I Wish

I Wish... by Finijo

I was 21 when I moved into my first apartment and attending college. My next door neighbor was a middle aged woman from West Virginia named Patty, and she looked after me like I was her own daughter. Patty and I would stay up late and watch Arsenio Hall or sit out on the balcony in our nightgowns and drink tea and eat the homemade chocolate chip cookies she made. Most days, Patty babysat her 8 year old grandson, Dave, and I began tutoring him when I found out that he could not read and did not even know the alphabet. When we started, he would fight me and say, "This is boring. You can't make me do this." I responded by making him run the stairs while his grandmother and I counted the laps he did. When I say I made him run the stairs, the truth is that Patty threatened to tell his grandfather when he got home if he didn't obey. Dave begrudgingly did what he was told. Pretty soon he knew the alphabet and after that he didn't have to run the stairs very often. A couple of years later, the family moved back to West Virginia and I have only seen Patty a few times over the last 20 or so years, but we talk on the phone and exchange letters and it always feels like we are back up on the balcony with our tea and no time has passed at all. I talked to Patty this past Christmas and Dave happened to be there, so we talked for the first time since he left Texas. He reminded me of all of the stairs I made him run and how he appreciated that I made him learn to read. It was strange to have this grown man telling me that I changed his life when he was a kid, but we talked about old times and had a good laugh.

Tonight I got a call from a mutual friend and my first instinct when I realized who was calling, was that Patty was either ill or she had died. I was wrong. Dave died of an overdose today. Two David's have passed out of my life in as many months leaving me feeling tired and sad.

Inappropriate Laughter

Today I laughed at one of my clients until I cried. It was uncontrollable laughter, the kind of laughter that causes you to stop breathing and your face to turn colors. 

It all started when he told me that his girlfriend's cat got out yesterday and hasn't come back and he is very upset about it. I asked how his girlfriend is taking it and he said, "She's alright. It's not exactly my fault that it happened... well it is, but it isn't." I asked him to explain and this is what he says:

Well, my dog got sick. He got diarrhea and I didn't realize it until I pulled the covers over my head while I was sleeping. (I am trying to stifle the laughter at this point, because I know this is going to be an awful/terrible/wonderfully funny story) You see, I pulled the covers over my head while I was sleeping and didn't know that my dog was sick and had defecated on the sheets. (By now I am laughing in his face, but he just kept telling me the story). I ended up with feces in my hair, my ears, my nose and my mouth. (My tears are starting and I am waving at him trying to get him to stop talking, but he just keeps going) That's when I started to vomit. I couldn't stop throwing up. It was a helluva mess. I had to shower twice just to get it all off me. (I think I had a small stroke after he said that). So after I was clean, I had to clean it all up. Did I tell you that my apartment is kind of a dump? Well it is, and the smell of feces and vomit was everywhere, so I opened the window to air the place out. Because my place is a dump, the screen was loose and the cat must have pushed it open and got out through the window.  

When I finally got myself together, I apologized repeatedly. It really isn't professional to laugh at the patients. He accepted my apology and said, "It's OK, my girlfriend keeps laughing at me, too." 

True story.

Existence

Buddha Eyes by Finijo

Existential thought of the day: We all need someone to witness our existence. 

It is not enough to be alive, although that is something quite extraordinary. We need to be known, to have people or at least one person know who we are, to verify that we do in fact exist. 

I remember watching a movie when I was a kid that reinforced this idea for me, even though I was so young, I couldn't possibly have understood why they impacted me so profoundly. The film, Cipher in the Snow, was an after school movie and depicted a boy going through his school day without anyone speaking to him. He rides the school bus home and is noticed by nobody and as he steps off the bus, he takes a few steps and then falls into the snow and dies. The rest of the film is spent with a teacher who is supposed to be the boy's favorite teacher (even though he never really noticed the boy in his class) tries to understand who the boy was by talking to his classmates, and he comes to realize that the boy's parents divorced and he has no friends. The teacher concludes that nobody really knew the boy and that he was a "cipher in the snow" and died because nobody loved him. He died without a witness. 

I've been working on my family genealogy for about ten years off and on now. I wonder sometimes why this quest is important to me. It's not like having the information will make a difference in my life. I will live and die regardless of whether I find more information about all of those who came before me. It occurred to me tonight that for me, genealogy is a way to bear witness for ancestors and relatives who lived and died before I was ever conceived. My grandmother gave me the family tree to work on when I was 14 and I don't think I looked at it as more than a curiosity until she died in 2003. When she died, it was like the quest to know her relatives and family burned through me. With each new discovery, I felt like I was a little closer to her and understood her life just a little bit better.  My brother David told me that searching for information about ancestors was 'living in the past." He never really understood. Today Marilyn took a call from the coroner who did David's autopsy. Preliminary results are in and it turns out that David had been diagnosed with diabetes in 2007 and never treated it. He also had "multiple heart attacks." I thought he might have had heart trouble five or six years ago, but when I asked him about the heart tests that I saw paperwork for on the dining room table, he lied to me and said "It was just a check up." He was in denial about so many things and I loved my brother, but he could lie as easily as tell you the truth and even though you knew he could do it, he almost always fooled you. Part of me wants to muster up a little bit of anger about his deception, but I think I am just too sad about the fact that he felt like he had to deceive everyone. 

