Merry Christmas

I know I'm not being politically correct but Christmas is a pagan holiday and since I'm a pagan by way of catholicism and communism I guess Merry Christmas is ok. I. don't like X mas. I know there's a christ in christmas but ... enough on that subject.

I've been really busy between the candy and the beading but I got everything done. We were supposed to have 8 people here for dinner tonight, but someone was shot last night. Three of our invited guests knew the victim and they were up all night.

It was ok though. I was so tired. I still haven't caught up on my sleep from the 2 and 3 in the morning nights doing the candy and then the wrapping of the presents. Then yesterday one of Barry's co-worker's had an open house so I had to finish shopping, cleaning and make a candy tray.

So it was just Barry, Katy, Danny, Berto and me and it was fine. (Berto has 2 teeth!)I couldn't wait to go through my beads and bead books and we are eating again-Barry just made us plates-ham sandwiches and potato salad that I made at 6 this morning-I was the first one up-watching FSTV and peeling potatoes. There were a few good shows on-a documentary about Yip Harburg the blacklisted lyricist who wrote Brother Can You Spare a Dime ( apparantly the Rockefeller Dad was going around handing out dimes to people dring the depression )and of course Somewhere Over the Rainbow. There was one about the mess coal companies are making in the south and another one about the anti-war movement in Amherst, MA at the Republican National Convention (we were there.) We should have been at the Democratic Nationl Convention too the pigs-Leiberman and Madelaine Albright yuch!

Anyway so it's just us now-Katy and Berto are out and Danny's watching TV so we are surfing and blogging and listening to the Four Tops and Stevie Wonder-I love Bernadette-no whores and bitches in those lyrics-
Bernadette,
people are searching for the kind of love that we possess,
some go on searching their whole lives through and never find someone like you...

Ribbon in the sky
This is not a coincidence
And far more than a lucky chance But what is that was always meant Is our ribbon in the sky for our love.

So it's just us-Me and Barry, Barry and me, Barry and Diana.
I am so grateful to have him here still. I think he's gonna be OK.
A few more months-April and the oncologist says he's home free.

I have my Barry and my kids are here and I have 2 grandchildren that I never thought I'd have-they're both boys but you can't have everything...

I'm pretty happy.
Merry Chrstmas everyone.
Love,
Diana

today

My kids are back home. Katy with a baby. Danny without his baby. I like having them home. I don't have to worry about them too along with global warming and the economy and the invasions.
I've been very nervous lately though. I'm not particularly happy with my job. I am working too many hours and I don't have time to think abou anything.
I'm tired, can't do any home improvements and that is making me nervous.

Deja Vu

Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury comic is following the formerly fooball helmeted BD through therapy for whatever they call shell shock these days.
He is home minus a leg from Iraq. He's angry and weak at the same time.

In her Vampire Chronicles Ann Rice says that because vampires live forever, they sometimes have to bury themselves in the ground to regenerate and some of them never come back. I am only 51 but I already see the consequences of not teaching the true history of the world. These boys and girls now too who join the army for whatever reason and go to war and do what they do coming back wounded, missing limbs, burned faces, crimes against other human beings indelibly etched in their minds when will they ever learn? There's only so much you can blame on the society at large when all you really need is 1/2 a brain and a library card to figure it out for yourself.

Don't try to tell them before they go. 10-12 years ago when we did the first local antiwar march during the welcome home the troops parade in bethlehem soeone asked one of the skinny young boys driving a tank what he thought of the antiwar marchers. He pointe dto a squirrel that had been crushed beneath the wheels of one of the military vehicles and said that's what I thik of them. Idiot. He doesn't know that he is that squirrel. Cannon fodder.

These wars, the rich taking everything, the destruction of the planet-these things make so little sense to me that I don't know how to talk to people anymore. I feel like an alien in my own country.

I am getting kind of annoyed by ANSWER too. I mean I'm glad they're organizing these demonstrations but we only have one life and not that much time to live it. They really need to hit the culture issue. The left does not have a cultural wing. We need one that will hit peoples hearts, their emotions. Something to make their stomachs hurt and their hearts reel.

It's hard out there for a pimp!!! Give me a break

I cannot believe this song won an Oscar; and yes I saw the movie.
Here's my parody. I'm not a fan of rap music but it's the best I can do.

It’s hard out there for a pimp? (You must be kidding!)

A man who lives off women is a wimp! (I’m not kidding.)

Get a job at McDonalds for your rent. (I’m not kidding.)

Work a double shift for the gas. (I’m not kidding.)

Because at least it’s your back that working. (Not a woman’s)

Because at least it’s you soul that’s breaking (Not a woman’s)

In my life I’ve seen and read a lot of history

And I know that life for working people is never easy

But that doesn’t mean any man has the right

To use women and children so he can take his next bite.

I’ve seen people beaten down by sickness and death

I’ve seen people lose hope when they’ve done their best

I’ve seen people deal with the hand they were dealt

By working hard and not using anyone else

A lot of blood, sweat and tears built this country’s wealth

And the few want to keep it all for themselves

But using other people to get “your fare share” of the crumbs

Is stupid, mean and just plain dumb!

