Adventures in the Everett shelter, part 2

The week from hell signaled the end of the line for old Ann. It started off on a Monday night. Reiko, the Japanese woman who had arrived the week previously, was more severely depressed than she had let on. Late that Monday, one of the women ran into the counselor's office yelling that Reiko was on the front porch bleeding form both wrists. Bridget, our favorite counselor from England leapt out of her chair and raced for the front door, telling us all to go to our rooms until further notice. None of us listened to her, instead we clustered in the kitchen and leaned against the door, trying to hear what was going on. Somehow the Everett police were on the front porch, holding a bleeding, screaming Reiko. There was a lot of shouting and doors slamming. An ambulance siren. More shouting. The front door slammed again. We all looked at each other in terror. We gossiped in a half-hearted way. We distractedly ate pop-tarts out of the box and paced the kitchen floor. About thirty minutes later, Bridget bustled through the kitchen door and headed for her office. She looked severe and said quietly,
"Not a word. Not a word from any of you. Go to your rooms. Now."
Meekly we obeyed. Those of us who had rooms in the upper levels of the house crept silently upstairs. We were very shocked. I couldn't sleep but then I remembered that Ann was gone tonight, on a court-ordered visit with her daughter. I had the room to myself and I lay down, feeling scared and depressed.
The next day, all the counselors and the Director of the shelter stayed cloistered in the main office for several hours. We stumbled around the house, bags under our eyes. The counselors would tell us nothing. We were too afraid to ask. The day passed without event but then evening descended and Ann returned from her court-appointed visitation with her daughter. She was in a bad mood, even worse than usual. She was not a woman with a sunny disposition and happy outlook. She went up to our room and began to throw my possessions from my dresser and the bed, onto the floor. I was downstairs watching television when one of the women came and told me. I leapt up the stairs and flew into the room. Ann was trying to rip my drawing pad apart and sort of snarled at me as I lunged for my drawing pad. She let go of it and leaned over her many garbage bags. I turned away, swearing a blue streak and when I looked up she had a large kitchen knife in her hand and she threw it at my head. I yelled with fright and surprise, ducked, and the knife sailed over my head and hit the wall near my bed. It fell down between my bed and the wall. I yelled again and she swung one of her garbage bags at me. I leaned out of the way and she grabbed her coat and took off for the stairs. I stood there in complete shock and couldn't move for a moment. Several women, alerted by my yells had nearly collided with Ann on the stairs as she shoved them out of the way and ran down the stairs. Bridget called out to Ann and told her to stop. I heard Ann's feet thundering down the last of the stairs and running for the front door. I heard her yell,
"Don't tell me what to do! You're a white devil bitch!".
She wrenched open the front door, and ran outside slamming the door behind her with all her might.

I stumbled downstairs saying over and over,
"She threw a knife at me! She threw a knife at me! I can't believe it but she threw a knife right at me!".
I was shaking so badly I thought I might fall down. My friend Julie reached out to steady me. Her face was as white as the proverbial sheet. No one said anything and the silence was absolute. Bridget looked ill with shock as she went to the front door and locked it, sliding the deadbolt closed with a snap. She was very distracted and told me to go upstairs and get Ann's possessions and to meet her in the office. All the other women were milling around, talking excitedly and fearfully amongst themselves. Numbly I went back upstairs. I opened the closet door and saw that Ann had five large plastic garbage bags full of stuff. One of the bags was quite heavy. Mindlessly I felt around under my bed and found the knife. Gingerly, I put it on my bed and just looked at it for a few moments. Then, heaving one of the bags onto a chair, I began to go through it. After a moment, I sat down rather heavily, staring into the bag in complete shock. I felt my jaw drop. The bag was crammed with hundreds and hundreds of prescription bottles. None of the bottles appeared to be Ann's. Men's names, other women, bottle after bottle after bottle of other people's medications and the bottles had many pills still in them. I wasn't a pharmacist but A.P. was a nurse and I knew that many of these pills were of the controlled substance variety. With shaking hands, I set aside that bag and picked up another. This one was filled with numerous pages of court/legal proceedings. Nosy little bugger that I was, I started to skim them. Most of them concerned Ann's various scrapes with the law and her attempts to gain custody of her daughter. I recall one document that sticks in my mind to this day. It said something along the lines of:
"When confronted about her actions, the defendant grew extremely hostile to the judge and attempted to throw a paper bag filled with a moldy sandwich at him. She was removed from the court as she began to scream profanities and it is our opinion that the defendant be denied access to her child..." This was an eye-opener. It also seemed to explain a great deal about Ann and her increasingly erratic behavior.


I must've been taking more time than I thought because my friend Julie came into the room and gawked at the stuff in the garbage bags. My face must have been as white as her's had been only moments ago because she just looked from the garbage bags to me and back again. She pulled another chair over to where I was sitting and raised her eyebrows.
"Spike... what... what is all this stuff?" she managed to ask as I silently handed her the sheaf of court papers so she could read for herself. She took the small stack as I distractedly rummaged through another bag of Ann's stuff. Julie gasped and I looked up at her grimly.
"This explains a whole lot about ol' Ann, doesn't it? She's... I wasn't lying to Bridget about her crazy crap! I wasn't exaggerating, Julie! Bridget will have to believe me now!". The stress of the past half hour was making my voice a bit shrill.
Julie just shook her head and put the papers down. She peered into the bag with all the pill bottles. She whispered,
"Spike, this is... what is this? All these pill bottles... I recognize this one... oh my God, this is a narcotic. What's she doing with these...it's.. this name on the bottle! These aren't even her prescriptions! What the hell?"

