Ruminations

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Fear of Addiction

Recently a friend of mine wrote a blog about addiction that touched my heart. A friend of her children’s died as a result of his use of mind-altering substances.

I have a cousin.  He’s 66.  He’s a medical doctor.  He is currently serving six concurrent one year terms in jail for six DUIs he had in the last 14 months.  Two of the incidents where he was arrested involved accidents.  In one accident someone was hurt, although I’m not sure how badly. It’s amazing to everyone in the family that he hasn’t killed himself yet.  He lives alone when he’s not in jail. He drinks alone.

I had an aunt.  She was an Olympic class equestrian.  She and her horse fell in the early 1970’s  at a practice for the Olympic trials. Her horse had to be put down and she never rode competitively again. She took solace in a bottle and in the prescriptions she was given. For more than 30 years, alone and angry because her dreams were dashed, she drank and medicated herself.  She was hospitalized at least 20 times for detox, overdoses, and various problems with her health due to her alcoholism. When she died her blood alcohol content was .430. Yes, she drank herself to death. She probably didn’t mean to, at least not that day.

Alcoholism runs hard in the genes of my family. I can point to almost any member of my grandparents generation and say, “He was an alcoholic” or “She was an alcoholic.” The alcoholics are fewer in my parents’ generation, but they’re there. I remember swearing to myself growing up that I would never drink alcohol. I hated what it did to the people I loved.

But I did drink.  In college I realized that I drank too much and too often.  I thought about the alcoholics in my family. I slowed down. I slowed further in law school, and then when I married and had a baby I realized how hard it was to change a smelly diaper with a raging hangover.  I slowed drinking even more.

In 1997 I was in a serious car accident. As a result of that accident the migraine headaches I have had all my life became worse. Ten years later I have a condition called “Chronic Daily Headache” or “Intractable Migraine.”  I have to take drugs to combat it.  Most of the drugs don’t alter my mind, but occasionally I have to take muscle relaxers and painkillers.

Because of my headaches I have stopped drinking alcohol almost completely.  Two drinks and I can guarantee myself a migraine.  The margaritas aren’t worth it.  I may go out with friends and sip one drink for three hours.  I may drink it faster then switch to soda water. I almost never have more than one drink any more.

But there’s another problem. You see, addictive behavior runs in my family, and I have prescriptions for addictive medications for the pain I have almost daily.

I am afraid of these drugs.  I hoard them; I use them sparingly.  I don’t want them to control my life.

Yesterday and today have been a bad days. My headache started early yesterday, but I was focused on something I was doing and didn’t take a break to get my Imitrex. By the time I was through with my project, I could barely sit at my desk.  I wanted to curl up under it in a fetal position. Unbidden, tears fell down my cheeks.  I staggered downstairs. The movement exacerbated the pain.  I could barely think.

I fumbled for the device that contains the most powerful dose of Imitrex. It’s an injection, and thankfully it works quickly. I can use the injection no more than twice a month. I use it only when I can’t bear the pain.  By the time I reached for the device, I was unable to form a coherent sentence.  My thoughts were disjointed, and overlying it all was a little girl crying plaintively in my mind, “It hurts!  Make it stop!”

I gave myself the shot.  I took a muscle relaxer.  I went to bed.  I slept for three hours.  When I woke, I still had a horrible headache. I took a painkiller.  My head still hurt. Yet I still had to function.

I am a mother; I run a business. I have to take care of myself so I can take care of my child and my office.

I worry that I will become addicted to the painkillers.  I worry that I take too many prescription drugs. I take three pills every morning in a futile attempt to control the neurological aspects of my migraines.  They have helped.  I shouldn’t say it’s futile.  The headaches would be worse if I didn’t take them.  Then there are the triptans – the drugs that actually stop the migraines. I can’t take them more than three days in a row, or I risk rebound headaches.

On days like today, when my head feels like it is split in two and one side is three times the size of the other, when a throbbing pain goes from above my left eye over the crown of my head and down into my left shoulder blade, when the pain is so bad I can’t sleep even with the soporific effect of the drugs, I despair of ever feeling good again.

The drugs don’t make me feel good.  They just mask the pain.  It’s still there; I just  don’t care as much.  I can laugh and joke and carry on a conversation with the drugs.  I hate them.

I am terrified of addiction.

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Procrastination and Common Sense

I am as the American Colonies were in 1775.

I know you all want to know how I could possibly be like the American Colonies were in 1775. “The simile is a stretch,” you think.

You are wrong.

It will require a bit of a history lesson, so get out your notebooks and pens and pay attention.

Two hundred thirty-two years ago today, a man in Philadelphia began distributing copies of a pamphlet he had published anonymously at his own expense. The man, known as Tom Paine to his friends, had emigrated to the colony in America from England only two years before.

By the time he fortuitously met Benjamin Franklin in 1774, Paine had failed at everything he had ever done in life.  He failed out of school at the age of twelve. By 19 he had failed at his apprenticeship to his father, a corset maker, and had gone to sea. He failed at that and returned to land work for the British government as a tax collector. By the time he was 32, he had been fired twice from that job, the second time because he agitated for higher wages, inciting others with his essays and leaflets to demand more money.

Once in Philadelphia, Paine began writing essays and contributing to a local magazine.  He was a popular writer, and was widely read.  He became a success.

Philadelphia’s air was full of anger and resentment against England when Paine arrived. The colonists in America felt that England was abusive towards them and despaired of Parliament even granting them self-rule.  Ten years before Parliament had reined in the quasi-independence that had previously existed for the colonies on the other side of the Atlantic.  In repealing the Stamp Act, which was despised by the colonists, Parliament passed the Declaratory Act of 1766, and claimed for itself the “right… power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America…in all cases whatsoever.”  Successively more restrictive laws were passed, and rebellion was imminent as 1775 turned into 1776.

