Who In The World is Matt Lauer?

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." - Socrates

They are dropping like flies. Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Ben Affleck,  George H.W. Bush, Louis CK, Jeffrey Tambor, John Conyers, Garrison Keillor, Charlie Rose, Roy Moore, Al Franken, Matt Lauer and on and on and on.  At first it was interesting to watch the stories unfold.  The real pain started for me with Al Franken.  I had just finished reading his book.  I liked his politics and admired his passion. I didn't want to believe it but I could not deny the evidence I saw with my own eyes.  The searing pain set in with the termination of Matt Lauer yesterday from his co-hosting job on NBC's Today.  I've been watching Matt for the last twenty years.  I felt like I knew him.  Apparently not.

The past few days I've been questioning whether we really know anyone.  It is not about whether at some point in their lives they have done anything we wouldn't think was okay.  Every adult alive has a chapter of their book they wouldn't want read aloud.  But rather, are the offenses a pattern that they are still living?  I'm not that much interested in whether some man made a clumsy pass at a woman by touching her butt twenty years ago.  I'm not saying that was okay but it was a different time.  But did he do it last week, last month or last year?  Did he do it to control her, intimidate her, scare her or just satisfy his own twisted urges? Is he a predator or just a creep?  In the case of Mr. Lauer, it seems he was both.

I would like to think the revelations of impropriety are over.  The last of them has been unmasked.  I suspect not.  More shoes to drop.  Sigh.

Willkommen daheim!

"There's moisture in my madness. I should start keeping my insanity in Tupperware containers." -  Jarod Kintz 

I swear I've purchased a couple hundred food storage containers in the last eight years.  When Jacob was away at school I often cooked large batches of his favorite foods to keep his freezer stocked between visits.  I prepare meals several times a week for my sister Nancy and I still often cook to stock Jacob's fridge now that he has moved into his own place.  I am always begging him and my sister to return my containers for reuse.  It is crazy to keep buying them.  Jacob is pretty good about returning my glass containers as well as my freezer bags and coolers.  Nancy sometimes remembers to give them back but as often as not, I get just a bottom or just a top so I now have a cupboard full of mismatched food containers but not a single usable combination.  That was my frustration yesterday when I was trying to pack up the meals I made for Jacob to greet him at the airport as he arrived home from another adventure.

For the best part of two weeks, Jacob and a friend have been exploring Germany.  I'm really happy for him that he is doing some traveling.  I believe travel is essential to gaining a real understanding of the world.  I know he has more adventures planned for next year to some destinations in the Orient.  And while I think it is wonderful, I also wonder if I will ever learn to sleep when he is away.  Jacob and his friends are sane and sensible people but the world feels like a dangerous place these days.  While he checked in a couple of times, I couldn't get him to do it with the regularity I would have liked so I settled for stalking him on Facebook to see if he had been on-line.  My son is not a user of social media but he will use Facebook Messenger as a vehicle to communicate when he is away.  Relief for me did not always come from a message home but from seeing that he had been on the app at some point that day.

Like a child I found myself counting the sleeps until his return.  I grocery shopped to stock his cupboards and cooked and baked all morning to stock his fridge.  I tracked his flight in real time on a flight tracker website and waited for him at the airport anxiously, peering through the glass intently to catch a glimpse of him at the luggage carousel.  Finally he arrived, looking tired but happy.  It was all I could do not to run to greet him squealing all the way.

We dropped him and his friend downtown and headed home.  Our time together was short and filled with stories of where he went and what he saw.  He promised more details and a long visit next weekend.  I wish I didn't have to wait so long but I'm okay with it.  I heard his voice, hugged him and saw him with my own eyes.  Last night I slept like a stone.

Not The Domestic Type

"My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance." - Erma Bombeck

Though I am 62 years old, I'm still a work in progress, still trying to figure out who I am and what I want to be when I grow up.  It's a lot of work.  The deterioration of my heart health has accelerated this process a little.  I've started cramming for finals.  It's not that I'm planning to kick off any moment but rather that the end zone seems a little more in sight. It is true that there was never time to waste, but I'm more aware of that now than I was a while ago.

