Meteor Showers, the crushed foot and door & a skull bowl

We woke up tonight at 1:00 am and snuck out to see the meteor shower. This week for the Northern Hemisphere is the week where the meteor shower is best (only the moon is shedding light on the stars). The best viewing time where we were was between 1:00 am and 2:00 am and so with a few blankets we got into the van. We drove past beacon hill park, which has no lights and then out to the cliff side park behind it so the hill blocked the city lights. There, with as much dampening as we could get, we got out and wheeled to a bench and watched the meteors. With the moon and in the city, us sharing lap and shoulder blankets, we could not/did not see many. Most were between the big dipper, the horizon, and the little dipper.

We each stared into the sky, with a quick, ‘ohhh, did you see that one.’ And after a bit of staring up our necks were hurting, and so I chanted slowly, ‘Star light, star bright….show us our meteor tonight.’ It didn’t work the first time but the second time there was a vivid flash across the night sky of a second of a meteor hitting our atmosphere and burning up, a large one making vivid fireworks. We called it a night.

It was not the best of days before that, since I managed to smash a door....the door leading into the apartment....with my toe. Okay, yes, I was going outside for the first time in a LONG while and I had INDY on the SLOWEST speed. Our outer door requires turning and pushing a lever down to open the door, you can’t just push it forward with an auto lock (oh no, too many thieves!). And then, through it is on the far side I am suppose to push it forward by leaning all the way forward and even then it would not be enough to avoid INDY hitting the door. So we will have to deal with that issue another time. But what happened is, I have been having a rapid degeneration of peripheral neuropathy in my hands and arms in the last week or two and I reached out to grab and turn the lever down to allow me to push the door open……..and I missed. Yes, I missed a three inch lever completely, and my left foot, particularly my large toe, hit the door. I tried to stop but with the problems of the peripheral neuropathy, that was probably a half second delay, which was enough time to, it seems, crack the door. No, I can’t feel the feet but I will have it checked out (you know, once I get a GP). This depressed me terribly because I was going out due to enormous pain.

I don’t know if you have had bad pain, like I have described where it just comes and comes and never lets up, but it is hell. And recently my spine and my hands, which I use every day to ‘lock’ nerve paths in place have been giving me constant pain. Total pain. So last night I tried to watch a DVD series that I had bought. Only I had bought season two of a series I watched from when I was AB. And now, right now, it was just too slow. Can you imagine being in really bad pain and then watching a TV show like Murder She Wrote or another slow show where you are like, “Oh come on! Stop interviewing them it is X and just finish the DAMN show!” – basically I need the equivalent of riveting or fast shows: the cocaine of TV. I had just finished Dollhouse by Joss Wheaton which did that for me, and resold it but this one was not. So here I had wasted what little money I had getting a TV show new release which did not distract me from the pain. And my goodness, the pain. It just washes over you, and washes over you. This picture is the only one I can find now. One day I will find the right picture to show the way I can not describe it because even if you scream or you cry or you smash you head against the wall the pain just keeps coming down and will keep coming down as long and as hard as it can. Linda found me, crying, my hand claws curls in my lap, sobbing and she helped me to bed and I cried the whole way. And she told me that she would give me the extra opium pill to go with the night pill (the strongest pill we have), and I cried harder. I told her I had taken that pill, the fast acting opium pill which is exceeding my limit and damaging my liver 30 minutes ago and couldn’t take another for 4 hours. She said, if I couldn’t sleep, then we would damage my liver some more. It was a brutal, ugly, heart wrenching time, when even to pull me upright to not aspirate my pills while swallowing, Linda had to hold me and hear me scream, and moan as she pulled me up. She had to wipe away the tears as could not move and then we tried to sleep.

So today I was trying to make sure that didn't happen again. I was going out to watch Psych Season 3 from the DVD rental store. It has been out a while now. I wanted to make sure Linda didn't see the previous night again, that's all.

Instead I broke the front door’s glass, and likely my toe. And I called Linda and she was, “It is okay we have renter’s agreement. But maybe they won’t cover this.” And I was near hysterical because I know we were trying to save money and had really no savings and then I do this. I do this. I hated being disabled, I hated not being able to even get a job serving donuts much less a research or government job. I hated it. So I hated myself. I went down to the DVD rental store. They didn’t have Psych season 3.

I came home and that was it, I was broken and I wasn’t going to be going out in INDY again. I was and still feel a child, unable to do the most basic things, and emotionally scared, as I am only able to remember my failures, like this. Because I CANNOT LEAVE HERE with my current inability to open the door or stop even on the turtle indoor speed, without the ability to react, and with a door I was no longer strong enough to throw open and ‘race’ through before it smashed down on me (because a slow closing door lets THEIVES in – can you tell the manager is paranoid about thieves). The Manager called the owner. Owner says the cost is on me. So much for the freedom INDY was going to give me. I can’t have freedom if I can’t enter or leave the building, or if I live somewhere that my non-AB body limitations is going to cost me hundreds I DON’T HAVE every time I try to leave the apartment. And what about the stores I try to visit. So I am house-bound now, not just choosing to stay inside.