For some reason, though, there had not been a formal rebellion against England in the colonies.  As angry as the colonists were, they didn’t rise up and take arms against their English overlords. There were skirmishes here and there, and demonstrations and the like, but no organized, armed rebellion. We look back on it today and wonder, “What were they waiting for?”  It’s hard to see why they wouldn’t take action.

Paine believed he knew how to package the idea of an armed rebellion so it would be more palatable to the colonists who might be sitting of the fence when it came to the issue of separation from England. He thought he had a way of convincing them to get off their dead asses and rebel.  He had a way to stop them from procrastinating any longer.

And now we come to how I am like the colonies.

Hello.  My name is Aramink. (Hello, Aramink.) I am a procrastinator.

I have lousy time management skills.  I let things without deadlines linger on my desk, hoping they will go away.  They never do.

I am a procrastinator.  Like the American colonies in 1775, I am sitting on my dead ass doing nothing (playing online) when I should be doing something constructive, something like writing, working, paying bills, balancing my checkbook, cleaning out closets, making my bed, taking a nap… well, maybe not taking a nap, but the other things certainly should be done.

The colonists were sitting around, complaining about taxes, about soldiers eating them out of farm and home, and unfair laws, just like I sit around and complain that I’m not getting out and getting things off my desk. Something had to shake up the colonists enough to actually do something about what they enjoyed complaining about so much.

Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, Common Sense, lit the colonies on fire.

The pamphlet appeared on January 10, 1776.  Over 150,000 copies were sold almost immediately.  Through many reprintings throughout 1776, as many as six million pamphlets reached readers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Not only did Paine write the argument that won support for the rebels among farmers and educated businessmen alike, but he also discussed naval strength and set out a model for the new government of a country called America.  He set out a plan of action for the colonies to take so that they could wrest their independence from England.  It wasn’t until the third edition of the pamphlet, published February 14, 1776,  that he set out this plan, but by the time the plan was proposed, the ideas in the pamphlet had already planted seeds of rebellion in very fertile ground.

Perhaps you’ve never read this famous pamphlet, which is credited with starting the American Revolution. How did Paine stop the colonists’ procrastination and propel them into action?  He focused them on the bad guy.  He identified King George III as the enemy of the American Colonies and he laid out a plan for getting rid of the yoke the king had clapped on the neck of the colonies with the passage of the Declaratory Act of 1766 and those successively restrictive laws aimed at strangling the autonomy of the colonies in America.

Why did it take ten years, from 1766 to 1776, for the colonists to act?

The same reason it took me a week to go to the doctor when I knew full well that the cranberries I was consuming in mass quantities were only giving me disturbing dreams and not curing my… indisposition.

Procrastination.

What stirred the colonists to action? Thomas Paine giving them a target and a plan.

What stirs me into action?  Deadlines.  When I don’t have one, I get nothing done whatsoever. I have no Thomas Paine to stir my passions into action.

I am a procrastinator.

Yesterday I was talking to my friend Katie about stuff I want to do but haven’t gotten around to doing.  I had a laundry list of things.  She laughed at me as I added more and more things to the list.  “You’re a procrastinator!  She declared.  I admitted as much.  I’ll deny anything until presented with incontrovertible proof.  She had the proof.

Then she gave me an assignment.

“This afternoon, do three of these things on your list,” Katie commanded. She was kind enough to specify which three, and I was grateful. “I’m going to check with you later,” she warned.

It was about 2:30 and my eyelids were getting heavy. I had dealt with Book Club drama for two straight days and I was sleepy. I went to take a nap.

I woke up about 5:00 and returned to my computer. Oh yes, I remembered my assignment.  I had to make two phone calls and mail something. Those were my tasks. I yawned and poured myself another glass of cranberry juice. Then I got a message from my friend Shawn.

“I understand you were supposed to accomplish three tasks this afternoon,” he said. He had been talking to Katie!

I stammered. I hemmed and hawed. I did those things at least as much as one can possibly do them in a Messenger conversation.

“Are they done?”  Shawn asked. I could tell by the tone of the letters he typed that he was about to get serious with me. (No, the font didn’t change. I could just tell.)

“Ummm…”

I dialed the phone. I made the first phone call.

“I’ve done one,” I told him.

“Only one?”

I hung up and dialed the phone again.

“I’ve done two,” I reported.

“You’re tardy on those two,” he advised me sternly, and then noted that I hadn’t done the third one at all.

“But I took a nap!” I whined, hoping for leniency since Shawn is known to be fond of naps himself.

No luck. He remained stern and even got Katie into a messenger conference with us.

Katie pronounced punishment. “You have to do what you didn’t do, and you have to write a blog post about procrastination,” she decided.

“But I have another post planned for tomorrow,” I protested, thinking about how I hadn’t finished my blog about Thomas Paine and his pamphlet, Common Sense.

“You must post your procrastination blog by 6 p.m. tomorrow,” Katie commanded.

Katie is a formidable mistress. I felt like a naughty kid. Shawn was probably laughing at me, but he was at least pretending to be stern, too.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said meekly.

Guess what happened.

Uh-huh.

I procrastinated.

I didn’t get my Common Sense blog written last night, so it wasn’t ready to be posted this morning. And I had to do this procrastination blog, too. Today is the anniversary of the publication of Common Sense, so I really need to post that blog today, but Mistress Katie says I have to post the procrastination blog today, too.

That’s why I am comparing my procrastination with the inaction of the American colonies prior to the publication of Common Sense.

