Sunday Mornings -

Again, lots like Saturday Mornings, just chibi.

Got up, lazed around yesterday morning, went out to Mitsuwa for lunch (always a plus) and then back home for naps. Got a phone call from Cedric to remind us that it was That Time of the Month and tonight was radio club.

In Chino.

*beep*

*sighs*

And my evening of doing housework so I don't have to do it alone tonight is toast. Add the fact I have to spend an hour in the car on the 91 and 57 through Orange County in a car. Each way. I swear, I feel like the crawdad tossed into the air by the herons in a Heather Alexander tune - "I live another day!" Why yes, yes I did call the Highway Patrol on the way there - some poor sod got smacked on the 57 going south and it was hard to say if they were going the wrong way or just over the side.

Jim likes the freeways because the traffic tends to be one direction and he doesn't have to be so concerned about the direction people are coming. Me, I prefer surface streets because at least the traffic isn't hurtling by at 90 mph, and half of it isn't heading for me.

I'd admit here that I never liked driving, but that would be a lie. I do enjoy driving - when I have plenty of space and no crowding. The fact I drove airport shuttle for two companies still makes me shake my head - both of them at LAX. The nutso capital for driving anywhere.

Which I guess speaks for my talent for bulling my way through things.

I was given space, growing up, for being weird. Which is to say, they looked at me like I'd sprouted horns and a tail and backed away. No, you're not staying home from school. No, you are not going to stay up all night because you're panicking. No, you are not going to get a single allowance for being depressed. And in the end, that was the one thing they did which was a kindness. It wasn't being kind; they were clueless - but it was the one thing they did which didn't make things worse.

I wasn't hospitalized. I wasn't drugged against my will. I was taken in for therapy and expected to use it. I was 8, I was 14 (and wasted years with someone who should have been a manager for a Del Taco) and changed hands at 18 when I stopped eating. Not to be thin. I was so anxious anything that went down, came right up again. It got so bad I got queasy at the sight of commercials on television. To this day, if I get whacked, my stomach rebels and it's the last thing to stop giving me trouble when the crisis is over.

I left home at 19 and lived alone until I spent the next summer as a camp counselor. Alone, in a place where I knew no one. I finished my Associates degree and then planned to transfer to my four-year school. Again, where I knew no one. I made friends - acquaintances, got work (worked two jobs all through school - didn't qualify for any financial aid, ever), got through school with a 3.0, made the Dean's List one quarter - most of that time living entirely alone. I moved 14 times - back home to work and save money in the summer, but every time I tried a living situation with other people involved, I got screwed over.

I was painfully thin all the time - struggling to keep my weight above 115. I was broke most of the time and was living on cartons of milk and candy bars. I wouldn't wonder that low blood sugar was partly to blame for the constant on-edge feeling I had.

I met George the last year I was in school, and he introduced me to chicken with herbs, stuffed with lemons - just lemons, quartered. Roasted. Yummy. And he introduced me to Cliff the last quarter of my last year of school.

Neither Cliff or I were doing well, to be frank. He had just broken up with someone he'd lived with for two years and I was the walking wounded poster child. Cliff needed someone to remind him to eat on schedule and take his medication regularly - and I quickly learned that when I was getting hungry, he was getting ready for a reaction. Co-dependant? Nobody quibbled. We were both out of our parent's hair and taking care of ourselves - nobody complained. When we married, we were each other's problem now - and not theirs.

Does this sound bitter? I can't say - both of us grew, matured and became more independent. We had someone who did what nobody else had - we had someone we could depend on to do what needed to be done, without getting weirded out by it. Cliff would take aspirin for headaches caused by insulin reactions he'd had at night, with his cornflakes and end up throwing everything up, plus blood. After I showed up, we'd have dinner, a snack and watching the insulin intake at night, he'd wake up hungry and ready for breakfast - with no aspirin. I gained weight, kept it on and mellowed out. I had one more huge depressive episode and it changed our relationship forever about two years after we married - not to push responsiblities back at him, but in that I wanted to be myself, not my role.

I can't say the marriage was a happy, uneventful one. But when the rubber met the road, neither of us would abandon the other.

I see many of my friends on LJ going through depression, much as I have. I keep popping up, saying some version of "I know that!" Well, yeah.

