mlcsartistictravels

Day 25, August 30, 2010 Today/Fear/Mr. Lambert's Effect

In a story called Mr. Lambert's Effect cheapdate uses the narrator's voice to describes who the Adam Lambert in her hread is when it comes to fear. May even have heard him say these words on American Idol or in an interview. I paid attention because it seemed like Adam wasn't afraid usually. Oh, he seemed confident, humble, laid back, and given his history as a musical theater performer, he is poised, a showman who knows how to establish rapport with an audience with behavior, clothing, make up and hair. His talent, voice, and gift, to me, are remarkable. He's a trained vocalist for theater.

This is what she says. "Adam was rarely afraid of anything. He didn’t care what people thought about him and he had a strong belief that the things that happened in our lives were meant to. Fear was a wasted emotion that only served to hold one back and initiate doubts. It was pointless and futile to be afraid."

Except now he was. He was terrified.
 

Adam in her head is nothing like Adam on Oprah. The story about the Adam in her head is an alternate universe story that takes place when Adam is a substitute teacher in a high school. Once she got to the second part, it began to take on a life of its own.

Today, today though, moving abruptly to a different subject, has been one of those unexpected days. I actually woke up at 10:30, a great time to come to life.

My friend Carol is dying and I was feeling afraid of going to see her, so I wrote another friend and said, "Encourage me to do this."  She did. After I cried a good bit on another friend's shoulder, I called the woman who has been sending me emails keeping us apprised of Carol's condition as each day passes.

I got the number at Carol's home and asked for her partner, Stan. As we talked, I decided that I couldn't go today anymore; I had things to do for me. So, I'm going after my appointment tomorrow. It will be a short visit and I'll be home again by 7pm and so glad that I went.

 

I cried and talked with Ricky, another really close friend, and solidified my decision. I started the chuck roast, and began peeling peaches that won't keep another two days without going bad. As I sliced them, I laid them out, not touching, on a piece of wax paper in a 13 x 9 inch pan, put them in the freezer for about 20 minutes and into plastic bags and popped them in to the freeze, top shelf. All I have to do it take a little chuck roast along on the trip or eat on the way, and it's done. If she lives or doesn't live through the night, it matters not. I'm not letting fear stop me from doing something I'd regret.

 

Have a most peaceful evening.

 

M Lyn

Day 24 August 30, 2010 Not much to say

That's about it. Up exceeding late and hoping to get to bed and to sleep much earlier tonight.

I really enjoyed the Emmy's and this year's host, Jimmy Fallon, I believe. Fun. I was disappointed that Glee 

Didn't garner a single emmy.

M Lyn

Day 23 August 28 Tri-Tip Pot Roast with Costco's tri-tip steaks

The tri tip steaks are tender and the pot roast I made with them turned out great.

1 pkg Lipton onion soup mix

Costco package tri tip steaks 2-3 pounds

2 large new potatoes diced in small cubes (use more if increase stock)

1/2 pkg baby carrots whole (increase number of carrots)

1/2 med onion

2 Tbsp canola or olive oil

2-3 cups of beef stock (low sodium)

dredge salted and peppered tri-tip steaks in whole wheat flour in non-stick pan with lid. I used my deep saute pan. brown meat and remove.

Saute sliced half onion Add potatoes, carrots (Use more than I did) add browned meat, add onion soup and 2-3 cups of beef stock and one package Lipton dry Onion soup mix.

Bring to boil and simmer for 1-1 1/2 hours. No more.

Serve hot. or if live alone like I do.  Cool remaining. Divide into serviings and place in zip-loc or other containers. If you wish, remove meat and chill. Remove fat and you can thicken with some au jus and add back into the liquid and make a gravy. I liked it plain.

Delicious, perfect for soft food diet also. Mash carrots and potatoes.

Day 18 missed this one August 27, 2010 Hairspray

All I can say about this incredible film, musical, story is this. If you haven't seen it rent it. If you have, see it again and feel so good. If you loved the sixties and were involved in Civil Rights, this movie will bring back memories, good ones. Treasure them.

I love these lines Queen Latifah said about her son in the film and the white girl he loved.

"Love is a gift. people don't remember that.

So you two better brace yourselves for a whole lotta ugly

From a never-ending long line of stupid."

Hairspray

I thought of my gay friends all the way through it.

Day 22 August 26, 2010. Lost three or four days

Too tired to write much. 