Thomas Paine set out a plan for rebellion and independence, and Katie told me I have to set out a plan to eliminate procrastination from my life.

These parallels between me and the American colonies are just downright uncanny, aren’t they?

Here’s my plan:

  • I will read my email first thing in the morning and respond to it all.
  • I will write the rest of the morning unless Jane is here, and in that case, I will write unless Jane has other work for me to do.
  • I will break for lunch and actually eat somewhere other than over my keyboard.
  • I will check my email immediately after lunch and respond to it all.
  • I will run errands and get other things done as my list dictates (see below).
  • I will read and write some more, as time permits.
  • I will make tomorrow’s list by 5:00 every day.
  • I will then allow myself to play online.

It may not be as good a plan as Thomas Paine’s was for rebellion, but it will probably help me to stop procrastinating.

I wonder if I should sign out of Messenger, too. I mean, I’m normally invisible, but I’m always here.  If I hadn’t been on Messenger before 5:00, Katie might never have given me that assignment in the first place, and I might not have had to figure out how to combine a blog post on Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and procrastination.

It’s worth considering.

Me, in My Thomas Paine Costume, Making My List
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Happy Birthday, Daddy

Today is my Dad’s birthday. He would have been 71. He died five years ago and I miss him more than ever.

My dad was my champion. His confidence in me never flagged, even when I was an angry, incorrigible teenager bent on self-destruction. He always told me, without any qualifying adjectives, phrases, or conditions whatsoever, that I could be and do anything I wanted in life. I’m 45 years old and I still believe him.

Dad wasn’t perfect. He drank too much. You know the kind of drunk I’m talking about. He was perfectly functional during the day – had a pretty high-profile position in the little community where he lived, in fact – but evenings were a different story. He was a melancholy drunk, the kind who wanted to sing “Danny Boy” and worry about the re-institution of the draft.

No kidding: when I was a teenager the draft was one of his favorite drunken topics. He was on the county draft board during Vietnam and the experience scarred him, I think. He objected strongly to the war and did all he could to keep kids from our area from going. He had a cousin who was on the ground in Vietnam, a brother who spent his tour with the Navy just off the coast of Vietnam, and a brother-in-law who was about to be shipped out when his luck changed and he was sent home instead. Wars that were nothing but someone’s political agenda pissed Dad off. You can imagine what he’d think about Iraq Redux.

Dad made Christmas magical. His birthday, coming on the Twelfth Day of Christmas, meant that the whole season was special. We had a tradition when I was young, that he and my sister continued after her divorce: Christmas Eve meant a trip to the closest Wal-Mart, 40 miles away in the town of Searcy. Dad wasn’t looking for significant gifts on that trip. If he saw something perfect for someone, he’d pick it up, of course, but the purpose of the trip was really to grab silly gifts, stocking stuffers, and prepare for Pre-Christmas, a tradition our family held dear.

My family inherited Pre-Christmas from Dad’s family. The legend goes that on Christmas Eve the kids were allowed to open one gift, and the adults, being who they were, didn’t want to get left out. They started exchanging gag gifts on Christmas Eve, accompanied by really bad poetry. There was a $10 limit on any Pre-Christmas gift when I was growing up. This encouraged creativity in gift-giving. A rubber chicken was always the booby prize, and one lucky person a year got it. It was a badge of honor to receive the chicken, which was always dressed up a little differently and presented with new panache.

I cooked my first Thanksgiving turkey at the age of 22 and had to call my mother to find out, halfway through cooking, that the giblets were in a package in the turkey’s neck. That Pre-Christmas I got the chicken with feathers stuck in its butt, intended to resemble the turkey. The chicken’s head had been cut off and, um, things were inserted in it. I don’t remember the poem (who can remember those horrible poems?) but I assure you it was appropriately insulting. A new chicken was purchased the next year to replace the poor decapitated capon.

It is still a badge of honor to receive the chicken. Jack and his cousins would be devastated every year when they’d open their pre-Christmas gift and it wouldn’t be the chicken. We had to contrive chicken gifts for them three years in a row just to get it out of the way. It’s hard to come up with a rubber chicken idea and poem for a ten-year-old!

But this isn’t a post about Pre-Christmas. Dad made Christmas special in several other ways, but I should have written about that at Christmas. At least I have blog fodder for next Christmas. No, this is a blog about my Dad, whose birthday is today.

I was Daddy’s Girl. Dad had two daughters, but I was It. Every girl, even my sister, should be a Daddy’s Girl. Sis got double billing with me as an adult, but as children, we were very definitely divided. She was Mama’s and I was Daddy’s. We sort of shared our little brother, who came along half a decade later and was the only boy.

As Daddy’s Girl I had the seat of honor. I considered it the seat of honor, anyway. I think I more or less took the seat, but I had it nonetheless. I sat on the floor at his feet when we had company. I sat to his right at the dinner table. On weekends I snuggled with him on the couch and watched John Wayne and Henry Fonda and James Stewart. If he went somewhere I was the child who accompanied him.

When I was about eleven years old I rebelled completely against going to church, which I thought was stupid and pointless. I just didn’t buy the whole “god” concept, which was no more believable than Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny in my mind. The story of Jesus and the ultimate sacrifice he made seemed ridiculous, and I said so rather vehemently. Martyrdom was foolish, no matter whether it was Jesus or Galileo. The choice between burning at the stake and telling a bunch of threatening men that I lied would have been easy for me. I’d be Galileo’s twin.

But at the tender age of eleven, too young even for confirmation in the church, it was Dad who told me that before I declared myself an atheist (I had no idea there was a name for it) I needed to consider whether there was a “Mover of the First Part.” There may not be a benevolent intelligence watching us now, but at some point, something, or someone, set the thing in motion. This was my first real theology lesson. It intrigued me a lot more than any Bible story ever could.

