RevSpork

Who knows when we shall meet again...

It is time.  My blog has reached the end of its nine year-plus journey.  It has served its purpose.  I finished downloading the blog, and over the next few weeks, I will finish adding any extras - such as photos - that didn't get downloaded, then I will shut the blog down permanently.  

It has been my pleasure to entertain you.  

 

9/6/2003 - 10/25/2012

Back to blogging

It's been a while since I posted anything other than a word-search puzzle.  Much of that was due to my six-week internship at the Chicago Tribune archives, which was an amazing experience.  Deep in the bowels of the Tribune Tower, I worked with boxes of old glass panes with photos from the long-extinct Chicago Herald-Examiner and Evening American newspapers from 1924-1935.  Despite the cold, dry environment and the sour smell of decomposing acetate (also in the boxes), it was an amazing six weeks.  Photos from the old Hearst newspapers were full of life: gangsters covering their faces in court; society matrons posing in their mansions; actors and actresses stepping out from the 20th Century Limited train en route to New York or Hollywood; flappers and sheiks strutting their stuff.  Typical of the photos I cataloged were the hundred or so photos from the 28th Eucharistic Congress held in Chicago in 1926.  It wasn't just the photos of the zillions of folks crowding Soldier Field for a mass that blew my mind; it was the photos of choir children packing both Wrigley Field and Comisky Park to rehearse.  

As much as I will miss the gig, I'm a bit relieved to be done as well.  I still have one library class to go before I pick up my Master's degree, and at the same time I'm taking an education course so I can get my certification to work in school libraries.  Although the education course is an intro, undergraduate-level course, I'm finding myself struggling to keep up in the class. I don't think being a teacher was ever just knowing stuff and passing it on, but the subject is far more complex than I ever gave it credit for.

In the meantime, I'm still married.  Still have two cats.  Still constantly edit while typing.  Everything is normal.  And I'm blogging again.

Been a while since I posted? Yes.

It's past 1:30am Monday morning.  Far-off thunder perks up now and then, and the cats are puttering around, but for the most part it's a quiet night.  I've either had little to say about the world around me over the past month, or I've been too busy with school to post.  I did a full-time load in graduate school this semester, the first time I've done since my earlier, failed attempt at a master's degree. It was a tough slog - man, it was tough - but I managed to survive with a minimum of emotional and mental injury, if not fatigue.  There was at least one time during the semester where I hit a wall, but I managed to overcome it, thanks to my bud / baby sister Lupu and a very bad casino in the suburbs, who took away my roulette money soon after they had to reboot the scoreboard because it crashed. 

I have two more classes to take before I get my Master's degree in Library and Information Science, which should be by the end of the year.  I'm taking one LIS class during the summer (it starts in less than 17 hours), and one more during the fall. 

Thanks to the State of Illinois, however, I'm not even close to getting my certification.  The degree is awesome, sure, and it will hopefully land me a job in library-land.  School libraries, however, are a different story.  In order to work as a librarian at a school library in the state, I need to be certified in the School Library Media Program, which is a totally different ball of academic wax.  Among other things, I need to:

1. Take three specific education classes;
2. Take three standardized skills tests;
3. Complete 100 hours of pre-clinical observation at a variety of school libraries;
4. Eat a 96-ounce steak, a baked potato, and a two-liter bottle of A&W root beer in 60 minutes;
5. A bunch of other things.

And that's all before I begin work on my clinicals. Once that's all done, then I can work at a school library... assuming there are any left by the time I finish. 

Yeah, I'm being a little pessimistic, but it's not that bad.  I've turned in 25 observation hours so far, and I plan to contact some very nice librarians to garner some more before the end of the school year.  And I passed the first skills test so far, so I'm not doing so bad.  It's just a lot of work. 

In the meantime, my wife has decided to explore the dead people in my family tree (which is a huge portion of it so far), and now she's checking birth records from Italy, which is a special treat since she knows as much Italian as I do, which is to say none.  Hell, I can't even remember half the swear words and obscene gestures my mother inadvertently taught me as a child. I'm no help, either - I couldn't care less about my ancestors.  I figure if they wanted me to know more about them, they'd drop by the apartment more often. 