I can tell you in great detail what happened. When, and my version of why. I can relate all the diagnoses I've been labeled with over the years. Some were useful - some are laughable.

I was depressed in an age where medication wasn't an option except in a hospital setting. Prozac wasn't invented yet. (And to this day, the only Prozac that ever was good to me was a little blue parakeet one of my therapists had - little bugger adored me.) Anyone who works in the field - or has worked in the field more than twenty years - will tell you than any depressive illness will break on its own in five to ten years, without treatment. Depression is fatal if you kill yourself, but it goes away on its own - all the work, drugs and therapies are means to hurry that process along.

It's as old as human history. You can go back and find the hints of what was tried (and everything in the world has been touted as a depression cure, from vibrators to snake skin) to treat everything labeled "bad humours" to "hysteria."

I was depressed at 8. I was treated with talk therapy and jelly donuts. Nobody got down to the bottom of the problem, which plagued me each and every time I had a depressive illness. Today, they'd diagnose me with PTSD - I had a father who died when I was nearly 7 of a drug overdose after abusing the big offenders of the day for a year and a half prior.

I didn't learn of this until I was 31. I didn't know. I was terrified of him. I didn't know why and I was chided each time I expressed this.

He was unpredictable, violent and I hid from him. That's what I remember. I wished him dead - and all of a sudden, he was. Just like that.

I was in my thirties before I knew why I was a piece of shit. Or why I thought I was. After my last depressive phase, after years and years and years and years and years.

I tell you. There is something - something unique to you - and sometimes it is so subtle and well-ingrained it's hard to discern. I was trained out of my self-hatred with cognitive therapy. Learning its source, I doubt I will ever be depressed again - the experts say once you have it, it tends to cycle in ten year intervals. Well, 8, 18, 27 - but now I'm nearly 43. And survived Cliff's decline and death without a relapse.

I tell you.

I'm no expert; my only gift is insight. But I tell you. You're not crazy. You're not sick; sick is how you feel. And you can do something about that. You have a born right to be here - you are not a mistake. Being alive is not a mistake. Being anxious is a sign something hasn't been thought through to its end - you fear the answer, but there is nothing to fear. And that hasn't been learned yet.

I was told I obsess too easily. I'll take it - I'll also take that some people are more biologically inclined to this and medication "fixes" it. I believe children of abusive homes can have lingering biological changes in their brains. I believe retraining your thinking process can fix that, too. I've seen it. I've felt it.

Depression and anxiety are not forever. Being aware of it is forever.

All you have to do is ask and I will go in more detail. I will tell you what I know.

After having the truth withheld from me all those years, you can understand why I have no problem discussing anything. Ask silverkun - or varna. I will discuss anything - anywhere.

It's the least I can do.

Sunday Mornings -

Again, lots like Saturday Mornings, just chibi.

Got up, lazed around yesterday morning, went out to Mitsuwa for lunch (always a plus) and then back home for naps. Got a phone call from Cedric to remind us that it was That Time of the Month and tonight was radio club.

In Chino.

*beep*

*sighs*

And my evening of doing housework so I don't have to do it alone tonight is toast. Add the fact I have to spend an hour in the car on the 91 and 57 through Orange County in a car. Each way. I swear, I feel like the crawdad tossed into the air by the herons in a Heather Alexander tune - "I live another day!" Why yes, yes I did call the Highway Patrol on the way there - some poor sod got smacked on the 57 going south and it was hard to say if they were going the wrong way or just over the side.

Jim likes the freeways because the traffic tends to be one direction and he doesn't have to be so concerned about the direction people are coming. Me, I prefer surface streets because at least the traffic isn't hurtling by at 90 mph, and half of it isn't heading for me.

I'd admit here that I never liked driving, but that would be a lie. I do enjoy driving - when I have plenty of space and no crowding. The fact I drove airport shuttle for two companies still makes me shake my head - both of them at LAX. The nutso capital for driving anywhere.

Which I guess speaks for my talent for bulling my way through things.

I was given space, growing up, for being weird. Which is to say, they looked at me like I'd sprouted horns and a tail and backed away. No, you're not staying home from school. No, you are not going to stay up all night because you're panicking. No, you are not going to get a single allowance for being depressed. And in the end, that was the one thing they did which was a kindness. It wasn't being kind; they were clueless - but it was the one thing they did which didn't make things worse.