If you were at work and not on the street

If you sweated your own body instead of using women like pieces of meat

Maybe you would get a taste of what life is really like
Instead of moaning, groaning and glorifying lumpen life

Newark NJ’s where I’m from, in my heart I’m still there

But it’s OK because I am aware

That its people like us who can build a better place.

Without being millionaires and spitting in peoples face.

I hate the words chick, whore, babe and bitch
I don’t want to be famous, flashy or rich

Our time will come. Maybe tomorrow’s not the date

But we’ve got a lot of patience so we can watch and wait

We’ll keep on pushing one step at a time

and if you get in our way you are way out of line.

A long Goodbye

I can’t stop thinking about my grandmother. My neighbor’s husband died suddenly. He knew he had cancer, he went back to work to wait for chemotherapy and he collapsed at work and died 4 days later. Joan Did ion’s husband died while she was making dinner.

My husband who is in remission from small cell lung cancer since May 2005 after a year long diagnosis/treatment nightmare has been sick for 3 days. Only one with a fever, but the noise in his lungs is like aluminum on a washboard. His fever reached 103 at one point. He wasn’t delirious so we are letting it ride since it’s a three day weekend. Last time this happened in August/September he was talking about how juicy bats are and totally out of it. I took him to the emergency room but it turned out to be a nightmare after the semi-deliriousness went away. When we were at the oncologist last month I mentioned the sound in his chest. The medical assistant had the stethoscope on Barry’s chest and had to take it out of her ears to hear me say, “That sound.” She said it sounded like a dry cough, but I sounded like a very wet cough to me. She sent him for an X-ray and gave him 2 meds. That was about a month ago and the sound has gotten to this. The infection that he has in his lungs has nothing to do with cancer except for his increased susceptibility so it’s not their function to take care of it.

When he was first feeling wrong I was very angry at both him and the doctors. Him because he was not enough in touch with himself to know that he was being fed a line. Sleep apnea was the best they could come up with. If you understand the current medical system there is no Dr Grueben who knew you since you were born. Who came to your house with 4 sick kids to give them the measles vaccine. I had to send him back again and again to make them find the cancer.

That’s what saved his life.

And this is our life now. I was so, so, angry at first for all the years I told him to stop smoking, but I don’t know if that would have made any difference because of hs family history. I was so, so angry that finally we were going to be able to enjoy the results of all our work and have some fun and as Ferlinghetti wrote, “right in the middle of it comes the smiling mortician.”

I was mad at the therapists available at the local hospital. The one available to me was an acceptor of my situation. I should go out with friends. I should find other interests. What kind of crap is that? I have never accepted anything in my life that I did not like. Why do I have to accept this? Barry does accept. He’s too conventional. He makes fun of me because I don’t walk on the grass or go up the down staircase or in the out door, but this …this conventional crap medical advice he accepts just like he accepted Sam’s pronouncement that “comrades don’t buy houses.”

Why would I call attention to myself by walking on the grass or walking in the out door?

That kind of stuff only makes your life harder than it already is. If you’re a white middle class man or woman may be you can get away with it. It makes you feel like Jesus to have yourself arrested and put in jail and have people have potluck fundraisers to pay your fines while you await the results of your sentence. All I can think of is that movie, “Romero,” and the beautiful young girl raped countless times, her tongue cut out, trucked out to a dumpsite and then shot. Democracy is not a moral principal. It’s a human right. American democracy only exists for the people who accept capitalism and see the brutality of its reach at home and abroad as an exception rather than the rule. They forget that Jesus was not arrested and let out so the community could have a pot luck dinner to raise his bail. He was crucified as a criminal.

So anyway, my grandmother died after having had Alzheimer’s for years. She was not herself for a long time. She didn’t remember her Danny O’Day which is what she used to call me because I loved the Irish songs so much. She wasn’t Irish as far as I know. Her dad was French; her mom was adopted and didn’t know what she was. My great grandfather Pierre Lambe was a housepainter and a painter of landscapes. My grandmother Pearl was the youngest of their children and the sickliest. She was 13 years younger than my grandfather. She taught me how to bake. She taught me to love potato pancakes and German potato salad and sugar cookies and Hungarian squares and bundt cake. She loved me in the way that someone who had been coddled and loved herself can love someone-with no fear and no reservation. I don’t love that way. I can’t love that way. When I was older I used to go and visit her. We would talk. When I was living with Barry she came to our apartment in Avenel and we went to lunch and shopping in Perth Amboy. That was before she walked over to the UPS terminal at Newark Airport and got lost, before she got lost at the Christmas tree farm, before she hit Danny when he was just a baby. Before the illness took over her life.

Barry’s illness has taken over our lives. He will not finish the bathroom. He will not come back to the way he used to be. My grandfather George Sackmann used to take me for walks and apple picking. He got sick and he turned into his illness, he became his illness. Barry has become his illness. He’s not Barry anymore. So I guess I can accept that Barry is gone already in so many ways and that what I have to do is make sure he is loved until the end. The memories I have of my grandparents were those of a child. The memories I have of Barry are as an adult. I chose him. It wasn’t an accident. I love him more than anyone in the world.