Because of this conversation with my dad, I was agnostic for years. I had to come to intellectual grips with the concept of infinity before I could put agnosticism away completely. Thanks to my dad, I actually studied theology, philosophy, and religion instead of just saying, “This whole ‘Jesus and God’ thing is nonsense, and I want no part of it.” I still study religions. Maybe I’m still agnostic in some ways. Nah…

I have my dad’s sense of humor. All three of his children do. The three of us have all remarked on multiple occasions how glad we are that we have Dad’s quickness to laugh, that we inherited the song that was in his heart. We are all basically happy people. We are happy on the outside and we are happy inside. My brother and I both struggle with depression, a genetic problem that comes from Mom’s side of the family. Believe it or not, though, even when we are depressed and at our worst, we are still optimists with a sense of fun. We are quick-witted. We see the irony in situations that make us sad.

Like Dad, all three of his children often laugh inappropriately. At the funeral of a family friend not too long ago, my brother and I walked in together a little late. Mom and Sis sat on the other side of the church. Jay and I opened the hymnal and the book that had the funeral service in it. We read the paper program. Then I noticed what I thought was a theme to the funeral.

“Jay!” I whispered, nudging him. “Do you notice that all these hymns have something to do with being submissive to God?”

He looked. Sure enough, each hymn had something about bondage or submission. He nodded. “Do you think the deceased and his wife were into BDSM?” I asked.

He moved a step away from me and turned red, trying to keep the laughter in. The widow was and is a woman of a very strong, dominant nature, and we were on the receiving end of her dominance many times growing up. The notion of her dominating her kind, soft-spoken, wheelchair-bound husband wasn’t far-fetched at all, but the idea that she’d do it in leather and with a flogger was making us snort.

Then came the concordant reading. More submission stuff. More bondage. Both of us were trying hard to keep a straight face, and we were not doing a good job. The homily was just as bad. Accepting death as God’s will, submitting whether we want to or not…

Yes, we laugh inappropriately. We should not have read anything naughty into the chosen hymns and texts of the funeral service. We were very bad. We will now submit to be punished, but only by the widow dressed in leather. (giggle) Dad would have found that to be hilariously, and inappropriately, funny as well. Too bad he missed it.

I was Daddy’s Girl. I didn’t care one thing about disappointing my mother or doing what she wanted me to do. If I thought I had disappointed Dad, though, it was worse than being spanked, grounded, or otherwise punished. I never wanted to let my Dad down. When Dad got angry at me, I knew I had truly screwed up. I knew I had to fix it.

When I was in my early 20’s and living 1500 miles away from him, I had a decision to make. It was a major decision, and I wanted him to tell me I was doing the right thing. I laid out the paths I could possibly take and I asked his advice. He said, “Why are you asking me? You’re just going to do what you want to anyway.” He said it gently. I realized that he was pointing out a flaw in my nature. I wanted him to reassure me that a decision I had already made was the right one. I didn’t really want his input.

Years later, when my husband said essentially the same thing to me, I understood that even though I had tried to be more conscientious about heeding the advice I was given, I wasn’t asking for it in the right way. I still have this flaw. Thanks to my dad, I am aware of it and it gives me a really guilty feeling whenever I realize that I’ve done it again. Gee, thanks, Dad.

Dad died very suddenly, either because of an aneurysm in his aorta or more probably from a deep vein thrombosis – a blood clot. Maybe it was the widowmaker heart attack – we don’t know. He had been having problems with numbness in his left foot for several years and no doctor had been able to determine what was wrong. It’s likely that he had a clot in that numb area that finally made it to his heart and stopped it for good.

Jack was ten years old when Dad died. We were talking about Dad one day not long after the memorial service, and Jack put his finger on what really made my Dad special. “You know what was great about Papa? He listened.”

That was really and truly what was great about my dad. He did listen, and he listened well. He didn’t interrupt with advice. He didn’t change the subject because he was uncomfortable. He listened, he asked relevant questions, and he led us to the answer. He wasn’t afraid of feelings. If we needed to vent, he understood that and he let us vent. He only tried to solve problems when we asked him to. He helped us see solutions and he did it with humor, diplomacy, and quiet support.

My Dad was a great man because he listened. I hope that when I die someone can say something that good about me.

I went to college where I did, then went to law school because of my dad. I accomplished what I have because of my dad’s support and encouragement. I look at life the way I do because I am my father’s daughter. I am who I am because I was Daddy’s Girl.

I love you, Daddy. Thank you for making me me. And Happy Birthday, you old fart.

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First Language

My sister called me from her car.

“I need you to speak Des Arc-ian for my children,” she said.

Des Arc is the tiny rural Arkansas town where we grew up, and from which we both gratefully escaped at the age of 14.  Well, at 14 we weren’t exactly grateful to be sent to boarding school, but in retrospect it was probably a good idea. If we had remained, we might never have learned to speak anything but Des Arc-ian.

“What do you need me to say?” I asked her.

“You are, of course, familiar with the phrase southerners use when they mean that they’re about to do something?” she asked.

“Like when we say we’re ‘fixing to” go to the store?” I really had no idea where we were headed with this.

“Yes,” my sister said, “but that’s not how it’s said in Des Arc.”

“Right,” I acknowledged, rolling my eyes at myself.  I’ve apparently lived in the big city of Little Rock for so long I completely forgot my oral roots there for a split second.

“How is it said?” she prompted me, putting me on speaker so that my nephews could hear the pronunciation. “Use it in a sentence.”

