almost spring

We had a big melt yesterday. Here's two views.

early this morning

Last night I dreamed X stopped to talk with me but didn't really want to talk. Was considering not talking with me at all. As X was talking to me (about not talking to me) I could see X didn't have any teeth, that is, the jagged gaps where X's teeth used to be - as if they'd just been pulled, except X's mouth wasn't bloody.

I was thinking about this dream. Feeling bad, feeling I'd been unaccountably rude back some months ago, was it really that long ago?, when I thought what it meant that X didn't have any teeth: X's opinion/words/attitude didn't "have any teeth"; no bite; couldn't hurt me!

I had the most delicious feeling of relief and realized I'd hit on something undeniably true. I just smiled and smiled.



On an entirely different subject, really different, I got my first mammogram this morning.

A few months ago I switched doctors, and they (the doctor and the nurse-practitioner) recommended I get a mammogram, and scheduled the appointment for me at the local hospital. I'm forty-two, and since my family doesn't have a history of breast cancer it's ok I waited this long. But now, probably, I'm going to get one every year. Not that anything is wrong, but I want to know about it as soon as possible if anything does go wrong in the future. It's helpful that the health insurance I have covers one mammogram per year. I don't know how much it costs out of pocket, but probably more than I can afford...then again, maybe I can. I just looked it up and apparently it can cost between $50 - $150. Not anywhere near as bad as I thought. I was feeling pretty good about the insurance company covering it, but now I realize it's not much skin off their noses. Dang. Why they cover mammograms and not any kind of bloodwork that indicates other kind of preventable diseases, is a mystery (except bloodwork, as a preventative tool, is probably more expensive...and more frequently used than mammograms). Sigh. Whatever.

So I went up to the hospital at 7:45am, so I could be 30 minutes early for my 8:30am appointment. After checking in I ran into a woman I know, who was on her way out. Without thinking I said "how are you?" and got an iffy reply. She'd just gotten a mammogram! She told me it wasn't too bad, and if I relaxed my shoulders it would help. O-kay. I got into the waiting room and didn't even see the little changing rooms and went straight to the lavatory to change into the hospital gown. But I was used to gowns being wrong side around and went out to get help to snap it up in the back. A very nice woman in the waiting room told me the snaps go in the front for mammogram exams. Oh, yeah, that makes sense. I put my sweater on over the gown...it was something like -20 this morning...and waited my turn. I put my coat and tops in one of the lockers. I filled out the forms. Then, after the woman who'd turned on the TV left I turned it off and looked around. Lots of signage about where the gowns were and disclaimers about waiting times and payment plans, and the hospital not being responsible for lost or stolen items. But nothing about the changing rooms being changing rooms, how to put on the gowns, or what to do if you've never had a mammogram before. Oh, yeah, and this is the part I really hated: the cabinet that the mammogram exam gowns were kept was pink (nothing else in room was pink, and it didn't really "go" with the rest of the decor) and the cabinet was way too high on the wall for someone using a wheelchair. Actually, now that I think of it the changing rooms and lockers weren't remotely accessible to someone using a wheelchair, either. Does the hospital have separate accomodations? I'm going to call them and find out. It seems like an egregous oversight. I don't use a wheelchair, I just have a very strong belief in universal design. Anyway, even though it was clear the hospital had gone to some trouble to design this waiting room, they hadn't gone to nearly enough trouble.

Then I got the examination. The technician was a short white woman in her 50's or early 60's in a colorful hospital smock-jacket. She was friendly and warm and asked if I'd ever had a mammogram before. Since I hadn't she told me she'd tell what was happening every step of the way. She got me positioned into the x-ray machine, right and then left, and then left and right, four pictures in all. I was amazed how well she handled my breasts without feeling like she was handling my...breasts. It didn't feel like a loaded situation, it felt like she was positioning any other non-sexual part of my body. I'm guessing this must take practice, but it seemed to be normal for her, and she was completely comfortable in this very awkward situation. Thank goodness, because if she hadn't been comfortable it would have been just awful, because I was certainly not feeling super confident and at ease. So hats off to her for doing her job well! It took maybe twenty minutes. Amazing and normal and odd and uncomfortable and ok.

Dr. Love back from the heart of space

The shuttle Atlantis toucheddown safely at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday morning at 9:07am. Whoo. So happy and honestly, relieved. Anything could have happened, but fortunately for everyone involved only the planned and predicted events took place.

