Okay. I need some help with this one. Today I was driving up in New Hampshire, and I found myself behind a truck with the one sticker that really sets me off. It’s pictured here and the one on the back of this particular truck read “Git ‘r Drunk.”  I looked into the cab of the truck and immediately hoped that this was not the way this clown was going to get any girl into the truck with him. However, there are always exceptions to the rule.

They say ignorance is bliss, and it truly is in this case. Guys who brandish this decal on their trucks are about as forward thinking as the bimbos who go to work at Hooters. If, in fact, women think that working at Hooters is reflective of  “women’s liberation,” they have their heads jammed firmly up their rectums. I’m here to tell you that they have set all women back by several decades. It’s hard to demand respect from men when women are filling the very role men have traditionally carved out for them.

Here’s what I’m thinking: We’re always hearing about these FEMA camps that have been built all across the United States. The right-wing paranoia squads are absolutely convinced that we’re all going to be rounded up and incarcerated there. I suggest a better use for these camps. Let’s round up all the clowns that brandish these stupid, sexist female silhouette decals and put them in the camps. Then, we can give them all some kind of massive sensitivity training. After that, we can round up all the women who waitresses at Hooters (and related jobs) and give them electroshock therapy.

That’s what I’m talkin’ about and, seriously, WTF?

On September 15, I was moved from ICU to the step-down unit. I was eating solid foods again and I had been sitting up for several days. Still no walking. While I’m on the subject of the ICU, I cannot say enough about the care that Anna Jaques provides. The nurses are spectacular. They’ve got everything down and there’s no messing around. Besides all that, they are a lot of fun. Because I’m at the hospital a lot with Beth to care for her various chronic illnesses, I never fail to visit the ICU and say hi to everyone there. I felt like they were my family when my family couldn’t be there.That was important to me. I’m not used to being sick and I’m resistant to being an invalid. They were great.

I had one unexpected visit before I left ICU. A doctor I hadn’t seen before walked in and introduced himself as Dr. Tarkan. He looked at my chart and IV and then said, “You’ll probably never have to see me again. My specialty is nephrology and they called me in on the case because your kidneys were close to failing. You were lucky.” I felt like saying, “No shit, Sherlock.” I decided at the last minute that I didn’t know him well enough to joke like that. Besides, he looked a little less loose than some of the other doctors that visited me. I mean, let’s face it. Nephrology? How exciting can it be?

On the road back

It wasn’t much different in the step-down unit. The care there was equally spectacular and Beth and I got friendly with a whole bunch of new nurses. The nurses and aides still came in at the same time at night, woke me up, took my vitals and gave me medicine. I still had the central and arterial lines. But I was going to the bathroom on my own. The best thing was that I was now going to get physical therapy and be allowed to walk again (with a heart monitor, of course). I’ve got to say that I cannot believe how much I lost while I was sick. I was just so weak. It took me forever to do anything, and the first day I was allowed to walk,  making it down the hall and back simply exhausted me. A lot of my meds were now in pill form, and I was on a ton of stuff. I was also getting shots in my stomach every day, but I cannot remember what it was for. My inhaler had been switched to Atrovent. (Later, my primary care doctor would add a long-acting inhaler as well, Flovent.)

During the week I was in the step-down unit, the kids came up for dinner several times. The food was great. The menu was like a restaurant menu.  One of the nurses we’d gotten friendly with came down from ICU on her break and ate dinner with us one night so that she could meet Thalia and Aaron. It was a fun time. Beth was great. She would get the kids to school and come up to the hospital for a visit. Thalia had a key and would let herself in, then get Aaron off the bus. Beth would go home and feed them, then come back with both in tow. My sisters and my niece cooked a bunch of food for Beth so she wouldn’t have to worry about that portion of the program.

I had received permission to use my laptop. The hospital had free wireless Internet, so I got back to my political blogging on Turn-Left. I also began to divide up Beth’s photos into categories so that I could begin her photo blog when I returned home. I had plenty of time to work on this stuff now. Jim, the guy who runs hypocrisy.com (which Turn-Left is a part of) called to say that he didn’t want returning to political blogging to be a detriment to my health. I told him it was adversely affecting my health to keep my mouth shut, so it was better to go back to blogging. By the middle of the week, I was working on the stairs with the physical therapist, and with the assistance of a cane. At the end of the week, I lost the heart monitor.