“Boys, I fikina snatch a knot upside jer heads if ya don’t listen to ya mama,” I said, helpfully.

Howls emanated from her passengers.

“Oh, my god,” yelled my 13 year old nephew, Austin. “It’s true!” I could hear nothing but the boys’ laughter.

By the way, for those reading this blog who have never been to Des Arc and encountered a native there who  announced herself to be on the cusp of activity, “fikina” is not pronounced fik-EEN-a.  It’s pronounced “FIK-in-ah.” And the name of my old hometown is “Day-uz Ark.”

There are lots of Des Arc-ianisms that Sis and I recognize as being uniquely Des Arc-ian, and which no one from Des Arc would think odd at all.

For example, if Des Arc had a fast food place with one of those fancy drive-up speaker things at which you could place your lunch order (it doesn’t, in case you’re wondering), you would most likely hear the helpful staff on the other end of that speaker say, “Yont fries widat?” (“Yont” rhymes with “don’t.” )

A Des Arc-ian calling his dog would shout, “Hyah! Hyah, Blue!” instead of “Here!  Here, Blue.”

“Have yerseff a seat rye cheer,” says a Des Arc-ian, beckoning you over and indicating that you should sit on the stool next to his at one of the two town beer joints. In Des Arc, they are not called bars or honky tonks, and there are never more than two operating legally at any given time. Colorful characters with such fanciful sobriquets as “Biscuit” and “Coot” might frequent such places.  Yes, I know and like both Biscuit and Coot.

You may know the material that those white cups suitable for coffee and other hot liquids are made as “styrofoam.” Don’t be fooled. Each little round speck that connects to each other to form that self-insulating cup looks just like a star in the night sky, and spread as thickly as Miracle Whip on Wonder Bread it’s clear why it really ought to be called “starfoam” by everyone.

“Jeet yet?” inquires your friend when you happen by at supper time. He’ll pull out a chair and bring out an extra plate of beans and cornbread and set it in front of you if your answer is in the negative.

My own name has a Des Arc-ian pronunciation. You probably think “Anne” has one syllable.  You’re wrong. It has two.  In Des Arc-ian, my name is pronounced “Eye-un.”  As if that isn’t bad enough, what always makes me cringe is when Des Arc-ians call me by the nickname my father’s family has for me.  No, it isn’t an unusual nickname for a girl named Anne.  It’s a pretty common one.  I absolutely hate the way my Arkansas family and friends say it, though.

“Eye-un-eh” is equivalent to fingernails on a chalkboard for me. I have always corrected every southerner who makes the mistake of calling me “Eye-un-eh,” reminding them that my name is “Anne.”  As a helpful hint, I even pronounce it correctly for them.

Oddly enough, all of my friends from college and all of my Yankee father’s family, almost without exception, have always called me “Annie.”  I’ve never complained.  I actually like it.

I lost my Des Arc accent when I went to boarding school.  Then I lost my southern accent when I went to college. I lost my New York accent when I came back to Arkansas to go to law school.  I didn’t slip back into the accent of my childhood when I returned here, though.  I speak sort of a hybrid of “Educated Little Rock” and “You Ain’t From Around Here.”  I almost never speak Des Arc-ian.

I left there 31 years ago, but on occasion, before my parents moved to Little Rock to be closer to my siblings and me, I did find myself going back to visit, and sometimes on those visits I was in a position where speaking Des Arc-ian was inevitable.  I would be talking to a local friend and I would slip into the patois. That vernacular isn’t something that rolls terribly easily from my tongue, but yes, I speak Des Arc-ian fluently when I want to. 

Now, if you ever talk to me in real life and a Des Arc-ianism slips out of my mouth, please look the other way.  If you simply ignore it as though it were an untentional tummy rumble or the like, my acute embarrassment resulting from the slip will pass more quickly.

Thank you.

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See-Mint Ponds

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I have a little landscaping project that is intended to make my cliff of a backyard seem less cliff-like, and less dominated by azaleas. The first thing I had to do was make more sunshine. As much as I hated doing it, this meant I needed to remove two of the three really huge oaks that were in the backyard.

My neighborhood is over 100 years old, and those trees weren’t young when the neighborhood was created. Although I love the shade of the trees in the summer, there was way too much shade. I have one patch of ground about 10×15 feet in which grass will grow. So, I took a deep breath and stocked up on firewood. It’s piled under the deck stairs now.

house firewood

To give you some idea of how steep the yard is, I took this picture. The deck stairs, under which the two ex-trees are stacked, are just barely visible in the far right of the photo. The fence, which is 8′ high, follows the contour of the yard, about to where the yard took a sudden 5′ dropoff. The main portion of the swimming pool is in that area below the 5′ dropoff. It meant, theoretically, that not much excavation needed to be done.

house pool steep excavation

Theoretically. Of course, that was before we discovered that the reason the drop-off wasn’t more than five feet was because fill had been added to the lot. Prior to the fill, the electrical lines for the house had been laid in that area. So we wouldn’t have to flip which end was deep and which was shallow, I called the electric company to see what it would cost to move the lines. I nearly choked when they told me that the price would start at about $17,000.00. Suddenly, the shallow end of the pool became the deep end. Now the pool is being built almost entirely above ground, even though it really doesn’t appear to be that way. However, the deep end needed to be made deeper.

Naturally, that meant that the excavation needed to be done through pretty much solid rock. With a jackhammer on the excavator, the pool crew began digging again. I’m getting lots of really nifty rocks that I hope can somehow be used in the stonework I’m going to be doing.

