anniversary and some pathological liars.

August 31, 1986 was the day I had my last drink. There was always a big fuss about anniversaries when I went to AA, but today's was very low-key.

Lately I've been thinking about some bad dates and bad boyfriends from my bad drinking days. The one I wanted to talk about was more than a date (we saw each other several times), but definitely less than a boyfriend.

In the early eighties, I was at a Yankees game by myself, and struck up a conversation with an older man who was there with his teenaged son. Martin explained to me that these weren't his usual seats, but that he had lent out his season seats to a friend that day (he pointed to a much better section than the ones we were sitting in). He said that, in fact, he was away on the weekends a lot and wondered if I would like for him to give me the rest of his season seats. I distinctly recall his son rolling his eyes, which at the time I ascribed to his being slightly embarrassed that his dad seemed to e trying to pick up a younger woman right then and there.

I was in my early 20s, and Martin was probably past 50, and I didn't particularly find myself attracted to him. But he appeared to be pretty wealthy, and I didn't see how it could do much harm to see him again - plus I very much wanted those Yankee tickets.

I didn't really understand what a pathological liar was, or really why someone would lie to me at all if I already showed signed of enjoying his company. I saw Martin maybe a couple more times. He gave me his business card, from a company called General Glass, but also explained that he had a lot of other business deals going on. He did drive a Mercedes. He told me about smuggling Torahs and other Jewish religious items into Czechoslovakia. He told me in some detail about a woman he was more or less keeping, a former Miss USA or Miss World  or such. She was from the south, as I recall, and very, very beautiful. He had bought her a co-op. He indicated that they hadn't been getting on too well, and at a subsequent meeting, he acting very upset and said she had killed herself.

What had started to seem like a very exciting and interesting life started to sound fishy. He drank a lot. And although he didn't really make a pass - in fact, he pretty much acted like a gentleman - he started proposing that he keep me in much the same manner as he kept the beauty queen. He would give me an apartment, we would travel together, and he would take care of my every need. And yet, somehow, he always forgot to bring those Yankees tickets. I believe I'd even given him my address so he could mail them to me.

I half-considered it. There was something very exotic about the lifestyle he described, and I felt somewhat honored that he had chosen me; it also touched off a certain level of greed in me. At the time, I worked with a very nice man named Joe, and every time I told him something about Martin, Joe said that the guy just didn't sound right.

The last thing I remember is that Martin had neglected to call, and I tried to reach him at General Glass. Whoever answered the phone told me that Martin hadn't worked there in some time, and kind of laughed about it, as if he couldn't believe that Martin still pretended to work there.

Pathological liar #2: I was fairly newly sober, and met a guy named - I think it was Steve Silverman - at a union meeting at NYU. I was very big in the staff union before I got sober, and stayed with it some time into my recovery, though not long. Steve was age-appropriate and nice-looking. I cant remember what division of NYU he worked at, but I know we started talking on the phone quite a bit. I was working at writing poetry and short stories at the time, and he expressed an interest in reading them. In those pre-internet days, I think I sent them to him inter-office. He later discussed them with me, intelligently and at length. Our phone conversations went on for a few weeks. He told me about some other jobs he'd had - I can't remember what they were, but they sounded interesting. At one point, rather casually, he mentioned that he had applied for a transfer to a position in the division where I worked (though the job was in a different building), and wondered if there was anything I could do to help. I seem to recall that I did speak to someone in the union, and Steve did get the job. He was going to take me out to dinner to celebrate and to thank me, and he stood me up. I never did hear from him again. I did hear, though, that his resume turned out to be largely falsified and that he simply stopped showing up for his new job. I don't know if it was the lying that bothered me so much - it was more that he launched what I would certainly call a courtship rather than simply asking me at the union meeting if I might put in a good word for him.

I never used to assume that someone was lying to me, especially if there didn't seem to be any reason to do so.

The third incident happened when I was well into sobriety, and it's kind of embarrassing in more than one way. When I was sober for a few years, I worked days (still at NYU) and finished my BA at night. I enjoyed school a lot at the time, and was deeply into the romance of scholarship. Between classes and studying, I hadn't had a date - or even gotten laid - for a couple of years. I had also put on a great deal of weight. At the time I got sober, people in AA promoted the use of sugar as a substitute for alcohol, and I ate a lot of sweets to keep myself from wanting to drink. I had put on about thirty pounds.

I should also mention that dating within AA ranged from bad to dreadful. (Joe Ford was an exception, but that's another story). The men blew hot and cold: they'd flirt and show interest, then change their minds, and you'd always have to talk about it. It was excruciating. And I wasn't getting much play from men outside the rooms, so I had this brilliant idea: I saw ads, and read postings online (newsgroup days), about certain bars that had special nights for "Big Beautiful Women" (usually referred to as "BBWs") and their admirers. A guy I met online invited me to one; it was kind of a sexy atmosphere, featuring a lingerie show, but the guy who invited me was way more smitten than I, so I decided to try another club on my own.

I wasn't as "big" as some of the other women who went to these clubs, many of whom dressed in a sexy was, with major hair and makeup; they also tended to be fairly buxom, which I was not and never was. (No matter how much I ever got to weigh, I always somehow remained an A-cup.)

So I went to this smaller club, and was pretty roundly snubbed by the other women. In fact, I won some sort of door prize, and when I went up to accept it, I heard one woman say, rather loudly, "She's too small." So I wasn't quite fat enough to be accepte3d by the other women. However, I did meet a very nice man - I think his name was Chris. He was a good sized fellow - not fat but hearty - and we fell to talking. He was wearing a band jacket, and told me that even though he played in a successful band, he liked a fairly simple life and lived in Staten Island when he wasn't touring. I asked what band he played in, and he rather shyly indicated that it was the band whose jacket he was wearing - Pantera. Now, I was solidly into blues at the time, and knew absolutely zero about those sorts of bands beyond the names, and it didn't strike me as odd that someone who played in a metal band (or whatever sort of band it was) liked a fairly simple home life and had a taste for larger women. When I asked about what seemed to be a wedding band, he said that he and his brother (who was also in the band) had exchanged them as an expression of their brotherly love. I bought that. I started telling him about the blues magazine I had started, and asked if he felt he could offer any sort of financial support (the printing costs were killing me). He said absolutely.

