Tempting the Fates

                   "Wretched Excess" ©, oil and gold leaf on linen

No sooner had I announced my triumph over lymphocytic colitis then the gods took offense and whacked me with another bout.  I am gluten intolerant and still have lymphocitic colitis.  I hope the gods are happy.

It was actually two days before I got the attack.   I have been known to embellish.  No really. 

Perhaps exaggeration comes from being a novelist.  But it has begun to haunt me.  There are parts of my first, partially autobiographical novel (Hell's Bells, available on ebay for a penny) that I no longer know if happened in the real world or in my head.  We did have a shark scare on the Vineyard one year.  My mother didn't particularly like to swim, but was stalwart about daily exercise.  Katama Bay was mostly murky with an abundance of squishy vegetation.  You wouldn't have caught me in there before the shark scare.  Time Magazine had published an article that (I believe) said sharks avoid  yellow and should be deterred with a blunt instrument.  I wrote that the mother character swam in a screaming yellow tank suit and carried a hammer.   I assume that was fabrication, although I know she often swam in a leopard skin patterned tank suit.  My parents were great characters and had no need of embellishment.

I tell people how my father's office (he was a writer) was next to where my mother painted.  One day he made a comment about a painting. She took it off the easel and hurled it at him.  Subsequently he moved his office to the other end of the house.  I believed this to be one of my fictions, so I was startled to learn it was the truth.  In 1958 or thereabouts, my father was interviewed on Person to Person. I watched a grainy tape of the show recently.  My mother, who went gray in her late thirties, looked like a bombshell blonde on black and white television.  She introduced me as her "chatty" daughter. And then she told nation the story about lobbing the canvas at my father.

Does it matter if a story is true?  I think it should, but I'm pretty sure that as the embellisher, I am ill equipped to judge.

The Unkindest Cut

     
      Too Much Information Alert: bodily functions discussed.

Two years ago I got the runs, the kind where you visit the commode 12 to 18 times a day.  Machines thoroughly ransacked my innards for information.    The doctor ruled out celiac disease.  I remember being so glad as I couldn't imagine a life without wheat.  He told me that celiac patients can not even use the same toaster as normal people because of cross-contamination.

 The bad news was that I had lymphocytic colitis.   The doctor told me I fit the disease's demographic. I guessed he meant old, white, overweight and female.  He chuckled.  Even worse news, there was no proscribed treatment. All he could offer was hand-me-down medicine.  We'd pretend I had Crohn's Disease.  Whooppee!

The treatment involved taking 3 steroids a day for a month, then 2 pills a day for a month and finally 1 pill a day for a month.  The doctor said I could expect 3 to 4 attacks a year.  That is 9 to 12 months of steroids a year.  I've never known anyone to advise long time steroid use, but I had no choice.  I did my first three month cycle, went steroid free for 6 whole days before I had to start another three month cycle.  It was insane.  The steroids made my voice squeaky.  The slightest pressure on my arms would create angry, red, puffy bruises. Seeing my hands, people would look away quickly, embarrassed by my condition.

I tried to outsmart the colitis.  I went to acupuncture. I drank vats of Aloe Juice. I meditated.  I took Vitamin K to stop the bruising.  I took Curcumin to reduce inflamation.  I took dreadfully expensive pro-biotics.   And still I had to take steroids.  I played little games, shortening the cycle of the pills.  I gave up fresh fruit.  I gave up nuts.  I gave up liquor.  I gave up chocolate.

Then one day I gave up wheat.  I almost hoped it wouldn't work.  But it did.  I may not have celiac disease but I am gluten intolerant.  I have been off the steroids for two months but I still erupt in weird bruises.  Is it too much to hope that long gloves come back in style?

Timberrrrr!

                           "Provence in a Bottle"

It has previously been noted ("Oh say, Can I see?" January 3, 2012 blog) that I have trouble seeing that which I am painting.  Several teachers have chided me for "not looking."  A recent critique accused me of greedily rushing ahead when I should be pausing and focusing.  All of this is sadly true.  Another comment, "Cindy mistrusts her eye and inner makings of balance,"  got me thinking.  Well, that and the fact that I have fallen twice in as many weeks.  My physical therapist, who is all that stands between me and back surgery, says I am "a crooked old lady."  Uneven hips, collapsed cartilage, a touch of scoliosis.   I do fall more than the average adult.  And without grace.  My husband remarked, after I went face first into the Palantine Hill in Rome, that I "went down like a tree."  I don't think he was talking saplings, either.

I used to enjoy a walk in the woods.   But Nature is  lost on me as I can't afford to look.  I am  focused on the ground, where tree roots, mud and tangled vegetation try to bring me down.   Ironically, my last two falls were on  sidewalks, where I was silly enough to think I was safe. 

So maybe my physical imbalance has rippled into my creativity, causing me to rush ahead as I paint.  To finish before I fall...

Spring has sprong*#^!