After the excavation was complete the day after Thanksgiving, it rained. I am so pleased to report that it appears that my new swimming pool will have no problem holding water successfully. This is what the newly excavated deep end looked like a week and a half ago.

house pool excavation

My contractor, aware that I wanted to save money wherever possible, suggested stocking it with catfish and foregoing a concrete lining. Mmmmm. Them’s good eatin’.Not wanting to disappoint my beloved son, who has his precious little heart set on clear water (yes, it’s all about Jack), I declined the contractor’s suggestion, despite the possibility of a business investment in the catfish business and possible tax deduction for business use of the property. Sadly, a zoning variance would probably be required and that’s just more trouble than I want to go to.

After making a basic form of the pool’s walls and lining it with rebar, the contractor started spraying cement through about 6 miles of hose that came from my front driveway, snaked along the side of the house, and finally made it to the back yard.

house pool construction

Let me tell you the crew had a fabulous time blowing the last of the drying concrete out of those hoses at the end of the day, too. They really looked like they were having fun. I have never seen so many grown men playing with rubbery tubes like that. It was inspiring. After the second day of fun with concrete hoses, the pool pretty much looked like a pool. The excavator was still back there, though, because there is a mound of mud and rock about 10 feet tall, and a Japanese Maple needed to be moved. The contractor wanted to wait as long as possible to move the maple so it would be dormant and hopefully not die. Finally, though, it just had to be moved.

Pool house construction

With the Japanese maple gone, it’s much easier to see the shape of the pool. All of these pictures have been taken from the third story deck. Isn’t my yard looking lovely?

My neighbors’ beagles are delighted with all the activity in my yard. They are very busy doing their allotted doggie-duties, and miss my dogs very much. If Frog-Dog and Missy Mia were home and not at their Dad’s for the duration of the construction, they, along with the beagles, would be loudly and frequently discussing the contractor’s shortcomings and directing the laborers as only truly great canine foremen can do.

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My House….

I love my house.

No, no. Not Aramink – although obviously, I loved Aramink or I wouldn’t still use the name. Places are important.

What I mean is that I love my house – the one I live in right now.

I used to have two garage doors. Now I have just the one, and it really does make getting in and out of the driveway a lot easier, especially with stone walls on either side.

That odd roundish projection between the garage and the front door houses the staircase between the top and middle floors. I call it the topless turret. Isn’t it scandalous?

To the left of the front steps is a little flagstone courtyard with a raised bed and fountain. The azaleas are gorgeous in the spring. A big old oak dominates the bed, and a stone wall just the right height for sitting marks the border. I have a smaller herb bed on the patio, too. (No, not that kind of herb – it’s right in front, for Pete’s sake!)

house

My house is perfect for Jack and me. It is three stories tall and clings to a cliff. The back of the house, which overlooks a wooded park, is all windows. It feels like we’re in a treehouse since we’re up in the canopy of the temperate rain forest. Jack’s bedroom and bathroom, and the main living areas (including my office) are on the top floor. My bedroom and bath are on the middle floor with the garage, laundry room, and another tiny little room I use as a sewing room. The bottom floor has Jack’s party room and a huge workshop. It also has an area that hasn’t yet been completely finished out. I’m planning to do something about that this spring.

From the upper deck of our house, off the kitchen and living room, we can see north across the Arkansas River to the cliffs of North Little Rock. We can also see west across the park to the other side of Hillcrest, which is the name of the historic neighborhood where we live.

houseWhen we moved in, the backyard really needed help. The house clings to a cliff, and the backyard was pretty steep. When the house was built a patio of native Ozark stone was built around one of three huge oaks in the backyard. A wall bisected the yard about halfway down the cliff. One side of the wall was even with the ground nearest the house. The ground on the other side of the wall was 5 feet below that. Did I mention that the house sits sort of on a cliff?

Not much grew in the backyard but those big oaks and a herd of overgrown azaleas. I bet you never knew that azaleas roamed the south in herds, now did you? Unfortunately, they do. The herd that was in my backyard had pretty much outgrown the grazing land, too. One of the sad truths about southern landscapes is that people tend to show very little imagination when it comes to shade planting. Azaleas and hostas are the staples. Ferns get thrown in as afterthoughts. Yawwwwwwn.

I’m engaged in a little landscape project now that should eliminate the boring sameness of the cliffside azaleas. It involves removing the three-level koi ponds (which leaked) and installing one somewhat larger pond that people can splash around in. No, despite the helpful suggestions of some, I won’t be stocking that particular pond with catfish.

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Final Proof

Imagine that you discover a document that absolutely proves whether or not God exists. Upon reading the document and finding the truth, you must decide whether or not to share the proof with the world. Would you?

Would it make a difference if the document proved the opposite of what you believed until you discovered it?

(Assume, for purposes of this question, that the document itself is proof enough)

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What if Guilt Disappeared?

This is an essay question on your final in a philosophy class:

Imagine that scientists create a new drug. When swallowed as a pill, it will completely and permanently eliminate feelings of guilt for prior events. Testing reveals that there are no harmful medical side effects. How should this pill be distributed?

Discuss.

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Karyan

Karyan was in a foul humor. He lagged behind the rest of the breck, muttering to himself. He knew they were going the wrong direction. Didn’t he have the best locus of them all? But no, Mauro was leader of the Keary Tynan, and if he said something was black then Mauro was determined to say it was white. If he said go east to get to the Gathering, Mauro would insist the way was southwest. Stupid Mauro.

