A Whole Lot of Shakin' Going On

Reader, we are fine so far after two of the biggest earthquakes we've felt in the twenty years I've lived here. Last night I went outside a bit after dinner and stood in the front yard looking up at the sky. It was a beautiful night, a typical glorious southern California clearness to the air and the temperature, and I noted how quiet it was -- no sirens, no voices, no birds. No birds.

I do not like earthquakes. I do not find them exciting, particularly when they happen really close to one another. I do find them similar, in some ways, to living with a person who has uncontrolled seizures. That means that I never get used to them. They come out of nowhere, cause the same burst of cortisol (or is it adrenaline), and one makes you feel nauseous and like you can't trust the ground under your feet while the other makes you feel nauseous and like you can't trust -- well -- anything. So, I generally practice being mindful, or at least try to be mindful even as I dissociate a bit during Sophie's seizures and marvel/wonder/holy shit! during earthquakes. But we're fine, honestly -- taking stock of emergency supplies, wondering if the 30 gallon container of water in the backyard shed is still good and whether I should go ahead and pack a "to go" bag specifically for Sophie and her meds.

Those meds control Sophie's seizures about as well as preparing for an earthquake controls my nerves. We could stretch out that metaphor to say that all is vanity and there's nothing new under the sun.

I read something the other day about the importance of a belief system -- higher power, etc. etc.  to allay anxiety. I remember feeling somewhat faithful in my Catholic childhood and early adulthood, was obsessed, briefly, with the lives of the saints and even went to a Billy Graham revival with my Bible beater college friends, but when I look back and read back (lots of religious agonizing in the journals), from this vantage point of general/relative unbelief in any higher power other than the universe itself and, of course,  love, love love, I'm struck by how I labored to believe and how the whole religious thing banks on the myth that it takes labor to believe, to love, to have faith, etc.

which

leads

me

to those I've engaged with over the last few days who argue semantics (the term concentration camp) and wave their silly flags and insist on the rule of law and God and Jesus and prayers and then exclaim should we just let them WALK over the border, then? and bite into their charbroiled burgers and slide some mustard over their hotdogs and watch some hulked up millionaire swing a bat at a ball as American as pie.

Speaking of pie, The Gig Economy Worker made seven peach pies this week and is taking orders for the rest of the summer.

(I picked those donut peaches from a friend's tree, a tree that had a ridiculous number of peaches and bowed branches, so heavy was its fruit. Alas, the taste was not as sweet and generous as the number, so I used very ripe, very delicious peaches from Trader Joe's)

Recalcitrance

Blackboard by Winslow Homer, 1877

I've completed my first week of teaching three English classes of eleventh and twelfth grade young women. Here are some observations and notes:

• a bit of Emily Dickinson -- hope and the thing with feathers -- inspired a group of let's say recalcitrant girls to write their own three stanza poems using extended metaphor and dang if they didn't do a beautiful job

• have argued over whether or not to read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (only the 12th grade girls are reading it, now). It's old. It's hard. Cry me a river.

•  read aloud Christina Rossetti's The Goblin's Market and are now doing a fine analysis of it (thank you, LP, for turning me on to this strange and wonderful poem). I felt a tad uncomfortable reading the provocative parts of the poem, given the sensual imagery of juices running out of mouths, etc., but this poem! the language!

• have begun reading Hawthorne's Rappaccini's Daughter. Remember that? I loved Hawthorne stories as a young reader and hope to pass along the weirdness (not of me but of him) to these students. 

• have worn black tights three times this week which is more times than in the previous twenty years. This is not hyperbole

• who knew I had so little modest clothing? I've had to purchase some things that make me feel strangely invisible which provokes thought -- interesting thoughts --we think the ways in which we adorn ourselves speak to identity but maybe they don't because I am still me however much I look like an Italian widow 

• (the question of being told what to wear and what constitutes modesty and the concomitant questions of male authority and hierarchy and what it means to be reverent, etc.) 

I am both exhausted and exhilarated, my voice hoarse at the end of the teaching period, warranting a Rules and Expectations hand-out that includes some communication pointers and a stern demand for respect for me and for one another which translates into Refrain from interrupting and talking over one another and me. 

