Really not the Lady With the Lamp...

The Flinty Bitch

In the second grade, when the subpar Bluebird Reading Group, the hamster sickening in it's pinched lousy cage, our wilting bean plants jammed into dented Dixie cups, or the paste eaters in the corner all conspired to send me into a depressive tailspin, I coped by conjuring up some lie potent enough to get me outa there and to the library.

It was a pisspoor library even as kiddy libraries go, but it had a shelf of bright Orange Books that became my earliest addiction. For whatever bad reasons, they had no pictures, these books, only prissy silhouettes, but I could overlook that for the tender meat within. These were all highly digestible bio's of Famous People's childhoods and not entrancing People at that. Besides the obvious nominees like George Washington et. al. there were lots of the uncharismatic like Luther Burbank and Thomas Edison, who were geeky way before geeky got hot. But despite their awful syntax and suspect scholarship, I fell in love with the Orange Books because of two of them were about Clara Barton and Amelia Earhart, actual girl heroes! a grouping that was thin on the ground during the dark atomic '50's.

My two Orange Books awakened some flickers of what I later identified as ambition, but at the time only felt like a novel disquiet. I loved Amelia Earhart but I absolutely didn't want to do Amelia Earhart-type things like sail into cloud banks (Jesus, no!), never to be seen again. So, that left Clara Barton, The Lady With the Lamp who, despite her sweet sobriquet, was clearly such a flinty bitch that even the Orange Book's weasely prose couldn't disguise her. Well, she'd have to be, what with disinfecting the entire Crimean War and inventing modern nursing. And, in fact, I would later learn that St. Theresa, George Sand, and Marie Curie all had something of the flinty bitch in them, a quality I've deeply envied in others. A bitch I may be, but I'm the chaotic distracted kind, a bitch who flips someone off in traffic about 20 seconds too late.

I find that in my slog through this Valley of Despond, I've garnered a bit of entirely undeserved admiration because of my boy's travails. This makes me jumpy, since I know I'm the proud owner of a really bad attitude about nearly everything, especially those things involving official forms, adult diapers, and wan expectations, all of which I have in spades. Right now, in fact. But a certain amount of stress is beginning to tell. I know all the signs, and one is my quickening desire to get a tattoo.

I spent a bunch of time yesterday carefully examining flash, trying to choose one, so I could head over to Suffer City that same night and get it hammered into my bicep. Something, probably the thought of pain I'd actually have to pay for, plus a few bleached grains of sanity kept me from it. But I 'fessed up to my boy. He's been readmitted to Baylor after a really fearful asthma attack, and I walked in just as the doctor was telling him he also had a MRSA staph infection, a particularly resistant kind.

"Well, they'll take care of it, right?" he asked once the doctor left. I stared at the floor trying to think. My medical knowledge tends to conclude somewhere around the early '70's, and what I knew of staph was that it was a real mofo. In fact, I didn't know how I could be in his room without being scrubbed and gowned. An airy glob of handcleaner didn't seem to cut it. "So whatchoo been up to?" he asked.

"I nearly got a tattoo," I said dully. "And I watched a Charles Manson documentary around 1 AM."

"You have absolutely no bottom," he told me. "Jeez. What is it with you and Charles Manson? Plus, the only tattoo you're allowed to have is a panda bear on your ankle."

"Really?" I asked. "That is such shit. I hate pandas. You're just saying that because you know I hate pandas. Their babies are the size of baked potatoes and pandas never know what to do with them. They just sit and stare until some zookeeper goes, Alright already and takes the kid off to their two room apartment."

"They don't know how to fuck either," my husband pointed out. "Most animals seem to know how, but pandas just get confused."

"Well, it's hard to tell a boy panda from a girl panda," I said reasonably. "I mean how do they know what they're getting? I can see their side on that one."

"You're not sleeping," my boy said, suddenly alert as a whippet. "You always want a tattoo when you have insomnia."

"Yeah," I agreed. "Plus I'm sleepwalking. I haven't done that since I was little. What I'm doing now is leaping up, grabbing the wheelchair and banging from room to room looking for you." (Then I'll suddenly come to, in the dining room holding the handles in a death grip, or I find the chair hulking in the hall like an Alfred Hitchcock title graphic.) "Anyway I'm going to the doctor tomorrow," I said, "We'll see what he thinks." (I didn't tell my boy that I hide the car keys every night. Whipping around with a wheelchair is benign enough, but I really don't want to wake up in my ancient Benz, rattling off to Galveston, zooming towards the shrimp boats and other mischief.)

