“Only” 50

On an extremely windy day, Shiloh the Lab and I set out for our daily jog. Glancing up the street, I saw Don, my 84-year-old neighbor who is a thrice-a-day walker, gearing up for his second jaunt of the day. Noticing he was waiting to talk to me, I sped up a notch and heard him say, “Wha’cha doin’?”

Thinking perhaps his mind wasn’t keeping up with his years, I scrunched up my face and looked at him incredulously. “What am I doing?” the wind blew my words up the street to him.

“Naw, I can see what yer doin’. How’re yeh doin’?” he clarified in Kansas speak.

“Ahh,” I realized, sauntering to his side. As we walked together, I continued, “I’m doing better since I committed to writing my book. I went to a writers group last night where we discussed issues and questions important to us. Because of all the publishing experience I’ve had, I was able to share some knowledge with folks, but my questions weren’t answered. The gal who ran the meeting is researching for me, though, and will let me know. I just wish I had someone who’d throw a few hundred dollars at me every month to keep me going.”

“Well, yeh git Social Security, don’cha?” he asked.

“Don, I’m only 50!” blowing off a couple years.

He laughed, “Well, everyone I go to breakfast with gits Social Security, so I figgered you did too.”

So I’m going to breakfast with him in the morning.

Feeling Lonely? Click…

If I were lonely, I could pay for match.com, eharmony.com, or Donna Shugrue’s Perfectly Matched dating service and a matrix-based formula would align me with Mr. Right. And if I were isolated, depressed, and wanted free companionship, I could click Get Your Free Quote at online-health-insurance.com, whose motto is “Health Insurance Online makes comparing quotes and finding affordable plans easy. Apply online or speak to an agent for cheap health insurance options.”

Free. Cheap. Those should’ve been my clues. But it was a Monday.

By applying online and not speaking to an agent (it did state “or” not “and”), I could put a person on the project of researching plans and rates for me, didn’t have to talk to a soul, and could work uninterrupted. Yep, back in management.

After entering my basic information on the site mentioned above—including my telephone number, I clicked for my free online quote. It was definitely a Monday.

The moment, and I mean moment, I clicked for my free quote, the phone rang. “Hello?”

“Hi, this is Doug, and I’m calling to talk to you about health insurance.”

“Noooooooo! How did this happen?” I have been on the National Do Not Call Registry since its inception, and I absolutely did not request a call, making his advance illegal.

After telling Doug to take my name off his list and hanging up, the phone rang incessantly till the predator gave up and started calling the next Monday moron. As I glanced at my computer, I counted nine U.S. predators that had spammed my email trying to get a piece of the commission pie. I felt very sick. The phone rang again and I spoke with Antonio, a guy who told me he lived in my city (but in a not-so-nice part of town). I said, “Are you at Daystar Terrace?”

“Ah, yeah. You must’ve gotten my email.”

I gave Antonio a chance after he went on for five minutes explaining to me how everyone and his brother got my information. I replied to his email more formally requesting my free quote. Well, it has been two weeks, and I’m still waiting for Mr. Briceno to write.

I unplugged the remote and powered off the answering machine. At 5:30 that afternoon when I plugged in my phone to recharge it, it immediately rang, as if they knew! I definitely had stepped in a pile of poo via that site I mentioned above.

This fiasco began with an announcement from Aetna, my health insurance provider. They are no longer offering individual plans in Colorado, so by midyear, I must select a new bloodsucker, just in case. Reminds me of an old satirical cartoon: A life insurance salesman says to a man and his wife, “That’s okay, Mr. Johnson, you just think about the policy, and if you wake up in the morning, give me a call.”

Last year I sought a different carrier via ehealthinsurance.com (a good experience), because Aetna had to be watched like I would a con man, that is to say, my ex-boyfriend. With every other claim, of which I have very few, Aetna either wouldn’t give me the agreed-upon rate between provider and insurer, or they’d simply refuse to pay their contractually obligated amount. I’d have to babysit Aetna, take my time to email them, explain their contractual agreement with the provider, and have them reprocess the claim.

Most of Aetna’s customer service reps didn’t write or understand American English, making this dance quite asynchronous. (They’ve recently hired English-writing Americans, probably due to my numerous complaints about having non-Americans wasting my time.) In 2008 it took one year of stressful aggravation and several appeals before they realized they had an agreement with a provider. They could have saved a lot of money had they initially hired native Americans.