We started to get rather cozy and began doing some kissing and touching in the club. We clearly had the hots for each other, and he asked if he could come to my place, as he was staying at a nearby hotel with the band and it was a little noisy and messy. My apartment at the time was a disastrous mess, so I suggested we go to the hotel instead. He said he had to run out to the hotel and check on the condition of his room, see if his bandmates were running riot...and he left the club and didn't come back.

That one really killed me. It wasn't just the realization that many married men considered these clubs a good spot to pick up willing and possibly desperate women (mostly with big tits). It was that he had lied to me even when I had indicated that I was attracted to him. He had no reason to lie. Which was probably why I fell for it: he was all set for an evening of what would have been some pretty good sex, and he blew it by typing himself up in a knot of unnecessary lies.

It should have been a mere disappointment, but it absolutely crushed me. It played into a lot of self-loathing I had lately experienced, which soon enough led me to a psychiatrist and Prozac. (A couple of AA friends, listening to me describe recent moods, suggested it - both had suffered crushing depressions in sobriety and had ended up on antidepressants).

I still have that naive tendency to assume that someone is telling the truth if they have no reason to do otherwise, but I guess some guys are driven to embellish. My bullshit meter has improved substantially since then.

And once the Prozac took hold, I lost around 30 pounds and started to feel a lot better about myself. I answered a couple of personal ads and went on two dates. Even though both seemed successful to me, I never heard from either again. Still, I liked the idea of dating. When I was a teenager and young adult, no one really dated in any formal way...you hung out, maybe you had sex, maybe you kept hanging out, maybe not. So actual dating was kind of new to me. I figured I'd have better luck placing my own ad. I put my writing skills to work, and came up with an ad that pretty well described who I was and what I was looking for. The headline was "Old hippie at heart seeks same." I mentioned that I was a blues journalist on the side, my age (38) and the age I was looking for (35-45), that I was sober and clean and that I was interested in a serious relationship.

These ads (again, pre-internet dating) would set up a voice mailbox for you, for a limited time, and I felt like my ad had been specific enough to weed out the creeps. I got a very manageable 12 voice mails, spoke to six of them on the phone, and met three face-to-face.

The first one I met was not a bad guy, but he was a sober social worker and basically that was it - all recovery talk. Didn't click. The third one I met seemed to feel that being an "old hippie" meant telling a lot of tripping stories; he also lectured me about Israel. Also not my type.

The second one I met in person was Barry. And we clicked. In fact, I went out with the Israel-lecturing guy the night after I met Barry for coffee, and as much as I had liked Barry, I liked him a whole lot better after the date with the tripping/Israel guy. So as soon as I got back from the Israel date, I called Barry at home, and left a voicemail saying how much I had enjoyed meeting him, and I hoped we'd see each other again soon. He called back in about an hour and said, "I was just going to make the same call." And that, as they say, was pretty much it. I found myself a nice Jewish boy who wanted to get serious, and he was good-looking and funny and warm. He was the guy. And still is.

Of course, I have many other stories of dates and boyfriends and pick-ups (please remember that we're talking about roughly 1975-85, when life and sex were a lot safer and easier), but I still find the liars baffling. And the dating stories are much harder to tell than the work ones.

my head is spinning somewhat

Can't really say why, but it is.  Too much good mood.  Too much good mood + can't talk about it = what do you think it equals?

All else is what it is and what it's been: work is still good, I feel hopeful about the jewelry, I'm trying to arrange a dinner with Robin for the 16th or 17th.  Robin will understand the spinning-head stuff.  Her head has been known to spin over such things.

Money sucks, sucks, sucks.  Barry had a shot at a job at Ohel, working with developmentally disabled people, but it turned out he had to have a driver's license.  He's now applying for a slightly less good but similar job, also with Ohel.  Of course, I suggested that he look for similar jobs in other agencies, WHICH HADN'T OCCURRED TO HIM. 

As we say in Mangalore, oy vey.

good...and bad

Well, "bad" is my ongoing concern with privacy and money.  I did decide to keep a second blog where I can rant and rave anonymously about those things that are both bothering me and attracting me too much.  And I have a second, private email address, and have been making use of "private browsing" at home, as not to leave an electronic paper trail.  Never thought I'd have to be so cautious about privacy as regards my spouse, but apparently he likes to look in on what I do and to take things the wrong way.  Really, really not good, as far as marriage goes.  I'm sure a lot of people have a lot of different points of view on this, but I think everyone needs some privacy even married couples.  For the record, I don't think I'm doing anything wrong that I require privacy, at least not at the moment.  But perhaps some thoughts and ideas should be kept private.

The money situation got a little worse because Barry fucked up on paying Verizon (which provides our phone, internet, and TV).  I let him pay the bills, which are three per month (Verizon, gas, and electric), and generally total around $300.  I knew he had not been paying Verizon in full (which I don't like -- I had been encouraging him to pay a little more than the minimum to eventually get the bill paid down to zero).  He assured me that he was paying the minimum to keep our service -- except he wasn't.  So I got home on Wednesday and the phone, internet, and TV were all turned off, and we had to cough up around $400 to get them back.  This is about the worst unexpected financial hit we've taken since I had to replace the dead computer, and it happened right at payday.  So I have to look forward to an entire month of not having enough.  Had to cancel New Year's with Jannah ($60 in train fare), any hopes of seeing a doctor ($30 co-pay), and may have to quit therapy, at least for now.  I tried to cancel dinner with Robin tonight but she said she'd pick up the tab.