So I spent the day watching snatches of football, massaging his feet and hands. "I just hate that you're going through this," I said, getting weepy, feeling angry too. "You're suffering so much and I'm so sorry."

"I was an athlete," he told me, eyes still fixed on the Tampa game. "I learned when it's something you really hate, you just go moment to moment."

"Yeah," I said absently. Now I was thinking of my undeserved back pats. What was I supposed to do after his stroke? Leave? Ride the Dog to Albequerque and start anew? Go to Home Depo where guys huddle up, hoping for a day's construction gig, and pay the first joker to say he'll change a catheter?

Q: So how do you get to be long-time married?

A: You don't leave.

Q: But what do you do when everything turns to shit?

A. You don't leave.

Or something like that.

We're in a weird motel...the indie version

During the late Jurassic age, I taught elementary art to get my teacher's certificate. Humping more supplies than a hundred dollar mule, I schlepped from school to school and met the wee ones. No mistake, these were tough rooms, so as an opener I'd asked the same question. How old are you inside? The six year olds were a bust, since that's a surreal age anyway. "I'm a bone," I remember one of them saying. "Just a big ol' bone."

It's a good question though. I happen to be 26 inside. How about you? And here's another. Where do you live? If, by temperament, circumstance, or a really bad smack habit, you live outside this culture, then you are, in effect, a Navajo. Being a blanket-wearing Navajo isn't too bad because you can see that everyone around you is bleeding from the ears over a construct that has no reality: arsisiety, I call it. Arsisiety is made up of newspaper snippets, chunks of blogging, staticky radio noise, talking heads on TV, and lots and lots and lots of colored pictures. And that's all.

But arsiety has a lot to say about airline tragedies, small children, Internet porn, and the durable horror of a dire medical prognosis.

So far only a few friends have ventured over to see me in my omnipresent Chucks, latex gloves, a sexy dab of Clorox behind each ear. As to the folks on the phone, their heads are totally full of arsiety doomsday ghastlyhood. Still, they seem to know all they need to. Oh, my God. How are you going to do this? There's no way you can take care of him. It's impossible. You've got that artificial hip. And at your age.

(Go screw yourself. I'm 26 inside.)

So, a girl walks into a room and Mistah Stroke opens his eyes and says, I got my keys and my tackle,and he holds out his hand to show me a nasal spray, his Primatene, and a plastic ruler from our auto insurence. S'all I need, he says. And the girl says, "Groovy. Time to change your catheter." And Mistah Stroke moans, But there's no one left. Where is everyone? Ohdear, Ohdear, Ohdear, Ohdear, Ohdear. And the girl says, "They're all making Halloween costumes. Lift up your butt." And she whips off his XL Depends. And Mistah Stroke says, Oh no, oh no, oh no. They're all gone. Everyone's gone. They'll get us too. And the girl says, "Bullshit. Roll this way." The girl says bullshit a lot.

So she puts down the waterproof pad, trades out his suave leg catheter for the giant flabby nightime catheter, gaffer-tapes it to the bed, puts anti-fungal ointment on his butt, powders him with lemony Mexican talc and whips on a new pair of Depends and yanks down his tshirt. Then she takes his blood pressure and his blood sugar. Mistah Stroke pronounces both excellent. "Bullshit," says the girl, scribbling down numbers. "Blood sugar is way high, blood pressure isn't great either."

You got a pen? asks Mistah Stroke asks her. "Yeah, why?" says the girl, holding hers up. For when they sign everything over to you. After I'm gone. "Nobody's signing dookie," says the girl, "we got shit to do." What? What? What can we do? There's no time. No time, Mistah Stroke wails a thin high wail. They've got us. We're so little. We're just so little. "You gotta get ready for Neuro-Rehab," says the girl. "That's like the rehab Olympics." Mistah Stroke brightens up considerably. The Olympics? he asks, looking pleased. I had no idea."That's you, bub," says the girl, giving him a peck. "Olympics all the way."

And that's one night down.

How do you like your blue-eyed boy now, Mistah Stroke?

Baylor Rehab people are great on setting goals, even when those goals are tiny and creep out us more abled types. My goal is to know when I'm going to crap. My goal is to roll my chair to the short bus. My goal is to clean my dick. And, don't get me wrong, I salute all goal-setting and a victorious climb to the summit from base camp.