In 2010 when I needed Mohs surgery for skin cancer, Aetna’s preauthorization representative said it would cost me only a $50 copay, so I proceeded with the dissection. When the actual bill came in at $2,000, I knew Aetna had erred and contacted them. Upon receiving my email, Aetna’s rep leaned back in her comfy office chair, filed her nails, and wrote (paraphrased), “The rep who told you your surgery would be covered with $50 was just kidding. What did you think the required preauthorization was anyway? It’s a cat-and-mouse game. Doesn’t mean a thing to us.”

Business law states, Aetna failed to honor their oral contract.

In this matter, I was fortunate for two reasons. First, I understand why Aetna would say they’d cover me then renege once the invoice was submitted. My friend works for a California insurance company here in the Springs and told me that when she denies a claim, she gets a kickback. She earns more money by not fulfilling the insurer’s contractual responsibility.

Second, I know about DORA, the Department of Regulatory Agencies, and for the first time in my life, a governmental organization was on my side; specifically, Deanna. This gal unceasingly helped me, from reading my initial request for assistance through completion, a process that took two months. She first contacted me via email, attaching the well-written, factually based letter addressed to Aetna. With the receipt of each DORA letter, Aetna would squirm and plant their heels into the ground, so my advocate, Deanna, would articulately, intelligently, and gracefully pull the rug from under Aetna’s sandy footing. Finally, Aetna admitted their trespasses, and to ensure I have no more claims, Aetna wrote me an assuring letter stating, next time anyone from their company says a procedure’s covered, don’t believe it.

Deanna is my hero and she knows it. I mailed her a thank you note telling her so. After all the travesties and injustices my daughter and I experienced in the Fourth Judicial District, DORA’s Deanna is a breath of fresh air. She’s probably gorgeous too.

So maybe I will start dating. Things are flowing more positively. Excuse me, phone’s ringing. “Hello?…yes, Brian,…health insurance? You have a very nice voice. Single?”

Damn Republicans

What’s a vote worth?

I’m so fed up with Republican calls and surveyors muddying my morgue that I’ve announced to friends I don’t plan to vote for any of the breeders, nor growling Gingrich. For the two weeks preceding Colorado caucuses, my otherwise silent sanctuary reverberated like a school with alarm bells blaring every 45 minutes.

“Hello?” I’d answer in my sweetest “you’re calling to offer me a job” voice, only to receive three seconds of silence as foreplay before the big bang.

“I’m Ann Romney, and I have five children….” Later, “We’re conducting a 30-second survey…,” which lasted more than a minute. “This is Team Colorado calling to remind you of the caucuses on Tuesday at 7 p.m., and did you know how horrid Rick Santorum is. He had eight children and is conservatively consuming all the nation’s food supplies! That’s why you need to vote for our More-men Mittski.”

I carefully and quickly yanked the plug to my remote phone and powered off my answering machine. Immediately a whoosh of peace enveloped my soul—till a dog started campaigning next door.

“I refuse to vote for a breeder,” I wrote my beautiful confidante. “They’re just selfish.”

“What if I paid you to vote for a breeder? Or is that illegal?” she honestly replied.

“What’s it worth?” I volleyed.

“Twenty bucks.”

Sure I believe we need change, but are any campaigning Republican contestants capable of making it good for United States Americans? As with any politician, we’ll see. Look at the current debacle.

And before any reader believes I’m against having children, I’m not. In fact, here's a photo of me practicing to give birth.

One of my closest friends has six kids, but they are from three husbands who didn’t have other offspring. That equals two kids per family. And Arnold? He had four kids. Plus one. That’s two-point-five per family.

I rest with my case—a six-pack isn’t enough.

(Maybe being celibate is getting to me, but what about Jon Huntsman Jr., five birthed, two adopted; Sarah Palin, five; Michele Bachmann, five birthed, 23 fostered.)

Who Tooted?

Whenever someone goes into my kitchen and forages in the refrigerator or cabinets, there’s a 99 percent chance that one LabraDog and one Maine coon will be five feet away, eyes affixed on the forager.

Recently someone was bending over to pull a stockpot from the drawer beneath the oven and simultaneously tooted an atonal tune. Standing up, that someone turned around and said to the gastronomic gazers, “Excuse me,” then smiled,

at which point both beggars glanced sheepishly at their own rear ends.

What Do You Do to Stay Warm?

On Wednesday it was a gorgeous, sunny, 65-degree day, perfect for my hike. On Thursday, the temperature fell like a hawk on a bull snake to 25 degrees. With the furnace kicking in every 20 minutes throughout the night to maintain a crisp 63-degree atmosphere, a memory floated to the surface from my days in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

In the autumn of 1979 I began my third year of college. Nick (Norma), Mel (Mary Lynn), Lynn, and I rented a small, dilapidated, old house on Niagara Street, or Niagra, depending on which sign you looked at. In the dark, musty basement of the place lived the Octopus, a huge-bodied furnace with about eight thick arms that could never reach the two bedrooms upstairs. From October till May that house was freezing, particularly Lynn’s and my bedroom, yet our heating-oil bills ran about $350 a month. I don’t think they insulated houses the year that place was built.