I wasn't hospitalized. I wasn't drugged against my will. I was taken in for therapy and expected to use it. I was 8, I was 14 (and wasted years with someone who should have been a manager for a Del Taco) and changed hands at 18 when I stopped eating. Not to be thin. I was so anxious anything that went down, came right up again. It got so bad I got queasy at the sight of commercials on television. To this day, if I get whacked, my stomach rebels and it's the last thing to stop giving me trouble when the crisis is over.

I left home at 19 and lived alone until I spent the next summer as a camp counselor. Alone, in a place where I knew no one. I finished my Associates degree and then planned to transfer to my four-year school. Again, where I knew no one. I made friends - acquaintances, got work (worked two jobs all through school - didn't qualify for any financial aid, ever), got through school with a 3.0, made the Dean's List one quarter - most of that time living entirely alone. I moved 14 times - back home to work and save money in the summer, but every time I tried a living situation with other people involved, I got screwed over.

I was painfully thin all the time - struggling to keep my weight above 115. I was broke most of the time and was living on cartons of milk and candy bars. I wouldn't wonder that low blood sugar was partly to blame for the constant on-edge feeling I had.

I met George the last year I was in school, and he introduced me to chicken with herbs, stuffed with lemons - just lemons, quartered. Roasted. Yummy. And he introduced me to Cliff the last quarter of my last year of school.

Neither Cliff or I were doing well, to be frank. He had just broken up with someone he'd lived with for two years and I was the walking wounded poster child. Cliff needed someone to remind him to eat on schedule and take his medication regularly - and I quickly learned that when I was getting hungry, he was getting ready for a reaction. Co-dependant? Nobody quibbled. We were both out of our parent's hair and taking care of ourselves - nobody complained. When we married, we were each other's problem now - and not theirs.

Does this sound bitter? I can't say - both of us grew, matured and became more independent. We had someone who did what nobody else had - we had someone we could depend on to do what needed to be done, without getting weirded out by it. Cliff would take aspirin for headaches caused by insulin reactions he'd had at night, with his cornflakes and end up throwing everything up, plus blood. After I showed up, we'd have dinner, a snack and watching the insulin intake at night, he'd wake up hungry and ready for breakfast - with no aspirin. I gained weight, kept it on and mellowed out. I had one more huge depressive episode and it changed our relationship forever about two years after we married - not to push responsiblities back at him, but in that I wanted to be myself, not my role.

I can't say the marriage was a happy, uneventful one. But when the rubber met the road, neither of us would abandon the other.

I see many of my friends on LJ going through depression, much as I have. I keep popping up, saying some version of "I know that!" Well, yeah.

I can tell you in great detail what happened. When, and my version of why. I can relate all the diagnoses I've been labeled with over the years. Some were useful - some are laughable.

I was depressed in an age where medication wasn't an option except in a hospital setting. Prozac wasn't invented yet. (And to this day, the only Prozac that ever was good to me was a little blue parakeet one of my therapists had - little bugger adored me.) Anyone who works in the field - or has worked in the field more than twenty years - will tell you than any depressive illness will break on its own in five to ten years, without treatment. Depression is fatal if you kill yourself, but it goes away on its own - all the work, drugs and therapies are means to hurry that process along.

It's as old as human history. You can go back and find the hints of what was tried (and everything in the world has been touted as a depression cure, from vibrators to snake skin) to treat everything labeled "bad humours" to "hysteria."

I was depressed at 8. I was treated with talk therapy and jelly donuts. Nobody got down to the bottom of the problem, which plagued me each and every time I had a depressive illness. Today, they'd diagnose me with PTSD - I had a father who died when I was nearly 7 of a drug overdose after abusing the big offenders of the day for a year and a half prior.

I didn't learn of this until I was 31. I didn't know. I was terrified of him. I didn't know why and I was chided each time I expressed this.

He was unpredictable, violent and I hid from him. That's what I remember. I wished him dead - and all of a sudden, he was. Just like that.

I was in my thirties before I knew why I was a piece of shit. Or why I thought I was. After my last depressive phase, after years and years and years and years and years.

I tell you. There is something - something unique to you - and sometimes it is so subtle and well-ingrained it's hard to discern. I was trained out of my self-hatred with cognitive therapy. Learning its source, I doubt I will ever be depressed again - the experts say once you have it, it tends to cycle in ten year intervals. Well, 8, 18, 27 - but now I'm nearly 43. And survived Cliff's decline and death without a relapse.