This cheerful can-do thinking can leak into us bedraggled caretakers too. Me, my goal is to search out Mistah Stroke and beat him with a frying pan until he looks like a mashed peach. But I probably shouldn't add it to the optimistic scrawlings on the white board installed in our newly rearranged home. The eighteen pounds of stroke reading Baylor piled in my arms mentions that there will be a change in emotions.

I imagine my funny witty boy is in there somewhere and maybe he can dig out. Sometimes I can even see him flickering like a candle in my hub's eyes. In the meantime, as the literature says, a flat-voiced entity, prone to fury has taken over, equipped with lousy judgement and the self-centeredness of a toddler. "Why haven't you picked up my shirts from the cleaner's?" Mistah Stroke demands. Because you can't walk, or button it, or have a place to wear it, and I'm too fucking tired, I answer in my echoing head, but I say, "I had other shit to do" and Mistah Stroke glares at me. "Like what?" And I don't say that I get up at 7 AM and keep running until 12 PM, when I write, pay bills, and watch drops of sweat land on my calculator. "Just a buncha shit," I say, in what I hope is a kindly voice that my boy might recognize.

Mistah Stroke requires catheter changing, 3 + large special salt-free, sugar-free carefully balanced meals, blood sugar readings, blood pressure readings, sponge baths, haz-mat waste disposal, swabs of antibiotic on a pressure point, Gold Bond Powdering, chair lifts and transfers, pillow shiftings, and clothing changes.

I require a nights sleep.

I took a nap this evening and woke to screaming. COME IN HERE RIGHT NOW! GODDAMNIT I KNEW IT! THIS ISN'T GOING TO WORK! I DIDN'T KNOW WHERE YOU WERE FOR AN HOUR AND A HALF AND WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO? AND THERE YOU WERE IN FRONT OF LAW&ORDER. YOU ALWAYS GO TO SLEEP IN FRONT OF LAW&ORDER. THIS IS A BIG FAIL. A BIG FAIL.

So I cried for a while and then got Mistah Stroke ready for bed. We ended the day like we began it, Mistah Stroke and me: in complete lunacy. He was up bright and early this AM. And when I dragged my weary ass in, he told me he was worried about all the money we owed Led Zepplin. "We do?" I asked, brightening some, wondering if I'd been living a more exciting life than in my current tar pit. "Yes," Mistah Stroke said, firmly, "and I'm worried." "I'll figure it out," I told him when I returned with his lumberjack's breakfast, which I plopped in front of him. I drank a Red Bull as he chewed moodily, then remarked grudgingly, "The food's better than in the hospital. Maybe it's better here." Maybe.

You have to take care of yourself, say the well-meaning voices. I'm given nice lotions and a candle. Pamper yourself, say the voices, as I throw the 18th wash in and scrub down two bathrooms with Clorox ala the infection-fighting pamphlet from Baylor. I've got other things on my mind besides fun pedicures, believe me.

I like to think about owing money to Led Zepplin, though. Rockers trump rehab every time.

Chop water, carry wood...

The Homestead

"Chuck Taylors," the bodyguard-sized black guy, remarked approvingly, glancing down at my feet. We were sharing an elevator at the Baylor Institute for Rehabilitation. He wore khakis, a Baylor-issued polo shirt with Baylor Rehab stitched over the tit, and enormous cross-trainers.

"Yeah," I told him proudly. "I can do anything in my Chucks." And stuck up one foot so he could check it out.

"I know that's right," he said, grinning.

It's right and it's true. When facing a gruesome job (frightening kid diseases, vomit, cat shit, horrible glop in the refrigerator) my sister always says, "I can do anything in rubber gloves." With me it's Chucks. Once I'm laced up I'm ready for serious rock n' roll. My mini-encountor in the elevator cheered me up. I was wearing my Buddha t-shirt, tight dirty jeans, and a hoodie in honor of Training Day with the Team and the black guy was obviously hip. I'd be assisting a person twice my size, half of him inert as public sculpture.

The black guy was certainly hipper than the lady with concrete hair, gold shrimp earrings, a $$$$$ suit, and foot-killer heels, when we encountered one another in the elevator at the Roberts Tower. She looked me up and down as I sagged grayly against the elevator controls. At the time, Lynn was in ICU, I had the Swine 'flu and was chugging between two hospitals, the house and drug store, and I had on my Awful Life uniform (see above) in honor of The Horror Show, and my attitude was as advertised.

"I looked like you in junior high," the lady told me.

"So flame on," I said, getting out on my floor. If I came on like an old badass, offending all and sundry, then avert your eyes muthafuckahs.