Finally, Jack and Felix are getting along just fine.  In fact, Jack just dropped by the office to demand why I'm not playing with him.  There are reasons for this, the number one reason being I really want to go to bed. 

Eh, what the hell. See you folks later.

On being in pain

Pain is a healthy thing, it is said.  It's the best method possible to inform you that something is wrong with your body.  Such an unpleasant sensation is helpful because it's hard to ignore.  Imagine your body informing you of a problem by, say, making everything smell like cabbage, or making your voice sound like Nathan Lane.  You could ignore it for a time.  Or, more soberly, imagine not having the ability to sense pain at all.  You could literally fall apart and not be aware of it until it was too late to get help. 

As much as we hate it, pain is a good thing.  However, sometimes our body sends us pain messages, and there's not a damned thing we can do to fix or even diagnose the problem.  Ever dealt with a constant "low on fuel" light in your car, but several miles from the nearest gas station, or faced with more immediate problems?  Those feelings of frustration and helplessness in being unable to fix a simple problem are multiplied a thousandfold when coping with unending pain.

My pain problem actually began nearly three years ago, when I couldn't shake a constant abdominal pain.  After explaining my symptoms to a doctor, she had a cab drive me to the emergency room with what seemed to be a mild case of pancreatitis.  Pancreatitis in itself can be pretty scary; some folks have to be hospitalized for weeks, living on liquids and strong painkillers because the inflammation is so painful.  I was tested and scanned and given morphine and the doctors ultimately diagnosed gastritis, which can also be pretty painful but sounds like something easily fixed by adding Beano to everything you eat. I was out the door by the end of the day, laden with pain pills.

Everything was hunky-dory for the next couple of years.  I went about my daily life; I suffered only the mildest of intermittent abdominal aches, nothing that couldn't be solved with a couple of Advils.  By October of last year, however, the pains returned and became constant.  No painkillers seemed to shake it.  Back to the ER I went.  This time I was hospitalized for four days, and for most of that time I was not allowed to eat or drink anything, not even water.  Again, the doctors initially presumed pancreatitis, and this time they were able to confirm it. 

There was a problem, however.  Most folks with pancreatitis are either alcoholics or suffer from gallstones.  I fit in neither category.  In the meantime, my abdominal pain, unlike years before, never really went away.  More gastrointestinal specialists were welcomed into my pancreas and, after a second MRI and an endoscopy, they were able to nail the problem: a congenital defect of the main pancreatic duct. 

While you sit there scratching your collective heads, let me remind you what a pancreas does: a lot of different stuff.  One of its most critical functions, however, is delivering enzymes to your digestive system that convert carbohydrates (say, pasta or beer) into something your body can use as energy.  The pancreatic duct is the delivery system and mine is screwed up.  I was apparently able to get away with this (most with this defect suffer no problems whatsoever) for a few decades, but as my body had been pain-free for a while, it apparently got bored and decided to surprise me with a gut punch.  Literally. 

Next Tuesday I see my GI specialist.  I already know what he will recommend: surgery.  There's no other way of fixing the problem. (Trust me: I checked the Interwebs.) And as I've never needed surgery in my life (I still have my tonsils, wisdom teeth, and appendix), I'm 100 percent freaked out about it.  In the meantime, I still have this pain, and it never really goes away. 

The worst thing about it is I can't even complain about it very much.  On the pain scale, it's about a one, sometimes a two or three.  It's far more aggravating than crippling.  That's not the same pain my mother can describe; her back pain has reached a level where her sister is occasionally woken up at night by my mother's screams.  Had this pain occurred a couple years ago, off she'd go to a specialist, but she was laid off from her job (ironically enough, at a medical clinic) over a year ago and, like most unemployed folks in their fifties, can't get her resume looked at by anybody.  So she's driving through her days, the low-on-fuel light constantly blinking, and she can't ignore it, the light so glaring it even wakes up her sister with its blinding luminescence. She's seeing a doctor about it anyway, and hopefully her pain can be fixed as mine will hopefully be. 

It's useful, pain is.  Given my druthers, I'd like the Nathan Lane option every once in a while.  And I'm sure my mother wouldn't mind it either.

All I want for Christmas is peace (and quiet) on Earth

This is my Xmas list:

1. I want, for a period of one week, no shootings in Chicago, starting on Xmas Day.  Just one week, that's all I ask for.  If you feel the need to shoot someone, hold off until after New Years.  I think our city could use seven straight days without richocheting bullets, blood on the street, and weeping family members. 