I haven't found a blueprint to follow to help me get to the big answers so I'm forging my own path on this endeavor.  I decided to start with figuring out who I am.  The voice in my head has had a lot to say.  I have believed many things about myself that I accepted to be true because it is what people have said to and about me.  In really examining those things, I realized that they are not all true. The first realization of an untruth about myself that I have long held is that I'm lazy.  It is a leftover from childhood.  I was not the most physically active girl.  I was far more inclined to get lost in a book than to engage in a game of sandlot baseball.  I didn't do the yard work at home and given the chance, I liked to sleep in.  How that was interpreted as laziness is neither here nor there.  In fact, I was born with a dysfunctional heart and have always wrestled with the physical limitations imposed by it.  But it didn't make me lazy.  I wasn't lazy then and I'm not lazy now.  For much of my adult life, I have worked in some form or another most of the waking hours of the day. I've long suffered from an inability to do one thing at a time.  After years as a c-suite executive, mom, crafter, learner, wife, daughter, sister, friend, volunteer and Martha Stewart wannabe, I am a master multi-tasker.  Not lazy.  Never lazy.  When I tossed out that one belief about myself, I felt suddenly liberated to consider all the rest.  What else did I believe to be true about myself and how have I allowed those beliefs to place limits on me?

In my secret self, I've always wanted to be a painter.  In the years of my childhood when art was a part of the curriculum, I was lucky to get a "satisfactory" in art.  My sister Nancy was, and still is, the family artist.  She is brilliant and talented.  I wouldn't allow myself to pick up a brush.  I have no skill and I believed no talent.  I would not allow myself to paint when it was so clear to me that I would not be able to produce a worthwhile result.  But a couple of months ago, I decided I don't care.  So what if I don't produce a worthwhile result.  I wanted the joy of the experience of painting.  So I bought a canvas, brushes and paint and set up an easel.  I produced my first piece and had it framed.  It is not great art but it is my art.  I did the next piece with perhaps less than impressive results but I had just as much fun.  There is a larger canvas on my easel right now.  I've been planning it in my head while I lay motionless in scanners on long and painful days in heart clinics.

In the time when I started high school, girls and boys were still streamed into different courses which we called options. Boys went into "shop" class.  Girls went into "home ec" or "stenography and typing".  I wanted to take home ec but my mom wouldn't let me.  She told me I am not the domestic type.  While most of my classmates were learning to  sew and cook, I was trying to learn Pittman shorthand.  Apparently, I'm not the shorthand type either.  I didn't enjoy great success in typing class, though I would come to master the skill on my own.  What I did do, was get a bit stuck in the notion that I'm not the domestic type.  I did learn to cook, had a child and have successfully run my home for more than three decades.  I taught myself to refinish furniture which I frequently do while I have a loaf of bread baking in the oven.  I entertain regularly.  And yet, I somewhere still harbored this old idea.  Last week, I spent six consecutive days in my kitchen making jams, jellies, pickles and delicacies to share at Christmastime.  This morning I sat down to label the jars before I carry them down to the cold cellar.  It would seem that I am the domestic type after all.

Making Memories

"Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future." - Corrie Ten Boom

I have returned home from a ten day trip to the U.K. spent reconnecting with Merv's family and reveling in time spent with Jacob exploring new worlds.  In so many ways, it was a magical time.  We started with a weekend in a small village in Wales for my brother-in-law's wedding and spent a week in London meeting up with family members who unfortunately didn't participate in wedding celebrations.  They are a fractured family.  Jacob and I spent the final five days of the trip alone after Merv returned home to meet some work commitments.

It was an emotional time for me.  I met one of Merv's nieces for the first time and another for only the second.  We took them on our tourist activities, a spin on the London Eye, a tour through the London Dungeons, hours spent exploring the Museum of Natural History and lots of tea and scones.  It was great to watch Jacob connect with his cousins.  For a couple of days, we had the pleasure of the company of our friend Emma.  It was a whirlwind of museums, gallery, high tea and theatre.  And on our last day in London, we were lucky enough to share lunch with Merv's stepsister and her husband.  I so much appreciated that all those wonderful family members travelled to London from different parts of England.  In the precarious state of my heart health, I didn't feel I could summon the energy to travel about the country to see them all.  Still, I amazed myself with how physically active I managed to be, averaging 20 kilometers on my pedometer every day.  My feet managed to carry me through The National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Museum of Natural History and the Tower of London.  I walked the mall, strolled Regent Park, Hyde Park, Westminster, Baker Street, Soho and Carnaby Street.  I climbed and descended the long, steep staircases of the London Underground, many, many times.