Dr. Pourati had come to see me before I moved to the step-down unit.  He told me that he would be on vacation the week I moved, and that I’d probably be getting out at the end of the week. He gave me a card with his cell phone number written on it, and told me to call him if I had any questions or if problems came up while he was away. Dr. Pourati also told me that someone would come in and set up the visiting nurse program with me. Before he left, he set up a follow-up echo for me on the 23rd of September, and a follow up appointment with him on September 26. I finally had to break down and choose a primary care doctor. I had scheduled an appointment with her in October. Dr. Pourati wasn’t happy with that timing, so he had taken the liberty of  calling and changing the appointment for me, making it much sooner.

Getting sprung!

On Monday morning, September 22, Dr. Harris came into my room and told me he was surprised to see me still here. My last chest x-ray was clear, and they were ready to send me home. He said he would take care of all the paperwork and I would be able to leave after lunch. Dr. Harris told me to order breakfast, and then went off to take care of the details. I had just ordered breakfast and hung up the phone when this tall skinny doctor with white hair walked into my room. He stuck out his hand, “Miss Della Piana, I’m sure you don’t remember me.” I shook back. “I don’t remember a lot of things,” I replied. He told me that it was probably just as well I didn’t.

He then proceeded to tell me that he had been a doctor for a long time and a handful of patients made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. I was now added to his list. He said it was a miracle that I was walking out of the hospital at all, let alone as quickly as I was. He also said he wanted to come in and wish me the best of luck. I was honestly trying to downplay this miracle crap. I’m not comfortable with that. I think it’s because I don’t want to believe I came that close and I essentially was taken completely by surprise; I couldn’t see it coming. That it could happen again is scary. But I don’t let it rule me. I did change some stuff. Now, as soon as I catch anything, I go to my primary care doctor whether or not I have a temperature or am coughing. All of the doctors got together and decided that would be the best bet since I had none of the outward symptoms of pneumonia. I’ll go along with that one.

We had one last thing left to do before I left, and that was to remove the central line. I’ll tell you what. After going through the removal of that small line, I was certainly glad that I’d been out of it for being put on and removed from the vent. The nurse bandaged the open wound on my neck and then came in and gave me instructions for showering because she was absolutely sure that was the first thing I was going to do when I got home. (She was right, of course. I had been there since September 6.)

I walked out of Anna Jaques at about 3:15 p.m. on Monday, September 22. It was warm and sunny out. We had to stop and get some prescriptions, and I was definitely exhausted when I got home, but I was happy to be out. I showered right off the top, then I hung out with the kids for a while. There were lots of naps thrown in there.

Getting back to normal…whatever that is

The very next day, I went to Pentucket Medical Center for my first follow-up echocardiogram. I had gotten a pep talk from Dr. Pourati before I left the hospital. He told me that he waited to give me the echo until after I left the hospital so that I would not become depressed that my heart had not made much of a gain. He repeated again that it would be a three-month process, but that he did expect to see improvement with this echo. Finally, it was my turn. The very first thing that happened was that I recognized the technician as a Starbucks Walkers Brook customer. She told me that I frequently made her grande extra-hot chai. She worked at Pentucket and also at the Lahey Clinic. That’s why she was in the Reading area.

After we talked for a bit, she started the examination. I was just laying there looking at the screen and, let me tell you, I had no freakin’ idea what I was looking at. After a few minutes, she said to me, “Did you actually have a heart problem?” I was kind of shocked at the question, so I told her what had happened. Then, it was her turn to be shocked, so I asked her why she was shocked. She told me that my heart looked great, perfectly normal, and that my ejection fraction was a perfectly normal 65%. No heart abnormalities. No thickness. Nothing. She said, “You’d never even know you were sick.” It was unusual for a tech to talk to somebody like that, so I had no intention of saying anything to the doctor about our conversation when I finally saw him at the end of the week. I did tell Beth. All she said to me was, “You crazy son of a bitch. Figures.”