My cousin-in-law, Dr. Stan Love, was one of the mission specialists who just re-entered the known world. I watched the events unfold in real time on the SpaceflightNow site via text (I didn't have a subscription for the live video feed, silly me).

Then I was all in a dither about sending flowers to Stan to welcome him back. First I went to a internet florist sight, and had almost completed the transaction when I realized I wasn't sure how long Stan would be in Florida, or if I even had the right address. So I quit that and decided to send them to his home address in Houston, and went downtown to pick out an arrangement from a local florist. But when I started to fill out the address information I realized I didn't know when there would be somebody home to get the flowers, as I realized my cousin, Jancy, and their kids would probably all be in Florida. Ahhhggg!

I went home and called my Dad. Although he didn't have a ready answer for me, while I was on the phone with him I realized I had a contact phone number from the launch invitation. I decided to try that number and see where it took me. A lovely woman answered the call and was able to direct me to a local florist in Houston (although at first I thought I was talking with someone in Florida!!!) who would deliver the flowers in a timely fashion. The woman said Stan would be back in Houston either Thursday or Friday, and the flowers would definetly get delivered to him whichever day he got back.

So I called the florist, who was as nice as could be, and helped me figure out what kind of an arrangement to order. In the end he assured me it would be a nice MASCULINE bouquet. I let that hard to fathom idea remain a mystery and thanked him for his thoughtfulness, signing the card "Welcome Home Stan - From Your Proud Cousin-In-Law, Eva".


P.S. Here's an autograph I received from Stan recently. In case you can't read it, he's saying how nice it was I sent the flowers...so sweet.

Snow, Love and Posting Update

Thing A Day has totally inspired me. I have a friend in New York City (one of my oldest friends because her mother and my mother met when they were in undergraduate school together) who is also an artist and she's participating in the thing-a-day thingy linked above. I just talked with her last night and was noting how I haven't been posting very much the last few weeks, partly because I feel like very very few people come to the site, and even fewer post comments. It's kind of discouraging, but after going to thing-a-day I feel a lot better and I'm ready to post my heart out once again!



Above is a photograph I just took of my back porch (the chair is for scale) to illustrate how much snow we've got around here. Too crazy. I've reached my AAA limit in free service calls (until August or something) so now it's $45 everytime I need to get dug out of my own parking space. Really frustrating and I'm counting the days until I can park with impunity again. Or, I should say, get out of my parking space with impunity.

Meanwhile, Valentine's Day came and went, without any genuine activity here in Eva's Icons land. But wait, I have to show you this "dark" valentine I got as a consolation prize (from a friend, Rachel Rice, who makes art that's dispensed from an old cigarette machine now known as the GLAD-iator).







Nice, eh?

Oh, I almost forgot. Dr. Love did have a space walk (read all about it here), but not on Feb. 14th. Everything, it appears, is subject to rescheduling when it comes to outer space.

Dr. Love scheduled for space walk Feb. 14th

It's true! This web site Spaceflight Now has the whole space shuttle Atlantis story including Dr. Stan Love's planned space walk (with another mission specialist, of course) on February 14th. Stan is my cousin-in-law. Stan Love is married to my one and only first cousin, Jancy McPhee. Jancy also works for NASA, but she's trained as a microbiologist, and is not an astronaut. Anyway, they are both awesome.

I was so excited on Thursday when I heard the news (that the shuttle had successfully launched into space) on the radio, I went out to the formery and told all my co-workers (I was in the back putting labels on bread bags when I heard the news on NPR). During my break I looked up the mission update and saw the (not-a-joke-at-all) post about Stan's schedule on Feb. 14th. Over the next hour I told whoever wasn't in the formery at the time what the big news of the day was: Stan Love's in outer space, and guess when his space walk is scheduled?! Nearly everyone guessed correctly. SO CORNY! I LOVE IT!

Guerrilla Girls homage

Here's a couple of political cartoons I've done with a friend. My friend's the idea person, and I get paid for illustrating them. Pretty cool, eh? We're both still developing the ideas and style of the cartoon, including the title and characters. But the one thing that's a given is the theme: economics.

Today's my birthday

Greetings fellow Aquarians (if you're not an aquarian that's aquarian-code for "hi everybody!").