My friend Carol is enjoying visitors today and is coherent. Doesn't sound like she's eating or drinking much.

She is at home now and that's a blessing for her. I'm too tired to go after the procedure. 

Tore some great pics out for my collages and art journal last night and finally read the pages Fern sent me from hers about how she did them.  I'm and extravert and she's and intravert on the Myers-Briggs so our methodology and the way we work will be very different.  Food is what I need now.

The pre-op area for Rose was very interesting and I wish I'd been able to use a camera and write in my notebook while I waited. Susie, the nurse, kindly drew my curtain so I wasn't shut off with no one to talk with or see. The guy across from me was getting some kind of knee thing done. In an hour and a half I doubt it was knee replacement. The  number of nurses and doctors ranged from one to seven or eight at one point and dropped off for about five minutes to just he and his wife and the whole pre-op was almost silent.

Interesting time.

M

Day 21 August 21, 2010 Today/Julie and Julia

Day 21 August 21, 2010 Not much today.

Tracking down guidelines for mental health treatment.  Baking trip tip steak so it’s tender, or grilling it, whatever.  Sounds like it’s bettter grilled with a marinade for two hours to internal temperature of 125 degrees and no more. Other wise its tender and great for tacos.

I don’t have the roasts.

Cutting up veggies for a few hours, too.  So, will be busy.  Getting ready to eat soft foods for two days before prep for procedure.

I had hoped to have some time, this next week just to eat and make sure everything is here, but, turns out Medicare allows only two months for an appeal for decision made about my health care. So will be busy with these issues.

Well, I’m off today.

Have a great weekend, all.

M Lyn

Draft 2

The first draft was written earlier in the day. It's 12:44 am. Julie and Julia commentaries and special features were very enjoyable. Nora Ephron, one of favorite directors, did the audio commentary and the actors, DP, art director, costume designer did the .... behind the scenes feature.

I love food and recognize the look on Julia Child's face when she's served a Sole Muniere for the first time in Paris. The orgasmic look that borders on passion of a sexual nature without the sex.That breathtaking moment when the flavor of the foods pass over the tongue, sensually, engaging each sense. I no longer have that ability since I lost most of my taste and smell, and miss it terribly. I have only the memories of those nuances and will always have the experiences that only people who love food as Julia, Julie and I do. Ratatouille's Little Chef, my friend Dick's chef nose, and all of us who eat as much by texture as we do by smell and taste. I don't know what I would do if I were to lose all of the two senses.

Somewhere I read recently that people who love food are highly sexed. If Julia Child and her husband Paul are examples they fit that comment. Julie on the other hand tackled such a big project as cooking her way through Julia Child's cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I loved Julia and Julia and find it improves with additional viewings.

I love all things inspirational, which this story was. I loved films where people find themselves within the context of a well written, directed, produced and acted movie. I wept with each passing insightful scene. I know the power of food, well made food and the social effects it has on people. How it deepens relationships, provides a center for breaking bread together, and a way to better understand and know the people who share the experience, table and food with each other. All of these phenomenons are depicted with grace, charm, humor and love. It's a film about passion and how it can change your life.

I suppose I set out writing every day for a year in hopes, unconsciously, that I may find what my dreams are and what I most love and want to do with the last years of my life, or even one year. So, this next year is devoted to art and writing, not therapy, although it too has a huge place for me.

Every day, I peek into my art room at the table I cleared last week, and vow, I will spend 15 min in Feeling Good, 15 minutes in its workbook, 15 minutes in Healing the Shame that Binds, half an hour doing art, and an hour or two for writing.  I'm lucky to get some of it and the art goes bye-bye each day and each day I feel a little more regret. 

Seems like there is always something medical, physical, health, weight loss or preparing food standing in my way. Perhaps, I need a timer and to just quit instead of finding myself here at the computer at 1:08 am.  Time to go for today.  Another good day. After all Julia Child was a master of organization and I am not. No matter how much I loved or organize or de-clutter, it will never come second nature to me, without thought. Right now, there are too many other knee jerk reactions; maybe someday they will fade more and take less energy, and there will be a little more time for other things.  I'll be older and older and getting closer to transitioning out of this life. I hope there's an art table in heaven. And friends. And dinner tables.