But the very best memories of this trip did not come from seeing the sights or attractions.  The best memories came in the quiet moments when I watched Jacob take care of me in the same ways I took care of him when he was small.  He carried my bags and helped me up and down the stairs.  He navigated all of our journeys on the tube.  He dealt with my technology issues several times a day.  And I sat with a lump in my throat as I watched him tighten the laces and tie up my running shoes.

The week ahead will be challenging.  I am feeling a bit nervous about the angiogram I have scheduled on Friday morning.  I know it is generally a safe procedure but like all things related to the heart, it is not without its risks.  Within the next couple of weeks, there will be more - another pacemaker procedure that's a bit trickier than the last.  I am trusting that it will go as planned but if it doesn't, Jacob will always have our memories of London.

Un-busying

"A bee is never as busy as it seems; it's just that it can't buzz any slower." -  Kin Hubbard

I don't know how it happened that I became one of those people who feels the need to fill up every moment with productive activity.  I'm pretty sure that when I was younger I was perfectly content to just watch TV or read a book.  Somewhere along the way, I stopped being able to do one thing at a time.  I still watch TV but I never just watch TV.  I watch TV and paint or bead or make something.

I suspect that as I age and my health deteriorates, I'm starting to cram for finals.  And while I hope finals are still a long way away, I'm not sure. I'm afraid to waste time.  I feel an urgency to create, to cook and can and bead, as though I need the assurance that when I'm gone, I will have left enough things to mark my time in the world.  I don't want to be forgotten.  I realize it is a crazy notion.  People will remember me or forget me, not for the things I left behind but for the impact I had on their lives - or not.  I hope all the young people I took on as my own will remember how much I loved and supported them.  Just the same, I'm trying to complete a project for each of them.  I had better stick around for a while.  I still have a lot of things to get done.

A couple of days ago, I found myself with two unscheduled hours on my hands when a client meeting got pushed from the morning to the afternoon. What I really needed to do was to take a nap.  The new drugs I'm taking to try and get my heart under control are knocking me on my butt.  I haven't experienced this level of fatigue since I was in cancer treatment more than a decade ago.  But I felt guilty about napping so instead, I made four litres of dill pickles.  It made getting to my appointment on time a challenge but I managed.  When I finished, I raced to my mom's for a late afternoon visit.  By the time I was done, I could barely keep my eyes open.  I should have taken the nap.  Bicks probably makes better dill pickles than I do and they're cheaper.  In the last couple of weeks, I've made dill pickles, pickled beets, grapefruit jelly, merlot jelly, riesling jelly and today, three and a half litres of bread and butter pickles. Other than making green tomato relish if I'm lucky enough to score a bushel of green tomatoes, I think I'm done.  I feel exhausted just thinking about carting all the cases of my canning down to the cold cellar.  That's on my agenda tomorrow.

In less than two weeks, I will be a visiting vendor at a show in Collingwood.  It will be my first official sale of Jackie's Creations. So in the next couple of days, I will finish up the few pieces I want to get painted and string up a few necklaces and bracelets.  I'm trying to get my steampunk outfit ready (which the sale host has asked that I wear).  And then I am done.  The whole week before the sale, I'm hoping to just concentrate on my day job and get some rest.

Somewhere in my psyche, I know that I need to slow down and stop fighting the fatigue.  My friend Gail tells me she things it's odd for a Catholic girl to have such a strong Protestant work ethic.  I am going to try to learn to un-busy.  I'm not sure I'll be able to get there but there are some books on my shelf that I'm anxious to read and when it comes to reading, I tend to get lost in my books.  No multi-tasking possible.

Not Entitled

"Male privilege and entitlement are dying a very painful death; no one gives up power without a struggle." - Gloria Allred

All the way around, yesterday was a lousy day.  Another visit to my cardiologist came with no good news.  He doubled up the medication he gave me two weeks ago, added an additional medication, is scheduling an angiogram for September and expects I will need additional pacemaker surgery in a few months.  Needless to say, I'm disappointed.  All this in the same week I had unscheduled dental surgery and a consultation with an endodontist to schedule the root canal I will be having next week. 