I don't have any plans for the day, although I'm going to work and they may have something cooked up for me there. Last night there was a party for my boss, who shares birthdays with me, although she's 2 years younger. It was a "last day of her 30's party". It was a very well attended party with lots of great pot-luck food and at least 12 children under 6 years old running around and around and around. The party was in the almost ready cafe space at the bakery I work at. The tile is halfway laid down on the floor and the plumbing has yet to be installed in the bathrooms, but essentially all the pieces are in place, and with the party it's been warmed up for the customer deluge.

Saturday afternoon I spent with my friend Gina to celebrate my birthday. We went to a new grocery/deli in Montpelier called The Uncommon Market for lunch. First, it's cleaner than I've ever seen the store in all it's itirations over the past 20+ years I've lived here. Second, they have fresh produce as well as all sorts of dry goods and canned goods in the grocery section. And they make things like turkey tetrazini and portabello mushroom soup in the deli. And the service is friendly, warm and thoughtful. What's not to like? Nothing, that I can think of, and they offer fresh seafood 4 days a week, and take special orders, too. Awesome! It's also nice to have a small market downtown, for those who don't want to shop at the Coop. I'm charmed and I will be back.

I also went to Restuarant Pheobe with my friend Jane Friday before last, also to celebrate my birthday. You begin to understand why I'm sanguine about doing anything today?

In case you didn't know today is also Jackson Pollock's birhday (1912) and Claes Oldenburg (1929). Happy birthday fellow artists!

downtown on a Saturday afternoon

After chores and lunch I went downtown on foot, on the way to a brisk walk. I've been diagnosed with high cholesteral, so I'll be doing a lot of brisk walking from now on, although I enjoy meandering a lot more. But that's not what I wanted to write about. On my way downtown I saw the blue lights of a police car and realized a street march was starting from the City Hall parking lot. When I got paralell on the street with the marchers I could see their placards. It was an anti-abortion rally. It happened that the marchers and I were walking the same route, although any similarity between myself and them stopped there. I looked at the marchers as I walked along. I realized after a few minutes that I didn't recognize anyone. At the time I thought the marchers were from out of town, that they had been imported for the event, which is entirely possible. But it's also possible the couple hundred people were local and I just didn't recognize any of the faces on the street because their lives and mine just don't intersect.

There was something else I noticed as I was walking down the street. It was very quiet. The marchers weren't chanting, they were mostly just talking among themselves. There was hardly anyone on the sidewalks that lined the marcher's route, and the car traffic was thin. It wasn't until I had almost reached the Post Office when drivers started honking their approval. One car honked all the way down the block. It wasn't much, though.

I'm thinking about the pro-choice rally I attended back in 1992 (I think that was the year) here in Montpelier. 5,000 people were estimated to have attended. I somehow ended up at the head of the parade (there was a percussion band keeping time and I banged on a drum for awhile) and got my picture in the paper the next day (if I can find a copy of the picture I'll post it). I remember one picture that was taken during the rally. It showed the blocks from the State House up through the corner of State and Main literally filled with people. That's five city blocks of people who felt strongly about the right of women to choose their reproductive lives.

musician Dan Walker

I went down to the Langdon Street Cafe tonight and drew Dan Walker, who played solo guitar and sang original songs and a few covers. He bills himself as an Americana Roots Music man out of New Hamshire. Pretty good. Damn hard to draw, though. I was feeling quite pissy after an hour and a half of not very satisfying drawing. As I was leaving I ran into Dan as he was coming back inside and told him I liked his playing. I told him I'd done some drawings but wasn't going to show him, because they were crap. But he said some 75 year old characaturist made him look like a woman, and as long as I hadn't done that, they were probably ok. So I showed him, but I was telling him everything that was wrong with the drawings, including the drawing above having an eye that's too big for the rest of his face. But when I held it up to him for comparison, the resemblance was pretty good! Huh! So I'm feeling much better now. Thanks Dan, and good luck on your tour!

P.S. If you haven't seen Maira Kalman's Principles of Uncertainty then do go and check it out as soon as you can! I just got the hard-bound version of the blog she has of the same name (but is no longer adding to) at the New York Times site. It's wonderful. I'm overcome. I want to adopt Maira. Maybe she could be an older cousin? I already have a few of those, so it's not completely out of the question. I'm just saying I'm open to the possibilities. Maira, if you see this, think it over and let me know! Thanks!

Goodbye Miche! Have a nice winter!