Julie's voice trailed off and I knew she was very upset because she normally wouldn't even say "hell", believing it to be a bad influence on her two small boys. She was a fundamentalist Christian and it was amusing that we got along so well as I wasn't too thrilled with most Christians at that time in my life. Also, there was the lesbian thing. Julie had lectured me about the evils of homosexuality and it seemed to be an odd pairing. Julie had even said so. The thing was, I was a cool person and Julie told me she couldn't help but like me, in spite of the Gay thing. It was strange but I liked her, too. She was witty and smart like me and we had an unlikely friendship.

I got up from the bed and Julie got up from her chair and we both began to grab the bags and haul them down the steps. DeeDee appeared in the door and I gave her two bags to carry so I could take the knife. DeeDee's eyes got huge as she spied the knife in my hand.
"Shit! Oh, sorry, Julie! Spike, did Ann really throw that at you? My God, she has completely lost it! You should see Bridget's face! I think she's gonna have a heart attack! She's already called Merrill and a bunch of other counselors, too. I think she said they were going to...". DeeDee continued to talk rapidly and I nodded absently, following her and Julie down the stairs. DeeDee was asking questions a mile a minute but I didn't try to answer her. I was lost in thought wondering what was going to happen if and when Ann returned to the house. In my mind's eye I envisioned police helicopters and a S.W.A.T. team taking up positions around the perimeter of the house. Smiling slightly, I followed DeeDee and Julie across the living room floor where Graciella and her children stood around the couch, goggling at us as though we were part of a television show. We went through the kitchen and paused outside the door of the Intake/Counselors office. Bridget was on the telephone, speaking quickly and crisply in her British accent. She saw the knife in my hand and her eyes got big for a second and then she waved me over to sit in a chair in front of her desk. She made shooing motions to Julie and DeeDee. They put the garbage bags on a chair next to me, shot me concerned, frightened looks and backed out of the room. Bridget, listening intently to someone on the other end of the line, walked around her desk and closed the office door with a snap. I sat down in my chair and leaned back against the wall, trying to stop trembling. Bridget finished her phone call, put the phone on the cradle and regarded me with huge eyes. I stared back at her. She blinked rapidly and then became rather business-like.
"Are you hurt, Spike? Did she hurt you?" she asked me.
I shook my head but showed her the kitchen knife again. Bridget seemed to lose her composure for a moment as she stammered,
"She... you're saying Ann threw this knife at you? She actually threw this at you? This is a serious charge, Spike! I know you two don't get along but to say that she threw a knife at you? That's rather a serious accusation!"
I was becoming annoyed. Bridget knew of many other instances of Ann's erratic behavior and yet she was grilling me as if I was the one who had attacked Ann! I stood up and gestured towards the garbage bags.
"Bridget, you know Ann's a wacko! Yes, she threw this knife at me! I'm not making this up! You should take a look at the pills in these bags! None of them have her name on the bottles! She's got all kinds of narcotics and pain killers and who-the-hell-knows-what-else in here and you think I'm making this up?!"
I realized that my voice was getting louder but I was angry and scared and I hated that look on Bridget's face. She opened her mouth and was about to say something when the telephone rang. She motioned for me to wait outside the office until she was finished. I got up from my chair and stomped over to the door. As I closed it behind me I heard her say,
"Yes, the address here is..."


End of Chapter 2

Adventures in the Everett shelter, part 1

Ann was crazy. I mean, she was certifiably crazy. I shared a room with her at the Snohomish County Domestic Violence women's shelter in Everett, Washington. This was way back in the fogs of 1990, after I left my abusive girlfriend, A.P.

The big old house in a residential neighborhood of Everett had room enough for about eight women and a raft of children. We had to share rooms, of course. This wasn't the Holiday Inn. The place was comfy, for a domestic violence shelter but it was way out in the boondocks, far from Seattle. Since I didn't drive back then (or now, for that matter), I had to take two very long bus rides from downtown Seattle to the house in Everett. I was fairly new to Seattle, having moved there from the suburbs of Washington, D.C. just nine months previously. Back then, Everett was very rural and "rednecky" and I hated being there because I was constantly worried about being gay-bashed by the local yokels and this fear was well-founded... but that's a story for another time.