But this particular day, getting off on the 3rd floor, I spotted Lynn stretched out on the bed, wearing his navy scrubs, looking like the old athlete he is, and grinning his new lop-sided grin. And then suddenly the Team piled in. There was Speech Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, Lifestyle Counseling, plus two or three I can't remember, and they all seemed young, well-adjusted, determinedly nice, with a kind of Lutheran Youth Group vibe and smelled like hand sanitizer. Each therapist addressed Lynn one by one, rattled off the goals he'd met, and predicted a stunning comeback. My boy, it seems, had worked his half-paralyzed ass off and this hoo-hah was a valedictory and graduation.

Perhaps it was a graduation too soon, I thought, trying to fathom the directions on a Foley catheter, while Lynn snarled, What's the problem? from his bed. The problem was that he was home and I was up to my chapped elbows in Baylor reading materials, scary-looking equipment, and a long list of arcane quandaries.

Even wearing my Chucks, I felt queasy. He had to have a glucose reading in the AM and PM, and our glucose-monitoring stuff was out of date and the unidentifiable battery was fritzing. His carbs had to be counted at every meal and each meal had to weighed and measured out, then recorded.His catheter was a leg device in the AM and putting it on was like putting clothes on a raccoon for sheer impossibility. The PM catheter held no joy either. His shoulder brace looked like a bondage freak's delight and everything I picked up was made out of velcro. He had eight separate perscriptions of which we had only two and lots of calls to make to the charge nurse at Baylor and the two other pharmacies involved in the fuck-up. Lifting him up was impossible and, lying on his back, he ate most meals with his fingers and all my blessings.

By two in the morning I was face down on the bed, still wearing my clothes, feeling I'd been beaten with a pair of cast-iron xylophone sticks. And that's all I remember.

Sunday was better, but that's a whole other radio show.

Mom's Sonic Boom Atomic Apple Pan Dowdy...

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Friday night I ate dinner in the bathroom, which seemed weird but there was no one there to comment. I was gnawing on the roast chicken I'd bought a couple of days before, but my cats frothed into Chicken Madness with such ferocity that the Big Chicken and I fled to the john. As I hung over the sink, tearing at a thigh, I could hear sounds of gnashing and howling just outside the door, like animal mutants from some sleazebag gore fest. I ignored them.

Chewing on the ass end of a chicken was a celebration. I'd coaxed my elderly Benz with its all its fearsome nuh-nuh-nuh sounds from greasepit to grease pit before winding up at Faustino's Transmission Repair. There, with the TV jammed on a blaring Mexican channel and a small beautiful child asleep on an oily couch, the Universe delivered me to a shop where the mechanics truly knew their shit. I got to stand under the carraige and, with a guy pointing things out, I actually eyeballed the three dripping seals and dented pan signaling an apocolyptic tranny burn-out. They couldn't do it that very day, but they poured in two quarts of oil and said I'd be okay until Monday.

On Saturday my dear pal called me to say he could cut my hair afterall, and I blew a kiss to God and all his crazy angels. This never happened during hippie days, when I actually wanted my hair down to my ass, but now in my declining years, my hair has turned into something kudzu-like. I was moving toward dreads as a clear next-stage.

"Oh, my God," my friend said, when I climbed out of the car. He looked pretty awestruck himself .

"I know, I know," I said. "I look like a goddamned troll-doll. Then happily settled on his fold-out high kitchen stool, I suggested, "Maybe cut to the middle of my neck."

"You'll get it cut the way I fucking cut it..." he started bitterly, yanking a comb through my raggedy multi-colored mane.

"...and I'll like it," I finished. I know how these things work: the kindness of others, that is.

Two weeks ago, Lynn's work place delivered three oozing file-boxes full of hot food. When I tore one open I stared down at a fatty pork chop casserole floating in oil, canned vegetables, and mushroom soup, next to it was a plastic container full of pink rubber slabs of ham. But this is what the generous hearts of others send. You get what they like, what comforts them, and their love is the real taste of the thing. I wonder how many Poor Souls have smacked their lips over my Super-dooper Gazpacho Tastee Delight. Probably they've sighed deeply, wondering why I sent over a jug of iced down V-8 juice with crap floating in it.

We do our best, you and I. We do our best.

Sunday, another old friend hauled my wild ass over to Baylor. My boy had called me the morning before, while I stared dully into space, wondering why he was calling on the phone when we lived in the same house. This is something I do every morning, and I'm so glad I'm not a widow. If I were, no doubt his naggy ghost would haunt my every waking hour, like some sorrowful mirage of loss.