Linda came home and gave me a present that Cheryl had left before going on her trip. It is a Skull bowl, and here I am with my easy grip spoon mixing a broth (where is the dry ice to bubble over?). Actually I had ice cream in it tonight! BWAHAHAHA! It helped, but I still feel like a total screw up particularly with tape across the door and a big sign. And I did it with my toe. Property really is more important than humans in this town.

But in the end, like the elusive fireflies, I got to see some meteors, about three or four bigs ones and as many little ones. I hope, when Hawaii is possible and we go, that we go to the big Island where the telescopes for many countries are (including the largest in the US) as there is no light on the island in the middle of the sea and they say the stars leap at you (or you at them). That is something I want to see. A blanket, a scarf of stars covering me. Everyone I love is here on earth, but maybe I would geek a while and like to explore, just a little, up there, to places where none has gone before.

Life without Linda and the $5,000 question

Today in grief counseling, I asked the person, one to one, how do people grieve, how do they cope with rapid losses, frustration, anger, and being dehumanized. But most of all what I wanted was hope that I might grieve, to accept the fact that the world moves on without me, and that the part I am sharing, is preparing for me to leave, or for them to leave me and return to the fullness of the world. It has been, though memory wiped often, my bones tell me, a weary time.
She said that many find comfort in the spiritual aspect of their journey, they turn to various beliefs.

I told her that besides the fact that the churches we are within wheeling distance of won’t accept us because we are a lesbian couple (because that is SO important right now, isn’t it!). But that, and here I started crying, “I do not believe in heaven because I do not want to live in a place without Linda.” I paused and continued, “I know that Linda will move on, and grow and become a better person, maybe find someone else. But what I want, is to be HERE, with her, with Cheryl, with my friends (online). I do not want to believe in Heaven.” (I do want her to move on and grow becuase I love her, I want her to grow into the person I see, a sort of super-Linda; and yet, I want to be there to be part of it)

As I said to Linda later, “You are funny, you smart, you are caring, you smile to hide how vulnerable and fragile you can be, you are the person I want to know more about and the person I want to be with. What is the love of Jesus, who is not here? Why would I want to spend time with Jesus when I could be with you?” I am sure that is some sort of heresy that is so terrible the ground will open up but I fell in love, I believed in that love, I fought for that love AS DID Linda. Cheryl has been there for me, other people have been there for me, and as awful as living sometimes is, as much as I scream from the pain of the seizures and the heart problems and heat ones and even when my arms turn totally green (or as the very pedantic woman said it, “Well, you are really only somewhat green, not fully green” – oh, I’m sorry, do you get a lot of GREEN humans in here so that you have to GRADE them according to how green they are?), THIS is where I would rather be.

This is NOT heaven on earth. But this is where I would rather be. Here is another picture from Oga to remind you what I know, that there IS wonder, there IS caring and there are miracles here on earth. And most of the time they take human form.

But there are also the minutes, and hours and days: strings of them, all hard and sometimes lonely, often lonely. But this, life is where I want to be. I like looking at this Pencil Board from Piano, the anime series, which shows that sort of feeling, that there is rain, and there is waiting (so much of a disability/illness life). And I want so much to be with Linda and on a road trip and with Cheryl and everyone but yet things just keep raining down on my life.

I did determine the other day to live forever by sheer will power, which will become somewhat problematic when I have to sleep.

Yesterday, I showed up to find that my person at Triumph is gone, quit on Friday, and this new person has been getting our emails (and I guess that is why she never replied), but didn’t notify me about this change. Very professional. The finalized $5000 Triumph was paying for the wheelchair in invoice form is gone. The new person knows nothing about it. She has a letter of intent from July. My Wheelchair place has the Blue Cross funding but they need the invoice and the letter of confirmed funding from Triumph. They have disappeared with my previous case manager. And while she CAN buy a wheelchair with them, I am not sure what use that would serve her. Also gone is the disc and the incorrect User ID which is stopping the computer that was sent to me it seems 9 months ago from working. Where has that gone? A fun appointment starting over, because remember, I am in “employment crisis” and though it turns out they CAN’T get a computer with dragonspeak to work for me in nine months, I am SURE my employer would patiently wait. I did make an offer to apply for the missing social worker’s job. They said they weren’t advertising it yet. Ah.