I saw Dr. Pourati  on Friday, September 26 and he basically told me the same thing the tecnician did. He then told me that I could return to work without hesitation. When I asked him if I had to start at fewer hours, he said, “No. You can go back to what you were doing before.” The last thing he asked me to do was go downstairs on the way out and have my blood drawn. They had never checked my cholesterol or run a lipid panel while I was in the hospital. He was sure that my heart attack was related to the septicemia and not a result of heart disease, but he wanted to close the loop on the information. I thought that would be a great idea since I hadn’t had routine blood work in about fifteen years. (Hell, I still can’t tell you what my blood type is.) I was concerned that it wasn’t a fasting test, but he wasn’t. I had not yet had lunch. It was after noon, and I had breakfast really early. He thought it would be fine the way it was.

He asked if the visiting nurses had been coming and I assured them they were. I told him they told me not to take my blood pressure and heart pills together because my blood pressure was pretty low when I did. He asked me how I felt when I took them together. Did I get dizzy or disoriented? I didn’t. He told me to go back to taking them together. There was no problem with that. He also told me that he would keep the visiting nurses coming for one more week, then cancel them. I would not need to be monitored any further.

I wanted to get back on the schedule at work as soon as possible, so I called Joy — my boss — as soon as I got in the car. The schedule for the week of September 29 was already done, so she put me on the schedule for the following week. I worked for the first time on Friday, October 10, just a little over a month after the whole disaster took place. That was about two months earlier than anyone had predicted. I also began cardiac rehab, so I managed my schedule around that.

There are a few lasting effects surrounding my near-death experience. Like, oh, if Beth can’t hear me snoring in the middle of the night she shakes me awake to see if I’m still alive. You know, stuff like that. And Aaron finally said that he doesn’t want me to get too tired because when “you got sick before you really freaked me out.” He had never said anything like that until about a week ago. I’ve pretty much put it behind me. It’s not that it doesn’t creep into my mind every once in a while. I’d be a liar if I said it doesn’t. I have to say, however, that I’m handling this much better than I ever believed I could. Now I just have to get past September 6.

A few people have asked me to write this post now. I’ve been avoiding it, but I cannot avoid it forever. It’s still a relatively new event in my life, but I feel like I’ve gotten past it to be quite honest. That’s not to say that there aren’t times of anxiety. There certainly are. However, I choose not to have it rule my life.

The term “one step from the slab” was coined by my niece’s husband Sergei. We used to use the term when we were younger to describe the old people in our family who were having birthdays. I’d ask something like, “Hey, how old is he going to be Sergei?” And Sergei would say, “I don’t know but he’s like one step from the slab.” Of course, now that I’m in my fifties and now that Sergei is about to be fifty, we no longer talk like that. Last year, at almost this time, I was one step from the slab.

Let me tell you something about myself: I am an insurance company’s dream. I’ve been paying health insurance premiums for years and have cost the companies virtually nothing.  Up until last year, I’ve had a total of 11 prescriptions over an entire adult lifetime. In essence, I had no real medical history until last year. Sure. I have allergies. I’ve had them for a long time. Usually Benadryl does the trick, but I cannot use it when I drive. I swear it induces coma. When it really bothers me, I usually get Allegra. It works and it doesn’t make me sleepy. A couple of years ago, my primary care doctor thought my allergies were becoming more respiratory and I began using an inhaler. Other than that, nothing new on the health front. I get a cold a year and it’s usually gone in a few days. I haven’t had the flu for a long time, and I’m pretty resistant to the stuff my kids bring home. It’s just the way it is. So, I went from no medical history to the edge of the earth in what seems to me to be one night.

September 6, 2008

The anniversary is coming up. I was working on Saturday, September 6, 2008. I remember that I felt okay, but I had been using my inhaler (Albuterol) more often than usual in the course of a day. That was about it. I felt like I had a sinus infection or sinus headache the day before. That’s not unusual if I have a bit of a cold. That’s where I usually feel it. However, it had cleared up. I certainly didn’t feel as though there was anything seriously wrong with me while I was at work. I was closing at Starbucks in Reading that night. I was supposed to be out at 9:30 p.m., then I had to turn around and be back at 6:30 a.m. the next morning for an opening. As it turns out, it slowed down during the course of the evening and I had the opportunity to leave early. I was grateful for that because I had a long ride  to Amesbury (about 32 miles one way). I noticed when I got to the car that I was winded.  I didn’t think much of it. I used my inhaler and headed home. The ride home was pretty uneventful.