Day 20, August 19, 2010 Queer as Folk/friends

Two days ago a friend sent me a picture of Gale Harold, one of my favorite actors. His new hair is cut extremely short, for him. I wondered what role he's doing that brought about an uncharacteristic almost military look. Like any red blooded filmbuff I checked Imdb, a database for all things movie or TV. When I searched for the new series Hellcats, in which Gale has a recurring role as law prof there were no pictures or mention of him.

    Next, came a Google image search for a short haired Gale. There was nothing there but Queer as Folk photos, head shots from other films, magazine articles, and TV series in which he's appeared. That brought smiles to my face.  Somewhere, mention was made of videos on YouTube. A search led to interviews I hadn't seen, a few cuts from 101, the pilot episode of QAF, and a really big smile lit my face, I'm sure, because it's happening now, just remembering.

    The way I felt when Justin tells the first man he has sex with, ‘I love you." Knowing the feeling of rejection when Brian tells him, "I don't believe in love..." Honest, forthright, blunt as Brian always was, like I wished I'd received and I’d been as honest as Justin was.

    I couldn't help smiling as I thought about each episode, as it moved across the screen and one event and experience after another, experiences I'd had as straight woman not to mention life experiences I'd had as a child, teen, and young adult. A friend who had a comic book collection, how I grieved when Classic Comic Books disappeared from the market. How I didn't tell anyone because I thought it was stupid or wrong. I really didn't have anyone to tell like Michael Novotny tells his best friend from childhood, Brian Kinney, and his buddies who know of his passion for comics, especially Captain Astro. 

    I was stunned when Brian tells a grieving Micharl, "Your mother doesn't know shit. Captain Astro was your childhood; you grieve as long as you want." How I'd given anything to have had someone like Brian who would understand my feelings and refute something Michael's mother, Debbie said Michael cared more about a comic book figure than real people. That scene gave me permission to feel what I did about other similar incidents in my own life.

    I'm not a man.  I'm not gay. But here was a show about five gay friends who actually talked to one another, knew each other well enough to call a friend on an issue, and Brian Kinney who constantly pushed them to be the best homosexuals they could be. I translated that to myself as, Be the best person you can possibly be. Don't ever deny who you are, what you think and how you feel. As Brian said to Justin's father, "That's not love. That's hate." Over time I’d come to see I was denying myself those same rights.

    A totally new concept, to me, it opened up more ways of thinking about others, myself, and my childhood than I ever had. For those reasons and many other similar experiences I had watching the show, QAF was never a "gay TV show." It was a story about five complicated, human gay men, still boys, in many apects, who mature over the course of the series and help each other and the chosen family they are all forced to find if they are to have a sense of belonging, acceptance, and knowing they are loved unconditionally. Only Michael’s, of the five, had a family who could give them that,. Dysfunctional and lost, at times, they find their way in life and become who they most are.

    For a while, they became the family I wished I'd had. Gay people I know well saw the series from different perspectives, as did those of us who joined forums like Queer as Folk forum and discussed each episode as it unfolded in the next week. Being there gave me contact with many new people, new viewpoints and exposure varying age groups, many women and a surprising number of newly "out" young boys, teens and young adults as they found their way after seeing Queer as Folk, a television show written and produced by gay people, for gay people, and about gay people. Men, especially. Didn't find the women as well written or people I could identify with as easily as the five main male characters.

    Only one of "new" experiences, new friends, new writing, fan fiction, and novel length stories, and a new therapist, Queer as Folk marked a time of beginnings, the start a new era, a time for the seasons that were to come in the next six years. A time for becoming healthier in ways for which I’d longed since I was since I'd known my family wasn't like other families.

Day 19 August 19 12:04 am What do I Say?

Good day! So much good.

Just watched Bones, the episode called The Soldier on the Grave.  Noticed something about David Boreanaz for the first time while he did that epi. He used a different voice, a different persona, voice, physically, emotionally.  He performed anger, deep sadness, PTSD or memories from his time in Kosovo as a sniper. In order for him to be enraged and be able to cry as he does at the end, he assumed those characteristics. His voice is raspy, softer, sad, full of compassion, lacking the usual sense of humor. He's straight military, or reverts to it regularly as the story progresses.

    He's still the FBI agent and he's a patriotic soldier who loved a basketball player and feels for another combatant back from Iraq. It's a tight quality in his voice, a set to his jaw that never goes away, a grief of his own, not verbalized until the end.

Day 17 August 18, 2010 6:06 am Music, a theme in my life

Music has been a recurring theme in my life.