Anyway, I initially shared a room with this really cute straight woman named Kris. She was startled to find out I was a lesbian and was a little leery of sharing a room with me until I made it very plain that I didn't mess around with straight women. Why do some heterosexual women assume that a lesbian wants to "do her"? Arrogance! Kris was cute and sweet, though, and eventually we became friends. We were having a great old time and then she got a place of her own, away from her abusive husband and left the shelter. I was very sad to see her go and wondered who I'd have to share the room with next. I didn't have to wait long. About two days later I met Ann. She was an older black woman with a two year old daughter whom she hadn't seen in about a year. She was eccentric as hell and constantly muttered under her breath. We hit it off badly from the get-go and things between us went from worse to horrible in no time flat. The first thing she did when I met her: She threw my clothes off my bed and claimed it for herself.
"I can't be sleeping without my back to the wall! This here bed is mine now!" she snarled at me as she rummaged through her four large garbage bags. I was too intimidated to protest but inwardly I seethed. I liked sleeping next to the wall. It had a great little space heater that made the attic room nice and cosy in the cold of the Pacific Northwest.
I didn't have many clothes of my own, having fled my abusive situation with hardly any possessions, so I had gone to a thrift store and bought some cheap t-shirts. One particular shirt, my favorite at the time had Mikhail Gorbachev's picture on it and some Russian words about peace and freedom. I liked it because of the bold graphics and text. I didn't care that it had Gorbachev's picture on it. Well, Ann certainly had words to say about it. I was taking my turn cooking dinner for the house and she stomped downstairs and slammed into the kitchen with my t-shirt in her hands. She waved it in front of me and yelled,
"What's this Commie rag doing in your clothes! I ain't sharing no room with no Commie! I'm gonna throw it in the trash!" and she headed across the room to toss it in the garbage can. I grabbed her wrist and shouted at her to give me my shirt back. Well, I got in all kinds of trouble for grabbing her and also, during our scuffle, calling her a bitch. I lost my temper, to be sure. We both got sent to the administrator's office and I got a verbal warning for putting my hands on her and calling her a name. She was written up for taking someone's property and attempting to destroy it. That certainly had the house buzzing with excitement. I made my dinner and everyone ate it except for Ann who was sulking in our room.
Life continued in the house. DeeDee called her husband and went back to him for a few days until she came to her senses and returned, sporting a new black eye. Graciella and her four boys hung around the house, not speaking a jot of English and constantly commandeering the television for "MacGuyver". But she sure could cook! The women who ran the house were all too familiar with Graciella and her sons. She had been in and out of this particular D.V. shelter several times over the years. This time around, Jorgé, her oldest son had his leg in a cast. His father had tried to push Graciella down the stairs and Jorgé had intervened. He went down the stairs instead. The boys didn't do much at the house and they never had to do any of the chores as did the rest of us. They were very macho and would order Graciella around, making her get them snacks and do all their washing. I despised the way Graciella let herself be treated by her sons but was told that that was part of their culture and that Graciella had always kowtowed to the men in her life. I had other problems so I just tried to ignore the creepy feelings I got around her children.
I spent most of my time drawing or writing in my journal. I made the weekly trip to Seattle to see my psychotherapist at her office in Fremont, a trendy neighborhood in Seattle. It was a long-ass bus ride, though. Two buses each direction. My eyes were getting bad and A.P. had destroyed my only pair of glasses. When I traveled at night I could barely see where I was going and so I was always terrified that I would miss my stop in Everett and wind up God-knows-where. So the bus ride back from Seattle was never very soothing. All that calming psychotherapy wasted on the perilous trip home!

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out if I should accept my sisters' goodwill and get a bus ticket back to Maryland. Somehow, this always felt like giving up and I resisted it. Seattle was an adventure! Unfortunately, it was not the greatest time I'd ever had in my life, thus far. I had barely a hundred dollars to my name, I was homeless and staying at a domestic violence shelter, I had no friends here, I had no job skills, etc. etc. Perhaps I should've taken my sisters' advice and moved back to the East Coast. But I decided to tough it out, for a little longer, anyway. I was probably in love with my therapist and didn't want to leave Seattle because of that! I certainly wasn't having a very good life, all told. When I first arrived in Seattle on February 14, 1990 I was with A.P., a crazy woman if ever there was one. I got an upper respiratory infection that winter and I had it for nearly eleven years! The entire time I lived in Seattle, I was sick, sometimes very ill indeed. Was it worth it? Anyway, I digress...
Ann's increasingly weird behavior coincided with my popularity at the shelter. Some of the women were just fascinated with me, goggling at me in wonder ever time we had to have group sessions with the shelter therapists. They could not wrap their minds around the fact that I was a lesbian and that I had been in an abusive relationship with another lesbian. One myth they kept trotting out: Women never could hurt other women, we are all too nurturing! Yeah, right. A.P. was a lot of things. Manipulative, mentally ill, obsessive, paranoid, controlling... she also could be, at times, sweet, caring, concerned but only if she thought she could get something from someone by being these things. She was very narcissistic which I only found out by degrees. At the shelter, I was the resident wit, always ready to zap someone with a well-timed pun. I had everyone in tears of laughter. Humor has always been my strong point. And I used it as a mask, my therapist was always telling me. Well, yeah, of course! Better the laughter than the endless crying jags!
So, anyway, Ann was required to go along to these therapy sessions with the rest of us. No one wanted her there because her behavior was always weird, if not downright hostile. She would mutter things under her breath whenever I spoke and the counselor would have to stop me for a minute and say something to her. Everybody else would roll their eyes and sigh. Ann was oblivious to us. Whenever it was her turn to speak, she would mutter even more furiously and blurt out strange things that made even the counselors scratch their heads. She never said anything that could be recognized as coherent speech. Eventually, she just sat in her chair and the counselor would skip right over her. This went on for a few weeks. Around the last week of November I was getting some good news nearly every day and was fairly skipping around the house. I found out that I had been accepted to live at a "transitional housing" program in Seattle. It was run by The Sisters of Providence, a great bunch of Catholic nuns and I had met the program director, Sr. Mary Wilson the week before. We got along like a house on fire and I was so happy to finally have a place to call home for a year or so. I had also gotten some money from Washington state. "G.A.U."-Government Assistance for the Unemployed. It wasn't a whole hell of a lot of money but it was better than nothing. I would get $350/month and my rent at the transitional house would be a measly $120/month. I had also applied for Social Security Disability Benefits and was going through that long, long process. Everything was looking up and I was going to be moving out a few days before Christmas. The only thing that put a damper on my joy was the continuing and escalating problems with Ann. She nearly set our room on fire one day when she put one of her garbage bags in front of the heater and turned it on to the highest setting. I smelled something funny and went in and found the garbage bag melting onto the floor! She would come in late from wherever the hell she went all day, nearly getting locked out by missing the eleven o'clock p.m. curfew. She would stomp upstairs and turn the overhead light on, waking me up. She didn't care. She would then pull out her garbage bags from the closet and rummage through them, muttering under her breath. I would try to sleep through this but one time I did open an eye briefly and found her going through my dresser drawers! After that, I asked for permission to sleep during the day so I could draw and keep an eye on her during the night. The counselors poo-pooed my concerns about Ann but then things started to go very badly wrong in her life and the whole house got in an uproar.