I tell you.

I'm no expert; my only gift is insight. But I tell you. You're not crazy. You're not sick; sick is how you feel. And you can do something about that. You have a born right to be here - you are not a mistake. Being alive is not a mistake. Being anxious is a sign something hasn't been thought through to its end - you fear the answer, but there is nothing to fear. And that hasn't been learned yet.

I was told I obsess too easily. I'll take it - I'll also take that some people are more biologically inclined to this and medication "fixes" it. I believe children of abusive homes can have lingering biological changes in their brains. I believe retraining your thinking process can fix that, too. I've seen it. I've felt it.

Depression and anxiety are not forever. Being aware of it is forever.

All you have to do is ask and I will go in more detail. I will tell you what I know.

After having the truth withheld from me all those years, you can understand why I have no problem discussing anything. Ask silverkun - or varna. I will discuss anything - anywhere.

It's the least I can do.

Sunday Mornings -

Again, lots like Saturday Mornings, just chibi.

Got up, lazed around yesterday morning, went out to Mitsuwa for lunch (always a plus) and then back home for naps. Got a phone call from Cedric to remind us that it was That Time of the Month and tonight was radio club.

In Chino.

*beep*

*sighs*

And my evening of doing housework so I don't have to do it alone tonight is toast. Add the fact I have to spend an hour in the car on the 91 and 57 through Orange County in a car. Each way. I swear, I feel like the crawdad tossed into the air by the herons in a Heather Alexander tune - "I live another day!" Why yes, yes I did call the Highway Patrol on the way there - some poor sod got smacked on the 57 going south and it was hard to say if they were going the wrong way or just over the side.

Jim likes the freeways because the traffic tends to be one direction and he doesn't have to be so concerned about the direction people are coming. Me, I prefer surface streets because at least the traffic isn't hurtling by at 90 mph, and half of it isn't heading for me.

I'd admit here that I never liked driving, but that would be a lie. I do enjoy driving - when I have plenty of space and no crowding. The fact I drove airport shuttle for two companies still makes me shake my head - both of them at LAX. The nutso capital for driving anywhere.

Which I guess speaks for my talent for bulling my way through things.

I was given space, growing up, for being weird. Which is to say, they looked at me like I'd sprouted horns and a tail and backed away. No, you're not staying home from school. No, you are not going to stay up all night because you're panicking. No, you are not going to get a single allowance for being depressed. And in the end, that was the one thing they did which was a kindness. It wasn't being kind; they were clueless - but it was the one thing they did which didn't make things worse.

I wasn't hospitalized. I wasn't drugged against my will. I was taken in for therapy and expected to use it. I was 8, I was 14 (and wasted years with someone who should have been a manager for a Del Taco) and changed hands at 18 when I stopped eating. Not to be thin. I was so anxious anything that went down, came right up again. It got so bad I got queasy at the sight of commercials on television. To this day, if I get whacked, my stomach rebels and it's the last thing to stop giving me trouble when the crisis is over.

I left home at 19 and lived alone until I spent the next summer as a camp counselor. Alone, in a place where I knew no one. I finished my Associates degree and then planned to transfer to my four-year school. Again, where I knew no one. I made friends - acquaintances, got work (worked two jobs all through school - didn't qualify for any financial aid, ever), got through school with a 3.0, made the Dean's List one quarter - most of that time living entirely alone. I moved 14 times - back home to work and save money in the summer, but every time I tried a living situation with other people involved, I got screwed over.

I was painfully thin all the time - struggling to keep my weight above 115. I was broke most of the time and was living on cartons of milk and candy bars. I wouldn't wonder that low blood sugar was partly to blame for the constant on-edge feeling I had.

I met George the last year I was in school, and he introduced me to chicken with herbs, stuffed with lemons - just lemons, quartered. Roasted. Yummy. And he introduced me to Cliff the last quarter of my last year of school.

Neither Cliff or I were doing well, to be frank. He had just broken up with someone he'd lived with for two years and I was the walking wounded poster child. Cliff needed someone to remind him to eat on schedule and take his medication regularly - and I quickly learned that when I was getting hungry, he was getting ready for a reaction. Co-dependant? Nobody quibbled. We were both out of our parent's hair and taking care of ourselves - nobody complained. When we married, we were each other's problem now - and not theirs.