"This is extremely important," he said impatiently. "Write this down."

"Okay, okay," I said, scrabbling for my pen, still hoping he'd hurry up and come down the hall to get his coffee.

"When you come on Sunday, I need you to bring the clippers. I need to get all these Old Guy whiskers off. Got that? Next, I need the nose-hair clippers. I've got one that that's like four feet long."

"Gotcha," I said. And all day Saturday, I wondered if I could shave him because I never have, but I decided I'd give it a shot. I remembered myself with my broken hip, staring at my chipped toenail polish, my scaly heels, wanting to kill myself.

So Sunday, when my friend and I finally tumbled into his room like a couple of clowns, I got out all the stuff, wrapped a towel around his neck, then shaved and trimmed, not doing a great job, but doing what I could.

"You look like yourself!" I said, amazed, watching his familiar face emerge out of all that Gentle Ben shubbery.

"Stay a little longer," he coaxed.

And I did.

Alt.ending

The Public Option

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Some things don't bear thinking on. Like what happens to Easter chicks and those free puppies at the mall. Or wondering uneasily about that child's shoe discarded and tumbling on the freeway? Or remembering my husband's body become wax, his skin turning loose and gray like a tattered garment, his mouth a dark O, as he realizes the ultimate betrayal of the body years before his time. His terrible awareness during the stroke: I had so many plans, and his wife's terrific rejoinder: I think we're on a whole new plan now, baby.

There's no time to brood over stuff like that. There isn't time to ruminate darkly over the mean prick at my support group who cut into my melt-down, noting prissily, Other people would like to talk too. There's no time to take satisfaction at the numbers of my group who shot him deathray looks, or for me to construct a stylish grouping of you-have-a-little-dick remarks to be delivered later and savagely. Nor is there time to take to my bed for a satisfying weepy escape, clutching a bouquet of radiology and ambulence bills to my soft breasts. I'm operating in 15 minute intervals now. and everything depends on other things.

The Benz is still mouldering bleakly in the garage, a victim of contingencies.The Iraqi garage-guys are close to me but still too far to walk home, and everyone I know is too booked up to take me . Then a friend calls me and she can do it, but only tomorrow. I'd told Lynn yesterday, I might have to miss seeing him, and his voice flooded with tears, Really? Then I realized I could grab a Cowboy Cab and get to Baylor that way, and I said, I'll be there, darlin'. Because isn't that what I actually promised 31 years ago?

There are my pals to contact, thank, and dissuade, like the guy who promises he can be in Dallas within 24 hours, bringing two ten ton army trucks, full of water, food, guns, and ammo. Me highly tempted to say either Jesus Christ! or Absolutely! picturing army vehicles rumbling down the freeway here, helocopters circling above the traffic like jumbo buzzards, then quietly deciding that he and I must have a talk, maybe quite soon, over his world destruction fantasies. There's my cookie-factory owning friend who promises clear bubbles of his pricey dough to Lynn's room for nurse-bribing purposes.

There's money to be lined up, payments to be arranged, put-off, and rescheduled. Me glancing nervously at the incoming bills, then recalling the wife of a client who perfectly fufills the biblical Good Woman ideal, with a modern twist. For she riseth at dawn, to upchuck bulemically and rag on the pool guy. Then, for her childs' sakes, she swoopeth upon insurence companies, to shriek at her HMO until night cometh. I make a note to call her, hoping to acquire the necessary shrew skills. I wonder if I'll be thrown upon America's only actual healthcare system: the bake sale. The one held in a windy parking lot, dirty newspapers flying around, and blown-up photos of the Poor Soul placed here and there, with fat teenagers offering a car wash as well.

There's no time to wonder about that either. But there's time, there must always be time, to hammer out an angry blog posting, as I'm drawn deeper into America's Healthcare Fun House, as I try not to bite some blank-faced functionary on the neck.

And there's time for some quick cat cuddling, as Antone Boudreau, Dickie Lee, and Lola rub around on my legs. It's not love really; it's about the roasted chicken I brought home the other night. They know I've got it stashed someplace.

That's me. Keeper of The Big Chicken.

Luck 2.0

Shitstorm 6.0

One nice aspect of living through a shitstorm is that it's kind of restful, if you think about it right. Since everything needs doing Right Goddamned Now! it doesn't much matter what you pick up and fiddle with. It needs doing. One fairly awful night, Right After, R.A. The Stroke, Lynn was convinced I was the Governor of Louisiana. Well, we're not going to have a bunch of conversation tonight, I thought brightly, and diddled with a client's website design.