Day 16 Absolutely Lovely Day

Am getting a little information on something that has troubled me for decades.  Wow!.

 Picked up things needed from stores. Discovered I was a week ahead of myself.  Thought

 it was the 24th and it was the 17th, so have a whole week to get things together for the

 colonoscopy.  Can meet with two people and it will mean that everything about the water

 damage will be complete. Oops.  One more thing, but no one has to come to my home and

 I don't have to stick around here for a day waiting for the phone to ring or people to show

  up on my doorstep. Or get up earlier than I do. Just for this week.

"Six Black to Eight Black Men" read by David Sedaris on the way to the stores was just plain funny and following more sad or not so funny ones, it was delightful. When he writes for a live audience, it seems like he is more funny, somehow than when he writes his books.  That logic won't hold, though, it's in Dress Your Family in Corduroy. Oops.

The TV shows recorded on DVR were all good, one way or another. Time on the computer, however, meant I didn't drink my water on time and ate too muchc.

Two men who write delicious stories posted a chapter tonight. Lovely, just lovely.

Finally, it's 6:06 am.  I can go to sleep in my bed.  Work toward going to sleep earlier tonight.

M

Oh, by the way, Costco has a new, Carne Asada wrapped in Pizza dough. Steak, pico de gallo, cheese.  Too much fat and way too long.  About 9 inches, at least, long and more steak in it than any sandwich of it's kind I've tried.  At least enough for two people, if not three if they eat like I do.  I scooped the insides out, left the bread and cheese and went home after walking the store.

Discovered three bottles of Citrizine I'd already bought lurking in a cabinet where I put it,

 and other supps, so can take back the newest bottle I bought. Each bottle has 365 pills in

 it.

There's one more thing, but, it's gone. Lovely. Absolutely lovely. One of those days that just happens once in a while.

Draft 2

Day , August 21, 2010 Make-up for Day 18

By Lyn Carr

How disappointing to look at my iCal and see just one entry: Amy for appointment. Pink, not blue, like it usually is.

Actually, Wednesday the 16th is the day I’m writing about here. This Tuesday was an absolutely wonderful day. Not a day to die (Little Big Man) or a Dienu day (if I died that day it would have been enough day), but, sheerly delightful from start to finish. One of those kind of days that doesn’t come along very often. If I remember right, I spent the first part of the day away from my home. (Bear with me, I’m tracking it down right now.”

What made it so enjoyable is that I could control what I did, and even more, moved along  that one day without the usual disappointments and/or things that go in ways that are unexpected.  I think it was one of those days one longs for, at least I do, when I did what I really enjoyed doing and was just, if I know what it means, in the moment.

  Whole Foods had the sweet fresh peaches I wanted and some crunchy baked apple slices to munch on when I was hungry. Staples had the tiny bottles of Purell for women friends for Christmas. These tiny colorful bottles with caps that fit the top and slide over the top of the bottle with a tiny little plastic strap that wraps around the strap of a purse. I like them because Purell doesn’t dry my skin like soap, water and paper towels or those noisy dryers. All I have to do is flip the top, squirt a liberal amount on my palm and wash my hands with Purell instead of those perfumed soaps out of dispensers. Soaps with so much fragrance in them that I can hardly bring my hands anywhere near my nose without instant nausea. I love my aqua bottle. 

Lime green, aqua, medium magenta, and coral color tops which wrap around a purse strap, handy for quick use. Easy to refill from a larger bottle of Purell that King Soopers has on sale for 88 cents, right now.

Next, feeling almost lightheaded from hunger, I stopped in at Costco to pick up three items on my list. Left with seven and a receipt for 127 dollars and on the way out tasted one of their newest additions, carne asada bake. I loved it, will never have it again, to too many calories. 

Chose some tri-tip steaks because I loved their flavor. I prefer them pan fried or grilled, I discovered, today.  I don’t have a burner large enough for my deep covered saute pan so the beef was a little on the tough-ish side.

Most enjoyable about the day is that there were no deadlines to meet.  No appointments to keep.  I could walk through the stores however I wish, saunter and check prices, and leave having bought mostly what I came in for. 

Weather outside was gorgeous.  I twas 88 degrees, sunny; there was a slight breeze so even when the temperature rose to 96, the dry air felt cool and it was late enough in the afternoon to find shade to walk in and not worry about ultra violet rays on my skin.

Lovely, lovely day.