I knew for the first time that something was wrong when I got home. I had a short walk from the car to the house, and I was having difficulty breathing when I got in the door. I used the inhaler again. By now, I had used the inhaler far more often that the recommended two puffs every four hours. I remember sitting down at the table and turning to Beth. “Is it possible I’m having a panic attack? I’m having a real tough time breathing.” It was after this that all hell broke loose, and my memory is spotty from here through the 9th of September. I will relate what I can remember.

At one point, I felt like the inhaler was working. I decided to go upstairs to the bedroom and watch television with my son, Aaron. We were laying on the bed together when my breathing became a problem again. I remember saying to Aaron, “A, go down and get your other mom. Tell her I can’t breathe.” I could not lay down. I got up. I was gasping for air. I walked out onto the landing and looked over the railing. Beth was there and I remember saying, “Beth dial 911.” Now, anybody  who knows me knows I do not ask anyone to dial 911. Ever. Beth knows it. She called 911 immediately, then she came upstairs. When she got up to our bedroom, I was apparently standing in front of the air conditioner trying to suck in air. I do not remember that. Memories get even spottier here.

I remember hearing the ambulance. I do not remember the EMTs or how they treated me. I remember being carried down the stairs in a chair, and I remember seeing a policeman walk into my house. And, oddly, I remember thinking, “What the fuck is he doing in my house. Cops do not come in unless they are permitted.” That’s it. I do not remember the ride to Anna Jaques Hospital at all. I do not remember the emergency room at all. I only know what Beth has told me.

My oldest sister, Mamie, and her husband apparently arrived in record time from Medford, also more than thirty miles away. My sister Joanne had a shorter trip from Andover. I seriously do not remember the ER. I do not recall speaking to doctors. I do not recall doctors examining me. I don’t recall not being able to breathe, but apparently I asked to be put on a vent. Beth tells me that I threw her out of the ER repeatedly. I don’t doubt this. Beth tells me that she was in the middle of a panic attack and was apparenty vomiting in the other room. I know this vomit thing is a recurring phobia and we’ll get to that, but not tonight. Suffice it to say it doesn’t surprise me that I was tossing her out if she was in the yak mode.

I am also told that the two doctors taking care of me in the ER were promising Beth nothing. They told her they were literally taking it minute-by-minute, then hour-by-hour, and they’d go from there. They said I was very sick. They told her that, if I survived, I would probably be on the vent until at least Friday. So, what exactly did I have? Wouldn’t you like to know! (Just kidding.)

I apparently had pneumonia for a long period of time. However, I ran no fever and I was not coughing up anything. The only symptom I had was the need to use the inhaler more frequently over time. I didn’t make that connection. What really caused the problem was septicemia. I didn’t know much about this before it happened to me. There were two other things that happened as a result of the septicemia. I had a heart attack, and I now had stress cardiomyopathy. It was also determined that I have moderate to severe asthma. I was transferred to the ICU.

Pulling a Lazarus

When I woke up on Tuesday (yes, Tuesday) I had no idea where I was. I looked to the left and saw three pictures up on the wall. One was a picture of Medicine Buddha. On either side of him were pictures of Thalia and Aaron. There were two nurses there taking care of me.  I was no longer on the vent, but I still had an IV running with antibiotics being pumped in. I was not on solid foods and would not be for several days yet. I had a central catheter and an arterial catheter.

It was only then that I learned how close I had come. I didn’t even realize that it was Tuesday. I was being followed by two cardiologists (one was the ‘house’ cardiologist who worked with the actual cardiologist on my case), as well as a nephrologist and an infectious disease specialist. When I woke up, they told me that I had cardiomyopathy and that my ejection fraction was only 15%. However, Dr. Harris and Dr. Pourati believed that would remit over time. I do not remember them telling me that I had a heart attack. I found that out for the first time when I was released and went to the follow up appointment. I am sure they told me and I do not remember. It never came up in conversation between Beth and I, probably because she thought I knew. The prognosis was that I’d recover, but I would be out of work for at least three months. That was Dr. Pourati’s best estimate.