The memory was of my roomies and me arguing about who would wash the dishes. After all, there was only so much hot chocolate and peppermint schnapps we could drink and we all wanted to be warm. So we’d come back from classes, eat dinner, and then, almost in unison, shout, “I get to wash dishes!”

“No, I do!”

“No, me!”

Hands in hot water is one way we could keep warm.

That 30-year-old memory led me to thinking of what others do to keep warm. So I asked a few friends.

Anita, who turns her thermostat down to 59 degrees at night, covers with an extrawarm comforter, and probably blows steam rings from her pillow, uses a little space heater in her office to keep her toes toasty warm when working. Banjo Bill says he puts on a vest.

Sam can’t handle anything less than 70, except his women. When cold weather sets in, he aims the thermostat lever at 80 and books a flight bound for Florida or Mexico where he frolics for weeks till he thinks it’s warmer back in Colorado. If I look at my book, though, I’m pretty sure that every year he returns to cold weather. He should be like my relatives. Mom’s brother and his wife, as well as her sister and husband, each have a home in northern Wisconsin and another in a warmer climate: Jack and Becky winter in Arizona, Shirley and Duane, in Florida.

Cherri, who hails from and moved back to Miami, handled Colorado’s occasional cold weather quite well, even driving in snow, albeit way too slowly. One night we had a sleepover at her place and what she laid on top of us was not an ordinary quilt. It felt like a 300-pound concrete patio. It pushed the air out of my lungs and left me motionless all night. I don’t believe the weight added any more warmth than a light blanket would have, and it reminded me of something I was missing in my life.

In Wisconsin, I remember some gals would pack on weight and guys would grow beards. I guess I could let the hair on my legs grow, but if I ever wore pantyhose…ew! like hair in a hairnet. Joe Namath wearing pantyhose comes to mind—dressed in drag before it came in vogue.

Me, well, I enjoy my morning coffee, half milk with honey, and a vigorous hike after working a while. If it’s too cold to hike, I vacuum and stand on my hands, but not simultaneously. A hot computer sitting on my lap makes work less frigid, and throughout the day I sip tea or my warm, milky concoction. Hot soups, chili, and other tomato-based meals make cold days more tolerable. Even red meat starts sounding good if I can get past the thought of slaughterhouses. Before dinner I might slip into my appetite suppressant, the hot tub that keeps me warm for hours and contributes to a better night’s sleep.

During the day I wear up to four layers on top, two on the bottom, and at bedtime I quickly slip into stretchy pants, socks, and a cami while a heating pad warms my sheets and jammie top. My room probably smells more like America’s Test Kitchen than it does a bedroom.

One story I’ll never forget is when my daughter, Ivy, was four years old, five inches of snow had fallen and was still coming down. I stuffed her into snow pants with suspenders, matching coat, scarf, and boots, then put her toddler’s toboggan in the Trooper and headed for the park.

A long, flat stretch of land runs adjacent to the parking lot and sits only feet from a perfectly sloping hill, great for sliding. The snow was sort of sticky, so I had to push the toboggan several feet to get it going. After a few trips down the hill and trudges back up, the snow smoothed out, making the journey slider friendly.

Being considerate, Ivy offered the next trip down to me, so I climbed in, held on to the toboggan’s edge lips, and Ivy pushed. Halfway down and still not gaining momentum, I turned around to give Ivy a quizzical, I-don’t-get-it look and found her dragging behind me, holding on tightly to the toboggan’s back lip. My shocked look melted the tricky little red-cheeked prankster into a warm puddle of laughter.

We all have cold-weather stories, but what do you do to stay warm?

Conversions

Twenty-eleven has been a year of great change in my life and around our home. My daughter graduated from high school and now attends an out-of-state college. Our home’s atmosphere has gone from moody oscillation to subdued ventilation. I might finally be going through menopause (I’ve had a big pause in men). And though every day I have always repaired or maintained something in our house or yard so projects don’t accumulate, major repairs and maintenance were waving their hands saying, “pick me!” Overwhelmed by all these responsibilities, I listed them and fainted.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’d rather clean a toilet than paint, and indeed I have cleaned a house or two. Is this beneath me. Heck no. I enjoy it. Nevertheless, for the first time since my BGF and I did it in 1996, I painted the stucco portion of the house’s rear below the brick and it looks great! It has a golden glow that really warms the structure and blends beautifully with the brick. Now my neighbors to the south can enjoy the view even more than when I dance naked at night with the draperies open.