End of Part 1

Falling into bad habits again...

I've got lots of problems with eating. I've been battling these problems since my early twenties. Now everything is complicated by having Type 2 Diabetes. Last week my wife and I were staring in dismay at our dwindling food supply. By last Monday, we had eaten everything in the house except for one can of sweet peas (which I have to stay away from as they are full of carbohydrate) and one can of V-8 juice which I wouldn't drink even if I was dying of thirst and/or dying of hunger. Bleeeeccchh! So, things were very desperate and I wasn't thinking of overeating, I was just worried about having enough to eat! Monday afternoon, my sister Mary took us to a grocery store and gave us fifty dollars. We felt like we had won a million dollars. We very carefully shopped for some food to last us a few days until we received a gift card from another of my sisters. I'm still rather shocked at how little we were able to buy with fifty dollars. I know food has been getting more expensive but the sticker shock at the register really drove that point home. However, we did get some good stuff and I made a big crock-pot full of soup. It's been one of my less-than-spectacular soups, though. I think I'll stick to making chili and stew.

So, the overeating thing, yeah, almost forgot about that. Our cupboards are well-stocked for the next two weeks and we did buy a few "treats". Jennifer isn't diabetic so she can still eat all the candy corn and Swiss cake rolls her little heart desires. I bought two packages of "Chik-O-Stiks" bite-size candies on Friday and ate both bags yesterday! My blood sugar is higher than usual and I haven't felt very well for a few days. Why do I do such things? I know that what I'm doing is wrong for my health but sometimes I just don't care. It's not fair that I can't have more than a few lousy damn pieces of candy! It's not fair that Jennifer can pig out on Swiss cake rolls and never have a single problem. I know that eating all that sugar is bad for me. I know I'll feel like shit and my blood sugar will spike alarmingly. Intellectually, I know that I'm only hurting myself. And sometimes I just don't give a rip. Sensible people, recognizing that there's a problem with eating sweets and being a diabetic, would STOP EATING SWEETS! They wouldn't want to be tempted so they wouldn't have any of that stuff around them in the first place.

I'm not sensible though. Well, I have moments when I realize that what I'm doing is unhealthy and will have repercussions down the road. See how sensible and thoughtful I appear at this moment? The problem comes when I'm wanting a treat and I want more of that treat than I'm allowed to have. I feel deprived. I get mad. I fight against my urge to rip open the bag of sweets or tear into the cheesecake... I fight and struggle and usually don't even ask for help from God and/or my family and friends. Because the addiction is drowning out all rationality. My willpower always loses and I eat and eat. Everything tastes so good and the reality of my actions doesn't hit me until all the food is gone is consumed and I'm left with a bag full of empty candy wrappers or an empty cheesecake box.

Then my blood sugar goes up. I can almost feel it going up. My hands and feet start to hurt. I feel like I'm going to fall into a drugged sleep. The pain gets worse. I feel sick and my head throbs. Silently I begin to scold myself.
"You idiot! Is THIS what you really wanted? Shit! This is serious! What the hell am I going to do now?". And then I just sit there, hurting inside and out, hating that I had no willpower to stop eating so much.

I think I'm going to have to stop buying this stuff. I tell myself that I can handle it, I'll only eat the three or four pieces of candy that I'm allowed to have. I really do start out thinking that I can handle this, it's no big deal, I can stop at just three, I know better now, etc. Eight pieces of candy later I'm still saying all those things but I've changed the litany a bit to accommodate my growing compulsion. "See? My blood sugar is so much better in control than it was, that eating more than I'm supposed to won't hurt me. I can stop anytime I want but I'm going to treat myself to some extra pieces. Everything is fine".