Beth called on Tuesday to ask if she could bring the kids up even though I was on a vent. They really wanted to visit. The nurse told her that she had a surprise, so she should bring the kids. She told Beth to call her from the waiting room and she’d meet them. When she walked in and saw me off the vent, she was ecstatic. We were talking and she pointed two things out to me. On the wall were two containers. One held a black liquid and it was three quarters full, the other a green liquid (there was significantly less here). She pointed to the green and told me that came out of my stomach. It was probably the remains of what I’d eaten that evening on my half. The other, the black liquid, had come from my lungs. Not only did I have pneumonia, but I had also harmed my lungs using the inhaler so much.

After Beth and the kids left, I couldn’t sleep. I had been out for so long there was no way I was sleeping right away. The nurse told me not to worry about that. I remember being up all night. I watched “The Omen.” Then came “Anaconda,” a movie I had never seen but one that was better than I ever thought it would be. After that, I was served a steady diet of WB 56 sitcoms until morning. Luckily, they had pretty good old movies on all day.

The one thing about ICU is that you never really sleep anyway. They were waking me up for medicine, then to check my vitals, and then to do chest x-rays. While I was in ICU, they brought the portable machine into my room. By the end of the week, I was sitting up for Beth’s visits. While I was up there, everything going on around me was very unnerving. I was stuck there, however, so there was no getting away from it. The woman in the very next room passed away. They could not save her. That was really difficult to watch. I caught glimpses of her family breaking down outside in the hall. I imagined what would have happened had I not been so lucky. By the time I moved to the step-down unit, three people had died in ICU.

I apologize for breaking here, but this definitely needs to be told in two parts.

Okay, this is sort of a here and now post but, at the same time, I refer to stuff that has happened in my past. So, let’s call it a “that was then, here is now” moment. I was inspired to write this because, a few weeks back, I met someone I used to work with. I haven’t seen this person since before Thalia was born, and that would be more than twelve years ago. As is just so typical of lesbians, she asked me, “What do your kids call you?” I replied, “Ma.” She looked at me, “And what do they call Beth?” I looked at her and said, “Ma.” She got this confused look on her face, “What if you’re together and you both answer at the same time? What happens?” I though about it for a minute, and then told her that Thalia will usually point to one of us and say, “You” or “This one.” That seemed to disturb her.

What this person wanted was two distinct names. Like, maybe ma and mom. Or mom and mother. I mean, you cannot imagine how long she went on about this. It made seeing her again a real chore. I call that “processing,” and lesbians are notorious for processing. Not this lesbian, mind you, but most lesbians. Shit, get a room full of lesbians together and you can almost hear the whirring sound. Let me tell you where I come from on this one.

I live in a “No Processing Zone.” Seriously. I come from a home where both my mother and my grandmother were called, “Ma.” We used to congregate at my grandmother’s house after Sunday morning mass to eat meatballs and dip bread in her gravy (that’s spaghetti sauce to non-Italians). When I say “we,” I meant our family plus my aunts and uncles and their families. There were more people calling each other “Ma” than you could shake a stick at. We worked it out. There has been absolutely no lasting trauma from it.

Now, for the benefit of those who haven’t seen the evil mother-in-law, I’m going to include her photo here. Doesn’t she look like a lesbian? She processes too. Yes, she wants Thalia and Aaron to call her Mamé because that’s what “her boys” call her. Her boys, of course, are her other grandchildren. I knew there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Miss Thalia would comply. When I told her, she looked at me and said, “I’m not calling her that.”

Now, there was a period in my life when I lost my fucking mind. I’m not prepared to write about that in much detail yet, but I’m getting there. Suffice it to say that I was involved with someone else, and this person was a processor par extraordinaire. To this day, I’m not sure WTF happened to me. This woman had every characteristic that I just about disliked in a person, and processing was just one of them. Needless to say it was over before it began.