I also tricked myself into a lot of touch-up painting. To some that might seem as simple as popping open a can of Coors and guzzling it down, but for me, opening a can of Sherwin-Williams is akin to opening Gorgonzola. But I opened, chewed, and swallowed, and again, the place looked and even smelled better.

But there was the big project, the one for which I could sort of see my destination but couldn’t fathom the path to get there. Dots on a map with empty space in between. You see, two of my many friends who have recently passed away left me their libraries, so I wanted to honor them by creating a space for their books where people could peruse, then check out a book or two. It’s what we already do in a condensed space, and there was only one room in which to comfortable house these books. So I began interviewing every friend who walked into our home. “Come, let me show you my new library!” I’d say. Then I’d ask them for suggestions.

In the lower level of our home is a room with no windows. When we moved here in 1994, I dubbed it my daughter’s playroom, where I could lock her up when she was naughty. It was space in which she could be creative with her friends, keep her art supplies accessible, and hang projects on the cork walls. I believe the room had previously been a torture room, with its sink and long shelf for accommodating chemical baths, or maybe it was a darkroom.

As she got older, Ivy and I called the room her office. We set up a desk with shelves, bought a decent lamp with three movable bulb casings, tossed in her huge beanbag chair, and kept the table for doing projects. But when Cat Number Two came into our lives in 2007 (see “Tattoo and Piercing”), he laid claim to one part of Ivy’s office. He used the cork wall as his scratching post. At first I was bummed to see chunks of cork of the floor and bare spots on the wall, but eventually I just walked past the mess or vacuumed it.

One day in late summer 2011, a month after Cat Two returned from a two-and-a-half-month explore 18 pounds lighter and regained his scratching momentum, I decided to do some cork removal myself. Ed suggested taking not only the cork but the whole drywall off. Attempting this, I soon feared the entire house would collapse, plus I found a wire that I suspected was still hot (wrong again), so I ceased further activity and prayed for a handyman.

Sam suggested keeping the cork on the top half and paneling the bottom, but cork was missing from the top. Two other friends, Michael and Anita, separately suggested placing drywall or paneling over the cork, to which I replied, “I’d be losing square footage in my home.” Michael also suggested ripping out the sink, shelves, and anything fifties in my home. Realizing I’d have to move, I chose another option. My neighbor suggested razing the house and starting from scratch.

Mentally exasperated, I needed closure, so by late October I knew how to proceed. Using a four-inch broad knife, I removed the cork, leaving small bumps of cement and pieces of flesh on the wall. Taking a lesson from the cats, I covered the bumps with paint texture I found in the garage. Almost everything used for this project, I found in the garage: paint, molding, a door, timbers.

I decided on a southwest, rustic motif. Two tones of blue for the sky, terra cotta for the sunset. I previously painted the brick wall, the backdrop to my bookshelves, a latte color and used a blend of warm tan and white for the rest of the room. When the painting was almost complete, my neighbor made numerous cuts with his saws—table, jig, and circular. I was on my way home.

Using my former 36” x 76” front door for shelves and two landscape timbers for spacers, I built bookshelves.

A table frame with Pergo shelves houses my encyclopedias from 1970.

Two stretches of door molding became a chair rail of exactly the correct length on the former cork wall.

Rope light and a six-foot length of molding were all I had to buy.

How cool is that?

Newt Gingrich

Guess who just called me.

Mormon Coffee—Chocolate

Humans can be so gullible.

I read a Parade interview with Mitt Romney in which he confirms that Mormons are not permitted to smoke, drink alcohol or coffee, or have premarital sex. Of these four directives, the least understandable is coffee abstention. Placing coffee in the same group as premarital sex is odd. I can’t imagine sending an 18-year-old off to college with the admonition, “You be careful now, honey. And be sure to avoid sex and coffee.” Then once the Mormon marries, he or she still can’t drink coffee. Why is this?

In response to the question, “Has it been hard to [not drink alcohol or coffee],” Mitt tells Parade, “My view is that the commandments of God…are not so much restricting as liberating.”

Now this little auntie has read the Bible several times, and there are a lot of drunk, adulterous, incestuous folks discussed. They lie, behead, pillage, and rape. But presently I do not recall a coffee restriction listed in the commandments.