The good news is this:  with all of the running around on Twitter etc, @astroshiva recommended this blog as a good source of Bollywood info, which is very flattering to me.  I consider myself a rank beginner.

So I ought to say something about the first half of Yaarana, which I watched last night.  (It's so hard to watch any more than half of a three-hour movie on a weeknight!)  I had been anxious to see this for a bit -- Netflix had it, but the subtitles were off by about three lines (that is, the title would come on three lines later than the bit it was translating), so I had to stop.  I ended up having to buy a DVD.  And it was well worth it.  For one thing, Kishore Kumar and Mohammed Rafi do the singing.  Also, I liked the themes of solid friendship and wicked family, and the fact that Amitabh plays both a country bumpkin and a talented singer.  (He really is wonderful at playing a bumpkin.  I'd like to see him do more comedy, though he has done some awfully funny TV commercials in recent years.)  I like Amjad Khan as the friend-for-life. And although I wasn't sure that the tag from my old friend, Go Meera Go, was from an actual song, it seems it is:  Sara Zamana from Yaarana.  There you go.  So now I know all four songs from the medley, and where each one comes from. Kaike Paan Banaraswala" from Don, "Pag Gungru" from Halak Namaal, "Rang Barse" from Silsilla, and "Sara Zamana" from Yaarana.  So maybe I do know a thing or two about Bollywood -- at least about Amitabh and about Hrithik Roshan's weird thumbs.

I really need a subtitled copy of Sholay.  Have not been able to find one online, and it's not a good month to buy one on eBay...which I might do anyway.

I am honestly not finding a whole lot of friendliness so far in the BW fan community, and that's a shame.  Maybe I'm still too new.  Someone reached out on Twitter to see if I was the same person from the blog, and I responded, then didn't hear from her again.  You'd think the other nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn would like to do the secret handshake, but no.  Maybe she's not so nice. Maybe she doesn't like not being the only one of her kind.  Can't say -- it's in her head, not mine. But I never do like feeling snubbed.
I think this will be a weekend to make jewelry -- not just for holiday gifts, but for some piece of mind.  I do need to be creating again.

When I start to follow, say, a certain actor, it's not just about appreciating someone his art, it's about growing my own.  It's about being inspired.  So, let's check out that inspiration this weekend, shall we?

I am mostly crying

Honestly, I think I'd rather be in desperate financial straits on my own.  That wasn't how I felt before this past weekend.  I thought that Barry was helping: looking for bargains, making dinner, even running to food pantries (which is how bad our situation is).  But now I have to wonder how much money he was siphoning off for things we can't afford:  cigarettes, chips, soda.  Maybe our finances aren't even that bad; maybe he's just been misspending too much money.  But it's exhausting to have to police him on top of everything else I do.  Plus, I don't really trust that he's doing that much as far as job hunting.  First and foremost, he absolutely needs to be working, whether or not I leave or kick him out.

At least on my own, I would know exactly who was handling money well or fucking it up.  I would not have to discover that someone who was allegedly helping me was actually doing harm.  I felt a lot of love in pitching in together in this very bad situation, and absolutely heartbroken that he was actually working against me.  And it's not just the cigarettes or the money or the lying:  it's also that I'm the one who would get to nurse him through emphysema or lung cancer.  It's spending money we don't have on something very harmful.  I quit a cigarette habit twice as bad as his -- I smoked twice as much -- and it's been six years.  I'm not asking for something I wouldn't and didn't do myself.

I was really, finally feeling settled into this marriage, feeling a lot of love and appreciation despite a lot of lacks and problems (like no sex for many years), but now I really want out.  I want to be responsible for myself, period.

Of course, the big problem here is that there's no way to separate.  We have one reasonably priced apartment and one job.  I'll be trying to set aside money to move, although it's really not my preference, but he has no income and can't really stay alone or move.  (I'm not close to being that mean.)  So we're stuck together for the time being, which is really awkward.  I might even consider staying together in the apartment if he gets a job, and has some of his own fucking money to waste.

Barry is in denial.  He met me at the subway yesterday, which he had been doing some in better times, and I asked, "What are you doing here?"  He said, "I came to meet you.  What's wrong?"  I said, "I'm trying to decide whether or not I can continue to live under the same roof with you."  So he turned and walked home, then got into bed.  Didn't get up to make dinner or anything else.  He takes to bed when there's something he doesn't want to deal with.

I guess there's not much else to say at this point.  I'm going to Jannah's for a weekend a week from tomorrow.  All of these discussions with St. Ann's people are depressing me dreadfully.  Some of them want to meet.  But as much as they share the problems they had at the school and their feelings of worthlessness, they're all achieving now and I'm not.  These are not friends I want.  I don't need any help feeling bad about myself.  And I really wish they would all stop asking if I still write poetry.  Considering the fact that Emmett Jarrett, the teacher who edited the literary magazine, only saw fit to publish one of my poems in all those years (and it wasn't even one I considered one of my best), I can't imagine how these people identify me as someone who wrote poetry.  Everyone wrote poetry at that school, and a lot of them still do.  It's been many years since I even tried...in the early 90s, I may have tried my hand at some song lyrics, but that went nowhere.

still not much happier

I feel like this whole issue is really dragging me down.  Barry is in total denial.  I think he's just looking at the current event, not the many times I've found cigarette ashes and butts and cellophane pack-bottoms here and there in the apartment ("It's not!"  "It's old!"  etc.).  In fact, earlier in the day that I caught him buying cigarettes at Rite-Aid, I'd found a cigarette ash on the computer keyboard, which he claimed was from a joint.  He never has enough pot in the house to roll a joint rather than smoke from a pipe.  But I let that one go.