I don’t say that I never think things through. I do, but I’m more likely to just “go with it.” I also don’t over-analyze a situation like my bride does. If someone does something that hurts her, she has to know why the person did it. I don’t want to know why. I just want the person to fucking stop. It’s simple for me. The less time I spend in the processing zone, the more productive my life is.

You know, my name causes me a lot of problems. That’s because my legal name is Frances and my middle name is Deborah, but nobody has ever called me Frances or Franny. It’s Debbie or Deb, but not Frances. (It’s also never Debbi with a little heart over the “i.” Not ever. Got it?) It’s also not Debby. No.

I’ve never used Frances, though. My dad wanted me to be named Frances after my mom. (Francis was also his middle name.) My mom wanted Deborah, supposedly because it meant ’strong willed.’ I’ve been looking around for definitions of the name that say it means strong willed, but the closest I can find is industrious. Rumor has it that my dad went down to the office at the hospital (?) and changed it to Frances Deborah from Deborah Frances.  Let me give you a few examples of some of the trouble all of this causes.

All of my work stuff, like pay checks, insurance cards, and the like are under Frances Deborah. So is my license and my registration.  A lot of my other stuff, like my resume, is F. Deborah. It’s tough for the people at Rite Aid pharmacy because they may get a prescription called in for Frances Della Piana. However, I am in their system as Deborah Della Piana.

When I was a kid, the nuns refused to use the correct spelling of my name, which is Deborah, because it was of Jewish origin. They refused to use it, and would send my report cards home with the name Debra. Who the fuck is that? That isn’t my name? I was most unhappy about that, and let me tell you, so was my mother. She named me, after all. The nuns learned pretty quickly not to call me ‘Frances’ in the classroom because I would not raise my hand or acknowledge the name.

Even my dad, who wanted my first name to be Frances, never called me Frances. To him, I was Debbie. It’s pretty clear that my father won the battle, but my mother won the war. So there you go. But that’s just one of the ‘name things’ going on in my family. The other ‘name thing’ is nicknames. This didn’t involve me. My nickname was Debbie. But it did involve several other people in my family.

First, my sister’s name is Mary. Everybody calls her Mamie, and it has absolutely nothing to do with Mamie Eisenhower. We’re not sure how that happened. My Aunt Florence was actually called Auntie Muff. I’m not even going there. My Aunt Buddy is the most complicated, though. Her real name is Aurora because she was born when the Aurora Borealis was visible. She hated the name Aurora, so she used her middle name, Ann. But we all called her Aunt Buddy. (And let me tell you, she’s nobody’s buddy, either but that’s a different story for a different day.)

My Uncle Salvy had two sons. One was called Gigi (his real name was Frank) and the other was nicknamed Nanny (he was Anthony). And hold it a minute, we’re not talking the pronounciation of the Leslie Caron movie, Gigi. For the nickname, the ‘G’ is hard and the ‘i’ is pronounced like a long ‘e’.

This whole process seemed to really take hold in my Uncle Tony’s family (my mother’s brother). He and his wife had fourteen children. That’s right, fourteen children. 14. Here’s a little listing of his childrens’ nicknames:

Gay is actually Philip

Dukie is Marilyn

Dusty is Christine

Winkie is Louise

This seemed to be a phenomenon on my mother’s side of the family, although it did extend slightly to my dad’s side. In fact, my dad’s name was Julius and everyone called him Juju. He also had a sister and cousin who were both named Phyllis. To distinguish between the two, we called his cousin Big Philly because she was tall and skinny. I suspect, however, that my mother was behind both of these nicknames.

W-T-F?

Okay, I know you’re all probably getting whiplash, but we’re now back in the present just for a short time. I’m honestly trying to stay away from politics on this blog, so consider this a commentary on character.

I write on my own blog called Turn-Left, and I confess to being an unrepentant liberal. Recently, a few of my conservative compatriots became so irritated with my positions that they started infiltrating my blog. One of these clowns (for lack of a better word) decided he “wants to teach me a lesson.” Yeah. I don’t really know if he was expecting me to be impressed enough to become a myopic, rigid, religiously-driven conservative, but his type brings out the commie pinko progressive Democrat in me. [If the truth be known, I'd be a card-carrying member of the Green Party if I thought they had a chance in hell of winning. Their platform is spot on for me.]