Literally and figuratively, it's the last of the miche. I've got a sandwich worth left in my kitchen, then, that's it. At least for the winter. I had a baker drop off a loaf for me last Friday night. Actually, it was Saturday morning. 2am, to be precise. (That's when the baker got back into town from baking...he was only doing what I asked him to do...) I realized way too late that I'd have to get up and retrieve my bread from the porch if I didn't want it to freeze. So I woke myself up to do that and couldn't get back to sleep. That's when I understood that it was either me, or the miche. Today I withdrew my employee standing order. But it wasn't strictly necessary to do that. Miche is only baked two days each week, and usually between those two days it's rare that more than 45 loaves are baked. So it's not likely that "my" loaf is going to go to waste.

Not that it would "go to waste" if no one bought the last loaf, because the bakery donates day-old bread to farmers in the area for animal feed. Plus, any little scraps of bread we employees don't eat on our break goes into the compost. Oh, and the compost is so awesome! Bread, dough, left over flour, food scraps, coffee grounds and even unbleached brown paper towels all go into the compost. We filled four 50 gallon compost bins in the past two weeks. The Central Vermont Solid Waste District picks it up and takes it over to the Vermont Compost Company, et voila, 200 less gallons of garbage in the landfills every two weeks. It's a beautiful thing.


"Say goodbye to the nice bread now, dear."

"Bye-bye miche! Bye-bye!"
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.
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Chores

Today is payday, which is helpful, because it's also chore-day. I put the rent in the mail, went to the once-a-month winter farmer's market (bought maple syrup, potatoes, pork ribs and some prepared chicken and rice), did the laundry, dropped off the dvd I saw last night (Ratatoille) at the local video/dvd place savoy theater/downstairs video dropped off some used 5 gallon buckets (that used to hold canola oil, from work) to someone who needs them for their sugar bush (maple sugaring business), went back to the farmer's market to drop off some extra small socks to Laini Fondiller (a woman with extra small feet) who runs Lazy Lady Farm where she makes excellent goat and cow's milk cheeses as well as raises them for meat, and also weaves and sells beautifully hand-dyed handspun wool (she named one of her goats after me, too!). I then got the car washed (and discovered rust in the wheel wells, dagnamit) and then finished up my chores by filling the tank with gas (at $3.06/gallon).



This is a drawing I did in May 2005, of the jar Laini uses to display her feta cheese at the farmer's market. It case you can't read it, it says "We Make Better Fet'r". I would have bought some of her feta today (it IS the best) but she doesn't make it in the winter.

Thanks for the comments!

I sent out a little e-mail last night about this blog, and gratefully received half a dozen comments back. Thanks for the encouragement!

white, many shades of gray, blue & purple (a snow storm)

I've been trying to find statistics on how much it snowed in December, but lacking factual information I'll fall back on the anecdotal: WAY TOO MUCH!

I know it's beautiful, I know. But I'm overwhelmed. Then again by tomorrow night it's supposed to get below zero, and by then it'll probably stop snowing. So, which is it gonna be, snow or cold? Cold or snow?

January 1, 2008. Welcome to winter, folks.

EDITED 1/3/08: It snowed 47.2 inches in December. WAY TOO MUCH, INDEED!

Miche (the whole miche, and nothing but the miche)

My love of miche has turned me into a neurotic freak! Ahhhhhhhgggggggg!

I've hit the wall. My need for a loaf of bread, even if it is a sublime loaf of bread, has taken over my life. Thanks to Bo for the illustration above (RHB is for Red Hen Baking Co., where I work. If you want to see more great silk screened images (on organic cotton t-shirts, no less) go to eatmorekale and check out Bo's business.

If you want to see what Red Hen says about Miche go here: bread varieties and scroll down to Mountain Miche.

Mountain Miche is a close relative of pain de campagne (bread of Campagne, France). I did a bit of research and found this map here, which I instantly recognized from the (old) break room wall at Red Hen! I can't read this web version, but it made me feel better, knowing I was on the right track.

Tracking the origins of my love of this bread, that is.

This is a long story, so pull up a comfortable chair and perhaps something nice to drink.

In 1983 I became a student at Goddard College, in Plainfield, Vermont. At that point in Goddard's history this was just about the nadir of it's student attendance record, due in large part to a massive retrenchment of the college's programs about 2 years before (it took awhile for things to get really, really bad). One of the silver linings of the retrenchment was the great attachment many of the faculty, staff and students had for the central Vermont region.