Does this sound bitter? I can't say - both of us grew, matured and became more independent. We had someone who did what nobody else had - we had someone we could depend on to do what needed to be done, without getting weirded out by it. Cliff would take aspirin for headaches caused by insulin reactions he'd had at night, with his cornflakes and end up throwing everything up, plus blood. After I showed up, we'd have dinner, a snack and watching the insulin intake at night, he'd wake up hungry and ready for breakfast - with no aspirin. I gained weight, kept it on and mellowed out. I had one more huge depressive episode and it changed our relationship forever about two years after we married - not to push responsiblities back at him, but in that I wanted to be myself, not my role.

I can't say the marriage was a happy, uneventful one. But when the rubber met the road, neither of us would abandon the other.

I see many of my friends on LJ going through depression, much as I have. I keep popping up, saying some version of "I know that!" Well, yeah.

I can tell you in great detail what happened. When, and my version of why. I can relate all the diagnoses I've been labeled with over the years. Some were useful - some are laughable.

I was depressed in an age where medication wasn't an option except in a hospital setting. Prozac wasn't invented yet. (And to this day, the only Prozac that ever was good to me was a little blue parakeet one of my therapists had - little bugger adored me.) Anyone who works in the field - or has worked in the field more than twenty years - will tell you than any depressive illness will break on its own in five to ten years, without treatment. Depression is fatal if you kill yourself, but it goes away on its own - all the work, drugs and therapies are means to hurry that process along.

It's as old as human history. You can go back and find the hints of what was tried (and everything in the world has been touted as a depression cure, from vibrators to snake skin) to treat everything labeled "bad humours" to "hysteria."

I was depressed at 8. I was treated with talk therapy and jelly donuts. Nobody got down to the bottom of the problem, which plagued me each and every time I had a depressive illness. Today, they'd diagnose me with PTSD - I had a father who died when I was nearly 7 of a drug overdose after abusing the big offenders of the day for a year and a half prior.

I didn't learn of this until I was 31. I didn't know. I was terrified of him. I didn't know why and I was chided each time I expressed this.

He was unpredictable, violent and I hid from him. That's what I remember. I wished him dead - and all of a sudden, he was. Just like that.

I was in my thirties before I knew why I was a piece of shit. Or why I thought I was. After my last depressive phase, after years and years and years and years and years.

I tell you. There is something - something unique to you - and sometimes it is so subtle and well-ingrained it's hard to discern. I was trained out of my self-hatred with cognitive therapy. Learning its source, I doubt I will ever be depressed again - the experts say once you have it, it tends to cycle in ten year intervals. Well, 8, 18, 27 - but now I'm nearly 43. And survived Cliff's decline and death without a relapse.

I tell you.

I'm no expert; my only gift is insight. But I tell you. You're not crazy. You're not sick; sick is how you feel. And you can do something about that. You have a born right to be here - you are not a mistake. Being alive is not a mistake. Being anxious is a sign something hasn't been thought through to its end - you fear the answer, but there is nothing to fear. And that hasn't been learned yet.

I was told I obsess too easily. I'll take it - I'll also take that some people are more biologically inclined to this and medication "fixes" it. I believe children of abusive homes can have lingering biological changes in their brains. I believe retraining your thinking process can fix that, too. I've seen it. I've felt it.

Depression and anxiety are not forever. Being aware of it is forever.

All you have to do is ask and I will go in more detail. I will tell you what I know.

After having the truth withheld from me all those years, you can understand why I have no problem discussing anything. Ask silverkun - or varna. I will discuss anything - anywhere.

It's the least I can do.

For bigbigtruck:

Before:



After:

---

Complete details Here.

Thanks to insomnia. I love it when a plan comes together!

For bigbigtruck:

Before:



After:

---

Complete details Here.

Thanks to insomnia. I love it when a plan comes together!

For bigbigtruck:

Before:



After:

---

Complete details Here.

Thanks to insomnia. I love it when a plan comes together!

After that last post - I'm a guy. I don't think so -

My journal says I'm male.

What does your LJ writing style say about your gender?

After that last post - I'm a guy. I don't think so -

My journal says I'm male.

What does your LJ writing style say about your gender?

