Random

Yesterday I spoke with a woman who told me she has 18 brothers and sisters. As I started turning this number around in my head I thought, Surely she must be including step-siblings and half-siblings. It was as if she had read my mind. “All from the same parents,” she said. “Wow!” I said, still turning the number over in my head, imagining a house with that many children and teenagers living in it (the screaming, the crying, the fighting, the laughing–it would certainly keep the parents busy). “We were raised Catholic,” she said. “And just so you know, the rhythm method doesn’t work.” Duly noted.
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I’ve been forlorn over the news that Christopher Hitchens has esophageal cancer. I missed the news when it was first announced because I was overseas and completely unaware of any news (no internet access, not much tv watching either). Then, just a few weeks ago, I did a google search for new Hitchens material and found the cancer story.

In a piece he wrote for Vanity Fair, he opens with this:

I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death. But nothing prepared me for the early morning last June when I came to consciousness feeling as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse. The whole cave of my chest and thorax seemed to have been hollowed out and then refilled with slow-drying cement.

He’s taken by squad to the hospital and eventually learns about the cancer. One of his lymph nodes can by palpated from the outside! “It’s not at all good when your cancer is “palpable” from the outside,” he writes.

So, so sad. Damn cancer. Damn, damn cancer.

Jun 26

Question

If you want to know what’s wrong with me, you need to know what’s happening to some of the people I care about most. To learn that, I direct you to my friend Cyd.

I saw the paperwork with my own eyeballs. I fluctuate wildly between knowing it will all work out and crying inconsolably. And not only because it affects this household so directly, but because it affects so many hard working people. Doesn’t it always, though? Hasn’t it been happening all over the country? Hasn’t it been happening for years? My father lost his job twice during his life. It’s a real bitch, but it will work out. It has to…there isn’t any other option.

It’s all about new adventure, new opportunity, right? Well, maybe tomorrow it’ll seem more adventurous. Today it’s soul crushing.

And just when I was settling into S. Florida, and enjoying my work with the immigrant community. I was always ready to leave the area, but now I’m dragging my feet.

May 4

Misc.

I had a dream I lost my job. In the dream, my job involved some sort of medical duties…I think I was drawing blood, or something. I lost it the same day I got it. Someone I haven’t seen in real life for ten or eleven years was with me, and she invited me to lunch once we received the news. As if I could afford lunch with just having lost my job. As if there were no problems at all. I declined and said I was going to go visit my mom & step-dad. I think I was going to ask if I could move back in with them.

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I despise how expendable companion animals are in this society. I sympathize that people are struggling financially (as you can see from above, my own concern with finances is permeating my sleeping brain), but it seems once you’ve made a commitment to an animal, it should be absolute. I’d no sooner return the cats to the pound because of my finances than I would turn out a friend or family member from the guest room. We may all be eating beans and rice—the cats and the people—but we’re all in it together.

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And thank you, William Rhoden, for asking why we continually give horse racing a pass:

“The sport is at least as inhumane as greyhound racing and only a couple of steps removed from animal fighting.”

This, of course, is in response to the death of Eight Belles in yesterday’s Kentucky Derby.

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I’m working with a friend at the center in hopes of helping him with his English. He had asked me several times if I could teach him English; I told him I couldn’t “teach” him, but I could practice with him. In our sessions, we discuss the work he’s doing in his English class. During the most recent session, he was trying to understand when to use “we” and when to use “us.” Alternating between English and Spanish, I tried to explain objective case. He thought the difference was based on the people included in the pronoun (“we” included the speaker, but he was defining “us” like “them”). I corrected this and then asked if his teacher had explained objective case. He said no. I asked if he had learned the basics of sentence formation (noun, verb, adjective, etc.) He said no. Granted, this may have been covered before he started attending classes because it seems like fundamental information to have for anyone wanting to understand how and why we select the words we choose. I don’t get the sense he is learning the 1st/2nd/3rd person breakdown either, which (I think) makes memorizing all of this information much easier. The only reason I remember the Spanish I remember is because we had to learn the various word endings based on the 1st/2nd/3rd person approach. I tried to diagram the pronouns for him, but I couldn’t explain what the diagram was meant to indicate. The language always fails me when things get too complicated.

Apr 2

In my humble opinion, which means little except in the small bubble that is my world, I believe the policy of destroying alligators because they are over five feet long is complete and utter bullshit. The argument is they are too big to “safely release.” I say, there must be some place in the glades where they can be relocated. Or a preserve. I can sort of understand the argument when there is evidence the alligator has been fed by people and associates people with food. I don’t know if there is evidence of that in this situation, yet the creature was hauled off to the processing plant because of his size. It irks me, but I’m a bleeding heart for wildlife trying to survive in the ever encroaching city.