Listen


Listen


Listen

Working Stiff

Street graffiti, Los Angeles, 2019

I finally got a job that I'm excited about, and it begins next week. I've been applying for various positions from a site called Indeed for the last year, and I was beginning to believe that it might be a front for some kind of data gathering Russian bot/Facebook thingamajig because literally nothing came out of it. I'm perfectly aware that I have my limitations at the age of 55, and I didn't bother applying to the kind of grunt work that offered a salary that would quickly be swallowed up by Saint Mirtha, but damn, it was demoralizing and all death of a salesman around here until Christmas week when I was hired to teach English literature and writing part time in a small private school for girls. The school is very small and very religious, with strict dress codes for both the students and the teachers. That's all I'll say about that. I am very excited and a tiny bit nervous but extremely grateful to have found something that perfectly fits the erratic schedule and overwhelming duties of my other job as CEO of Sophie, Inc. I will be jumping right in on Monday with the girls already reading Frankenstein. 

I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other. 

from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein








The universe is abundant.

Making Pies

My podcast partner, Jason Lehmbeck suggested that I put up an end of year post, a Who Lives Like This?! list of our favorite caregiver podcasts, and I said, Jason! I'm busy! Taking care of Sophie and making cakes! Jason reminded me of the fabulous song by Patti Griffin called Making Pies which is now running through my head -- as I make cakes for the masses and care for Sophie. I think you, dear Reader, should listen while you read:



The past six months have been incredible for the Who Lives Like This?! podcast -- we've talked to so many lovely and amazing mothers and fathers of children and young adults with disabilities. We've talked to those in support positions, and we have several terrific guests coming up in the new year -- siblings, mothers, fathers, bakers, pie makers, business tycoons -- well -- not business tycoons. We'd love to have a caregiver on the show who's also a business tycoon, though, so if you know someone, let us know. Pie-baking, as you might guess, doesn't pay all the bills!

So here goes on a list of caregiver podcasts that we love.

Ours truly
www.wholiveslikethispodcast.com

Lomah
www.lomah.org

Mama, Build Your Empire
https://mamabuildyourempire.podbean.com

Mama Bear
www.mapunknown.org

Learning Not To Swear
www.tedlyde.libsyn.com

The Accessible Stall Podcast
www.theaccessiblestall.com

Reader, please leave a comment here or elsewhere if you know of a podcast that might appeal to this mighty group of caregivers. Share the post, too, if you are so inclined.

Now, I've got to go make pies.

You could cry or die 
Or just make pies all day 
I'm making pies 
Making pies
Making pies 
Making pies

Post Thanksgiving Catch-Up

I had all my chicks home for a long weekend, and that is a good thing.

I had such a good time talking with Henry about all kinds of stuff. It's hard to believe how grown he is, how self-possessed and on his way.

I baked a lot of apple pies.

If you peer into the distance, you can see some biscuits. I baked a lot of biscuits.

I baked a lot of pumpkin cheesecakes, too. They tend to split on the top, even though I refrained from over-mixing the batter (causes air bubbles that rise to surface and split the cake open while baking) and turned the oven off and left them in the oven for two hours after baking. Outside of using a water bath, do any of ya'll have any tips to avoid the splitting? Toasted meringue helped disguise the cracks and went beautifully with the pumpkin, if I do say so myself.

On Thanksgiving day, Carl, Henry, Oliver and I went down to Skid Row to help a wonderful organization feed the needy and the homeless for a few hours. It's shocking to see and disgraceful to accept the level of impoverishment in this beautiful city that I call home. I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that I can help more in whatever capacity.

And then there's Sophie. She is struggling. I don't know the answer and grow tired of living the questions. I had a mini-breakdown on Saturday night. Ok. It was a breakdown. I haven't cried that hard in a long time, the kind of cry where you might as well vomit up your heart, if not your guts. I thought a lot about what it means to be faithful. Faith full. Not to any god but to love and life. There's grace to that, an inversion. Prayer as incarnation, a calling forth, for something dark to be revealed.