2. Some less news about reality TV stars, please.  Replace with happy news about cats helping babies go to sleep.

3. How about a holiday season when folks aren't stealing money from children.  I'm not fond of Christmas, but I never force my attitude on kids, and definitely not by taking things away from them.

4. I'd like a war on the non-existent "War on Christmas." And Jon Stewart should be the general.

Am I asking too much?  I don't think so.  I'm not greedy. 

I'd also settle for completing my "Robot Chicken" DVD collection.  Hint, hint.

Signing a death warrant

I've seen plenty of these photos of Facebook recently.  Many of my friends have lost their cats this year.  Our friends Jim and Amy lost both their cats within a month.  I react like most cat-lovers do: I offer honest condolences to my friends and hope they are all right.  Then I move on, occasionally thinking about their loss and quietly thanking the fates for our own healthy cats.  But each posted R.I.P. carries with it an implicit warning: cats don't live forever.  If you spend twenty years with them, you're truly blessed. 

Mimi's problems started in August. She began having problems breathing through one of her nostrils.  It was extremely stuffed up, and first one vet, then a second couldn't come up with a reasonable solution.  A specialist found the problem: nasal lymphoma.  Faced with  some options, we immediately decided upon chemo.  After two weeks, Mimi's tumor looked to have gone into partial remission, and she was largely her old cranky self again.

Last week, however, after I returned from a four-day stay in the hospital for pancreatitis, Mimi began to regress.  The infection returned to her right nostril, then spread to both.  Her nose was clogged with snot, then a mix of snot and blood.  Then Tori found dried-up blood on the floor.  Sunday evening was the last time she ate.  Although hungry, she'd look at the food he offered her and turn away, as though she didn't know what it was.  Then she'd look up at us, wondering why we hadn't given her food yet. 

I took her back to the vet on Tuesday.  We came out of the vet with more meds and a bag of saline for me to inject into her for about ten minutes a day.  Call us Thursday, the oncologist's assistant told me.  Give us an update.

Thursday.  Today.  The day after Mimi refused food yet again.  The day after I had to puncture my own cat and fill her with life-saving fluids.  The day after she fought Tori and me with the energy of a cornered cougar just because we were trying to give her medicine.  The day after both Tori and I broke down, realizing that we, like Mimi, were also cornered, and that the worst option for Mimi was probably the best. 

Today I made the call.  The oncologist talked to me about options.  A second CT scan to see if the tumor had spread.  A neti pot-like process to clear out her sinuses.  Rescue chemotherapy to starve out the tumor.  The odds of success? 50/50.  How much time did she think Mimi would get?  2-3 months.

No, I thought.  No more.  Strip away the expenses.  Strip away the emotional pain Tori and I are going through.  Strip away every single remotely-selfish element and whittle it all down to the one issue that matters: What about Mimi's quality of life? More injections, more failed attempts to eat, more nose bleeds, more struggling to breathe...

My oncologist told me, sounds like half of you has made up your mind, and the other half is trying to rationalize it.  Yes.  Let me know, she says.  I hung up.

I summoned up every ounce of self-control I had and called Tori at work.  Fighting tears, we came to the same conclusion: No more CT scans.  No more chemo.  No more picking up Mimi and fighting to squirt medicine and liquid food down her throat.  I hung up and called our regular vet.  She was in a meeting, but would call us ASAP.  I uttered the word "euthanize" to the clinic employee on the other end of the line, and her voice immediately lowered, almost a whisper.  Ok, she said. 

When Tori got home from work, we met with the vet.  We told her about the options, and that the options added up to more stress and misery for Mimi, and she agreed.  We set a date and time.  We discussed cremation.  We discussed the possibility of a house call.  We broke down again. 

Tomorrow, Tori has the day off.  I will go to work, but only for a couple of hours.  I will come back, and we will drive Mimi up the wall with attention, brushing her, loving her.  We will spend our day with Mimi, offer her our love, scritches, and kisses.  And the next day we will do what we desperately do not want to do, and we will dump the remainder of our tears into that crazy cranky beautiful calico soul, and we will post a photo on Facebook, and we will then cry for our loss, for our reduced family, and for the fortune of having Mimi in our lives. And then we will move on, because that's what we're supposed to do. 