Nothing is fine. Nothing is fine and I know that it isn't. Even sitting here typing this, I'm getting cravings for stuff that I just don't have any business eating! My fingers are sore from yesterdays' over-indulgence. Diabetes is serious business! And I hate it! All the other damn things in my life that are bogging me down: chronic depression, Irritable Bowel Disease, back problems because of a pinched nerve... it's not fucking fair! I know I'm being a whiny little so-and-so. Well, it's my damn blog. Probably a lot of people think stuff like this, they just won't admit to it.

I was doing so well for awhile there. Right after I was initially diagnosed with diabetes, I was a champion of giving all the "bad" food the heave-ho. I stopped eating chocolate and didn't have any candy or other junk for 115 days! I was so proud of myself. As my body rid itself of all the crap I had been dumping into it, I began to feel better and better. I had energy! I could walk several blocks at a medium clip and not feel as though I was going to pass out! I began to lose weight! I'm still losing weight but I think that some of my fears about having diabetes have been lulled by the more clamoring voice of my food addiction. I fear complications from diabetes but in a insubstantial, nebulous sort of way. Ouch! Insubstantial is it that my fingers are hurting with a sharp, jabbing pain as I type this? I don't think so.

I will need to write more about this, if only to keep myself honest. If I put this out into the "Blogosphere", I can't deny it as easily. Now, though, I have to wrap up this chapter and check my blood sugar. Today I'm eating much better than yesterday as all my "treats" are gone. I've got to take my diabetes meds and think about what I have to do in order to curb this eating addiction. Thanks for reading.

My Foot Hurts!

Ow! My damn foot hurts and I'm rather upset about it. I hurt it doing something innocent. I was trying to add money to my MARTA card as the bus was moving. That's not very easy, believe me. The bus drivers here in Atlanta do not wait for anyone to find a seat or to put money in the fare box before zooming down the street. It's precarious. I'm not elderly but I do have some issues with various parts of my body not wanting to operate properly, especially when I'm standing up inside a moving vehicle.

Anyway, the bus lurched around the corner and I was nearly thrown into the driver's lap. I'm not sure exactly how it happened but as I was trying to keep myself from falling onto the driver my right foot got bent at a weird angle and I actually heard something "snap". It hurt a lot. I made a face and said, "Something weird just happened to my foot!" and then I stumbled over to a seat so that my poor "wife" Jennifer could sit down also.

This is only a tiny bit about my foot. Sure, it hurts like hell. It's now swollen in the small spot where I did whatever I did to it. I'm not writing very well tonight. Sorry. I'm cold and tired and worried about Friday, October 24 2008. I get to plead my case for Social Security on that day. I have been worrying and worrying about this thing since October 3rd. I just pray that The Social Security Administration re-instates my SSDI or I am screwed. I have no money for my diabetes medication, my anti-depressant/sleep med, my stomach meds... and we haven't been able to pay our co-operative's "carrying charges" (just think 'rent', it's easier, even though we own our condo). Bills are piling up and today we used the last of any money we had. We're going to have to go to the food bank a few times before the end of October. I have done a lot of research on my case and am hoping that if I come to the appointment prepared with all the necessary paperwork plus all my research, there's a hope in heaven I'll get my SSDI back for November.

Until I hear from them, I'm not really going to be in the mood to spin any yarns from my vast collection of stories that reside in my muddled brain. And if their decision isn't good... I may not be writing anything in this blog for a long time. God, I hope this Friday I get my SSDI benefits back!

I have a song playing and playing in my head. It's called "Spiderdust" and the woman who sings it used to be in this band called Bel Canto. Her name is Anneli Drecker. She's from Norway and has this mysterious voice. She also sang backup vocals in Jah Wobble's song, "Becoming More Like God". I think she's sexy as hell. Anyway, because of OCD or whatever the hell is my problem, songs sometimes play over and over in my head for DAYS! And not the entire song, which is even more aggravating. Just snippets. So, I have the chorus of "Spiderdust" playing endlessly in my head: "Spider, Spider, something something something... (Norwegian, perhaps? Can't understand what she's saying at any rate!) something... Spiderdust, Spiderdust, Spider--something something something..." Catchy, no?

At least I have a few words. One time, last year when I was having so much trouble with insomnia and hadn't slept for three days, I had a bass line from a U2 song going through my head over and over and over until I wanted to throw myself in front of a speeding car! I love the song but the bass line, by itself was driving me crazy.

Well, on that mentally ill note I shall bid a farewell: "Spiderdust, Spiderdust, something something something something... eagle eye?"

All That Cheese, But No Cheesecake

I've always hated when strangers feed me some cliché and then smile with dubious sincerity. I try not to do that in my dealings with others. If I don't have something comforting to say, I try to keep my big trap shut. Now, I've said many an inappropriate thing, without thinking, but I don't believe I've ever resorted to lame clichés.