Today, we went from my sort of “non” grief counseling to see this somewhat Blue Cross covered (except for the last $1000) oxygen concentrator, which would allow me to leave the house (longer than my 40 minute tanks). The women who, after I told her I did NOT have COPD four times, continued to extol the virtues of this concentrator for people with COPD. It had two significant differences from the one we took to Japan: 1) It is loud, like twice as loud, like over 60 db loud and you have to shout over it loud and 2) it has so many small parts that even the able bodied person selling the machine who had sold many could not with her two good dexterity hands, change the battery. And it requires you open a zipper or two, or three as it is built into a bag, and she didn’t seem to get it needed to be able to be attached in someway (like in my backpack) to my wheelchair.

The other model, while not have quite as much maximum outflow has an easy giant handle to pull out batteries and new ones are simply dropped in by gravity. And it is so quiet that on the Tokyo and other subway and bullet trains, I had it going without anyone hearing it. We used it in the car driving with Cheryl and all talked. Problem is, we have to find a new supplier as the other, slightly older model is…$1400 more than Blue Cross will pay, and we don’t know yet if Blue Cross will transfer the letter for the “oxygen concentrator” to a different concentrator or we start the six to eight week process again. I COULD go insane worrying about these things but that is why there is a "medical team" who does that, I think finding another (my deduction: cheaper) supplier of the concentrator we want is the plan.

Know what I do at times like this> I look at the complexities of males. And if normal males weren’t enough, I look at anime males. Like the Yaoi males, maybe a teen? Dunno. Yes, beautiful and yes, somewhat complex and emotionally challenging BUT does not have a $1400 worry attached. So before we say goodbye to Yaoi for a little while, here is our Uke again, in trouble this time. He has been caught by the Seme (aggressive older male) making money modelling as a ‘sweet goth loli’ girl. Obviously the attempts of the Seme to drag off our pretty boy (who by the way is just way, way, way too perfect for those clothes and makes me glad I am a ‘goth loli’ and ‘goth’ who wears dark clothes and not a ‘sweet goth loli’ as then I would have to admit this guy looks way better in any clothes I buy than I would). Ha! Don’t worry, you can tune in without having to see our Uke and Seme couple for a while.

I also like hetero couples, well ANIME hetero couples like this cute couple Spice and Wolf: this is on a Pencil Board which is what people in Japan put in front or inside the plastic of their binders at school or university (or their job if they want). They are so colorful a lot of people collect them. I don’t know why but fox eared girls are kinda cute.

Linda was very almost late for an important meeting which I can’t tell you about because it would be…TREASON TO THE QUEEN (no seriously, over there you have breach of confidentiality, but Linda is a government manager in a government ruled….by Queen Elizabeth II – at least in name only, she lets the Prime Minster do the heavy lifting). So I can’t tell you as I don’t want those BeefEater guys with the weird lace collars and long pointy things to come and put me in the Tower. So I was let off and was racing home to meet my home care person. And I was going downhill towards this newly finished street, which had been sinking. Well, it turns out that the curb cut LOOKS like, with new cement and all, that you can roll right down it onto the street and up and over, but no. I found this out as I was flying, my legs ripped out from the velcro tie-down, and I was pretty much still in the seated position.

I actually looked back and there was my chair, still at the curb, where I had hit the street in a bad curb cut which such force it stopped the wheelchair dead while I soared onward! Now coming down was kinda OW, but I have to admit there was a whole Road Runner and the Coyote aspect to it, where I am literally sitting there in mid-air, my hands still down trying to touch my wheelchair wheels at my waist as I sail about six to seven feet through the air in a seated position. Tell me that doesn’t make you think of a cartoon!

Anyway, with some local help, they brought the chair into the intersection, I pulled myself back in the chair and made it back home and found…a home care worker I remember I think, from before the big brain go boom and she and I get on well and she is willing to work nights and will bring her laptop (oh my type of person!). So aside from my right side having MORE road rash and my right wrist sprained again (once from the seizures last night), the ending was comical and sort of positive.

Except there is a guy who is driving me nuts on ebay, but that for another day (Says, “I will not sell to McClung” – what did I DO, run over your dog? What did this OTHER McClung do?). I wanted to finish with a few things I bought for $2 (yeah, you know me, I go wild when I spend) over a month ago which just arrived. They are some Hello Kitty as various traditional people during the New Year’s and Spring Festivals and purification. I don’t recognize most of them, one is a sort of Hime (ritual Princess), and it is on water paper, how cool is that. So if you know anything please let me know but still, I do the traditional ancient Japanese Hello Kitty or goth or alternative Hello Kitty, but not the pink fluffy!

I close with some postcards from Chobits, another hit Anime, these are from the creators Clamp, a female only drawing company, who have done many famous series. This book of cards is from 2000 and is out of print, but I found it for not very much, enough to justify buying it, waiting the six weeks to get it so I can send them out as postcards to people. Like I said, only the best for my friends.