A Series of Irritating Events from the First World

So far, during the last three days, while they are hardly calamitous events (but, rather, what we might call "first-world" problems), these things have happened:

1. TSA stole a $100 bill out of my bag. Police recovered and impounded it, but it's already cost me $16 to get a notarized letter authorizing the Phoenix Airport Police to ship it back to me. The numerous phone calls that I made to get this information are too boring to enumerate, but when I finally got everything in order, the letter notarized and attempted to fax, it was not working. I spent some time this morning with the Phoenix Recovered Property department, again too boring to enumerate, and was finally told that the fax did work and that I should try again.  
2. A package from Anthropologie was delivered to my address yesterday, empty. It was one of those plastic envelopes, and after picking it up and thinking, Man this is a weightless dress!, I realized that the envelope had been cleanly slit and the contents removed. I ran down the sidewalk and caught the postwoman who exclaimed that she, too, had wondered why the package was so weightless. She called her supervisor who told me to call the Postmaster General. I did so, and they told me that it looked like the package began its journey to my house at 10 oz but that the last weight recorded was 0 oz, so obviously something happened along the way and an investigation would commence. I called Anthropologie and explained the situation, and they agreed to send me another dress. I am now waiting for the Post Office to continue their investigation. Stay tuned.
3. My OB/GYN ordered a colonoscopy kit for me that is evidently a whole lot easier than going through the regular thing. If I pass this home kit thingy, I don't have to get a colonoscopy for another five years. I called the company this morning to ask why it hadn't come yet as I was informed two weeks ago that it had been delivered. The person at the company checked and told me that it had been delivered but to the wrong address. Instead of South My Street Name, it was delivered to North My Street Name. So someone on North My Street Name has a colonoscopy home kit with instructions on how to provide a stool sample. The company is sending me another one. 
4. I sent my manuscript to the editor last week, and it has not arrived. I put the tracking number for the parcel in the USPS website, and it said that it had not been received. Apparently, my manuscript is floating around somewhere in between Los Angeles and San Francisco. I will cancel the check that accompanied the manuscript and resend tomorrow, if it doesn't show up at the editor's place by then.

So, what next? Throw it my way. Give it to me.

Oh, here's something amusing. I received an inquiry today from an online job site that I've been using in an attempt to get freelance writing gigs. The notice stated that I was an excellent match for the following position:

We produce gay romance novels based in contemporary settings and in supernatural/paranormal worlds that encompass shifters, such as werewolves, vampires, dragons, and many more mythical creatures. Our characters fight through relationship woes and celebrate swells of passion in situations ranging from love triangles to forbidden desire, tribal rivalries, mpreg, and ancient or secret worlds clashing with the new. Adventure, mystery, crime, comedy, and drama are no strangers to our romance stories.

We’re looking for a talented M/M (gay) romance writer, that from the first sentence to the last, can keep readers engaged and craving more!


MUST: 

☻ Be a native English-speaking writer with excellent comprehension and execution of English grammar.

☻ Be dedicated to writing character-driven books focusing on the development of romantic attraction between the main characters. You have the creative freedom to flesh out the details within our guidelines.

☻ Be an enthusiastic and thorough researcher.

☻ Lastly, be original. We run books through PlagScan and Copyscape. 

 What do you think? Should I apply? I am nothing if not an enthusiastic and thorough researcher.

Poetry with Senior Citizens

How's that for soothing? The steam from my coffee cup literally swirling up and out and can't you smell those peaches and the pears are buttery and the sun, always the sun. The calm certainly belies the simmering rage I feel, especially tonight after seeing the POSPOTUS give one of his inimitable rally speeches, this time in the great state of Mississippi, where he mocked Dr. Ford. The backdrop was a bunch of hooting and hollering white men and women who, I suppose, are his base and never was there a better word to describe them.

We need to turn this thing around.

Here's something else to soothe our souls. I'm teaching a couple of creative writing classes to senior citizens. They are lovely men and mostly women in a couple of assisted living homes here in Los Angeles, and I got the job by applying through one of those newfangled job search engines. I won't be putting either of my two boys through college or putting in an adapted bathroom for Sophie with my pay, but I already really like doing it. The group that I've seen twice is particularly fragile -- both physically and cognitively -- but they can be inspired to tell the most vivid stories. I am always the first, one woman began, her words unfurling to describe her early childhood days in the cotton fields of Texas, plowing and picking. Another woman opens one eye and glares at me. I've got NOTHING to tell you, she says and closes her eye. She's so hostile that I sort of love her. She also told me at the end of the class (she contributed nothing) that's a pretty dress, and I said thank you. I recited Joy Harjo and played a Native American water song. A man in a Dodgers cap whose chin lay on his chest while he gently snored through the entire first class was lively in the second one. When prompted to write about someone in your life who is important he chose his son and said He always does the right thing and organized this whole thing when there was all this darkness and trouble. 