After that last post - I'm a guy. I don't think so -

My journal says I'm male.

What does your LJ writing style say about your gender?

And then the phone rings -

Again. This time, it's Scott and he's at the airport. Scott, who works for the CIA in imaging. Is at the airport in Los Angeles.

It's another death. This time, it's Uncle Abe - and he was older than dust itself. But Scott's father - his mother died of MS complications a decade ago - needs him, tho' he won't say it.

And so - he is here.

Come on over, you remember the way, right? He was here the weekend following Fanime, he and his wife and two daughters. He's here solo, this time.

I can't feel anything but happy. I know his family well - heck, it's possible I was named for his mother - the families knew each other well. VERY well. When I introduced Scott to my mother when we were both in high school, she proceeded to tell him about what kind of baby he had been. Those things just don't come out in general conversation, Mom will say. The things people just don't say, I think. And shake my head.

His mother's name was Elaine, and both his parents knew both of mine, before either of us was born.

And Scott was the first boy to propose marriage to me. I was 16 and he scared the shit out of me. I am so glad he married someone who loved him as much as he loved her - he was an only child with a sick mother and was one of the most misunderstood folks I ever knew.

Moody as muddy water. Could easily have been called an alcoholic.

Just like me, he's had to do it all the hard way, all uphill. And he made it. His wife was down with Crohn's (finally lost the entire large intestine and has been functioning with an ileostomy for twenty years) and he ended up raising his two girls single-handed while working a full-time job changing oil at Sears - and going to school. He got his degree in photography at long last, and now he works for the CIA in imaging.

I remember when talking about it was a joke.

I remember when we disagreed on religion and he wouldn't have anything to do with me. I remember living with Cliff and the two of them hated each other, and Scott thought Cliff had done me a serious insult by doing so.

It is truly a blessing to forgive. And understand. Scott's wife would really like me to get on the bandwagon about how two "faggots" cost her a job because she was a Christian. I can't. She was adversarial and aggressive and not at all sorry to insult the people she worked for. Whatever the reason, that's not a good working relationship - and she needed to find another place to work and they had good reason on a personality fit basis to let her go. I said as much, being sympathetic to her plight - let's face it, that couldn't have been much fun.

We don't talk religion much. I wouldn't join the Calvary Chapel moofest and he couldn't understand why. My religious experience was when I was much younger - I don't need to convert to your way of thinking to be in the right with God. I guess being ahead of them was enough to piss them off.

So many thoughts. So much time. He and Jim just get along like they've known each other forever. What a switch.

And so Jim has gone to work, Scott is on his way to Hemet - and I am playing caretaker of the estate. Watering both yards, finishing the weekly housekeeping tasks - the weather is beautiful and cooperative. I won't have to wait until dark to do everything.

Another death in the family. It's that stage in life, I guess.

We took him to Curry House where he polished off a whole plate of the spicy, and I gave him a taste of the Suntory before he left for Hemet.

And the story continues to be written as we live it.

And then the phone rings -

Again. This time, it's Scott and he's at the airport. Scott, who works for the CIA in imaging. Is at the airport in Los Angeles.

It's another death. This time, it's Uncle Abe - and he was older than dust itself. But Scott's father - his mother died of MS complications a decade ago - needs him, tho' he won't say it.

And so - he is here.

Come on over, you remember the way, right? He was here the weekend following Fanime, he and his wife and two daughters. He's here solo, this time.

I can't feel anything but happy. I know his family well - heck, it's possible I was named for his mother - the families knew each other well. VERY well. When I introduced Scott to my mother when we were both in high school, she proceeded to tell him about what kind of baby he had been. Those things just don't come out in general conversation, Mom will say. The things people just don't say, I think. And shake my head.

His mother's name was Elaine, and both his parents knew both of mine, before either of us was born.

And Scott was the first boy to propose marriage to me. I was 16 and he scared the shit out of me. I am so glad he married someone who loved him as much as he loved her - he was an only child with a sick mother and was one of the most misunderstood folks I ever knew.

Moody as muddy water. Could easily have been called an alcoholic.

Just like me, he's had to do it all the hard way, all uphill. And he made it. His wife was down with Crohn's (finally lost the entire large intestine and has been functioning with an ileostomy for twenty years) and he ended up raising his two girls single-handed while working a full-time job changing oil at Sears - and going to school. He got his degree in photography at long last, and now he works for the CIA in imaging.