Setting all that aside, it's been a bad week in the world.  Seven months into Donald Trump's presidency, we are are facing the first threat of nuclear war. Two childish dictators in a pissing contest can take the whole world down.  It's too terrifying to contemplate.  But there isn't even a need to go so far from home to get up close to hatred and mayhem.  A trip to Charlottesville, Virginia would do the job.

Yesterday's neo-nazi, white supremacist  march in Charlottesville and the violence that erupted with counterprotesters ended with a 20-year-old white man deliberately driving his car into the counterprotesters resulting in the death of a young woman and injury to many others.  As if that wasn't bad enough, Donald Trump made a weak, pathetic statement that fell far short of condemnation of the neo-nazi groups.    For the rest of the day and night, CNN was filled with outraged pundits both in rebuke of Donald Trump's statement and in defense of it.  Several times I heard pundits on both sides refer not to just the rights of everyone to free speech but also to the right of everyone to their own opinion.  I take exception with that.

You can differ with me politically - I'm okay with that.  I may lean slightly left of center and you may lean a little right.  There is room for us both to hold our views.  But I will not defend or even support your right to hold an opinion that is rooted in hate and fear.  You do not have a right to believe you are superior because of the colour of your skin.  You do not have the right to believe you are superior because of the shape of your genitals.  You do not have the right to believe you are superior because of where you happened to be born.  You do not have a right to turn your back on desperate people because you are afraid that one in a million of them may hurt you. Refugees are not Skittles.  You do not have a right to hate.  So no.  If any of those things describe you - you do not have a right to your opinion.  Crawl back under your rock and stay there.  You will turn into fossil fuel soon enough.

Of Teeth and Tickers

"A woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets." - Gloria Stuart

I could say I've had a tough couple of weeks but that would be like saying Noah got caught up in a slight overflow.  A couple of weeks ago, I went for all the tests my doctor routinely orders after my annual check up.  I had put them off for a few weeks because I've been really busy but I finally got around  to scheduling the big ones - mammogram, breast ultra-sound and cardiac echo.  No good results in any of them but more of a "six month follow-up" on the breast scans recommended.  The cardiac echo was an entirely different story.  A panicked technician spent an inordinate amount of time conducting the echo.  She was so alarmed by what she saw that I went home hooked up to a 48 hour Holter monitor.  A couple of days later, I saw a new cardiologist as it was deemed unsafe to wait for my own cardiologist to return from his vacation.  A couple of days after that I spent three and a half hours in a nuclear perfusion stress test - perhaps the most brutal test I've had to date.  It would appear that my heart doesn't like being paced and as a result I have developed both A Fib and heart muscle dysfunction.  The pacemaker that I got last year fixed one big problem and created a couple more.  So once again, I'm staring my mortality in the eye, trying not to panic, dealing with the side-effects of the new drugs I've been given to deal with the A Fib and hoping against all hope that there will be some new and effective treatments available by the time the current drug options have run out.  Of all the health issues I've dealt with over the years, I still find the heart stuff to be the scariest.

In the midst of all this heart drama, I went to my dentist for my regular hygiene appointment.  She noticed that one of my crowns seemed to be separating though I've been experiencing no discomfort.  She ordered a set of x-rays and informed me a couple of days later that I needed two crowns replaced as well as another root canal which will also need to be crowned.  Ugh. I spent four hours last Thursday getting one new crown followed by an endodontistry consult yesterday.  The root canal will be next Friday.  Today I went to have the second crown replaced.  It took all of five minutes before my dentist declared that the tooth couldn't be saved so a crown replacement became an extraction and a bone graft with a plan for a tooth implant in six months.  It's been a painful day.

I keep wondering what the universe is trying to tell me.   I can't seem to catch a break these days.  My back is extremely sore, my sciatic nerve is screaming and both my shoulders are shot.  I don't want to whine.  I'm tired, stressed and scared and trying to carry on without showing that I'm tired, stressed and scared.  I've been thinking about the advice I've been given in other tough times.  Though it pretty much annoyed me when my friend David said it to me years ago, it's probably the best way to go.  "Suck it up, princess".  Okay.  I'll try.