Haunted

Hibiscus Black and White by Finijo

I chanted this morning at the kaikan and got to have tea with a good friend and I feel great. Having some time alone with my friend after what feels like forever was really nice. It gave me the chance to talk about David and realize that I am doing much better. Talking about him feels like keeping part of him alive and with me. He was a workaholic and could not sit still for anything. He yelled at his workers constantly to "Get back to work!" His son, Robert and I worked on how his headstone would read and agreed on:

David West

November 25,1953 - December 31, 2012

Loving father, brother, and friend. 

I"m only laying here because I have to.

Get back to work!

He would appreciate that his wicked sense of humor could make people laugh who come to visit him and who come to visit others. Now I am off to celebrate Marilyn's birthday with some Vietnamese food and have a good time in the realm of the living with my family. I was excited to get the following tweet:

Chuck Palahniuk retweeted   Cecil Angeline Turla @TurlaCecil @_FullyBooked @chuckpalahniuk Awesome news is awesome! Stoked! #Haunted t.co/qOp9yHUW 10:39 AM - 02 Feb 13  Reply  Retweet  Favorite

Just Ink 2

Mandalascape by Finijo

Last night I had a great time at the Just Ink 2 show. I didn't sell a thing, but the atmosphere was buzzing, and the art was inspiring. So much creativity in one room, and at the risk of sounding like a New Age dork, so much positive energy from all of the artists and the people who were there to see and buy art. I had a very late dinner with my East End Studio Gallery peeps and enjoyed laughter and good company and conversation.

This morning, I went outside to feed the birds a bag of outdated corn tortillas and the weather was so perfect that I took a barefoot stroll through my yard to see what survived the winter. My fig tree is still chugging along as is my pomelo tree and I expect to have them fruiting nicely in about 2-4 years. On the other side of the yard my orange tree has rallied and my lime tree is going strong, but I think my lemon tree has given up. I will have to replace it this spring. While checking my lemon tree, I noticed a fresh harvest of pecans had blown into my yard from my neighbors huge pecan tree, so I filled the bag that held the tortillas in and came back in with about 5 lbs. of wonderful, fresh and free pecans. 

 Today I will create.  

Shame on Applebee's

While I no longer wait tables, I support that hard working and underpaid part of the American workforce. Unless you have done that work, you cannot imagine how much of a toll it can take on your body and your spirit. 

I just posted the following on my Facebook and I am hoping that it will strike a chord with others who will also express their displeasure with Applebee's.

I waited tables while I was in college and the thought of Applebee's firing the waitress really ticked me off. It's hard work for less than minimum wage and I support the waitress' right to express herself. She didn't post name of the pastor, but she did post the pastor's shameful behavior. This is the e-mail that I sent to Applebee's informing them that I will not support a company that does not support its employees.

I am writing to tell Applebee's of my disgust with your company's decision to dismiss the server for posting the receipt of the pastor who refused to tip and used religious tithing as the excuse. Shame on the pastor and shame on your company for allowing that dismissal. There are hundreds of thousands of servers and former servers who know what it means to work for less than minimum wage and rely on their tips to survive, and I am among them. The work is hard and at times hazardous, and although we expect to be stiffed from time to time because people are cheap or even dissatisfied with service, being insulted and having the cheapskate customer hide behind religion as the reason is despicable. Firing the server for posting the receipt on line without posting any identifying information about the customer is beneath contempt and cowardly of the manager. I expect a company to stand up for its hard working employees, and knowing that Applebee's does not feel the need to support their servers will keep me from eating at your restaurant in the future. Shame on Applebee's for not speaking out on behalf of the server and her first amendment rights. There are a lot of chain restaurants (TGI Friday's, Black Eyed Pea, Ruby Tuesday's, etc...) that serve similar food at similar prices that can benefit from my business.

I will be posting this letter on Facebook in the hope that there are others who will support the server your company betrayed.

Sincerely,

Karen West

Applebee’s fires waitress who posted receipt from pastor complaining about auto-tip

news.yahoo.com

An Applebee's waitress who posted a receipt with a note from a pastor complaining about the