But how do I live with someone who's working against me?  Of course, I don't hate him enough to throw him out with no income, or to move out leaving him with none.  Honestly, I hadn't been thinking in terms of "his money" and "my money" up to this point, and I know we spent a lot of "his money" last year -- his inheritance from his father.  But "my money" right now is what I'm going out and earning every day.  He does a lot of chores and housework but he doesn't bring in a cent.  In fact, he has to borrow money that I have to repay (I have no idea how long he owed that $15 to Alfonso, but it must have been a while ago since Alfonso felt he had to remind me).

He has gotten better about bargain shopping and doing without most luxuries this year, since the unemployment and my Dweck job vanished, but I guess he still doesn't understand that payday means unlimited wealth.  He also doesn't seem to understand that doing chores and housework doesn't mean that he can stop looking for work.  We walked by a cell phone store the other days with a "Help Wanted" sign in the window -- why should I have had to be the one to say "go in and get an application"?  I can't work *and* job-hunt for him at the same time.

I can't seem to work or to get much done at all, although I did a frantic cleaning of the kitchen sink on Saturday afternoon.  He washes most of the dishes most of the time, but not the sink or the area around it, which was really gross.  I'm trying to get the place clean, bit by bit, but he never goes past the maintenance chores.  I've been waiting for him to put up a towel rack in the bathroom for eight months or so (and have reminded/complaining from time to time).

I don't really have the time or energy to do the shopping on top of everything else, but I've had to cancel some doctor's appointments so I can do it.  I can't just give him money.  Let him feel like a fucking hobo.  I feel like a fucking idiot.

And all bets are off on any kind of "misbehaving."  As far as I'm concerned, I'm moving out of this marriage, and much as I'd like a single life, I could probably do a little more at this point than bat my eyes.

this is a bad state of affairs

I seem to be having a marriage problem.  If I sound surprised, it's because I am.

It goes this way:  Barry supposedly stopped smoking cigarettes about two years ago.  I had stopped some years earlier, and the smoke was starting to bother me, and the smell of smoke, and the health issues, and most of all the price.  We had an agreement that he would stop when it went over $10 a pack, and then it went over and he didn't tell me.  So I blew a fuse and gave him 30 days.  I did say that if he wanted, he could mooch one if he was with a smoking friend, but that was it.

Now, I've caught him here and there with a pack in his dresser, or trying to mooch from people on the street, and have done my share of yelling about it.

So, on Saturday, my pay hit my account, and we went out shopping.  For about a week before, I'd been making lists of what he needed to buy when I got paid and the costs.  So when we went out on Saturday, I had a very set shopping list, a very set amount I was taking out of the bank, plus I was going to buy a one-month unlimited Metrocard for myself and put $35 on one for Barry. 

We were going to do most of our shopping at Rite-Aid -- we have a 20% off card there, so we buy a lot of housewares there as well as pharmacy items.  As we were walking to Rite-Aid, Barry asked if I would give him $20 to walk around with, "So I won't feel like a hobo."  I gave this to him, which made me remember that he owed $15 to a guy in a local deli.  I said, "We can stop at Eagle on the way back and you can pay Alfonso, since you have the $20."  He said something like, "This 20 is for me, we can give Alfonso another 20."  I explained that I was counting every dime because I was, as always, very worried about money, and didn't want to be tight at the end of the month yet again.

So we get into Rite-Aid, I get a cart, and Barry says there's something he wants to look at, he'll catch up with me in a minute.  So I go down one aisle, then up another, and I see him at the checkout, and I hear the guy counting out eight-odd dollars in change.  I yelled, and I hope the whole store heard, 'WHAT ARE YOU BUYING???"  I yelled until he said he'd return it, and when he did, he found that this did not solve the problem.

I yelled all the way home, called him a liar, said I couldn't trust him, and said he'd broken my heart.  I said he would only be handled small sums of money any more, and I had no idea when this would change because it was a matter of my being able to trust him again.

So that's a deal -- I'm only giving him a few more bucks than he needs for a particular payment of shopping trip, and making him show me receipts.  Fuck of a lot of extra work for me.  (And that's before we look at the fact that I'm the only one working, and it;s MY money that he was trying to spend on cigarettes.)

Since then, I speak to him, but there's no affection.  I sure don't feel it.  I haven't touched him or kissed him or said I loved him, and haven't worn my wedding ring.  I actually had a nice present for him on Sunday which he did not get.  The whole birthday thing may be off.  The whole marriage thing may be off.  How I am going to live with someone I can't trust?

Mostly, I want him to get a fucking job, so I won't be paying for his bad habits, and I can move out without leaving him flat broke.  I'm at least that kind.  But even if it was a "spur of the moment weakness," as he claims, it's happened before and will happen again.  I've found evidence of smoking in the house and he denies it, acting offended.  Now I'm the one who's offended.  There's really no way for him to make this right or to make it up to me.  Once you've done something you're never supposed to do, how do you fix that?

We basically have a partnership at this point, not really a marriage.  Delilah is on hold, because I don't think I want to start any kind of "together" project with him.  This one may have broken the back of our marriage.  I've been tolerant with a lot of little things, but I can't overlook this.  It's really bad.

what the hell? and what the hell happened to my body?

nature's most perfect food?