Let’s check my Book of Mormon. Across from the inside cover reads “A Few Interesting Book of Mormon References.” Nothing about coffee, nor in the table of contents. In the index, coffee would be between Cockatrice and Cohor: the first stimulates my interest. Could it be that abstaining from coffee became law after 1948, the copyright date of this book? Checking Wikipedia’s entry for Book of Mormon indicates no word coffee in its contents.

What is so bad about drinking coffee aside from consequential bad breath? One answer is, given the number of kids Mormons usually have and how close two people need to maneuver to conceive all those offspring, a person’s breath is vital and should be fresh at all times, just in case.

Another thought is, coffee can be used as a stimulant, giving the drinker a kick-start in the morning after rolling over. I don’t see anything wrong with waking up before driving to work, but if you’re like me, you blend regular coffee with decaf in the coffeemaker and don’t experience any stimulating effects, just warmth and, of course, bad breath, but I don’t practice procreation. There’s usually not even enough caffeine to get my bowels moving. But with all those kids—they have five sons who’ve given rise to 16 more children—wouldn’t you think a stimulant would be a Mormon mandate?

From reading the entire article, I don’t believe stimulation or caffeine is the Mormon’s culprit, since Mitt’s wife, Ann, says he really likes chocolate—hot chocolate, chocolate milk, and specifically, Over the Moon Chocolate Milk, the low-fat kind. Chocolate has been known to have caffeine, so coffee’s naughtiness cannot be caffeine’s inherent crystalline compound.

Let’s ask my iBook Oxford what coffee really is: “a drink made from the roasted and ground beanlike seeds of a tropical shrub…of the bedstraw family that yields these seeds, two of which are contained in each red berry.” Hmm, it’s not made from beans, so Mitt can probably warm his insides with a piping hot bowl of chili during those cold Massachusetts winters without sin. Coffee is made from seeds. Further in the interview, Parade notes, “The Governor’s current favorite cereals are Brown Sugar Chex Bites and Quaker Oatmeal Squares.” Mormons, therefore, condone seed and bark eating, since seeds and spices are often cereal ingredients.

Not being permitted to drink coffee really has me baffled. What is this bedstraw shrub that bears coffee’s seeds? Oxford states it’s “a herbaceous plant with small, lightly perfumed white or yellow flowers and whorls of slender leaves. It was formerly used for stuffing mattresses.”

That’s it! Just when you thought I didn’t have a story. It’s the mattress component. If you drink coffee, particularly in the presence of an unmarried member of the opposite sex to whom you are attracted, the next step is obviously onto a mattress, with bad breath, no less.

Like to share a Hershey’s bar? Mine has nuts.

Excerpts from www.parade.com/news/2011/12/mitt-romney-family-man.html

Sexual Harassment

I get so sick of hearing about women telling the world their sexual harassment stories, the latest being Herman Cain’s two Six-figure Innuendo Girls. As I quickly turn off the radio or flip the newspaper page so I don’t have to ingest another bite, I wonder, Are these girls so lazy and desperate for attention that they pry their now-bruised knees off the floor or drag their sorry arses out of the hotel bed to drown us in their cesspools? Are the media so desperate for stories that this is the best they can do? It’s reverse carpe diem.

Sure there are going to be honest-to-god rapists, gropers, porn watchers, exhibitionists, and voyeurs, but those aren’t the guys the chicks are after. These slimy guys likely have no money, nor should they aspire politically.

Sex is natural. Teasing is natural, in America, at least. If I conjured up all the sexual innuendos, gestures, pats, bumps, and jokes throughout my lifetime—on men’s and my initiation—I could spend all day writing and blaming and living in the past. Sex is a vital part of the world, particularly in procreation and advertising. Sex might be better portrayed as a natural dimension of most human beings, like their needs to eat, sleep, and relieve themselves.

I’ve known of women who couldn’t live without food but could live without sex, too many in my opinion, and too many after they’ve landed their trophy husbands, had a couple kids, bought their minimansions, and who only worked if they wanted to. These women come from various religions or none, and because of their self-created, falsified frigidness, their husbands seek at least one of their needs elsewhere.

Is this seeking biblical? Yes, in the Old Testament; no, in the New Testament.

Is this Muslim? Absolutely, in some sects, where men may have numerous wives and concubines and treat them as chattel to use and discard at will.

Is seeking natural? Darn tootin’!

If I had a husband who wouldn’t put out, I’d be shopping too. Frankly, I wouldn’t need to gaze far to find the right fit either. Would I call demonstrating-interest behavior sexual harassment? Heck no. I’d call it a mutually beneficial exchange, as long as no diseases were involved. In younger years I’d say, “How can I work on self-actualization when my basic needs (food, shelter, and sex) aren’t met?” referring to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.[1]

It’s difficult to think clearly without some type of release, which lately has been hiking.