It is raining outside. Started, Linda said, just before my seizure this afternoon. Still, when I wheel into the bedroom tonight, Linda will be there. Where else in Heaven and Earth can promise me that?

Hoh Rainforest, I have big crash, the squirrel grapevine and more postcards

Today we did what I had come over two previous times to attempt, and failed both times: go to the Hoh Rainforest. It is a rainforest and a World Heritage site. I had decided to make one last attempt, and with two weeks of sunny weather, though it predicted rain, today turned out sunny. We drove out there (2.5 hours) and did a “semi-accessible trail” – if you consider stairs to be 10 inches and higher ‘semi-accessible.’ But I saw the Hoh rainforest and I took a couple hundred pictures. (Camera whores are we!)

We saw the Hall of Mosses and we saw two first year black squirrels fooling around in the tall trees (acting like the teenagers they were, swinging from the moss and other dignified actions). I have to wait until I return to give you the whole pictures and story.

But I did have a exciting spectacular accident which involved me running out of control down a steep narrow trail on a section where there was a drop off and no guard rail. Apparently after a look of terror I said, “Help, Help!” before I managed with the one wheel on the ground to direct myself toward the steep incline the trail was cut from (the wall of dirt and tree roots). I hit it, which flipped the chair over, threw me TOWARDS the drop, and then threw the chair into the AIR, with my legs still strapped in, landing atop me (how that is possible I don’t know. That is what the two witnesses say and it makes Very interesting bruises). But, I did NOT fall over the edge (whew!), though apparently I hit so hard a cloud of dust and tree leaves made a plume into the air and my head was a few inches from the side of the down slope cliff.

Some people from below, having seen the plume, ran up to help. At this point I was pretty sure that my finger as well as at least one knee was broken because well, I could FEEL THEM, and what they were saying is not to be repeated in polite company (so skin me down and body slam me a few times and you CAN get some feeling out of me).

I looked up and said, "I am ONE with the forest!" (apparently two goth girl who had come to help...or watch, found that very funny)
I was assessed and carried into my chair and decided NOT to take the additional trail, but call it a day. No, nothing broken, at least nothing obvious. So just an exciting finish to the day (but wait...there's more!) There were lots of great woods and great moss and just wait for the pictures. But yeah, there was a bit of hell trail.

We had lunch and a couple crows appeared to beg. I said, “No way, I’m waiting for squirrels.” It was a joke.

But you know how the squirrel grapevine goes. Well, a few minutes a young squirrel (a few months old and about 4 inches long) appeared racing across the parking lot and in little jumps approached towards me. I threw what I had which was a piece of roll, so a bit of bread. He came about 18 inches away and grabbed it, eating it down. It was a red squirrel with red tail and red chest. As he was eating a SECOND squirrel appeared. He had a pinecone in his mouth and raced past. After feeding the first squirrel a few more times, he left, racing off the way the very young and very energetic squirrels do.

Then the second squirrel raced back, buried the pine cone a few feet away and had a “My turn now?” look to his face. I tossed the bread in the air and he ended up going within a few inches of Linda (who was taking pictures – I was too busy being the ‘squirrel whisperer’) to grab it and then have a good munch. So that was a good end of a trip; got to see a world heritage site, a great forest, bruised and bleeding AND got to have red squirrels (which I had not seen before) seek me out. Not Linda or Cheryl, ME, (seriously, do I have some sort of squirrel musk on me?).

I can’t show you pictures of the Hoh (until I get home to download them) so I will show you what I did work on yesterday which is some more postcards. I am sending these out right now. And to complete my ‘I am the punch doll of the universe’, for the second week in a row 10% of my postings from the last week appeared in my post box, only this time for a different reason. After about 400 postcards, it seems there is some stick-up-the-arse in Tacoma sorting center who has issue with me sending decorated cards, or Japanese cards or whatever. So I just keep working. And here are some of those who I spent a month or more getting. I think they have beauty.

The postcard project doesn’t define me, but it allows me to reach out to other people, to say that I actually care about something beyond myself – which is in a way, a gift I give myself and one I hope I give to those who receive them. They are important to me, and now they too are being a bit stomped on. To see a set of cards that took an average of 3-6 hours each to make returned is painful, but I don’t quit, I don’t stop, not as long as there is intent in my brain and a way to continue. So I will keep posting the ones I send out. And I will keep sending.

I don’t know much but this I have experienced from “health professionals”, and social workers and those who are to help the vulnerable and the police and the politicians: that the act of giving a damn, of caring about an individual is a rare one. Even to the point of just sending a personal postcard is very rare. I wish I had any of my health care “professionals” spend that much time in a week thinking and caring about me. I imagine there are millions out there who do. I can’t send out millions of postcards, but I can send hundreds, maybe if I have time left before I die, a couple thousand. People matter.