I was glad I had, when the Chairman called today. "How can you do this?" he asked. "Don't you have the Swine Flu and doesn't your husband have a stroke?" I explained patiently, that down here on the 8th circle of Hell, we're not just toasting marshmallows. We're still doing shit. One thing we're not doing is the laundry however, so all my jeans have fairly serious diaper butt. But meanwhile, I'd gotten four whole hours of sleep, surrendered my will over to God, talked to a member of the reality-based community, and felt like a monster of health. Had decided if Lynn was going to die, he was going to fucking die, against my most strenuous wishes, true, but there wasn't much I could do about it. I had to float on the wings of the world and trust them.

I was now wearing my black and white Chucks, my favorite Buddha t-shirt, diaper-butt jeans and a faceful of makeup. Planned to go see my boy.

But when I wandered out to my ancient war pony, aka The 15 year old Benz, it wheezed like an old whore. For this is the Law of the Shitstorm: If It's Big And Expensive And Breaking It Will Really Fuck You Up, It Will Happen. So I knew something horrible was going on with the transmission, and was not amazed. I was just grateful I didn't need to have both knees scoped too. But I was out of catfood. Oh Jesus. Can you do just one grocery run? I asked it and the war pony's headlights gleamed seductively. Wait right there I told it and raced back to the house. Had to call my boy. I thought about breaking down in that particular part of Dallas and shuddered. I'd be barbequed and eaten in a vacant squat, probably before nightfall.

Lynn picked right up and his voice sounded good: nice and rich like it really is. "You sound great," I said. I explained about the car. "I think the transmission's going to fall out on the floor, but don't worry. I got it covered," I said figuring quickly. I could do one transmission, but not a vacuum system. But then no one can do a vacuum system. We ancient Benz owners live in dread of something going wrong with the Benz' completely insane vaccum system that transports various vital fluids and gases. We think. None of us really knows anything about it except it's totally unaffordable and you are truly SOL when it goes.

"No. Shit no. Don't come," he said thinking about empty lots, pointless murders, awful drugs, and sketchy characters too. "I showed Heidi my blog," he said. Heidi is one of the army of creamy rosy-cheeked Baylor therapists.

"You did?" I said. "What'd she think?

"Oh, she was impressed. And then I said maybe we could get the communications up to what I'm more used to."

"She was treating you like a moron," I guessed.

"Yeah. But I think it'll be okay." I bet it will, I thought. I bet old Heidi's fucking shiny white veneers fell out on the floor when she got a gander.

See, my boy has a blog with upwards of 6000 viewers daily and sometimes 10,000. It's read worldwide, with 200 readers in the Vatican alone and about 20 in some yurt in Tibet. My theory? I think he's done TV so long that he just intuitively knows what tweaks people. Plus, he's ravenously curious about everything, so it's always an interesting effortless blog. His theory? People suck. "They just like the big tits, and weird stuff I do. And anything about Miley Cyrus." Actually it was moi, your very own Writer to the Stars, that caused him to go viral.

Now at my tiny blog, with my 10-20 dog-faithful readers, I really do write about weird shit and then draw curly inferences with each hand-carved letter. So I came upon this article one day, Man Marries Pineapple, about a guy in Germany with a thing for fruit. There's stuff that's actually too weird for me, so I sent it to Lynn. He'd just started Athensboy: The View Behind Blue Eyes and was averaging about 60 hits a day, which I thought was so successful, you'd have to be a greedy bastard to ask for more.

He posted it and then fifteen minutes later, he yelled, I think I'm going viral! The two of us stood there staring at the screen, watching different parts of the world map light up. Holy Shit! we breathed.Within two hours he had 16,000 hits and it's never slacked off much since. So old Heidi can go fuck herself. She's lucky just to get to hang around him.

But we'd already had The Talk. And I'd given him my view of rehab as I'd experienced it."See, I think it's like public school.They're really aiming for a good C average joe. They don't like failures and they sure as shit don't want any A's. So if you don't want to turn into one of those old assholes on a motorized chair, with a nice black lady trudging behind you, then you gotta fight. It's a head game. When I was a patient no one listened to me and no one believed me. So I just decided I would never, never, never shut up about the horrible pain in my shoulder (turned out to be a snapped rotator cuff) and I would not answer any dumbass questions beginning with the words Are we... " I shut up abruptly. He was dealing with enough. And who was I anyway?

Then I went home and sobbed for about four hours, feeling unequal to all of it, as I always am in the face of love and loss.