very glad we went. It’s astonishing how much fun you can have with puppets, and how breaking the fourth wall in a particular way – you see the puppets and their puppeteers – there’s no hiding, no ventriloquism – is just cool. Stu watched a YouTube video where some of the actors went out among the people in London and we watched an episode of a Food Network show where the actors were visiting a bakery and it’s simply wonderful goofy how they go in and out of character. Some months back Kevin Clash was on the radio show “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me’ with his best-known puppet character, Elmo. It was a tad weird as you could swear they talked over each other. Go ahead, listen to the podcast, ask Peter Sagal. So we had a lovely dinner and then we went to the theater. Huge fun. 2. Then last weekend we did it again, dinner and a show, as it were. We went to “Short Stories Live”, a production from ACT (Seattle, not SF) where several actors from the big deal theater here read three short stories. In this case, they were from “the Roaring Twenties”. I went because one story was by Dorothy Parker. I had (sorry) no interest in the other two, one by Fitzgerald (Sorry I simply never have gotten him, and don’t recall a thing about the great American novel he wrote.) and one by PG Wodehouse. Okay, 99.9 percent of you and of all my friends adore Wodehouse. I do not. I cannot stand PG Wodehouse’s characters. I hate Jeeves, I hate Bertie, I hate all the Drones and I hate all their girlfriends, mothers, aunts and others. Hate ‘em. I will never learn to love them the way Stu does and the way most of you do, I even get, to a large extent, what it is about Wodehouse you like. He makes me grit my teeth and roll my eyes and I can’t wait for it to be over. The performances were a delight- instead of one actor reading the entire story (as was the usual way they did stuff and was the way the Parker story was read) they broke it out to several actors and it worked. We talked with a couple of them afterwards and had a great time (besides it was 90 degrees out in the heat of the day and we were inside a nicely air-conditioned hall). Getting in and out was cute fun as I needed to be pushed up and then belayed down a very steep temporary ramp. And I admit to be thrilled that one of the people helping me out of the place was the director of the theater company. He needs to know that this venue does that to people in wheelchairs. They were all very glad to help but it was nerve-wracking. Just a bit. Dinner after was again really fine and I had strawberry shortcake the way it am supposed to be (biscuits, not sponge cake folks) and went home in the coolth of the day. 3. I have a three page letter going to the president, CEO and chair of FedEx about his lousy rotten lying stinking shit of a company that cannot manage to get one goddam package to an address when it says it will. And thinks nothing about making you sit around waiting for 12 hours (as I had to sign for the thing), and being lied to by three different people. Seriously. Lied to. About the hours of delivery. About how I would be contacted with an ETA. Best of all, after a day and a half, about 6 phone calls, three supervisors later reading that I was “unavailable” while I was sitting in my house (probably on the fricking phone with FedEx) when they attempted to delivery the time. You don’t do that. You don’t tell someone “we will call you” and then not bother to call and then try and pass the blame on to ME for your errors, lies, shortcomings and screw-ups. Oh no you don’t. Happily, we did get the new television in time to watch the concert held in London for Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday. It was broadcast on Canadian tv as it happened. A few days later, it appeared on cable in the US. GODS forbid we show something like this on network. There’s probably some show featuring people eating worms to rerun for the12th time, or an in-depth discussion of whoever it is who is famous and having a baby this week. OOO, now that affects my life. The concert had a lot of cool “I never heard of them” performers which was the best part for me. I don’t truly care about Queen (and without Freddy Mercury?) and okay, so that was Amy Winehouse. Oh dear gods. And the scrolling “birthday messages” telling Mr. Mandela how “inspirational you are” and all from total strangers struck me as a waste of pixels (like he cares? I know, you want ot do something but come on. That Stacy from Milwaukee wishes you the best birthday EVAH probably did not really register. The man is 90 and spent a huge part of his life in prison. He walks with difficulty and needs help getting on and off stage. Scrolling birthday messages seem a little trite and stupid, even if Peter from Birmingham thinks “you’re the best!” 4. I appear to have developed stress migraines the last few weeks, something that does not happen to me. I get migraines, yes, but never due to emotional upsets; they have almost always come in a cyclical manner, even post-menopause. The last few weeks, however, they’ve shown up (one just started, I went and took something) and have been hanging around most mornings. Happily, every drug on the market for migraines works on me. Happily, I have a really great doctor who supplies samples for me to try. But as many of you know, there’s little worse than the pain of a migraine headache. (Happily, by the time this was finished, the headache had already started to ease.) 5. I am blessed with my friends. This I know. If it isn’t clear enough, four of you PAID for my wheelchair ramp. In fact, I recently took the money left over (it was built by a volunteer; I paid for materials – wood and concrete) but he donated his labor) and paid it forward to a local man who lives with neurofibromatosis and whose co-workers and friends are raising money for him to have surgery, which he has been unable to pay for in recent years. The ramp is a lifeline, since without it, I’d be unable to get out of the house with the wheelchair and I thank you all again. I assumed, I admit, that no one would want their money back so I didn’t even ask you guys – it was a minor amount but I decided to pass it on. 6. Speaking of which, the amazing person who has come to my financial rescue before has done so again and there is nothing I can do except to say how amazing this person is. When someone is generous and doesn’t want acknowledgement or thanks, it’s a tad frustrating. All you can do is, um, well, enjoy/appreciate what has been given and pass it on when you can. I am without question hugely fortunate that this person is in my life and I’m stunned every damn day at the generosity I’ve benefited from. I’m learning to ask without being too overly squishy about it, but I still cry whenever the answer is “yes” because it amazes me. Thank you. I don’t think you read my blog but thank you anyway. 7. I’m having a slightly better time with the chair but it’s still very very very very frustrating and difficult. I went to the shop last week to get some stuff checked – I almost ran out of power last week after meeting Tim Hallinan for coffee – a nasty end to one of the nicest things to happen recently – and had to have the batteries tested. No one knows what went wrong. I talked about charging and batteries and we fixed a couple minor things (or talked about fixing them) (like the footrest) and talked about removing the headrest because it’s centered on the back of the chair and I’m NOT. That is, my head does not GO in it properly so we’re probably taking it off for now. I’m still fucking up going through doors, going backwards hitting far too many things as I turn around and I’m still getting furiously angry and tearful at my failures. I can’t help it. I FUCKING HATE THIS. Do you understand how it is? I don’t really. I just know that I AM GODDAM FURIOUS at not being good at this and at knocking things over, and running things over, and breaking things and damaging things and fucking UP. I don’t do well at making mistakes and learning things slowly. I want to be able to do this NOW and stop screwing up. It’s very hard. There’s no way to do it except practice and understanding the chair which is very hard because it’s impossible to sense where you are in space with stuff behind you. When I attended grad school in Albany, there was a shuttle bus between our dorm complex and the main campus. I still remember getting WHACKED in the head as I sat there by people with Really Big Backpacks who had no sense of where they were in the aisle of the bus, but forgot that their backs extended a foot or so past their bodies. This is how it is. And it’s awful and frustrating and I’m crying way too much and screaming and having tantrums and pounding on things because I keep hearing cracks and screeches and the sounds of things breaking, falling and snapping as I try to do something. But Jesse Helms is still dead. And we finally do have a working television. But I’d suggest you stay clear of the house unless you’re willing to witness an alleged adult behaving like a emotionally screwed up teenager. Or worse. Tomorrow, we’re probably going to go see the new Pixar film, “Wall-E”. That’should help. As long as I don’t break something between here and there.