Grasping at Grace (and Growth)

Diaries

I'm writing this with a cat on my lap. I have to periodically remind Carter that he can't grab for balance at shirt. There are breasts under there, my dude, and your claws are unwelcome. Really. But I can't bring myself to knock him off my lap. That's partly because I love him, and partly because I know it won't do much good; in a minute or two, he'll be back on my lap. I have found myself repeatedly surprised by finding him back on my lap after dumping him - I don't even notice him coming up to my lap until after he's made himself comfortable and me uncomfortable. Cats. Go figure. 

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Dysfunctional Families Close Ranks

Whatever the horrors that Iran's theocracy has visited upon its own people - and they are horrors, as the grieving survivors of at least 7,000 Iranians killed by the regime in the past few months can attest, and the relatives of untold thousands killed in the years since 1979 - people in Iran will put that aside and stand against what we've done to them in the past 36 or so hours. 

Your family may break your bones, bruise your mind, or force you down into heartbreak. You may hate your mother or your brother for what they've done to you. You may dream of revenge.

But when the neighborhood bully comes and strikes them down, injured or dead, then turns to you with a smile and says, "You're welcome," and expects you to go to your knees and thank him for that violence? You may well jump on the bastard's back and close your fingers around his neck, or hook them into his eyes, because they were your weight to bear, your sorrow to work through. 

Didn't we learn this when we "freed" Iraq? 

Apparently not. 

Job One: Remember that Computers Are Stupid

Job Two: bake Bob's favorite cookies to thank him for setting up my new laptop, and putting up with the occasional stupidity that's part of dealing with ones and zeroes.

We both knew it would take a couple of days, or even more than that, and I'm trying to be patient as he preps the new one (an Asus Vivo) so that we can download all my files from my slowly dying Lenovo, files that have been downloaded onto a delightful little red portable 2T hard drive.

That drive may will come in handy after the transfer, since I might need to keep it connected to my new laptop for a few weeks, or maybe months. My Lenovo has 1.82 T of storage, whilst my Asus only has 1T. We'll eventually see about getting a new, larger, drive in the Asus, but I don't foresee me using up the 1T of storage the Asus has. 

I've named the little hard drive Ada, and my new laptop is officially Alice-Alyx. It's the first time I've named a laptop, but it seemed the right thing to do with this one. I'm laughing a bit at myself, but hell, why not name some things that will help keep me happy for a good long time?

Now one of the remaining questions is whether Alice-Alyx will recognize my Samsung Galaxy ear buds. We tried to get them paired up yesterday, and the Asus laughed at us. Once again, I'm reminded that computers are stupid; they only do what we tell their ones and zeroes to do. 

In the non-computer part of the weekend, I was able to get in touch with a skiffy fannish acquaintance whose holiday card came back to me a bit ago. It turns out that he and his partner had indeed moved from the address I had for him, so I can send him something soon, and most definitely this coming holiday season. 

I also cleaned the bathroom, and sorted a small mountain of paperwork that had grown so high it was in danger of toppling over. I'm terrible at organizing and sorting, but I managed to do it today. I'm inordinately proud of myself. (I probably shouldn't be quite so loudly proud, because the universe will undoubtedly send something my way to punish me for such hubris. Heh.)

So that's my excitement for the weekend, and I am very happy that that's the most excitement I've had to deal with. Compared to this time last week, it's easy-peasy. 

He Woke Up

I awoke at about 6:15 a.m. to feed the cat, and after a night of night sweats (further, deponent saith naught because, eeuww, TMI) and dread about which Bob would greet me when he woke, I couldn't get back to sleep. I got up and tried to catch up on far too many emails. "Catch up on" quickly devolved into pitching most of the 650+ emails into the aether, 

Then I thought about updating Bob's doctors on the newest situation - him being home. I finally did that, but not before fearing that Bob wouldn't easily wake, or maybe he'd regress to not waking up at all, when I brought him coffee. 

He woke up. 

And he got up. And got dressed, and talked to me, and joked, and was there. All there. 

Another episode gone? Well, we thought it was gone back in January, and it came back, but I'm choosing to believe in hope this time. And it was a delight to be able to tell people from that damned hospital, and from one of the rehab places I was gearing up to tour that we didn't seem to have a need for them. I will also cancel the tour of another rehab place that I'd set up for Wednesday. 

I hope I'm not jinxing everything, but again, I'm choosing to believe in hope this time. 

That doesn't mean our work is done. We have got to figure out what the fuck goes on in BB's body to throw him into confusion, weakness and aphasia, and why it was so bad this time. There has to be a reason, or even more than one reason. So that's on the to-do list. But Sunday is a day of rest, so I will rest, watching Bob at his computer, and urging me to read the political columns he's sending me. It feels like home again. 

Yep, I Tested Positive

I thought I was coming down with the same bad cold that Bob was slowly recovering from. I don't get colds all that often, and I'd thought this one would pass me by, but nope, it appeared eager to settle in my head. Well, dang ... I headed for bed, hoping it wouldn't be too bad in the morning. 