The first time I ever had cheesecake was when my dad died in 1975. He was fifty-six and he had a major heart attack. I was eight years old. I remember waking up on that day in September and hearing my sister Nina crying and my sister Kathy trying to comfort her. Confused and half asleep I asked what was happening. I heard strange men in the living room talking to our mom. Kathy said that something was wrong with Dad and that an ambulance had been called. I looked out the window and saw a white station-wagon type car with a large red cross painted on the side. I was scared and wanted to go out into the living room and find our mom. Kathy told me to stay where I was but to get dressed. I think I pulled on some jeans but kept my nightgown on. I remember sitting on my bed and listening to the voices of the paramedics as they moved around the living room. I don't remember things in any particular order that day. I do recall seeing the paramedics wheeling a metal stretcher into the house and trying to summon tears because Nina was crying and I thought that I should be crying as well. At some point, the paramedics went away and we crept out of our bedroom and into the kitchen. Mom told us that Dad had a heart attack and died. She was sitting at the kitchen table and said this without emotion. She was probably in shock. As I said, my memories of that day are disjointed and out of sequence. Dad's brother, Uncle Bud, showed up. Many telephone calls were made. My sister, Mary, came home from a friends' house where she had stayed the night before. I don't know where my sister, Amy was. Relatives and neighbors came in and out. I went across the street to the Curnow's house to play with Linda Curnow who was my age. She and her brother, Johnny had all the coolest Hot Wheels toys and an electric race-car track. Linda looked at me, wide-eyed and asked me about my dad. I calmly told her that he had had a heart attack, whatever that was and that he was dead. She looked at me with big eyes and wanted to keep asking questions but her mother intervened and asked me if I wanted to eat lunch at their house. I said yes, gladly. Linda's dad brought home a big bag of hamburgers from Jeno's, a hamburger joint that had rectangular burgers on rectangular buns which I just thought was the coolest thing ever.

Sometime around early evening I remember going back across the street and going inside my house. The kitchen table was crammed with all kinds of food and  my mother and Uncle Bud were sitting next to the table, smoking cigarettes. My Uncle Bud asked me if I wanted a "Sloppy Joe-Joe" and I told him that I wasn't hungry. I was kind of irritated that he used such a dumb term for a sloppy joe and felt as though I was being talked down to. I don't remember what I did after that. 

The next day was also a blur. We may or may not have gone to church. Mom was a stickler for going to Mass every Sunday but this was a very different event. I do distinctly remember that Nancy and/or Patti Smith, the next door neighbors, coming over with a pan full of blueberry cheesecake. They had made the refrigerated kind with cream cheese and a can of blueberries. When one of them handed the pan to my sister Mary, I remember thinking, "Ewwwww! Cheesecake? Cheddar cheese and blueberries? Gross!".  Thankfully, I never voiced this opinion out loud. When Mary and I went back inside our house, I said something to the affect of "I'm not eating a cake with blueberries and cheese! Ewwww!" I don't think any of us knew what a cheesecake was. That was a bit too exotic for us! Anyway, we unwrapped it and saw that it wasn't Cheddar or Swiss cheese. Cream cheese was a mystery to me. I had a piece and tasted it warily. Wow! It was so good! Who knew? I couldn't get over how great this stuff was. My sisters and I ate all that cheesecake happily. I was surprised that something that sounded so gross could turn out to be so delicious. 

That was my introduction to cheesecake.

Four years later, my mother died. She was also fifty-six. She died of lung cancer that metastasized into brain cancer. Both she and my father smoked cigarettes to beat the band. Dad had also been a pipe smoker. It's amazing the culinary wonders I experienced with the death of both parents. For Dad's death it was no-bake blueberry cheesecake. When my Mom died, Mom's friend who was also the mother of one of my classmates made venison meatballs. We had those with a big vat of spaghetti and sauce. I can't say that the venison was as big a hit as the cheesecake had been but it was the thought that counted.

I remember going back to school after the official, sanctioned mourning time for my mother was over. Some block-headed nun took me aside and after expressing her version of condolences:  "At least your mother was a good Catholic! Think of those Protestants that die and go to Hell!" 

and then said, "It was God's Will and we cannot fathom the mysteries of that Precious Will. We must be strong and trust Him." I didn't know what to say to this so I nodded and smiled slightly. I was highly irritated though. God's Will?! Oh, yeah? What a cop out!

I heard that a lot, during my childhood. It was after my mother's death that Catholicism and I began to part ways. Actually, I was beginning to think that Christianity, as it was being taught and practiced was rather silly and stupid. This whole idea of what constituted God's Will was the first thing that had me wanting to run for the exits. Many, many years later when I was much older and could form an opinion without worrying if I was being a "bad Catholic", I began to jettison many of the beliefs with which I had been indoctrinated. Well-meaning but clueless people who spouted the "God's Will" excuse at every opportunity used to make me seethe with rage. Was it really God's Will that my mother died? God supposedly raised Jesus to life again, but He couldn't be bothered with my mother? Or, more to the point, was it really God's Will that my mother smoked two cartons of cigarettes a day? Actually, for clarity's sake, I'm not sure she did smoke two cartons a day, it just seems that way. She did smoke a hell of a lot, anyway. Where in the world did Free Will fit into this whole deal? It was God's Will that my parents were alcoholics as well as smokers? Wow! What a great God we believe in, huh?!

Telling young children that bad events in life are God's Will is morally reprehensible and irresponsible. But I suppose if that's what you really believe, you're going to say that in your efforts to be "comforting". But, I think that if you really don't know the answers to the big questions, you should keep your trap shut and/or admit you don't know. Being uncertain about the big issues of life and faith is seen as a weakness, somehow? Why? You somehow think that throwing out the tired old line about "God's Will" is somehow better than admitting that you just don't know? That's a lot of crap. 

