The saddens me

I luxuriated in the inanity of the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon. I bathed in the plate spinners, the ventriloquists, the impersonators, the clowns ... the acts I only saw during the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon. And then there was Jerry himself. Mr. Maudlin. Extolling the virtues of the perFORmers, practitioners of the business known as show. Always finding new and creative ways to offend.

This year there was no Jerry! I never even tuned in.

I know I'm in the minority, since MDA made more than $2 million more than it did last year, with Jerry, but I'm not contributing to MDA anymore. For while I enjoyed watching and making fun, I always paid for the privilege. No Jerry, no Gal.

Yes, he's an ass. But he also dedicated a half century to publicizing this cause and raising a ton of money for it. He deserved better than he got this year. He earned the right to sing, "You'll Never Walk Alone" to children who will never walk at all. And if I can't make fun of the tastelessness of that moment, my checkbook stays shut.

He was right

My best friend is the Felix to my Oscar. A place for everything and everything in its place. I often ask him if his compulsion to clean doesn't add to his stress. He insists no, that it makes his life more comfortable and enables him to be more productive.

I think I get it now.

My home is neater than it's been in years. I have taken Hefty bags to the dumpster and 78 books to Goodwill. I've hung things up and put things away. It's by no means a showplace (I can still see 11 pair of shoes from here) but it's more organized. And it gives me an interesting feeling when I enter a room. Surprised, a little pleased.

"Invest in a Dream"

That was one of my concepts, presented a couple weeks ago and chosen by the client before the Labor Day break. And it was the last thought I had before I woke up with a start just now. Why should I be awakened by a dream about a relatively small project that went well? Why can't I turn off my mind and sleep at night but I can doze off on the sofa and waste an entire afternoon? Why is this fucking cough still plaguing me?

This blog is becoming a chronicle of how I'm unraveling before surgery, isn't it? Sorry about that. But I promised myself this would be an accurate reflection of who I am at any given moment, and right now my stapler cyst is casting a huge shadow over my whole life.

It's not all bad. I'm reminding myself to find the things that make me happy in life. Sunday, returning from the store, I walked behind a mom and her two little girls. They were close in age, perhaps twins but not identical, dressed the same. Gray blouses, pink jumpers and gray tights. Black sandals that kept coming undone. Dangling little white circles from their ears. I suspect that either the ear piercing or the longer earrings were relatively new because the one with the straight hair kept trying to keep hers still, pressing them against her head as she walked. It caused her to lag behind. It touched my heart and fascinated me to see two little girls appear so similar and yet in that moment I could see how individual they were.

My nephew and I talked on the phone -- he has a cough, too, and we didn't want to make one another sicker. He's very excited about his creative writing class. His teacher -- a man! still a glamorous exception in the sixth grade world -- handed out magazines and instructed the kids to cut out random pictures. Their weekend assignment was to write a paragraph about each photograph. My nephew was proud that his paragraph about the photo of a farmer and cow wasn't about the farmer and the cow, but about how good milk tastes on a hot summer day. He's confident his teacher will be impressed by the spin he put on the assignment and I'm happy he's excited about this class. After all, I turned creative writing class into a career, maybe he will, too.

OK. I have coughed, taken my temperature (still 97.1, which is normal for this Gal), dosed myself with cough syrup, swigged some oj and FB'd & blogged. This has taken a little over 30 minutes. I think I'm ready to try to sleep again.

Oh, how I wish this was all behind me and I was looking back on it!