Stupid Mauro and stupid Brenna. Had she not sided with Mauro the breck wouldn’t be wasting time. They had already traveled two hours under Mauro’s orders, and Karyan blamed Brenna as much as Mauro. Beautiful Brenna, with the laughing eyes and the perfect teeth, the raven hair that tended to slip and slide and shine in the sun…

Now he was going moony over her. She’s moony over Mauro and I’m moony over her, Karyan grumbled to himself. He was getting over his moony feelings, though, the more he saw her simper in Mauro’s shadow. Why was it that the women all thought Mauro was so great? Why did anyone think Mauro was so great, for that matter? He was muscular and handsome, sure, but he was as dumb as a rock. Mauro was only chosen Leader because he acts like he knows what he’s doing, Karyan realized. He doesn’t know any more that anyone else, and he knows less than I do about how to get to the Gathering. Stupid Mauro.

Malina and Tamal were beginning to fall behind the rest of the group, he saw. When they had slowed enough for him to meet them, he greeted them silently and waited for them to speak. The three of them kept walking, but allowed themselves to get slightly further behind.

“We should be there by now,” Tamal said at last.

Karyan shrugged.

“How far away do you think we are?” Tamal was attempting to get Karyan to speak against Mauro’s leadership decision, but after the argument the breck had over Karyan’s objection earlier in the day, Karyan was not feeling cooperative.

“Farther away than we were this morning,” Karyan replied.

“We think so, too,” Malina said.

“Then tell Mauro. Otherwise we’re going to be wandering in the wilderness for forty days and nights and we’ll just keep getting farther away.”

Malina twisted her mouth at his sharp tone. “We think Mauro will just change direction gradually and circle around to get to the Gathering. He won’t admit he made a mistake and turn around.”

“Maybe.” Karyan shrugged again. He hoped Mauro would be shown to be a complete fool in front of the entire breck. He hoped that by nightfall the breck was still wandering and would have to walk back an entire day to get to the Gathering. He hoped that they missed the Gathering altogether because of Mauro’s incompetence. Stupid Mauro.

“You should tell some of the others,” Malina said.

“Me? I tried to tell everyone this morning. No one listened then, including you. Why would they listen now?”

“Because my locus tells me that we’re farther away, too,” Tamal said.

“Right, well, maybe you should tell someone else, then.” Nothing would please Karyan more than to be proven right, but he wasn’t going to insist that the breck listen to him now. He was enjoying his sulk far too much for that.

“We should tell them together. Your locus is better than mine. I’m sure some of the others are also sensing the distance,” Tamal argued.

Karyan stopped. “Why should I tell anyone anything?” he demanded. “Mauro’s the leader. He knows all and sees all and hears all and locates all. I’m just a lowly Tynan, young and unproven, stumbling after my leader hoping someday to have his attention. Maybe he’ll let me repair his boots or something. They’ll need repairing after all this trekking we’re doing without reason.”

Tamal sighed and exchanged a look with Malina. “I know your feelings are hurt because of Mauro’s decision this morning, but…”

Karyan snorted in disgust.

“Really, Karyan!” Malina exclaimed. “You’re angry because of this and the fact is we need to get to the gathering. Mauro’s leading us the wrong way, and your locus is better than either mine or Tamal’s and we know it’s the wrong direction, too!”

Other members of the breck were stopping now, looking back at the discussion between the three of them.

Karyan crossed his arms. “I’ve already said what I think. Repeating it isn’t going to change the mind of the great and infallible Mauro.”

Malina put her hands on her hips. “You’re a mule!” she snapped. “You act like Mauro’s decision was a personal attack on you, and it wasn’t!”

“No, it wasn’t personal at all,” said Karyan agreeably. “When he said he wasn’t going to listen to one voice of dissent he wasn’t talking about me at all. When he said that my concerns were the ravings of a spoiled brat, he wasn’t personally attacking me at all.”

“Karyan, look, you’re acting like a child, just like this morning. You don’t want to do anything unless it’s done your way. We need to talk to Mauro and explain what we sense.” Tamal was trying to sound reasonable.

“I already did that, or did you forget? And besides, I am a child. You heard Mauro this morning.”

The rest of the breck was making its way back to where the three of them stood. Mauro was bring up the rear, the beautiful Brenna at his side.

Tamal and Malina opened the discussion to the rest of the group. A few had the grace to look uncomfortable.

“Actually, I was sort of thinking we were headed the wrong way, too,” offered Siyamak, his dark eyes looking toubled.

Karyan leaned against a boulder, his arms still crossed, still closed to the rest. He looked up, pretending to study the cloudless sky.

The other members of the breck came closer. Tamal and Malina led the discussion, and the Keary Tynan debated their location.

Abruptly, all discussion stopped. The Keary looked over Karyan’s head, their mouths collectively agape. Karyan, still closed to the breck’s discussion, noticed the shift in their attention nevertheless. He looked up, just as the two strangest Tynan he had ever seen jumped directly into the midst of the debating Keary.

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Books and Movies

Last night Jack flipped me his copy of Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass. “Your Rule, Mom,” he reminded me. “You can’t see the movie until you’ve read the book.”

“It’s a good Rule,” I said defensively. “And I’ve been meaning to read it anyway. You took it from my pile of books, remember?”

My Rule about reading the book before seeing the movie applies to all three boys. (All three? Yes, all three. It applies to my sister’s sons, too. Andrew is four months older than Jack and Austin is two and a half years younger. We call them the “cousin-brothers” because they spend so much time together. Hey, we’re in Arkansas. My sister and I co-parent well.)

The Rule came about because my sister and I knew that if they didn’t read the book first and they saw the movie, they’d never bother with the book because they’d think they knew the story. I bet I can get a few confessions from my friends – perhaps one or two of you saw movies when you were supposed to read a book for school assignments.(To Kill a Mockingbird, maybe? A good movie, yes, but a much better book. Since it’s the only book Harper Lee ever wrote, I think we owe the author the courtesy of reading it. Go ye forth and buy it now, Wench commands thee!)