Sexual harassment takes two or, in less healthy maneuvers, more. But if sexual harassment presents as a joke, or “those pants look very nice on you, mm-mm,” or “lovely top you’re wearing today,” even in a certain tone, it doesn’t sound like harassment to me. Flirting, perhaps, but “aggressive pressure or intimidation” as Oxford states harassment, no. And don’t you have to be open to intimidation to actually receive it?

But “those slacks sure must be happy today,” or “if that blouse were cut much lower, the dam would be flowin’ and I’d be there with mouth wide open,” or “gee, those trousers sure sport a nice bulge.” These, in my mind, cross the aggressive border.

But often a person’s words aren’t as consequential as the listener’s feelings about the person saying them. If she likes the guy, his words might be taken lightly, even if off color. But if she views the speaker as repulsive, you can bet the guy is naked in the political arena with a pack of starving lions. We also need to factor in the listener’s perception. If a gal had been raped or sexually abused, any bodily comment or gesture might be perceived as harassment.

Feelings change over time, and perhaps the guy once liked becomes, 10 years later, a flirt, a lech, or a sexual harasser, the subject of an inquiry and media attention. Open the financial faucet and give her six figures and 15 minutes of fame. Once her intimations are public and people have mucked it into a diarrheal slurry, who really gives a crap? What does she really want? Another line on her résumé? Think about it. What is really behind the accusations? Does anyone really want to hear about the Polish blow-job girl on former President Clinton? Not me.

Maybe I got the Herman Cain story all wrong because I turned it off so quickly, but I’m guessing the people bringing forth vomitous detritus feel good today but will question their motives in later years. I know people who drag others down in a masturbatory attempt to make themselves feel more important. It has never worked for the betterment of the world. I doubt it ever will.

[1] An interpretation of Maslow's hierarchy of needs from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Getting Religion

I am a sinner and my girlfriend is parting company with her mate of 26 years, so it is as good a time as any to get religion.

As with most men, her husband preferred spending an hour at a home-improvement store rather than at church, and as with most sinners, I preferred hanging out with other sinners to assure myself I wasn’t alone. For me that meant going to a bar or to church, and on Sunday mornings, well, going to a bar seemed very Irish and I’m French, preferring wine or a less fermented variety.

My girlfriend, Anita, got a head start church searching and ventured solo the week before. Though she was not impressed with the church’s misplaced and alternative political viewpoint, she had an overall good feeling about the place.

By next Sunday when I jumped on board, we’d decided to wade into nearby fellowship waters. Our goal was to stay in our area of the city, as well as to find a small church in which we felt community and where leadership provided guidance for good living, upheld positive values, and maintained cohesiveness within the congregation.

When we arrived for the 10:45 service, there wasn’t a car in the huge parking lot. This I took as a sign. Church hadn’t been a part of my life since my love and I split in 2006. Maybe, I thought, God had different plans for me, like communing at an Irish pub, though I’d probably have to move to Chicago to find an open bar on a Sunday morning. The sign on the church’s door read: Join us for our annual Labor Day picnic in Bear Creek Park.

Because we were all dressed up and needed somewhere to go, I exclaimed, “Let’s go to my old church!”

We arrived at Calvary after the other thousand congregants had and parked a distance from the new structure. In this new building that had risen since the fires of my relationship hell, ever more people needing the love and dynamism of Pastor Al swarmed to hear him preach. He makes people’s hands, voices, and hair rise. I love this guy. And I like that the congregation isn’t dominantly white. Yes, Pastor Al can put the fear of God into a soul, and my friend said she was one of them.

The Sunday next, we waded back into nearby fellowship waters. This time, September 11, the parking lot was full, as was the sanctuary with first-service attendees. Arriving early is my modus operandi, whether to a party or church. That way I can observe those coming in and, in this case, coming out. It’s education. As we walked out the door after the unchurchlike service, we glanced at each other knowingly. Next?

My neighbors for years encouraged me to attend a vibrant, open-minded downtown church. Though both neighbors were members of other downtown churches, they knew my spirited nature. Three times I had walked this church’s labyrinth, a structure indicating the church’s deeper walk with the mysterious. On September 18, Anita and I thoroughly enjoyed the Congregational church, their engaging, approachable pastor, and their music, particularly the handbell choir. Still fanning embers of tradition, such as singing from hymnals and having a choir, their members seemed very involved in contributing their time and talents to the communities, microcosmically and macrocosmically. Anita and I both felt it was a viable contender in our quest.