                              "Broken but Unbowed"

   Spring has sprong and so has my back.  After a month of limping and climbing stairs one leg at a time as if I had a priceless tea cup on my head, I saw my doctor.  He sent me for an MRI which was done at 8:30 at night.  (There is something very creepy about medical procedures occurring after normal business hours.)  When the doctor called  with the results he seemed in awe of the collapsing cartilage, advanced degenerative arthritis and scar tissue.  This is a man who had replaced my left knee twice within a matter of weeks so he should have been prepared for havoc.
   I am fervently hoping to avoid further back surgery.  I had two disks removed 20 years ago.  My husband wasn't a 'hands on' attendant'.  I was flat on my back, stranded in the guest room. He would check on me before he went to work and when he returned asked if I might need something.  I learned a valuable lesson, when surgery looms,  keep a jar of peanut butter and a bag of prunes by the bed.
   The big 65 is just around the corner.  I had hoped to be in better shape.  Optimism is for the young.  I feel like an old car swaying down the road with bits and pieces falling by the wayside.  A muffler here, a rusted bumper there, the rest is duct taped.  And there is an 18 wheeler bearing down on me at warp speed.

lease lessons

  My mother used to grumble and fret for a good three days before she would hole up in a closed room to pay the bills.  But her real stress was her role as a landlord. My father claimed he was unsuited to handle such matters.  My mother often lamented that she wished, just once, to live in a house that did not need to be rented.  We lived in Connecticut for nine months a year.  When we moved up to the Vineyard for the summer, the Connecticut house had to be rented.  Readying the house for tenants was also my mother's job.  My father would disappear to the golf course.  I was supposed to help, but cleaning was never my ambition.
  If it were but one house, she could have handled it.  My father was a writer and my mother an artist.  In the early years, there was a certain herky-jerky quality to their financial stream.  My father's grand idea was to invest in real estate.  He had lucked out in 1953 by purchasing a Victorian house on 25 acres on Chappaquiddick for $8000.  To improve future cash flow, he created more rental houses.  First, he moved a goat shed, an art studio and other out buildings on the property across the way, paid $500 for a foundation, and voila, a rental house.  Later he made my brother Randy climb trees to find the highest point on our land.  He then had a house built of his own design.  It had no inside stairs, a widow's walk on top, and electric heat, which extended the rental season.  Mother, quite reasonably, hated being a landlord.  One year tenants in the goat shed house complained that there was a wretched stench in the wall by the fireplace.  Something big had died and they wanted it out. Now. Or a rebate on the rent.   So, Mother hired a team to remove the wall at no small cost. They found nothing.  It was later determined that the offensive smell came from a pretty conch shell, placed on the mantle by the tenants.  There was nothing pretty about the dead conch inside.
  I have inherited her dread of tenants.  And leases.  Which makes me wonder what sick impulse led me to volunteer to be lease chair at The Torpedo Factory. There are 70 or 80 studios rife with paperwork and problems.  And mine for another 21 months and 27 days.

The Slippery Slope

One may be forgiven for feeling creaky when it's time to apply for Medicare.  It is after all, a watershed moment.  Luckily, someone alerted me that it must be done within three months before  turning 65.  I'm not sure what happens if you miss the deadline.  Perhaps you have to wait until you are 130.

I came upon a true indicator of advanced age in the dentist office while waiting to have a tooth extracted, the hole packed with cadaver bone, all in preparation for an implant.  It used to be the only benefit of visiting the dentist was the wait room filled with copies of People Magazine.  Imagine my dismay when I realized I have no idea who the featured people were.  I am so removed from hip culture that Nicki Minaj might as well be the new pomegranate flavoring.

Books of a Feather

                     "Take your Choice" by John Frederick Peto. 

   I love books.  Who doesn't, you might suppose, but there are those among us who do not read.
   I come from a family of writers.  My father wrote best sellers.  My mother wrote and illustrated "Jerry the Giraffe" in 1945. (The copyright page affirms "This is a wartime book produced in full compliance with government regulations for conservation of paper and other essential materials.") One brother has written several well-received scholarly books.  And then of course, I added to the pile of felled trees.
  My daughter, a voracious reader, designs books.  She could make more money if she took her skills elsewhere, but she loves finding 'her' books in stores.
   Last post I was de-cluttering the house.  If I were serious about purging, I would start with the books.  But I can't.    Books aren't 'friends', as some have claimed.  But the good ones become a part of you, echoing throughout your life.  I would never treat books as they are pictured in Peto's painting (above) but I do mark passages and turn down corners.  Some pages may sport the occasional food stain.  My father was even more vigorous with his books, sometimes tearing whole chapters from the binding (to be used as research).  Not just for the mind,  books are visceral, meant to hugged or even thrown across the room.
   My husband is a steady reader.  We used to share books.  No more.  I bought him a dreaded kindle for Christmas as his heavy computer bag was tearing at his joints.  Secretly, I hoped he'd hate it, as I know I would.  He loves it.  Bastard.
   In the late 80's I could not find a publisher for my fifth novel.  My agent called to say I had been offered a contract for an electronic book.  I laughed and said, don't be ridiculous. No one is ever going to read a whole book on a computer.