Now, these conservatives aren’t really bloggers. They are just insulting name callers. That’s what they’ve done to me and the rest of the liberals on my blog. You know, the usual stuff: “militant homosexual” (because I dared to say that everybody should be able to marry whom they want; it’s guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution), “anti-American” (because I believe that nobody should be tortured in any form in any war, and that George W. Bush should be indicted for war crimes), and “God-hater” (because I firmly believe in the separation between church and state). Since then, Joker has said that he’d enjoy a burger and beer while he watches me being waterboarded. Know what? Fuck him. How’s that. There. Feeling better. So, let me get to my question.

How is it that these true believers, these patriotic Christians (by their own definition) can square up their religious beliefs with their support of torture and illegal wars that are doing nobody any good. Our soldiers are dying. More than a million Iraqi civilians (read: The people we are supposed to be liberating) have died, and another million are displaced refugees. It had nothing to do with “freedom.” It had nothing to do with protecting America. It was all about oil.  I’m curious about that. See, it doesn’t work for me. I’m a Catholic by birth, but a Buddhist by choice. (Long story. We’ll get to it some day.)

The Buddhists simply do not “do” violence. Buddhists in Tibet won’t even pick up arms to liberate themselves. They are abused by China, yet they won’t hurt others even to free themselves. The Dalai Lama has to live in India because the Chinese will kill him if he returns to Tibet. (He escaped from there in 1959.) Every year at the center I sporadically attend, they spend hundreds of dollars to buy lobsters from food stores and return them to the ocean. To some, this sounds stupid. However, the Buddhists have a great spiritual respect for the planet and all living things.

To be perfectly honest, America claims to be a peace-loving nation but that’s not the way the numbers go. In fact, the U.S. has spent more time in war than in peace. There are only two of those wars that were justified — WWI and WWII.  Not Korea. Not Viet Nam. Not Afghanistan. Not Iraq. None of them.As a result, I’ve begun to fulfill the requirements of dual citizenship with Canada. Should my children want to fight for the U.S. if we are threatened or under attack, I support that. However, my children will never fight in an Iraq- or Afghanistan-style war.

These conservatives are, simply put, hypocrites of the tallest order. They wouldn’t know Christianity if it hit them in the face. They simply use God’s name to justify what they do and what they support. And, by the way, did you know that the commandment “Do not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain” has absolutely nothing to do with the swear “Jesus Christ!” It has nothing to do with that. What it means is: Do not use God’s name to justify the evil things you do. I got that right from the mouth of a Bishop.

Anyway, that’s it. I’m done. They’ve taken up enough of my positive energy for today, and I feel much better now. Thanks for putting up with that.

Again, living in the present…for this morning at least. Did anybody catch the story about the Texas couple who found Jesus in a bag of Cheetos? No, if you haven’t heard about it, I’m not kidding. This is really a WTF moment. Something as absurd as this could only happen here, really. Think about this happening, say, in Jakarta. You’d never see it. I’m not quite sure what that says about us, and I’m really not quite sure if I want to know what this says about us.

Needless to say, the Cheesus Christ Cheeto has found it’s way onto ebay. You knew that was next. I confess that I just don’t get it. I mean, when I find things like this, why can’t I see Jesus and cash in? Oh, wait, I’m a Buddhist. That could be it. Or maybe I’m just not that twisted. Yeah.

This also confirms that Texas should just be allowed to go on and secede. Let’s face it. This is also the state that gave us George W. Bush. Let it go. Democrats will probably be outlawed, so we’ll take them. No problem. Then Texas can rejoin Mexico and get back to its roots. It’ll be good for them. And us.

I went to Texas on business once, and it was quite an experience. I mean, these people were, well, unique. That’s all I can say. Very impressed with themselves. You know, The Lone Star State. The bar at the hotel lobby was a fascinating vantage point for people watching and I spent hours there. I felt like I had been there for hours the next morning. I couldn’t even remember what I drank, but I drank a lot of it. I only went to Texas to help set up the show, so I did that the next morning and immediately got on a flight and came home.