There are many things I'm not too sure about. I'm not sure whether Jesus really is God or just a human who was/is closer to God than anyone else. I'm not sure what I believe about a place called Hell. I'm pretty certain that it's not a giant lake of fire. I'm also pretty confident that God doesn't SEND people to Hell, they choose it by the way they live in this life. Not being sure whether Jesus is God has not stopped me from having a lifelong love affair with *Herself. S/He seems to still want me for a sunbeam (or a Proctor Silex). When my friends have asked me things about God I tell 'em what I think and believe. I have never trotted out that tired bullshit about God's Will. If I don't know, I don't make up something. Why do we feel as though we have to know everything? I guess faith in God means having faith even though one doesn't understand a lot of it. Does uncertainty just scare most people? Yeah, it does. I want things to be certain, too. I want to know for certain that the Earth isn't going to be blown up by all of us humans lobbing nuclear bombs at each other. I want to be certain that I'll someday have a close relationship to my sister Nina. We currently don't even speak to each other. I want to be certain that God knows what S/He's doing and that "all will be well, all will be well,  and all manner of things will be well", a quote that has been attributed to several mystics but I believe came directly from Julian of Norwich. 

Anyway, I am certain that God wants me to love those well-meaning slingers of "cheese", the crowd that crows about the Will of God. So, I shall take a deep, calming breath and send them blessings. I think I'll go to the store tomorrow and buy some stuff to make a refrigerated cheese cake!

*Herself: Father Andrew M. Greeley, an author and Catholic priest, often refers to God as "Herself". He frequently writes about a distinctly feminine form of God. You may think that's blasphemous, stupid, feminist claptrap, etc. I rather like it and will continue to use the Irish form of the feminine aspect of God. Deal with it.

Smell-o-vision (My Fun Jobs)

My hiking boots were covered with fish entrails, sudsy water, iodine, and fish scales. I smelled of salmon guts and sweat. My fellow co-workers and I reeked and none of us were very popular as we crammed ourselves onto the bus. No one wanted to let us sit next to them and I can't say I blamed them. We were a weary, stinky crew. Too tired to joke or talk, I stared out the bus windows, not really seeing anything as the bus rolled past the factories and foundries of the industrial section of South Seattle. This was my third week working at this particular seafood processing plant. I was making  great wages! Ha! Yeah, right! After the temp. agency took their cut, we got $6.00 per hour. For the back-breaking work that the seafood company was making us do, we should've been getting at least $7.25 an hour. We griped about this every day during our measly 30 minute lunch break. A bunch of us were talking to the rest of the crew about asking the temp. agency for higher wages. We ran into lots of resistance from the Asian women, though. For them, $6.00 an hour was a king's ransom. They had moved to Seattle from China or Taiwan or some other Asian country; it was hard to understand them as their English wasn't very good. They refused to rock the boat, though. Where they had come from, $6.00 was a weeks' wages! They were living high on the hog in Seattle and couldn't understand why the rest of us were so unhappy with this job. Times were tough in Seattle in the early 1990's. The big internet boom was several years away. Working for a temporary staffing company was supposed to be much better than having a job in the fast food industry.

The woman who owned the seafood processing plant with her husband and family worked us very hard. She was always barking orders like a drill sergeant. "Hurry up with those hot cans! They have to be stacked on those trays before they can be cooled! Step it up! C'mon! Time is money!", she would yell at us first thing in the morning as we stumbled in from the street. Sometimes there wouldn't be enough oven-mitt things for everyone and she'd give the unlucky few old t-shirts to wrap around their hands as we grabbed the burning hot metal cans off the stacks coming from the sterilizer or the oven or whatever it was that sanitized them. After an hour of rushing around, crashing into other co-workers and burning our fingers, elbows, and various other upper body parts, Sheila the drill sergeant, would pull some of us off to help with the beheading of the salmon, or canning the chopped seafood. The smell of raw fish was overpowering and the concrete floor of the processing room was a slippery hazard of cold running water, suds, fish guts, and all sorts of other unsavory detritus. It was loud in there and boiling hot. There was a big conveyer belt that brought in the seafood that the men would grab and commence to gutting. They would fling the guts onto the floor and the cold rushing water would carry everything to huge drains in the center of the floor. It was easy to stumble or slip and fall on discarded fish guts. There wasn't anything to grab onto if this happened. I nearly fell every time I shifted position at the canning machine. It was impossible to hear Sheila or her husband, Dave when they were yelling at us to get us to do something. I just kept my head down and slammed the lids on the filled cans as they trundled down the line of the canning machine. I got a rhythm going after a while. Grab a can, slam the lid onto it, press the handle down, eject the can and repeat. Slam, press, eject. Slam, press, eject. I was a robot, mindlessly slamming, pressing, and ejecting.

Somebody figured out a way to discreetly throw a can lid in the canning contraption in such a way as to make the machine jam. When this occurred, the entire line ground to a dead stop so that the machine could be shut off and fixed. You couldn't throw a can lid in the machine too many times without Sheila and Dave becoming suspicious so we sort of timed our rebellions. It was wonderful to get a break from the noise and soul-crushing labor. We'd all stumble outside and have a smoke or a quick cat nap. The Asian ladies always clucked their tongues at us in disapproval. They loved to work! They couldn't get enough of the seafood plant and had to forced out the door at 5 p.m. They probably would have stayed all night if allowed to. God, no. Sheila and Dave were extremely careful never to have anyone work more than forty hours a week. No overtime for us peons!