The following Sunday we headed north a few blocks to an extremely unprejudiced, unbiased, nondiscriminatory, liberal church.

The following Sunday, the first in November, the sisters took tradition a step further and visited a Methodist church. Anita’s neighbor joined us on this expedition because she was, in fact all of us were, raised with Midwest Methodist teachings. Time stood still in this space. The congregation was primarily white of hair, limited of hearing, and slow in communicating, except for a boy who slickly grabbed a plastic container of communion juice and downed it on his way to Sunday school. That’s the spirit! This kid I could relate to. In his wit, the pastor assured us, our communion time would also come.

Throughout our grand adventure, I learned that some churches say A-men and others say Ah-men. Nothing about women. They all say the Lord’s Prayer too, with variations on sins, trespasses, and transgressions. Why they all pointed their fingers at me I’ll never know.

Other neighbors are members of the Episcopal church, or the Western branch of the Church of England. I’d only been to this church a couple of times for a wedding, maybe a funeral—same thing, so I looked it up in my iBook’s Oxford dictionary. “Church of England: the English branch of the Western Christian Church, which combines Catholic and Protestant traditions, rejects the pope's authority, and has the monarch as its titular head.”

Rejecting the pope’s authority sounded good, and I love monarchs, even planted milkweed to attract them, but what’s this about a titular head?!

Neither Anita nor I had any proclivity to figuring out when Catholics sit, stand, kneel, or fall prostate, or is that prostrate, on the marble, yet this Episcopal church fell very close to Catholic ground. The people were the most welcoming, gracious, and all sang like the Vienna Boys’ Choir, even the choir itself, singing from the heavens behind us.

By this time we realized that all churches these days have Communion on the first Sunday of each month. Each serves its version of bread and wine, but this was the second Sunday of the month and the priest was wiping the cup. I turned around and asked the kind, educated man behind us if Communion is a weekly event, and he replied, “You can have Communion here three times a day.” Great!

As we were leaving the chapel’s beautiful property, vast and elaborate as it is, we averted our attention onward. My friend and neighbor had invited us to attend an evening service at her huge Presbyterian church, so Anita and I prepared to accept. We weighed our options: try a Lutheran church if one exists in Colorado Springs, look online for any small Bible-based churches nearby, or go to the first one she visited, where I’d only been for a wedding. And that is what we did.

Three gals, Anita, my neighbor across the street, and I were enveloped by handbell music when we walked into the sanctuary. In a gentle, flowing service, I felt peace, acceptance, and the presence of real love. The pastor talked about forgiveness in a way I’d never heard, wrapping his talk eloquently around Joseph’s story, using integral parts as meat and leaving some details for dessert. Lovely.

Had I been healthy, I would have been there with my friends the following Sunday, but I shall be there the next—and likely the one hereafter. Amen.

African sky © 2002 Bob Groat

Between My Ears

Life is surreal. Throughout my life I’ve danced atop a fine thread, dipping my toes into dreaming reality then wakeful reality without a seam. I wonder if I’ve said or done something out loud and should pardon myself or if I’ve really had the experiences I have. Waking hours ebb and flow into alpha, theta, even delta, then back to beta, maybe because I’ve not been blessed with consistent spells of uninterrupted sleep, maybe because life is a dream.

To feel truly alive, alert, and awake, I hike—swiftly.

It’s my way of reducing the fat between my ears. After relocating to the Springs in January 1985, I would head toward the mountains Saturdays and Sundays. In 1990 we built a house in the mountain to provide no-drive-required trail access, and in semiretirement, I’ve walked the earth in all types of weather, breathing deeply and smiling, almost daily for 11 years. Hiking is therapy. Sanity. Cleansing. Sometimes social, usually solitary, full of flora and fauna, and today it was worth $100 plus compliments.

One week ago, Tuesday, I had a follow-up biopsy, 13 months after having a hole chiseled out of my head. The surgeon had sought to release my most secret, creative thoughts and unleash their vast potential, but all he found was cancer.* Morpheaform basal cell carcinoma isn’t a typical skin cancer. It can morph into organ, muscle, and bone. Months after surgery and sporting a lovely white gash on my forehead, a large bony bump grew below the scar—an unsightly, painful reminder of mid-September 2010.