Why I'm not fond of Halloween

I want to make it clear: I don't hate Halloween.  I can't stand a lot of holidays (Saint Valentine, are you listening?), but Halloween is a day I simply let be.  

It's a little strange, when I think about it: Halloween is a day when you can go totally crazy.  Deck yourself out, act like a madman (but not like a zombie - zombies are so 2010)... what's not to like, especially a nutjob like me?  

Let's go waaaaay back in the wayback machine, back to... 1976?  1977?  I can't quite place the year.  (That's a wonderful thing about passing 40: you can't nail any year, so you have to settle for a range.)  Anyway, we're doing some serious time travel, at least in terms of my lifetime.  I lived with my mom in an apartment building on the Kansas side of Kansas City.  Apartment 213, to be exact, at the end of the hallway.  (Now that I think about it, it was probably 1977.) 

Back in those halcyon times, before sexy bee costumes were readily available, a mom could get away with slapping some old clothes on her son, dipping into her makeup, and turning him into a serviceable clown.  And that's what she did.  (Sorry, no photographs available.) So there I was, a clown, ready to take on my apartment complex and make off with gallons of candy.

Unfortunately, my mother made a mistake: she didn't accompany me on this trick-or-treating excursion.  The building's tenants were mostly elderly folks; I didn't know any kids my age, so I went alone.  I was six years old at the time, and although such an act would land me in foster care today, in 1977 (it was definitely 1977) this was perfectly fine, especially when we knew so many of our neighbors.  It was okay.  The problem with this particular journey?  I was shy. 

Imagine being a six-year old, trick-or-treating in an apartment building.  The doors were HUGE, tall wooden structures.  The hallways themselves were lit, but the lamps had long since yellowed, giving the hallway that dark, jaundiced look common to old apartment buildings.  And when you're six, hallways go on FOREVER.  How the hell was I, a shy clown, supposed to take on this building full of harmless, friendly senior citizens?  I ended up wandering the hallways, trying to knock on the doors but, my little fist hovering an inch away, not quite having the gumption to finish the knock.  The few times I did knock, nobody answered, which I guess further diminished the rewards of overcoming my shyness. 

Complicating the issue was my clown makeup.  It itched like crazy.  A mom - certainly my mom - would tell me to stop scratching and rubbing my face and, backup makeup at the ready, make the necessary repairs to my costume.  But I was not only alone, I was hopelessly lacking in self-discipline. 

When I knocked on my own door a half-hour or so later, my mother opened it to see this short, severely smeared clown, a total of one piece of candy in his pumpkin bucket.  I don't recall if I cried or not, but even without the tears it must have been the most pathetic scene in American history. 

I did go trick-or-treating in later years, sometimes with my mom's or stepdad's friend's kids, but the humiliation stuck with me, and by the time the 1980s arrived, I had stopped trick-or-treating altogether.

Fast-forward several years.  (We'll go with 1984.)  I lived on Long Island now with my grandparents and my dad.  I was still shy, considered by classmates and neighbors as a freak, and popular as a cloud of flies.  However, I figured I could score a few popularity points if I performed a Halloween role from the other side of the door.  Why not give out the treats?

My grandmother was happy to cede that role to me, and so I gave out the treats for the next few Halloweens.  There was one problem: my grandmother - bless her soul - was incredibly cheap. 

So you're thinking, "So she gave out cheap, crappy candy, like those horrifying peanut butter lumps in black and orange wrappings that you inevitably had to eat pieces of along with the impossible-to-remove candy.  Or was it old-person candy, like those inedible butterscotch drops?"  I wish. My grandmother gave out pennies. 

To be fair, she didn't give one penny to each trick-or-treater; she gave out five.  Yes, five cents to each kid who tromped up our stairs.  She would empty her piggy bank, stack piles of five pennies on her card table, and give them out as needed.  I'm sure you little brats are thinking to yourself with that snark you're so famous for, "Well, back in those days you could buy a lot with five cents."  I was around in 1984, and let me tell you, you could buy a lot with a dollar (one slice of pizza OR two candy bars OR four games of Centipede), but five cents would get you a piece of Bazooka bubble gum.  One piece.  And if you're buying one piece of Bazooka bubble gum with five pennies, you were one poor bastard.  At least buy two for a dime, for crying out loud. 