I was making falafel for dinner tonight, so Barry stopped into one of our local kosher mideast grocery stores for some pita. There's one local kosher grocery where they're okay to Barry and very cold to me, but the one he went into today is run by a very sweet guy named Moishe who is lovely to both of us. Apparently when Barry was in there, Moishe gave him a couple of containers of foodstuffs from his mysterious fridge, all things he made himself, for free, to try. One was some small pickled peppers, but the other was truly amazing. They were these spicy pickled lemon slices, and those suckers are like a party in your mouth. They must be cooked a bit because they're very soft, even the peel. They're probably made with a bit of sugar, but I'll let that pass. These things are sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and juicy all at once, and then the hot peppers kick in, just a touch. (I mean, isn't that basically every taste except umami?) They're also deeply lemony because you get to eat the zest, which is perhaps more intensely lemon flavored than the pulp. I dunno, they're just outrageous. Barry was a little scared of them, even after I ate one, but he also thought it was fabulous when he finally tried it.

Perfect food aside, I had a great weekend at Jannah's (it ended up just being me), and even sold some jewelry. Since I got back, I've made some more very nice pieces, but haven't wanted to write at all. The weather's been very hot and sticky, and even though we have a/c, we live on the top (third) floor and it's often not freezing in here (the living room and kitchen are open to each other, so it's an impossible space to cool entirely). Plus, our living room air conditioner seems somewhat ill. It keeps icing up.

Tuesday night we went to see Conan O'Brien at Radio City (the "Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour"). I missed the on-sale and ended up paying stoopid money to one of them-there legal scalpers they have now. (They call them "ticket brokers.") I did get awesome seats, though, and as I had figured, they had a raft of awesome guest stars: Vampire Weekend, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Paul Rudd and Bill Hader (I think I may be forgetting one). And the band was featured prominently, which made Barry happy. But I think the funniest thing was when Andy Richter strolled out singing the Trololo song. (And if you've never seen the Trololo guy before, isn't he trippy?)

My foot got a clean bill of health on Friday, hooray! My feet are happy once again.

Money has suddenly gotten a little tight, so I've had to keep a close rein on my lovely spouse, and I've made quite a few cutbacks myself. I've now cooked dinner six nights running, which is the longest streak in quite a while. After I saw the podiatrist on Friday, I took the Q train one stop to Avenue U, a different part of Avenue U than where I live now -- the part with all the Chinese stores. So I went to my favorite Chinese supermarket and bought a pound of salmon fillet, a pound of red snapper fillet, a pound of jumbo shrimp and a box of tofu -- all for $22. The salmon was poached and cold Friday, the shrimp were sauteed with olive oil, garlic, cumin and hot paprika (thanks, Mark Bittman) last night, and tonight I made falafel from a mix. I made gazpacho with the salmon and tossed salad last night and tonight. We're eating decently well. I feel good in a lot of ways.

Oh, here's a necklace I just made, labradorite on silver, and I hand-made the centerpiece, the clasp, and the hooks on the matching earrings.

Guess what? they've tweaked the interface here and I CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO POST A PHOTO. So, no freakin' photo of my new necklace.

the mysterious foot boo-boo

Early this morning, I remember shift in bed and sliding my foot down a little, and then -- terrible pain and a bleeding foot. Very scary. I have a small gash right on the edge of my heel. We got the bleeding to stop and Barry cleaned it with witch hazel and foot on neosporin and a bandage. But it hurts like hell to put any pressure on the heel, and I have a feeling I'll be more or less off my feet for a few days. My best theory now is that when I stretched my leg down the bed, I inadvertently kicked a cat (all three of them, at times, sleep at our feet), and she swatted out and a claw accidentally caught my foot. None of our cats would scratch us hard enough to cause this injury; our cats, at their angriest (with each other or us), might hiss and air-swat in our direction, and they rarely get angry unless, for instance, we rub a belly that doesn't want to be rubbed.

Anyway, this is freaking me out a bit, and I'm watching very closely to see if the pain lessens or if there's any sign of infection. For me, the absolute scariest thing about diabetes is the possibility of losing my personal mobility, my ability to get around on my own, which is why, ironically, I'm always ultra-careful about my feet. Even when I've been lax with blood testing or diet, I've always been extremely good with my foot care, though not 100%. What I'm supposed to do on a daily basis is wash, dry, examine, and moisturize my feet. I do examine and moisturize daily most of the time, and probably do the extra washing (besides showers) three or four times a week.

I've had some kind of skin problem on the ball of my right foot for over three years. I had thought it might be a recurrence of the psoriasis I'd had some years earlier on the side of my heel, because it looked and acted like psoriasis (hard dry skin that cracked). But when I was diagnosed with Type II, my doctor said that it was an opportunistic fungal infection that develops when blood sugar is high, but I have lowered my sugar, seen two podiatrists and one dermatologist, and three years later, it was still there. Recently, I started treating it more intensively with an over-the-counter diabetic foot cream, and it finally seems to be going away. This was part of the reason that I went all summer without wearing sandals last summer, which was murder for me even though I didn't go out much. I look forward to wearing sandals all year, though I know that these days it requires being extra-attentive about my foot care. So, after walking all over the place in sandals for two days this week with no problem at all, I cut the hell out of my foot in my own bed. Shows you how much I'm in control of my own life.

A new friend of mine, whom I met through my blog and then hers, has been making me think a little more about the lack of spirituality in my life over the past number of years. It's not so much anything my friend has said about me but the example she's shown me. And it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to be involved in any organized religion. Actually, another friend, Jannah, belongs to a Reconstructionist Jewish shul in New Hope, PA, and that's the only organized religion that's appealed to me in years. It's kind of like Reform Reform Judiaism: very gender-neutral, and very inclusive (for instance, they don't really embrace the "chosen people" concept). It's also very, very community-oriented; when there was terrible flooding in the area, the congregation was really, really there for anyone who needed help.

