The
Guest
Refrigerator Door
From my cousin Donna's fridge
A diferent thing to do with poetry magnets
* Discussion *
Talk about it here.
WHAT I'M READING...
Deja
Dead
by
Kathy Reichs
(not for the squeamish!)
WHAT I'M WATCHING...
The Perfect Storm
(I never want to go out
in a boat again!)
Pictures from the Cincinnati are now up at Steve's Club Photo page.
Pictures from our Family reunion are on my own Club Photo page.
powered by SignMyGuestbook.com
That's it for today!
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MY
LIFE IN 850 WORDS
28 August 2001
There was an article by a columnist for The Davis Enterprise in today's paper.
She's a columnist with whom I usually agree and this particular column talks about what
it's like to write a column on a deadline, once or twice a week. How it should be
structured, and how it should be no more than 850 words.
I was curious and pulled up several recent journal entries and discovered that I'm
probably averaging about 850 words an entry--some a bit longer, some a bit shorter, but
basically they're each about 850 words.
I always wanted to write a newspaper column. So I decided I'm going to work more on making
this column-like. I suspect nobody will notice a difference, but it will be a discipline
for me--can I say what I need to say in 850 words...filling if I don't have that many
words, tightening up if I tend to ramble.
Of course I've decided to start thinking of this as a daily column on a day where there is
pretty much nothing to report. But I like to give myself a challenge!
Well, I guess that's not really true. I do have something to report. After about a
month or more, I finally drove Priscilla to the clinic again this morning. What with our
traveling, and all the volunteers at Breaking Barriers fighting over who gets to drive
Priscilla, it just hasn't worked out for us to get together.
Actually, I was scheduled to drive her both Saturday and Sunday and I just about died when
she called here at 9:15 on Saturday to ask where I was. I had just plain forgotten. It's
about a 40 minute drive to her house and I managed to make it in 30 minutes, driving 80
mph, but the clinic where she gets her injection each day closes at 10, and so as I pulled
up in front of her house, her son let me know that she had just left 2 minutes before with
a neighbor. I don't blame her, but I felt so bad for letting her down.
This is the worst possible time to let her down. There are more woes in Priscilla's life.
Her mother, who had a stroke several months ago and who suffers from diabetes, had to have
a leg amputated and there is talk of amputating an arm. Priscilla is just beside herself
with worry about her mother, so much so that she has put off her own chemotherapy.
Adding to the general worry about her mother, her brother, who has been taking care of the
mother since her stroke, for some reason doesn't want other people in the family around
her, so when he discovered Priscilla had been at the hospital, he moved the mother to an
undisclosed location and, as he has power of attorney, he told the hospital staff not to
give information to the family
There is some concern about possible elder abuse, and so I've been calling around for
information and advice today and have encouraged Priscilla to call Adult Protective
Services to see if they will do an investigation. The mother has lost about 100 lbs in the
past year and Priscilla reports that she looks like an Ethiopian refugee, with a wrist so
thin Priscilla is able to circle it with the fingers on one hand.
Priscilla could hardly walk this morning, she's in such pain, and now she's having heart
palpitations (undoubtedly due to the stress). I felt so sorry for her. The doctors have
told her that if she doesn't start her treatment again, she is going to die, but she feels
she can't take care of herself until she knows her mother is all right.
As if that weren't enough, she says she managed to get enough money to put together a box
of things like soap and peanuts and other little things to send to her son, who is in
prison doing a life sentence. Before she could get it mailed, her sister, who is a drug
addict, opened the box and stole all the things.
Nothing ever goes right for Priscilla. It breaks my heart when she tells me of her worries
about her family and cries because she feels so helpless. It also makes me feel guilty
when I learn how hard she had to save to put together a box for her son, when the cost
would have been nothing to me. It's all relative.
I've promised to give her a ride to the prison on Friday so she can visit with her son. It
will give me the opportunity to go for a walk while she's visiting, if the temperatures
aren't too high.
The rest of the weekend was spent putting the cabinet under the kitchen sink back in order
after Walt installed a new garbage disposal.
Not exactly riveting, this account. Or, as Paul would have said "It's not a good
story, it's just what happened." (But at least it's just about the right length --
845 words!)
See? I can do this!
One Year Ago:
Psychic Woman
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