One day I was rushing around helping this tiny Asian girl who looked like she was twelve years old. We were on can cleaning duty. We were washing out all the recycled cans that were going to be re-sterilized. Sheila and Dave were yelling at us but as usual it was too noisy in the main processing room to hear anything so I was nodding and smiling and ignoring them as usual. The young Asian girl did something with a can I didn't see because I was busy with my own can, and then she dropped it on my hand and it cut me. It must've been very sharp because then my hand started to gush blood, dramatically. I freaked out and Sheila sloshed over to see what had happened. She made me soak my hand in a vat of iodine which stung like hell. I had to stand there for twenty minutes with my hand submerged to the wrist, feeling foolish. The little Asian girl was nearly in tears as she repeated something over and over to me. It was probably an apology. Either that or she was telling me about a great recipe for canned salmon. Anyway, Sheila grudgingly gave me a bandage to put on my wound and sent me home. 

I decided  that weekend that the fish processing plant would get along fine without me and asked for another assignment. I got a new job... at a certain Seattle coffee company's warehouse, a few blocks north of the seafood plant. Oh, what fun I had there, working on the production line, bagging coffee beans for all the major airlines and some hoity-toity  hotels. It was interesting to see what some of the disgruntled employees did to those bags of coffee! I'll "spill the beans" in my next scintillating blog! Until then, my dears, goodnight!

Interesting Neighbors

Sleeping peacefully after a long day of doing practically nothing (as usual), I was shocked out of bed by the blaring of the visual/audio fire alarm that blasted through my apartment and through the entire Lake City House apartment building. 

   "Attention! Attention! An emergency has been reported in the building! All occupants are advised to vacate the building immediately! Do not use the elevators, use the stairs! Repeat! Do not use the elevators, use the stairs! Calmly wait in the lobby of the building for the fire department! Attention! Attention! An emergency has been reported in the building...". This was accompanied by a very loud wailing siren and flashing white lights. The lights were for the hearing impaired, the blast of noise was for the visually impaired. The emergencies were almost always the result of the intelligently-impaired. Almost every week some idiot burned some food on/in their stove and instead of opening the sliding glass doors to their balconies, they would open their front doors that lead to the halls. The halls all had very sensitive smoke detectors installed in the ceilings and when the smoke from the burned food was detected, the fire system for the entire building was activated, the flashing/strobe lights would start, the loud recorded voice would begin intoning its message of impending doom and one would be violently jarred out of bed or the shower or whatever calm activity one had been engaged in before the excitement began. 

We had many immigrants living there and far too numerous mentally ill folks. All the Russian immigrants on my floor were very sweet even though they didn't speak a word of English. They smiled at me as their visiting grandchildren gamboled around them like a litter of enthusiastic puppies. The Russian immigrants cooked some very ... umm... "interesting" food. I'm sure that to them, the food was wonderfully delicious but to some of the rest of us it was a trial to walk down the hall to our apartments sometimes. Smells reminiscent of boiled socks in brine or fried god-knows-what in hot oil would waft from their apartments and hit you full in the face as you got off the elevator. I would cover my face with my t-shirt only if the sweet little Russian folks weren't standing around in the hall. I didn't want to hurt their feelings. They probably thought our food smelled terrible, as well! I usually took a deep breath as the elevator approached my floor and only let it out after I had scurried to my apartment and shut the door behind me.

The Russians never set off the fire alarm. At least not on my floor. No, it was usually this perpetually drunk guy three doors down from my apartment. He was an old hippy and spent his days trying to sell people worthless junk he had been seen pulling out of the dumpsters behind our building and the nearby Value Village. He was nice enough but he got on my nerves because he was always trying to sell me stuff that had been mine, before I put it in the community room for anyone else who might want it! He must've dropped too much acid back in the day because he always saw me taking things out of my apartment and setting them on the tables in the community room. He'd come knocking on my door several hours later with the items in his arms and ask me if I wanted to buy anything. After a while I got tired of telling him that the stuff he was trying to sell was stuff I'd just given away. When he rang my doorbell, I'd peer through the peephole and if I saw that it was him, I'd ignore him until he gave up and shuffled away to someone else's apartment. As far as I know, no one ever bought any of his "treasures", as he called them. When he wasn't digging through dumpsters or trying to sell me my discarded stuff, he was attempting to cook food and then falling asleep. The fire department had to be dispatched to Lake City House seven times in one week! Finally, the Seattle Housing Authority decided that tenants who were responsible for the repeat offenses of being stupid and setting off the system for the entire building would need to pay a hefty fine for each incident. This was the best policy they ever implemented and many of us wished that it had been established sooner. The repeat offenders were outraged, of course. They couldn't afford the $75 fine for each fire department visit! It wasn't fair! Everyone in public housing was there because they couldn't afford to live anywhere else! How awful! How cruel! Someone should march down to City Hall and demand an audience with the mayor! Those of us who didn't repeatedly burn something and open the door to the hallway were not sympathetic to these whiners. The Seattle Fire Department wasn't sympathetic either. Eventually, the whining died down and the worst offenders either learned how to respond to a burned dinner or had to find another place to live. Those fines could really add up.