Unfortunately, although you'd think we have every possible kind of Jew in Brooklyn -- no Reconstructionists. There are only two Reconstructionist congregations in New York City, and they're both on the upper west side of Manhattan. I've been in e-mail contact with someone who's trying to start something in Brooklyn, which might initially be a group that floats to different shuls with Recon. rabbis guest-conducting services. But it looks like this activity will probably center around the Park Slope neighborhood, which is not that far away, but is in no way my neighborhood. Unless something is a little closer by, it's not my community; Brooklyn is not solidly car-culture, like some other places. A lot of people have cars, but a lot can and do do without (like us). It does shrink the "neighborhood" a bit, to the size of what's accessible by walking, or a short bus or subway ride. If I have to ride the bus 45 minutes to have coffee with someone from my shul, that's nice but it's also not a nearby network for me. And quite frankly, Park Slope is a little on the yuppified side for my taste. (I did live there for about nine years, in an area that was then a little iffy but is now cleaned up, but the more "desirable" part of the Slope was always too rich for me.)

Barry and I had a great day yesterday -- went to see a matinee of A Behanding in Spokane with Christopher Walken, Sam Rockwell, and Anthony Mackie (I had scored some ultra-cheap and really excellent seats). It was my second time seeing Walken on the stage, which was a real treat. It was a beautiful day, so I decided to wear one of my new Mission Canyon getups, my new sandals and more of my jewelry than I generally do (meaning earrings, a necklace *and* an anklet). After the show, we went down the the Village and had a bite at our favorite Italian cafe, then smoked a j*int and strolled around. Poked our head into a favorite jewelry store, C'est Magnifique on MacDougal Street (also home to one of our favorite store cats, a tiny three-legged tortoiseshell named Fazool who is well over 20 -- the store guy thinks 23-plus).

Somehow, we ended up putting deposits on two pieces of jewelry, for no particular occasion. (Given that I have made some 95% of the jewelry I wear over the past 8 years or so, I'm trying desperately to feel entitled to my new ring.) I spotted a 14K ring with a really lovely sapphire cab set in a high pronged setting, with three one-point diamonds on either side of the shank, very simply. It's a much higher setting than I usually wear, meaning that I like rings which are closer to my finger, but what's so beautiful about this ring is that the high setting allows the light to really get around the stone and show it off, and it's a lovely Ceylon blue color, not one of those navy-blue sapphires that's so dark it's practically opaque. Barry is actually more of a jewelry-wearer than most men (for which I am truly grateful, since he understood when I began spending so much time and money on making jewelry), and he favors silver, turquoise, and Native American. He spotted a bear-claw and turquoise cuff that was too small for him, but then chose a stamped sterling cuff made by a well-known Native American jeweler (last name is Bill, I can't remember the first, but he's the son of a slightly more famous Native American jeweler).

So he's going to have lunch with his friend Felix tomorrow at the Italian cafe (we go there together, and also separately with other friends), and is going to go pay off the balance on our jewelry and I'll get my ring tomorrow (his cuff actually needs to be made slightly smaller). I actually think this is the first gold ring I've gotten since my wedding band, which was from The Clay Pot (which is in Park Slope, and is very famous for artisan-made jewelry and wedding bands in particular. (I took a quick look, and they no longer sell either of the rings we wear -- his is white gold in a Celtic design, and mine is simple connected leaves in 14K). I'm not a metalsmith so I don't really make rings, though I know a lot of people are making wire-wrapped rings now and I'll probably learn that at some point. So I have a beautiful new ring which was not horrendously expensive ($275). We're going to call the new jewelry "a gift from Poppy," meaning that we'll pay for it with some of the money Barry's dad left him. His folks were always generous with us, and did things like bought us a new bed when we moved out of our original apartment, and paid for the catering at our wedding, and it's kind of nice to feel that they're still doing it. I think they're also buying us a new air conditioner for the bedroom this summer.

OK, here's some truly good and amazing news: I've lost 10 pounds, in a little over a month. (The first ten always goes fast, and after that, I can lose around 7-9 pounds a month if I behave myself with food.) This puts me down to 170, after a few years of being around 180-185. I know numbers are just numbers, but it's one of a number of ways that I can measure how well I'm taking care of myself. I'm trying to test my blood three days a week (I was getting sore fingers from testing every day, and the doctor said I didn't have to test that often). This morning's fasting number was 97, and unfortunately, I fell asleep after breakfast (I woke up with my foot injury only 3 hours after I'd gone to bed), and so I slept through the two-hour post-prandial test time. But I tested anyway, four hours after breakfast, and it was 117, which looked good to me for a double-post-prandial. (Had to order breakfast in, since I couldn't stand up to cook, and had a white-Western-with-cheese omelet wrap -- I asked for cheddar, but ended up with American somehow. And then a navel orange.) I don't mind eating a certain amount of fat in the morning because I know it keeps me feeling full. And there's healthy stuff we can order in for dinner around here -- there are a couple of good kosher vegetarian places (we're neither kosher or vegetarian, but their meals are clean and fresh and wholesome).

My sister-in-law Elise forwarded me some info about a crafts sale in Chelsea next weekend that's looking for vendors. I'm checking to see if they provide tables; if they do, I think I'll cough up the $50 fee and see what I can sell. I was looking through some of my work last night, because I'm sending some earrings with Barry for our favorite waitress at the cafe, and also was going to bring some to my GYN today, before I had to cancel the appointment due to the malady known as Boo-Boo Foot.