Fearing the bump was more of the dreaded C word, I visited Dr. Sniezek again. He is my favorite doctor, despite his digging tendencies. I like him because he quickly and accurately responds to my rapid-fire questions. He’s intelligent, honest, and fun. By 10:30 on appointment day, eight patients sat comfortably around his waiting room zoning out on Halcyon and donning bulging, white gauze wraps, primarily on their faces. When it was my turn, he was 99.9 percent certain my bony growth was not cancer, even though I told him I’d been losing hair like a retriever for a month. But his proclivity to not sending a patient out of a room without a bandage led to a biopsy, just to eliminate the 0.1 percent worry variable. The sweet receptionist, with whom I have a great rapport, could barely look at me when I came out to pay my debt. Ugh. Results were to be available in two to three days, so Friday was the latest. Got home. Hiked. Rested.

I pushed my sorry self outdoors Wednesday before book club. We’re reading Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth about being fully conscious. Upon arrival, I became fully conscious that our host was very sick with a cold, coughing into her hand, blowing her nose and not immediately washing. One of her viruses got away from her and wiggled into my weak, submissive nasal passage. I felt its tingle. You know the feeling.

Thursday I was worried, depressed, and I failed miserably on my daily home repair job: moving two door lock strike plates needed to lock the front door of this constantly shifting house. I save a lot of money doing work myself, but I wonder how much of my work will have to be redone. No word from doc’s office, no person answering the phone, no ultrahigh vacuum for virus removal in an unsealed system. At my spiritual, consciousness meeting Thursday eve, friends bathed me in white light and healing. Everyone knew I was okay when I drowned in love.

By Friday, day three, I’d heard nothing. Hiking didn’t alleviate my fear, and resistance wavered. My anxiety level went from six to 10 on a five-point scale. Luckily my Friday friend came over and saved the day with his always-unconditionally loving presence and leaving a message with the doc’s office.

I later stepped out of phone range for a half hour when, of course, the nurse left a 3:59 p.m. message for me to call her at my earliest convenience. She gave no word on the results, even though I had granted permission to leave intimate, vital confidentialities on my machine. Just call, she said. At 4:23 p.m. I returned her call and found she was gone—till Monday. Fortunately a new gal informed me that my forehead nub was the start of a horny protuberance and soon I’d morph into a mythical animal.

Or maybe it was scar tissue. At that point I didn’t know if I was relieved or ticked off that I’d been left hanging.

By Saturday, I had my conscious friend’s cold, a sore throat, drippy nose, and 12 pounds of fat between my ears from four days of stress, 10 of which still lingered after running three miles on the trail. Not wanting to bless my Sunday friends with a virus, I opted out of church, hit the trail, and missed a great music program.

Monday arrived and I had a plan. I decided to advertise for a roommate to draw income and cancel my health insurance to save $200 monthly. First, errands. I used a car wash coupon my girlfriend gave me, then my shiny, dripping car and I headed toward the recycled-home-supplies store. It was closed on Mondays, so we trucked northward toward the grocery. A block farther, in front of office space I used to rent with Dennis, my friend and work mate of 22 years, a grated trailer disengaged from its fork, likely due to carelessness on the installer’s part, and bounced around two lanes of traffic and a sidewalk before coming to a halt. I was the first one behind the guy’s white truck, shocked. I drive about 2,000 miles per year and, fortunately, maintain supervigilance on these nightmarish streets.

In the grocery store parking lot, there was Dennis. Before I could tell him what happened, he announced that he had heart bypass surgery a month ago. When the doctor told him he had blockage and would immediately go into surgery, Dennis said it was surreal, like he was in a dream, a very bad dream. This is the same Dennis who for decades has biked 25 to 30 miles a day. Tears flowed from my eyes following our long conversation. What was God telling me?

Safely back home and groceries put away, I changed into shorts and sprinted out the door with Shiloh the Lab. What a relief it was to be outside, not contained in a two-ton shell. I said hi to a neighbor boy (he’s 46, six years my junior), who said I looked great. “Pardon?” I asked, so I could hear him say it again. I gratefully thanked him, touching my heart, and briskly strode up the street.

Twenty feet later, I saw a waterskiing partner and friend working on a neighbor’s house. “Hi, Tom!” I called.

“Hey!” he said. “You look great.”

Unreal. Life can be a dream, a sweet dream when you most need it. (Maybe hiking is all the insurance, ah, assurance I need ; )

* See http://auntieeartha.blogspot.com/2010/10/c-word.html

Autumnal Changes

As autumn has arrived with crisp, cool days and colder nights, I’ve observed the shortening of our front porch rug. First a few threads of its yarn fringe seemed to be falling off the rug’s body, attributed to rain and windy weather, I surmised. The fringe, however, disappeared geometrically as the nights grew longer. By yesterday, a side of the rug had disintegrated too.

Yes, what used to look like one gal’s front rug has taken on a new life that probably looks very much like an ambitious squirrel’s living room.