I have a feeling there are a lot of Cheesus Jesus finders in that state. Beware.

This blog spends a lot of time looking back, but I’ve still got to live in the present which is not always an easy task. On the mornings I’m not at Starbucks, I’m the one who gets up at 6:00 a.m. to get the kids off to school. I usually give myself a fifteen-minute advantage so I can shake off the sleep. Got to be alert and upbeat with these two on a Monday morning. Neither of them enjoy school, and Monday mornings are the absolute worst.

Anyway, I had two thoughts this morning that I want to share with you. First, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I have: Gas is creeping up again. Now, I’m paying $2.23. That would be less a problem if I were not traveling 72 miles a day, but I am. So, I was thinking how great it would be if I had a Port Key on my patio. All you Harry Potter fans know what I’m talkin’ ’bout. You know like the boot that took them to the Quiddich World Cup. That kind of Port Key. For those who don’t really know what a port key is, click here. All will be explained.

Now, I’m sure it would be embarrassing at the beginning. You know, the sight of me making a thudding entrance in the Walkers Brook parking lot would be entertaining to be sure. But I’m sure with time I’d be able to make one of those more dignified walking-style landings like Mr. Weasley. People would hardly notice me coming out of thin air.

I don’t have problems with motion sickness. I was always the master of the roller coaster and the round-up at Nantasket Beach. I can handle the spinning thing okay. And just think of the gas and time I’d save. I’d be able to hang around here and write longer (faster transport time than a car), and absolutely no need for gas. I’ll take it.

It was after this initial thought that things got wierd. I happened to be watching Death on the Nile on Beth’s computer while I write on mine. The nastiest character in the movie (and also the victim because of her shitty attitude) is named Lynette. For some crazy fucking reason, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme came into my head. Anybody but me remember her? I was thinking what a three-time loser she is. Think about it for just a minute.

First, good old “Squeaky” was once a member of a dance group called the Westchester Lariats, and she appeared on the Lawrence Welk Show and at the White House. If that isn’t enough, she’s also a former member of The Manson Family. If Lawrence Welk doesn’t make you a loser, hanging out with Charlie Manson definitely does. You’d have to be short on gray matter to pay homage to that weasly little rat-faced git. Life in suburbia and membership in the Lariats must have really sucked and she had to be desperate for something, although I’m not quite sure what.

The ‘third’ part of the three-time loser thing is not just that she failed to kill Gerald Ford, but that she chose Gerald Ford at all. Gerald Ford? Why, man? Yeah, okay, it was infuriating that he pardoned Tricky. That didn’t make me happy either, but the important thing is that we got rid of Tricky. We held him accountable and he paid the price. (We don’t bother to do that anymore, by the way.) It wasn’t necessary for old “Squeaky” to take it to that extreme.

After this last thought, the kids took over and all thoughts left. I know there was another messed up thought coming over the horizon, but maybe it will make it later. We’ll see. Until then, I’m going to prepare myself mentally to serve coffee and various treats to the entitled masses. Have yourselves a good day.

Okay. Look, I admit to being a Red Sox fan. I’m not a Manny fan, however, and I truly believed it was just a matter of time before he brought his special kind of magic to the Dodgers. He did today, May 7, 2009.

Today, Manny Ramirez was banned from playing baseball for 50 games for testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug. According to sources, he tested positive for HCG, or human chorionic gonadotropin, a woman’s fertility drug which helps the body produce testosterone.

Okay, so he releases this statement saying that he recently saw a doctor for a problem and the doctor gave him a prescription for something he thought would be okay. Right. A woman’s fertility drug that helps the body to produce testosterone. Not a steroid, but a performance-enhancing drug.

What medical problem could Manny possibly have that would require him to take a woman’s fertility drug? Perhaps, they want him to get in touch with his feminine side. Who knows? By the end of the frakin’ season, he could end up looking like fellow sportsman, Dennis Rodman. Different sport; same effect.

Remember the news story about the guy who chopped someone’s head off on a bus? Well, I just found out that I’m taking the bus down to Cape Cod tomorrow to pick up a new car. Do you think if I tell the guy next to me that the head thing has been done before and they found out mine was empty, it’ll work?