My last couple of sales were not successful. I did one last year at the Hudson Guild; after taking a quick peek at my jewelry, the supervisor there was glad to take my table fee, and so I tried to sell hand-crafted jewelry in a room full of people selling old crap from their closets. I had some friends come down, and *still* didn't make back my $25 table price (I would have made a profit if I had sold even three pair of my cheapest earrings). Last summer, I did some outdoor selling In Pennsylvania, at a benefit for the Israeli Red Cross (I had met the folks who do the local fundraising for Magan David Odom at one of their fundraisers at my friend Jannah's shul). This was a cool event because it was a Jewish motorcycle rally. Jews on hogs! rabbis in leathers! "Hillel's Angels"! But the only vendors who really got much traffic were the food vendors; none of the rest of us did much of anything. Also, Barry and I had been staying with Jannah, and in the rush to get to the shul on time, had neglected to put on sunscreen, and this was an outdoor event, and there were no canopies on the tables, no shade. As a result, I got roasted to a fare-thee-well. (Recently, I was shopping at our local Rite-Aid drug store, and grabbed up an impulse item at the checkout counter: a key chain with a little bottle of SPF 30 attached to it. Don't leave home without it. It might prove to be the best $2.25 I've spent in quite a while.)

I got my hair cut on Tuesday, my first venture away from long grey old-hippie hair in about a dozen years (though once in all that time, I went to a very pricey salon and got it nicely layered, though mostly I just trimmed my own ends). There are a bunch of hair cutters and salons around here that all charge about the same, $35 for a wash and cut, so I picked the one that looked the most modern. And oy vey, what a nasty stylist I got! If there's such a thing as good "chairside manner," she don't got it. Instead of saying something like, "I know you wanted to have a very short top, but I'd like to try something a little longer on top first and see if you like it. I think it might be more flattering", what she said was (and imagine the brusque and heavy Russian accent), "Your hair too thin on top, I cut short, you see scalp." I let her cut the sides and back short and leave the top longer, but I felt like she hated my guts for wanting something wash-and-wear, low maintenance, and not dyed. She let me know that she believed women should not wear their hair grey until age 60, and gave the distinct impression that there was something wrong with *me* for not wanted a hairstyle that required a blowdryer or straightening iron or curling iron. I mostly got the short, messy style I wanted, but the beyotch insisted on plastering it down with gel before I left, which was way ugly. When I got home, I immediately got into the shower, washed out the gel, then toweled it and put in a dab of a much gentler styling product, and worked it with my fingers. Nicer.

It got me to thinking about the *good* experiences I've had with hairdressers and haircutting, having worn short hair for most of my life. I really love to hair a hairdresser who will cut for my face and my lifestyle (LOW MAINTENANCE HAIR), and really listen to what I want, and really talk to me, and make suggestions based on his or her eye and experience. It made me think that I might want to learn to cut hair, and I actually made inquiries at a few cosmetology schools. I have an appointment to tour one on Monday, which I now think I'll cancel. Unfortunately, the mysterious foot boo-boo made me think hard about any job that would require me to be on my feet a lot; even if I lose more weight, I'm not sure I can stand for hours and hours the way I used to. (I've learned this the hard way at some standing-room concerts over the past bunch of years.) If I were a haircutter now, I could easily lose four or five days of work over something like the foot boo-boo.

I'm thinking more now about making a new effort to show and sell my jewelry. If I do the consignment route, at least it would be full-time and I could keep up with the shops a little better (it is often hard to collect money from stores in a consignment arrangement). Or else I'll find a couple of good an appropriate indoor flea/crafts markets (not having a car, I can't really provide my own table), so I can only work events where there is access via public transportation and I don't need to carry more than my wares, a hand mirror, a calculator, etc. I think I do good work and haven't yet found the right outlet. I'm also feeling very motivated to start working again. I packed away my jewelry stuff a few months back after our landlord bitched about the clutter in our living room; I had been working at a bridge table with materials spread all over the top, and plastic shoeboxes of beads stacked all around and under. I always have insane amounts of materials, I guess the same way any artist would want as many color and medium options as possible. I just hate the idea of wanting to make something and not having what I need. So we packed it up to show a fairly empty table top, and still need some storage solutions so I can work without cluttering things up. For instance, I could use some shelving behind the table to store materials, and maybe some drawers for finished work. And a file cabinet for the cartons of bottlecaps that are also in this area. Basically, I don't want to unpack anything until the clutter is a little more under control and I actually have places to put things away, rather than just leaving them on the tabletop. But I really do miss making jewelry.

A perfectly good question

I posted a question to Facebook yesterday: something along the lines of "Have you ever met a genius? Have you ever met a saint? Have you ever met anyone who had a special aura about them that set them apart in this sort of way?" In the interest of brevity, I did not seed it with some of my own answers, and *no one* answered. One person pressed the button to say he "liked" it.

Which forces me to write about it here, of course.

I might have mentioned it recently, here or elsewhere, but at Penguin I got to shake hands with Paul Ruesesabagina, the Hotel Rwanda guy. He just exuded goodness, everything but the halo.

Two musical geniuses, I think, though of course I've seen more. With artists. you can often tell from their art. But the ones I met who really got to me were Larry Johnson and Luther Allison. I first heard blues at one of my summer camps -- one of the folk music counselors used to play a handful of songs on an acoustic guitar, elaborate ragtime fingerpicking and great lyrics... and I later learned he was basically playing Johnson's album "Fast and Funky" note for note. (No mean feat, that.) I got to spend some time with Larry in the 80s when he lived downtown and there were times when we'd sit and talk and then he'd just play for an hour or two. Best, most faithful of all the Rev. Gary Davis students.

Now Luther, I think, though also a great, great musician, also had a great aura of calm and caring. Almost immediately when I met him, I felt like I'd always known him and would know him for a million years. Unfortunately, we only met two or three times, and spoke once on the phone, before he died prematurely of brain cancer.

Some geniuses are not famous geniuses and some not-famous geniuses are so brilliant that somehow they tend to have problems dealing with others. Those were the ones I usually ended up dating.