Now, if my grandmother simply rolled those pennies and sent me to Waldbaums to buy some Halloween candy, I would have gladly done so.  But no, she did not believe in giving out candy.  So I gave out five pennies to the kids, young and old.  And unlike giving out cheap candy, when you could at least salvage some dignity by tossing in a few extras, no amount of pennies can compensate for the fact that your house is THE CHEAPEST GODDAMN HOUSE IN THE ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD.  A grandmother giving out pennies can get away with this crap, since she's a grandmother and you'd forgive her for being senile.  A 14-year old kid who's already unpopular?  Yeah, right.  Within three Halloweens, all but the youngest kids skipped our house, leaving my grandmother with far more pennies and me with a powerful sense of relief. 

I have not gone trick-or-treating in thirty years.  At Halloween parties, I dress as myself.  Again, I don't hate Halloween.  I like watching the kids walk around with their parents, dolled up in The Current Hit Costumes.  I don't mind the parents getting into the Halloween spirit by dressing up as old dorks.  But I also don't mind treat-or-treaters not buzzing our apartment.  It's no big deal: it's my problem.

I'm not here, nor is Mimi

No drink in my hand.  It's too early in the day for alcohol, and besides, I just took my meds an hour ago.  I'm not sure if combining booze with my meds is chemically a bad thing, but I work on the assumption that mixing booze with any meds is a bad idea, and so far that philosophy has suited me well. 

Mimi has undergone two rounds of chemo so far, and as of Thursday was doing fabulously.  One of our vets called us, congratulating us on the good news, that her tumor has gone into partial remission. 

Then yesterday came, and the recovery blew a tire.  Mimi wouldn't take her meds that morning, and when I got home from work, I found Mimi hovering over her water bowl in the kitchen, a small puddle of drool on the floor.  I looked into the bedroom and found vomit everywhere.  Every ten minutes or so, she'd try to drink water, only to fail.  I finally took a syringe and forced some lukewarm water down her throat, then called the vet.

This shit is normal, I was assured.  And I understand that.  The part of my brain that took the SATs understands that.  The part of my brain that practically sprinted Mimi to the vet, however, does not care how normal it is.  It does not care that chemo can wreck an appetite, can make one so nauseous, swallowing anything is an ordeal.  It refuses reasoning and logic, preferring love and desperation.  

After the vet gave her an injection of water and some anti-nausea medication, I took my calico home. She returned to her water bowl, sat, and waited.  She hasn't eaten anything since, and Tori and I have had to crush her meds, mix them in water, and deliver it to her orally through a syringe, but we're determined to see this through. 

After Mimi's two weeks of chemo, I was fooled into thinking it was going to be easy.  Everything was fine, and it would continue to be so.  I let my guard down, and got a vicious hit to the solar plexus as my reward. 

I've been lucky.  My father, grandfather, and many of my relatives succumbed to cancer, but I was physically too far away to witness the fight.  I got an occasional snapshot of the fight during those rare moments when I could fly out to visit, but I couldn't witness the daily battles, when every activity one normally takes for granted is suddenly a test of endurance.  Sometimes you can eat, sometimes you can't.  Sometimes you can drink water, other times you need help.  In Cancerland, this is normal, but I only visited Cancerland; I've never lived there before.

So Mimi is curled up on her pillow in the living room, next to the radiator.  I'll place a water dish nearby when I'm done here.  And I might have to squirt another 5 mL of water down Mimi's throat later.  It's part of life here in Cancerland, and I'd better get used to it.

Notes on a fifth wedding anniversary

I'm slightly drunk right now, following up a couple glasses of wine with a rum and diet coke (we are short of non-alcoholic mixers).  It's been a rough week for Tori and me.  Hell, it's been a rough three months.  First the miscarriage; that was pretty rough, but we managed okay.  There are times we find ourselves hit with "what if" moments, moments where we think to ourselves, "by now we'd find a heartbeat" or "we'd know the gender soon."  April 4th of next year will be particularly problematic for us; that was the estimated due date.  But overall we've been hanging in there. 