A couple of these stalwarts were Jules and Helen Rabin. Jules had been a professor of history (I believe) at Goddard before the retrenchment, and Helen was/is an artist. Sometime between 1981 and 1983 Jules decided to write a book about the history of bread baking in France. And towards that goal he built a little brick oven in his back yard, just like village bread bakers of France have been building for maybe the past thousand years. And started baking a variety of regional breads of France. Maybe the oven and baking came first, and then the book idea came second, but for the purposes of this story, it's not so important.

Sometime before fall 1983 Jules and Helen decided to start selling their breads in some local stores, under the name Upland Bakers (aka Rabin's Bread). They sold a stout baguette, a rye, a whole wheat, rolls, and a pain de campagne. There may have been a couple of other varieties, but these are the ones I remember.

The little convenience store just down the road from Goddard (aka The Red Store) sold the baguettes at the checkout counter, naked as the moment they were pulled from the oven. I don't mind the bags bread is required to be sold in these days, but there was something about these loaves of bread lying bare-ass on the counter which facilited them quickly landing in hungry students hands. Um, also, they were only .99 cents.

I was fully prepared for my introduction to Upland Bakers bread by my mom, who loved, loved, loved a good loaf of home made bread. She spent probably a quarter of her time in the kitchen baking bread, and this is saying something, considering she spent a quarter of her waking hours in the kitchen cooking or baking. But that's another story. All you need to know, for now, is that I inherited my love of food directly from mom.

Many loaves baked and consumed later we come to the sad sad day when Jules and Helen decide to retire. I think this was in the summer of the year 2000. I, along with a good portion of central Vermont, was bereft. What to do? How would we survive without the crusty crunchy chewy wonderfullness of Upland Bakers (insert bread variety here)???

Perhaps not so coincidentally the year 2000 saw a remarkable surge in artisan bread bakers all over the state. When Upland Bakers started there were no other artisan bread bakers in central Vermont. There were, perhaps, several others in the state. By the time the Rabin's retired there were so many artisan bread bakers there wasn't enough shelf space to accomodate them all. Not that any of these other bakers came close in quality. Or at least that's what I thought, until I had a sample of Red Hen Baking Co.'s Mountain Miche at the local farmer's market. Initially it was the memory of Upland Bakers' pain de campagne in Red Hen's Miche that pulled me in, but eventually the miche itself kept me coming back.

About a year and a half ago I started working at Red Hen. One of the first things I recieved as an employee was a bakery t-shirt (see illustration above), with a silk-screen of the infamous miche pictured. Sometime in the past 6-9 months I started getting an employee standing order of one loaf of miche each week. At first I was able to get it on Thursday nights, at the end of my shift. But the bakers' schedule changed and the loaves were coming out hours after my shift end. So I switched my order to Fridays and picked it up at the farmer's market on Saturdays. Miche is meant to settle overnight, so although this sounds unlikely, this was actually an ideal solution. Until I started coming up to the Red Hen booth at the farmer's market looking for "my" loaf of miche first, and visiting Randy, the owner, and the other people who worked at the booth, second. Unghgh. I really wanted my miche. I really wanted to visit. I really, really wanted my miche. Then the farmer's market season ended. But wait! One Saturday each month there will be an indoor market in my town! Oh boy. At about the same time the bakery moved six miles closer to where I live. So I decided to start driving to the bakery on Saturdays (one of my days off) to pick up my miche. Awesome you say? Sort of.

Today I picked up my miche. I'd asked the packer to set aside a loaf of Friday's bake for me to pick up on Saturday, instead of switching out a loaf the wholesale manager would set aside for me on Thursday (switching a day-old loaf for a fresh loaf). The packer wrote "(D)Eva - me miche" on the bread bag he'd set aside for me. Diva? Oh man, I thought, this is getting bad. But the real corker came just a few seconds later.

Randy, one of the owners, was at the bakery when I stopped by. He asked me if I wanted to have breakfast at a restaurant off the regular delivery route, if I could deliver bread there for Red Hen first. I agreed. But I got all flustered on my way out and left one of three bags of bread (holding probably 20 loaves) behind. I didn't realize this until I arrived at the restaurant. I delivered the two bags I had, collected payment for the three bags, and turned around to collect the third bag to finally deliver, which I did without mishap.