There was one -- you can find stuff about him on line, I think. He became somewhat well-known many years after we dated. And what he was famous for ties in directly with his being gay. Yes, my well-known, gay, genius boyfriend. (If it makes me look any less stupid, I kind of figured out that he was gay during the time we knew each other. which was the very early 80s.) So I met this guy, Casper Schmidt, through Susan Hein and Lloyd deMause, who were friends of my mother. Susan and I were also very fond of each other, and she would often invite me to parties along with my mother (and my stepfather, if he was willing to step in enemy territory, among the shrinks).

Anyway, I met Casper at a New Year's eve party at Lloyd and Susan's, and he was kind of perky and prematurely grey and had this really interesting accent (turned out to be South African), and we kind of took a shine to each other. Casper was involved in Lloyd's Psychohistory group (real fast: an interpretation of history through Freudian psychology), and I was really impressed with his intelligence. He was really, really, smart. He was a child *psychiatrist*, which meant he was an MD as well as an analyst, rare in those analytic circles (where the analysts tended to be MSWs or Psych Ph.D.s). And had published poetry in South Africa, and made prints, and I can't even remember what-all else. But I'm dating him, and he seems perfectly happy to be seeing me while he's eying guys. I double-dated with my friend Leslie and she remembers "that guy who was so nasty to you."

So here's the end of the story of the brilliant Dr. Casper Schmidt, which would be funny were it not so sad: somewhere in the eighties when I was maybe a couple of years shed of him (and I didn't learn this until relatively recently), Casper, who has come out with a loud bang, publishes a controversial paper claiming that AIDS does not exist except as a psychosomatic projection of the self-loathing of gay men, something like that.

Then he dies of AIDS. So, maybe not so brilliant.

The famous brilliant person I met and spent some time with is David Lynch. I love a man with a great big brain, and I also love his taste and individuality. He is very special.

You don't see people with great spirits that often, and it surprises me that I didn't encounter more while working at a mind/body/spirit imprint. Piero Ferucci may well be one; we had one phone call and a bunch of e-mails. He wrote a book called The Power of Kindness that is just amazing. And I don't recommend woo-woo books very often.

I had a college professor who was like a shining light, so many ideas and so much information and such a lovely way of sharing a story, a room of 150 students would sigh as one. I'm talking a lot on Facebook with grade and high school friends about the teachers we had there, and I'm only remembering snips and dribbles of what I was taught. But I studied with this professor in the early 90s, when I was finishing up my B.A., and he was magical. That would be James P. Carse, retired but still writing.

Once I let go of my tendency to be hynotized by extremes, I was able to have a happy marriage to a bright, regular guy, who has strengths and weaknesses. But scarily smart guys can still sometimes make me dizzy, so it's best I'm mostly at home.

OK, I'm gonna write the memoir-thing, my recollections of summers and school over a period of about ten years This blog should have some entries of that sort, about camp or school, so I'll just write about other things here for now.

sorry for the wait

It's been a while since I posted, which I guess is not the best way to develop a readership. Still, everything seems so difficult lately. I was depressed all summer, and went right into those sad short days of winter.

I've been having trouble for several days with my bad tooth, one which has had a low-grade abcess under it for many years, and which was root-canaled about eight years ago. The abcess generally drains itself, and only once about fifteen years ago did I have a problem with it, where it stopped draining and swelled and hurt. Got some antibiotics and a mouth rinse and was fine until now. And any time I've had to take antibiotics for something else, it's helped the abcess. Well, I gotta go see an oral surgeon next month to see if he can dissect the gum and clean the thing out, or if it has to be pulled. (Not the worst thing in the world if it has to be pulled: there's a missing molar on the bottom left and I can get a bridge made.)

We are very lucky to have found a cheap dentist nearly. Our downstairs neighbor recommended him. Dr. Kadaa charges only $650 for a root canal, which is about what you pay at NYU Dental Clinic minus all of the waiting and being treated by a student. Dr. Kadaa rocks.

And though I've been using ibuprofin for the pain, which was been considerable, he offered to write me script for Tylenol and codeine; Barry said yes for me. I didn't want to seem to eager, but the truth is that I love that stuff when I need it.

I heard from an old friend on Facebook, who told me the usual about himself: hometown, profession, number of wives and kids, and added, "And you?" Me? I am one of the greatest underachievers on the face of this earth. I have parlayed a 168 IQ and an expensive education into nothing. I can't drive a car; I don't own property. I had a great two-and-a-half year career in public radio and TV (in an upstate city, not here), and a great two-year career in publishing. Other than that, I had a lot of shit jobs, the cheap ones that paid my way through NYU and the pricier ones in private industry where I learned both about insane bosses and about the ways in which my mental illness makes me a terrible employee.

I'm thinking more and more, lately, about actually writing a novel or memoir, and was encouraged to do so by a former history teacher. My best professors at NYU would probably say the same thing.

I wish -- gotta say it -- that a certain person I worked with in my publishing job, who held a high position in the Transcendental Meditation world, had made good on his offer of free TM training for my husband and me, or even just me. (He wasn't someone from my company, but someone who worked with one of my authors.) I have a feeling it would have done me a lot of good in the past months. I hate how much medication I have to take for things like cholesterol and high blood pressure and diabetes; I hate how much I have to take for my mental health, and it doesn't exactly work right. I'm OK with the medication model for mental health at this point, though I was raised a Freudian and think a lot of Jungian thoughts. But they don't even know exactly how and why the meds work so they're just throwing stuff at us and seeing what sticks. I'd like to see how much of this stuff I'd really need if I meditated twice a day.

Did I mention it was 4 degrees out today when I went to see the cheap dentist? 4 degrees and windy. My husband announced that we were taking a car service. He has been so wonderful to me that I truly can't complain about a thing...except that I'm not sure if I can get any better until he's back to work. I may be too tired to explain this now.