The stories. Everyone has a story.

Except for that POS that is running ruining our country. I know I'm not supposed to wish harm on any living being but damn. And the people who support him? The word scratch. The word eye. The word out.


#smashthepatriarchy



Here's a poem.

All the Difficult Hours and Minutes

All the difficult hours and minutes 

are like salted plums in a jar. 

Wrinkled, turn steeply into themselves, 

they mutter something the color of  sharkfins to the glass. 

Just so, calamity turns toward calmness. 

First the jar holds the umeboshi, then the rice does.

Jane Hirshfield

Seeking Position

Experienced freelance writer looking for work. Experience includes several ghost-written books of non-fiction, medical writing, healthcare writing, personal interest articles for The Los Angeles Times, marijuana.com, Spirituality and Health Magazine and contributions to gratefulness.org and OnBeing. Personal work published in numerous literary anthologies and journals. Micro-memoir published by Shebooks in 2015 and available for purchase online at Amazon for a ridiculously low price. Skills include editing, proof-reading and an uncanny ability to mine story from seemingly ordinary things and lives, and don't we need stories in order to live?

Website with CV and all relevant publications is here.


Salary negotiable.

Gig Economy Update

Everyone Needs Cake™ for March Selections
photo by Carl Jackson

The gig economy is going ok. I'm making cakes every month -- this month's selection is a Funfetti Vanilla Cake with Vanilla Buttercream and White Chocolate Ganache Glaze and a Pistachio Rosewater Cake from Ottolenghi's new pastry/sweets book. I have orders for both of them throughout the month but can always take more! Everyone Needs Cake.™ I'm also working on a very cool project with a very cool tech entrepreneur that you will hear about soon, so stay tuned. I have some nice writing assignments via The Los Angeles Times but am looking for anything I can get to supplement them. Do you need a ghost writer? Do you need a writer for anything? Check out my website and pass it along to pertinent people.

As you know, Sophie is an Uber driver and working toward getting off the backs of our hard-working Republican lawmakers who are working on balancing this great Disunited States of Amerikkka's budget on her back. Between the Uber driving and her part time job as a sex worker,* she'll be in the black soon, I'm certain, and recognized for her contributions to the great Capitalist Economy.

Today, I paid my health insurance bill before my mortgage because -- you know -- I'd sooner be homeless than without health insurance.  That's not a complaint.

In other news, I thought I'd misplaced the four worn sheets of passwords that I keep, so I spent about two hours on the computer changing the passwords to all the important accounts, and then I found the password sheet in the dash of my car where I'd stashed it on my way to Palm Springs this weekend. Does anyone out there in the interwebs know of a better way to organize, store and keep safe from Russian bots the bazillions of passwords to one's accounts?

I hope ya'll are having a nice day. I miss all of you.











*See my post a few days back for an explanation to this, admittedly, inappropriate and very dark-humored comment.

Crowd-Sourcing with My Peeps with an Update

I'm working on an exciting new project that has the potential to be a game changer and really help caregivers of children with special healthcare needs and disabilities. I need your help.

I'm compiling a list of people in the Caregiver/Special Needs Healthcare/Disability Community and would love your suggestions.

Here are the categories:

1. Real Parents (like yourselves or people you know)
2. Creative people who are also parents or involved with caregiving
3. Famous people: celebrities, writers, etc.
4. CEOs 
5. Organization Leaders that are also parents
6. Big Foundation execs
7. State and Federal Special Education Leaders

You don't have to know these people personally, although if you do, that's great (and I'll contact you separately to get more info) -- just know of them. I need names. If you could sit and really think about this, jot down names and either contact information or titles, I would really appreciate your list. If you're one of these people, please let me know!

I appreciate it and look forward to your lists!