Then I ordered some lunch, as it was getting late for breakfast. I went for the catfish gumbo and home made biscuits. Tasty, but way too hot for me. I seated myself near the door (silly, I know), and as I was finishing the gumbo there was a delivery, and then a bunch of people coming and going, and the door got left open. Brrr. One of the people coming in and leaving the door open was David Mamet, who lives nearby part time. I recognized him instantly. I tend to stare (it's an artist's burden, I can't help it, really) and this case was no different. Between feeling unnerved at his arrival (lots of his family and friends as well) and the door hanging open (and asking someone to catch the door on their way out) and finishing my gumbo, I decided it was time to go. I got up from my seat and instead of waiting for the check I walked up to the cash register counter and waited for the waitress to take note of me. The chef was paying for the aforementioned delivery and asked if I'd been helped, so I explained. Eventually, between him, the waitress who took my order and the one who served me, I paid my check and left.

I'm thinking I may have to give up the miche, if restaurant mortification is what is becoming of me.

The pink and green truth

Full disclosure: I used some white-out (!!!) in this version of the wall-washing drawing.

hand written with Sharpie and Prismacolor Markers

hand written post

Where Mom Left Off, part 2

My parents are second from the left 
(Mom standing, Dad sitting) in this Richman family portait taken in 1961. 
They got married about six months later.

    

    

Here's a couple of photographs commemorating Dad's promotion to Lietenant in the Philadelphia Fire Department, in 1969. That's my brother with the bow tie, and my mom and I with matching dresses for the occasion. Dad's got on a nice silk tie.

today

It's Friday. I woke up at 6:21 AM. I had been dreaming I was telling my friend Gina all about a crush I was recovering from. It was true to real life detail for detail (except I haven't talked with Gina about any of this, yet). The only thing that was different (than real life) was following Gina from room to room while I told her what had happened between me and my crush-ie.

Thursday morning my therapist asked me to think about how dreams effect real life, and vice-versa. Or, did he ask me how dreams and waking life interact? Or what it means to have dreams, and how they effect us, whatever is going on in our waking lives? Now I can't remember.

I do remember responding to his suggestion with sarcasm, as he knows I have issues about this subject, since my late mother was a Jungian psychoanalyst. Dreams and all that hoo-ha. Interestingly, my dream life seems to be effecting my waking life, despite my mistrust of psychoanalysis. But when my dreams act like my waking life one quarter step removed? I'm sorry, that's just weird.

My weekend is on Fridays and Saturdays. I spend a fair amount of time wandering around the internet during my time off, and today I've been spending some time on Maira Kalman's blog: here

I also ran into an aquaintance who is a bookbinder, who also has a blog and a website: maydaystudio

Both very cool, in totally different ways.

At 7:45 AM I tried getting my car out of my snowfilled driveway. It's only December 21st and I've already gotten stuck three times (front wheels spinning on ice under the snow). My next door neighbor took pity on me and helped me back out. But she said she's gotten stuck just as many times. WTF?! Winter is less than 12 hours old.

Mercifully this didn't take very long, so I made my appointment at the mechanic right on time. He replaced the purge valve, but first listened to another customers's engine, and then, while working on my car, took two or three phone calls and a visit from a potential business insurance provider (who he apparently knows personally...he kept making references to some awkward voice mail messages from someone they know in common). All this in less than an hour, and no more "check engine" light on my dashboard!

I park my car on the other side of my apartment building (where the traction is better) and walk downtown to mail a birthday present to my niece, who will turn 11 on December 24. I got her a little leatherette covered blank book and a graphite pencil. Last year I got her 12 Prismacolor markers and a big sketchbook. I am the art aunt.

I wander into my beloved independent bookstore, which can also be accessed at Bear Pond Books and I page through the 2nd edition of the cream of the crap, "The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, in The New Yorker" by Matthew Diffee and Robert Mankoff. It's awesome, partly for the cartoons, but mostly for the seriously silly questionaire all the artists fill out (or ignore, or cover with graffiti, depending). They also have all been asked, apparently, to provide a photograph of 1. a self-portrait; 2. the inside of their refridgerator; 3. drawing a cartoon; 4. their feet; 5. their studio/work space. I love seeing all these artists riffing on the posibilities in these requests. The guy who photographs himself drawing a cartoon, with a handcuff attached to his wrist, also abligingly provides a photo of his foot drawing a cartoon with a (foot?)cuff attached, made my bookstore visit. It's 9:45 AM.