You see, there’s a sneaky thing Hollywood does. It doesn’t make movies of books. It makes movies based on books. There is a huge difference.

The fact was never presented more clearly to the boys than when the first Harry Potter movie came out. Despite J.K. Rowling’s close supervision of the project and her input, the movie just wasn’t like the book.

“Neville didn’t have much of a part at all,” complained Andrew, the older cousin.

“Hagrid keep changing size,” said Jack, unimpressed by the special effects.

“They found the keys too easily,” Andrew groused.

“That chess game was lame,” agreed Jack.

“I liked it,” offered Austin. He was too young to have read any of the books by the time the first movie came out, so he had no problem with it whatsoever.

My sister and I had taken them to the movie together. We both laughed. “See? This is why we say always to read the book. The book is always better than the movie.”

“But why is that?” The kids were really disappointed.They had read this wonderful book and the three that came after, and were absolutely riveted by the story and the characters. The books had already told them what Harry, Hogwarts, and Diagon Alley looked like.

“Why is that? Because your imaginations are much better than anything a movie can show you,” we answered. “Even the best movie-maker is limited by what he can do with the actors and special effects. Your imagination has no limits at all. Anything can happen when you read.”

When Holes was made into a movie, the same sorts of criticisms occurred. Both older boys had read the book and really enjoyed it. Once again, the movie was a disappointment.

“The lake wasn’t as big as it should have been.”

“The casting was terrible.” (They were a little older and more discerning about such things.)

“The vermin in the pits weren’t as scary as they were supposed to be.”

“The climb up the mountain didn’t have the same significance.”

“I liked it.” Austin, again, wasn’t old enough to have read the book.

When I told Jack that movies were going to be made based on the His Dark Materials trilogy, Jack sighed. “It’s been sitting on my shelf for years. I guess we’ll have to read it.”

“Why haven’t you read it before now?” I asked. I had given him the trilogy for some past Christmas after reading a rave review.

“I tried once. I just couldn’t get into the first book. I put it down and haven’t tried again.”

I do that, too, I must admit. Sometimes I pick up a book and it’s just not the story or the style I’m in the mood for at the time. I put it down meaning to get back to it eventually, but it collects dust for a long time waiting for me to approach it again.

When he returned The Golden Compass to me last night, I asked Jack how he liked it.

“It was good,” he answered. “It’s sort of an anti-Narnia. But it did take me some time to get into it. It was slow at first.”

“Do you think the movie will be good?”

“Sure,” he answered.

“Even though all books are better than the movies made based on them?” I grinned, feeling a little smug and superior, pleased at the chance to drive home my point that books beat celluloid hands down.

“That’s not always true,” Jack said.

“Give me one example of one movie that was better than the book!” I demanded in surprise.

“Starship Troopers.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. The movie was better than a book by Robert Heinlein?”

“It was, Mom. I mean, I just don’t like the way Heinlein writes.”

I gaped. Who was this child, this alien being, this life-form from some other planet? He doesn’t like the way Heinlein writes? This… this…. creature… standing in front of me couldn’t be something composed of my DNA.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I managed to gasp.

“No,” he said. “I hated the book Starship Troopers. The movie was good, though. They changed up the plot and the characters so that they were better.”

I’m still dumfounded.

When he was about 10, I gave him a copy of Heinlein’s The Star Beast,assuming that he would fall in love with the Lummox just like I did.

“It’s boring,” he announced halfway through, just as the two kids took off to the hills with the beast to hide her from the hoards of scientists and media.

“You’ve just gotten to the most exciting part of the book!” I objected.

“I’m sick of that book. I’m not reading it any more.”

I backed off. I didn’t want Heinlein to be an assignment, but he had to read him. He just had to.

I gave him The Rolling Stones, knowing that he would be delighted with the twins Castor and Pollux, and that he would even get the mythology reference. He didn’t even open it.

Again, I backed off. Maybe he really wasn’t ready for Heinlein. Maybe when he was older…

Recently he asked to read Stranger in a Strange Land.
“Hell, no!” I said.

“Why not?”

“Are you kidding? That book has tons of sex in it!”

Jack’s face went through several different expressions before he settled on defiance. “But you keep wanting me to read Heinlein.”

“Yes, but you aren’t starting with Valentine Michael Smith and Jubal Harshaw. Nor are you starting with Lazarus Long.”

“Who’re they?”

“Mike Smith is the Man from Mars, and Jubal is his lawyer. Lazarus Long is his own grandfather.”

“No way!”

“Time travel, baby. But at 16 you aren’t yet old enough to grok the Martian version of god or love, and you aren’t yet old enough to find out what Lazarus and his maternal ancestors do for entertainment during long spaceship rides.”

“When will be old enough?”

“Old enough for me to give you Stranger in a Strange Land? About the time you register for the draft,” I retorted. That’s in a couple of years. “About the time you are old enough to order a draft beer legally,” I revised.

I bought a copy of Time Enough for Love and left it conspicuously on a table. It disappeared. I saw it in his bathroom, a bookmark about halfway through it. He started it. I’m not sure if he ever finished it. Hopefully my strategy will work and he’ll swipe Stranger from the bookcase and read it under the covers with a flashlight just because I was so shocked and said he couldn’t. Hopefully he will learn that Heinlein’s place at the apex of the pantheon of science fiction gods is deserved. If he doesn’t, I will know beyond a shadow of a doubt that all of his chromosomes came solely from his father’s side of the family.

I hope Hollywood never makes a movie based on Stranger in a Strange Land.

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