**Please email me your lists if you don't want them "public." If you do have ideas on people, that's fine to leave their names right in the comments. My email is elsophie@gmail.com

Christmas-Time Caregiving Extravaganza

Hint: This isn't Sophie. Read on.

Suspense, right?

Sophie has been home from the hospital for a few days, but we're still recovering from the latest We Don't Know What's Wrong With Your Daughter But She Doesn't Have Pneumonia And This Will Cost Approximately $125,347, Part of Which Will Pay For The Care She Received At This Particular Medical Establishment But Mostly Will Go Toward Padding the Pockets of The Plutocracy or Terrible America.*

Here's Sophie in her nest:

Here's me, eating a spoonful of lemon curd, left-over from an order for a Gingerbread Forest Cake with Lemon Curd.**

Oliver had surgery this morning on his finger. He had a benign bone cyst that needed to be removed, so we rose earlier than the sun this morning and made our way to Santa Monica where the nice receptionist charged us $934.56 for THE DEPOSIT, and the nice Anesthesiologist and the nice Orthopedist and the nicest Nurses prepped Oliver for the surgery. He woke in the Recovery Area quite nicely, and in the car on the way home waxed rhapsodic about how his former fears for anything medical had disappeared and I often overthink stuff and am so glad to release these fears and thoughts. Honestly, Readers, it was like the usual fabulous Big O, without the EDGE. I'm contemplating a nice propofol drip for all of us.

Here he is in his nest:

His cheeks are not that full. He's just eating a bagel and watching something dreadful on Netflix.

In lieu of propofol, I'm continuing to eat spoonfuls of lemon curd.

*Terrible America is an apt expression coined by the great Rebecca L, poet extraordinaire. I think we can safely say it is a Terrible America that is run by a POSPOTUS and a repugnant political party that is actively supporting its sexual predator in chief as well as a pedophile Christian judge running for Senator of Alabama.

**Everyone Needs Cake™ is my new gig. I make cakes for people. I use the money I make to support the Medical Industrial Complex. Please help me to use it for shoes or make-up or something. I'm getting old and would love this really large cozy blanket I saw on the Johnny Was website.

Alchemy and Anxiety

I don't know about you, but I feel so weird these days, so out of sorts, so self-conscious and aware and filled with adrenaline and disgust and anger and -- should I go on? I miss blogging, too. I miss marking my days here and the casual way I'd throw out some thoughts and observations, a bit of poetry, a rant or two. I'm not tired of blogging or of blogs, either. I am preoccupied. I am so afraid of normalizing that POS running the country, the sycophants that support him, those that still maintain we must come together. Come together, my ass. I'm as overwhelmed as every other woman by the toppling of the patriarchy, too. When is the head dude, though, the Sexual Predator in Chief, going to get his due?






I'm baking a lot of cakes. I baked this one:

Coconut Cake with Coconut Buttercream

and I made five of these:

Apple Toffee Crunch Cake with Cinnamon Buttercream

I made about a million of these:

yeast dough rolled in cinnamon sugar

It came out like this:

Cinnamon Pull-Apart Bread with Caramel Glaze

Baking, unfortunately, does not alleviate the stress of the Repubs screwing us, over and over, now with their new tax plan which is really another version of their healthcare plan, which basically reinforces the direction the Disunited States of America is going which is a plutocracy. I want to say f*^k all of them, but I tire of cursing.







I also made the most killer cinnamon buttercream.

Butter, sugar, egg whites, cinnamon

Honestly, that stuff is nearly sexual. A silky sweet meringue that takes butter and transforms into something that melts on the tip of your tongue, just a trace.

Alchemy.



I had my first paid gig at The Los Angeles Times on Saturday. Here's the link.


#gigeconomybaby

Everyone Needs Cake™

I'm baking cakes again.

I made cupcakes today, too.

I've hatched a plan to make two specialty cakes a month and deliver them for free within a certain mile radius.

This month I've got a

Halloween Red Velvet Cake with Marshmallow Buttercream and Meringue Ghosts.

Here's a photo that I lifted from the internets. I have no idea where it came from, but I made one like it a year or so ago, and it's awfully cute.

Here's the flyer that I made to advertise the cake baking extravaganza.

I don't ship but I'll put you up for a night if you decide you need to have one.

Everyone Needs Cake™