And then Mimi, our middle-aged cranky calico, started having some health problems.  She's been fighting some nasal infections, and she's been finding it more of a chore to breathe.  First it was thought she had feline herpes, but she tested negative for that and positive for some nasty bacteria.  We gave her antibiotics (much to her disgust), but she was better for only a few days before her nasal problems returned.  We took her to another vet for a second opinion, then a specialist.  She got a CT scan yesterday, and we got bad news: Mimi has cancer. 

I had feared this for a while, because she had been losing quite a bit of weight over the last month.  But the news hit me hard.  I've had family members die on me, most recently my father six years ago.  But he was far away; I had a 900-mile emotional barrier, and I could forget that my father was dying when I needed to.  That's not the case now.  This cancer is in my household, and it's a lot harder to run away from this one.  Besides, Dad had a living will; he could (and did) die on his terms.  Mimi's condition is a different case: her death is on my (and Tori's) terms.  And yeah, she's a cat, but she's a member of our household, and she is deeply loved.  And to decide when to let a loved one go is the hardest thing to do in the world.  In a way, I ducked that responsibility with my father, but once Tori and I receive the results of the biopsy, it's us, and us alone, who must decide.  I'd give away every one of my possessions for someone else to make that decision - as long as Mimi gets to live. 

Under these circumstances, Tori's and my fifth wedding anniversary arrived today.  (Well, not anymore, as of ten minutes ago.)  It's sad that we had to cancel our fifth anniversary party, that we cancelled our anniversary dinner at Russian Tea Time.  It's sad that we're both stressed, that we find ourselves having tense discussions about trifles because we've been hit by so many things in the last six months, we're hypersensitive. 

But this is what we signed up for.  We didn't sign up for "everything will be totally awesome" in our wedding vows.  We didn't vow that "Now that we're married, nothing bad will happen, dammit."  We couldn't, and the reason is obvious: we can't hold off the future.  Time is neither good nor evil: it simply is, and we are pulled along because we cannot do anything else.  There will be good things in our future, and there will be bad.  Our love for each other cannot prevent bad things from happening, but it gives us someone to hold onto when one or both of us needs to howl at the moon.  And I could not have picked a better life partner with all the knowledge of the universe. 

Tori, my love, my darling, I am here for sickness and in health.  Get used to it, babe.

Happy anniversary, sweetheart.

How to fly

About a week ago, I dreamt of flying.  It's not unusual for me; I fly frequently in my dreams.  I enjoy them very much. 

In this dream I flew over the roofs of unknown neighborhoods, straining my unfeathered arms towards the tops of trees.  Some nights I fly thousands of feet up, looking down at cities I do not recognize, maintaining a course I know nothing of.  Other nights I have to work harder at it, working to lift myself a dozen feet up or so.  This night my dream-mind was content to fly at a lower altitude.  The roofs were your basic A-frames, sometimes with chimneys, sometimes flowers.  Sometimes I have a reason for flight; this time around I carried with my flight it no assignments, no direction...

I woke up on an office couch.  The office was empty, the couch and a nearby bistro table and chair the only furniture.  I scoffed at my flying dream, knowing full well I could not do such a thing.  After all, the best I could do was levitate, which I did.  I whipped my arms downward to give myself lift, and I rose up toward the ceiling.  What a weird dream, I thought to myself as I floated over the couch, the table...

I woke up on a desk.  It was large, like a CEO's desk; I was lying upon it.  I got up off the desk, blinked a little bit, and looked around.  It was a dean's office, and I was at some small, privately-run college.  I remembered my dream, and I thought: how ridiculous.  People can't levitate - for very long.  The best I can do is about 5-10 seconds, and not much higher than around six feet or so.  But I'm one of the best there is, and there's no reason I couldn't teach others to do so.

So I started teaching others how to levitate.  We start out by sitting on soft couches, so when our bodies can't levitate anymore, we won't injure ourselves.  We flap our arms down to get liftoff, we levitate a few feet, and hold it until we plop back onto the couches.  I think to myself, this isn't very useful, but it's a lot of fun, and the students are enjoying themselves...

I wake up in my bed.  I pull the sheet off me and sit up on the bed.  My brain rewinds through the dreams, and I feel a wave of disappointment flood over me.  I know the truth.  I know reality.  But just in case, I flap my arms downward...