Around 3 a.m. Saturday I woke up with aches that signaled a potential temperature. And indeed I had one; 100.7, significantly higher than the 97.9 I usually run. I knew that colds don't feature fevers so I tested myself for COVID. 

I didn't even have to wait the requisite 15 minutes, both lines were there in bright red within 30 seconds. 

Welp. 

I've felt like I've been hit by a truck ever since. I keep telling myself it's a smaller truck than it might have been, thanks to the booster shot I got last year (of course, I can't recall exactly when I got it, but I think it was in mid-summer.) but it's still a truck. I ran a lower temp on Sunday, and Monday and Tuesday, today, I haven't had a temperature since then and today I retook a test. At first, the only reaction was the control line. Huzzah! I was certain I'd gotten the first of the two negative tests I'd need to declare myself COVID free. As I said, Huzzah--

--except at the end of the 15 minute wait time, there it was, a faint but definite second line. 

Welp. Again. 

And it's still like being hit by a small truck. 

Ah well, I'm getting some work done on my NTBP* novel, escaping a corner I'd painted myself into. And I'm also making some bread. That always comforts me. 

And here, have something I wrote about cold decades ago. Since we're still in single digit temperatures with subzero windchills, it feels the same to me, although this was written after a relatively rare ice storm during a cold snap.

. 
* not to be published

He Had More Than a Dream

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had grit and determination, and strength and righteous anger that he controlled in the name of peaceful progress, and pride that he wanted Black Americans to recognize and adopt for themselves. He believed in this country - god knows why, given how much hell America put Black people through, all the way from 1615 to the then-current day - and he worked like hell to make it a better one. 

He risked himself and his family, with constant death threats and a firebombing at his home in 1958. He almost died after being stabbed in the same year. He risked his reputation and his legacy, surviving several arrests and jailings. He risked those who believed in him and in what he had to say, because he knew those who hated him would hate those who believed in him.

He fought for what he shouldn't have had to fight for; true understanding of what Black Americans deserve, and what White America has resolutely refused to admit was required.

He fought against nasty, petty, and powerful men like J. Edgar Hoover, who spread filth and lies about Dr. King. Why? Because he was afraid of Dr. King. He hated what Dr. King stood for, so he tried to erase the man. He wasn't the only one. 

After his stabbing, Dr. King had one more decade to shake the foundations of this country, to start the Poor People's Campaign and to oppose the Vietnam War. And then White America killed him. 

Who called for the assassination? Did someone pay James Earl Ray?  All of that kind of misses the point. Ultimately, the real conspiracy is what people in this country have insisted on doing ever since that April morning at the Lorraine Motel.

For more than 57 years America has worked tirelessly to erase his truth. America wants everyone to remember him only as he spoke during the March on Washington, choosing to turn those powerful words into an anodyne formula they want to speed the erasure of real history. Some of them manage to listen to Dr. King's "I've Been to the Mountain Top" speech and cry tears about his unnervingly prophetic commentary. 

But they don't like reading his letter from a Birmingham jail. They can't stand his anti-war stance. They loathe his pro-union beliefs, his support of poor people of all colors. 

It's still White America that fears him the most; rich white Americans, anti-union white Americans, pro-capitalism white Americans, the people who understand that he had grown so much larger and more dangerous to their power than they'd thought he would be. 

Let's remember him for what he was. A warrior.

And I'll try not to be part of the problem, but part of the solution, as difficult as that will be.

Pills and Novels

There's nothing like getting up, grabbing the handful of pills you normally scarf down, and having one of the horse pill-sized vitamins get caught in your throat. There's that initial split second of "Oh, it'll go down when I swallow again" and then panic - and pain - as the damn thing doesn't go down. 

Actually, painful doesn't even begin to describe it; agony is probably a better description. I kept trying to dissolve it with water, but it wasn't working. I was literally on my knees because of the pain. I woke up BB and between crying and gagging I managed to tell him what was wrong. He got up and did the Heimlich maneuver on me. It didn't shoot the pill out of my mouth, but it did move it just enough so that, about a minute later, I was able to cough, and the cough finally sent the thing stomach-ward.

Truly, for him to roll out of bed, bleary-eyed, and immediately know to do the maneuver, just reminds me that he is by far the most level-headed man I know. 

As of tonight, my throat feels as if I've come down with something flu-like. I know my struggle to get the pill down my gullet caused some bleeding, since I had that coppery taste in my mouth that's unmistakable. With any luck, it will heal relatively quickly. 

I'm never again taking all my morning pills at once. 😬

On the other hand, I finally put up the 19th and final chapter of "Gleaning Musutachi," the original novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo, of blessed memory, over on originalkaffy_r . It's monumentally flawed, and wouldn't make it to anyone's slush pile, much less publication, but I didn't write it to get published. I wrote it because I wanted to complete something of novel length. I'm fond of the characters I created and, despite the flaws, the world I created pleases me. I also managed to keep the plot from completely disintegrating. Yay, me. 

So pill pain, and something I could put up as a completed original novel. I love Fridays.  

Testing, Testing

I'm going to post something without coding the text color, just to see if a change I made with help from muccamukk  will do that. 

Woo-hoo! It worked!