On my way home from downtown I start thinking about posting more of my mom's story on the blog, but first I pop some biscuits and chicken in the oven (I kind of skipped breakfast). I usually check out my main e-mail account, Doonesbury, dykestowatchoutfor, Found Magazine, my hotmail account, alas, a blog, and drawn!, before doing anything else on the web, including look at my own blog. And look at the personals hosted by my local free alternative weekly, Sevendays Personals.

Yeah, that's where I saw the ad for the guy I've had a crush on. He's the sweetest, but not for me. Oh well.

I did a little shopping at the food co-op a few hours ago, which was pretty busy at 3pm, but I knew it would be even busier later. Holiday frantic energy. Two advantages to being single and a Jew at the end of December: a short gift-giving list and it's all done before Dec. 25th.

I did write a bunch of holiday well-wishing cards to my co-workers earlier this week, though. I work at the Red Hen Baking Company, which just moved to Middlesex, VT (from Duxbury) a little over a month ago. I also work for Anne Davis, who is the artist who creates the greeting cards, calendars and now children's books for her company Anne Made Cards, which I used for the aforementioned holiday greetings.

Time to log off and relax on the couch with the latest issue of the New Yorker magazine.

Happy Solstice everybody!

Taking Up Where Mom Left Off, part 1

In January 1994 my mother and I planned a trip to New York City to celebrate my birthday. My mother wasn't feeling well, but decided to make the trip anyway. She lived in Boston, I lived in Vermont, so we met at the hotel in NYC. After a few hours together we realized we needed to do something, because mom was sick, really sick, and could barely stand or walk on her own. I took her to an Eye, Ear, Nose & Throat specialist, because mom complained mostly about something feeling like it was stuck in her throat. But the specialist said we should go to the hospital, because she (the doctor) couldn't figure out what was wrong. At New York hospital my mother ended up in the ICU, because sometime that night she went into insulin shock.

Mom had had diabetes for 10 years by this time. She had chosen to treat her diabetes without taking insulin, or other medical intervention. She ate well (loved to cook), walked everywhere and went to the Y religiously, and loved what she did for work, as a Jungian Psychoanalyst and Psychiatric Social Worker. I don't know what kind of medical advice, if any, mom was getting before that trip to NYC, but whatever it was it did not prepare her for almost a week in ICU at New York hospital.

After that she had to start taking insulin, and within six months she started to lose her eyesight. She had a number of laser surgeries, which maybe slowed things down a bit. By 1997 her eyesight was completely gone.

In October 2004 Mom fell down a flight of stairs while visiting a friend, ending up in the hospital.

The hospital people would only let mom out if my brother and I agreed to help her get services set up at home. I took time off from work and stayed on the couch in mom's apartment that first week, while my brother ran errands. My brother John and sister-in-law Kirsten lived 45 minutes from Mom, had already been running errands for mom for years. Since I lived 3 hours away I hadn't been doing much of the leg work, so I decided I would stay with her and provide some relief for John and his family.

Between October 2004 and March 2005 I think mom was in the hospital three or four times. Mom had several diabetes related health issues, including the loss of eyesight. Her kidneys were only functioning at 20 percent. Also, she had advancing neropathy in both her feet. The pain in her shoulder was initially diagnosed as a rotater cuff injury, but after exploratory surgery it was discovered she also had arthritis. She also had high blood pressure. My mother got a new doctor sometime after the October hospital visit, who put her on a low potassium diet. This was supposed to help her kidneys function better, but it killed mom's morale, since it severely limited what she could eat. Mom loved to cook (and eat) and having only a few ingredients to work with (and ones she didn't like that much) was no way to live.

In March 2005 Mom was found unconscious in her apartment, after accidentally taking too much insulin. During the ensuing hospital visit we (the doctors, John & Kirsten, me and very reluctantly, mom) determined mom needed physical rehabilitation before she could either come back to her current apartment, or move into an assisted living apartment. In April 2005 we all decided mom wouldn't be coming back to her current apartment. In the next six months she spent time in several rehabilitation centers and at least one nursing home.

We were all hoping she'd move up the list on the assisted living apartment and be able to move in before winter, but mom's health never recovered. Mom had a heart attack and died in the hospital in September 2005.