I remember when talking about it was a joke.

I remember when we disagreed on religion and he wouldn't have anything to do with me. I remember living with Cliff and the two of them hated each other, and Scott thought Cliff had done me a serious insult by doing so.

It is truly a blessing to forgive. And understand. Scott's wife would really like me to get on the bandwagon about how two "faggots" cost her a job because she was a Christian. I can't. She was adversarial and aggressive and not at all sorry to insult the people she worked for. Whatever the reason, that's not a good working relationship - and she needed to find another place to work and they had good reason on a personality fit basis to let her go. I said as much, being sympathetic to her plight - let's face it, that couldn't have been much fun.

We don't talk religion much. I wouldn't join the Calvary Chapel moofest and he couldn't understand why. My religious experience was when I was much younger - I don't need to convert to your way of thinking to be in the right with God. I guess being ahead of them was enough to piss them off.

So many thoughts. So much time. He and Jim just get along like they've known each other forever. What a switch.

And so Jim has gone to work, Scott is on his way to Hemet - and I am playing caretaker of the estate. Watering both yards, finishing the weekly housekeeping tasks - the weather is beautiful and cooperative. I won't have to wait until dark to do everything.

Another death in the family. It's that stage in life, I guess.

We took him to Curry House where he polished off a whole plate of the spicy, and I gave him a taste of the Suntory before he left for Hemet.

And the story continues to be written as we live it.

And then the phone rings -

Again. This time, it's Scott and he's at the airport. Scott, who works for the CIA in imaging. Is at the airport in Los Angeles.

It's another death. This time, it's Uncle Abe - and he was older than dust itself. But Scott's father - his mother died of MS complications a decade ago - needs him, tho' he won't say it.

And so - he is here.

Come on over, you remember the way, right? He was here the weekend following Fanime, he and his wife and two daughters. He's here solo, this time.

I can't feel anything but happy. I know his family well - heck, it's possible I was named for his mother - the families knew each other well. VERY well. When I introduced Scott to my mother when we were both in high school, she proceeded to tell him about what kind of baby he had been. Those things just don't come out in general conversation, Mom will say. The things people just don't say, I think. And shake my head.

His mother's name was Elaine, and both his parents knew both of mine, before either of us was born.

And Scott was the first boy to propose marriage to me. I was 16 and he scared the shit out of me. I am so glad he married someone who loved him as much as he loved her - he was an only child with a sick mother and was one of the most misunderstood folks I ever knew.

Moody as muddy water. Could easily have been called an alcoholic.

Just like me, he's had to do it all the hard way, all uphill. And he made it. His wife was down with Crohn's (finally lost the entire large intestine and has been functioning with an ileostomy for twenty years) and he ended up raising his two girls single-handed while working a full-time job changing oil at Sears - and going to school. He got his degree in photography at long last, and now he works for the CIA in imaging.

I remember when talking about it was a joke.

I remember when we disagreed on religion and he wouldn't have anything to do with me. I remember living with Cliff and the two of them hated each other, and Scott thought Cliff had done me a serious insult by doing so.

It is truly a blessing to forgive. And understand. Scott's wife would really like me to get on the bandwagon about how two "faggots" cost her a job because she was a Christian. I can't. She was adversarial and aggressive and not at all sorry to insult the people she worked for. Whatever the reason, that's not a good working relationship - and she needed to find another place to work and they had good reason on a personality fit basis to let her go. I said as much, being sympathetic to her plight - let's face it, that couldn't have been much fun.

We don't talk religion much. I wouldn't join the Calvary Chapel moofest and he couldn't understand why. My religious experience was when I was much younger - I don't need to convert to your way of thinking to be in the right with God. I guess being ahead of them was enough to piss them off.

So many thoughts. So much time. He and Jim just get along like they've known each other forever. What a switch.

And so Jim has gone to work, Scott is on his way to Hemet - and I am playing caretaker of the estate. Watering both yards, finishing the weekly housekeeping tasks - the weather is beautiful and cooperative. I won't have to wait until dark to do everything.

Another death in the family. It's that stage in life, I guess.

We took him to Curry House where he polished off a whole plate of the spicy, and I gave him a taste of the Suntory before he left for Hemet.

And the story continues to be written as we live it.