Small smiles and a pet peeve

 

Sophie waiting for happy hour

Several things yesterday and today gave me small smiles—I like moments like that. Last night it was far too chilly for happy hour on the patio so Jordan, Mary, and I gathered in the cottage. Sophie sat on the deck and stared at the cottage for the longest time. We couldn’t figure out what she was doing. Much later it dawned on me—she was trying to figure out why we were inside and not outside with her. She loves happy hour when there’s a guest!

Some time ago, Dean Jones, who bills himself as the Well Seasoned Librarian, interviewed me for his podcast. The interview covered the whole of my career and gave me a chance to talk about some of my books and how they came about. Today, I finally got the link and listened. At first I thought my voice quavered, like an old woman (hold those comments, please!) but as the interview progressed I must have felt more at ease because my voice got stronger. A couple of times my mind went blank, and I couldn’t remember  simple fact or a title, but I think that was just on-the-spot nerves and not failing memory.

The ”well seasoned” in Jones’ moniker comes from the fact that he has a special interest in food and food writing. He apparently was attracted to my work by the Blue Plate Café Mysteries, but then we had a good talk about Gourmet on a Hot Plate, the book and the blog, and I told him my story about seeking a publisher for a biography of Helen Corbitt, the Neiman Marcus food lady who really was a fascinating woman aside from her career at Neiman’s.

You apparently have to sign up for Spotify to listen, and that took me a chunk of time this morning. But now I have a Spotify account I will likely never use again. If you’re interested, here’s the Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2nGkxjM8qFsbuE44nUDGJ6?si=-2pgSQ8TSnu24ja1yuZryg. The interview runs twenty-nine minutes.

A pet peeve I’ve only recently developed: It is slowly dawning on me that when Jordan and I go to my medical appointments, everyone from the doctor to the receptionist talk to her about me, as if I weren’t there or were incapable of understanding. I didn’t really catch on to it yesterday in the endodontist’s office, probably because I was so relieved to have the procedure done with. But last night, talking about it, I realized he told her that I should eat soft foods, nothing crunchy. He explained the medications (none of which I took) to her and showed her the x-ray of my tooth. When I complained about it—to Jordan, after the fact, she said, “The screen was behind you. You were still in the dental chair.” Maybe so, but if I’d be alone, he’d have gotten me out of that chair, into my transport chair, and wheeled me to the screen.

By contrast, Monday I went to the eye doctor alone—Jordan dropped me off and picked me up, but I was in the doctor’s exam room alone. The young doctor carefully explained to me three options for surgery that might improve my vision. Without them I see well enough to drive, if I were still licensed, and certainly well enough for my daily routine. I told the doctor that I didn’t want any surgeries that were not absolutely necessary, and he accepted that saying, “You seem to have a good grasp of the condition of your eyesight and the options open to you. We’ll do nothing and check again in a year.” I loved the words, “You seem to have a good grasp.” Of course I did. My mind still works, just not my legs so well.

I think it is a common misconception among those in the health care professions. If they see an elderly patient with a walker or a wheelchair, they automatically, though probably unconsciously, assume some degree of dementia. Every time I mention it, Jordan says I’m imagining it, but it’s happened too often.

I resolve as of today to take more direct charge of office visit with physicians. After all, I’m the one that schedules appointments and deals with the physician’s office (I am blessed to have several docs that I can communicate with by email), and pays the bills. I don’t mind if they call me “Judy” instead of “Mrs Alter”—in fact, I prefer it. But I want to be talked to, not about.

As you can tell from this post, dementia is an ongoing concern with me. My mom developed it, from a series of TIAs or small strokes, when she was about the age I am now. I think my ongoing involvement with the writing world and my active voice about politics and current affairs helps keep that wolf from the door. But I loved it when Christian said the other night, “Well, you certainly don’t have dementia.” Wish I could remember what the conversation was about.

 

 

Catching up and reaching out

One of the first things I read this morning was a short blog by an author friend about how she’d devoted a day to doing the odd details that often slipped through the cracks of her life. She must have read my mind, because I’d decided to take care of odds and ends—that stack of papers on the corner of the desk needs sorting, and there are odd bits of paper and notes scattered everywhere with things for me to do.

So I called my accountant, called the supervisor of the yard guys and then watched with bated breath while two went on the roof to cut a tree branch that had worked it’s way around a live power wire. Filed some papers for a possible project on down the road and wrote a note to an old acquaintance who’d written after she found me on the Women Writing the West listserv. I had promised to give my suggestions on another author’s query letter—I was pretty drastic and hope she took it well. She used way too many adjectives, and I kept thinking, “Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.” A synopsis isn’t the place to showcase your writing style—that can come in the actual manuscript.

I sent several emails to friends about everything from last night’s supper to an upcoming gathering to remember a friend who died a couple of months ago. Supper last night came from Eatzi’s—a sort of cafeteria of prepared foods. Upscale and very good. Linda came in from Granbury, and we shopped together for supper. But when I said, “I’ll have a crab cake,” she said, “I will too.” And when I said, “Green beans, please,” she said, “For me too.” We laughed at what they must have thought about us. I also bought a Cotswold cheese with chives—new to me and delicious. The three of us—Jordan joined us—almost ate the whole hunk, so we’ll have to go back from more. The crab cake was almost pure crab, low on filling, and that made it delicious.

But a big thing I did today was to wade through a podcast and a rather long book review friends had said I “must” read and/or hear. In addition, I found a lengthy excerpt from a new book on the online weekday newsletter, Wake Up to Politics. If you don’t know it, do look it up. The excerpt is from The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For, by Charlotte Alter (no relation, but I’d sure claim her). The book appears to be about the changes millennials will bring to our culture and our politics, but in the quoted section, called “The Last Dinosaurs,” she makes some amazing points: Google only launched in 1998; Wikipedia came along in 2001, and the iPhone in 2007. Those social media changes have had an enormous impact on us in a relatively short time. By contrast, the telephone was not in common use until almost seventy-five years after its introduction, and both radio and TV were slow to be found in most households. Millennials are the first generation who never knew anything but this digital world.

The other book that impressed me was Why We Are So Polarized by Ezra Klein. Klein points out that these days few people vote a split ticket—we are less tied to a candidate than to the party. And criticism of our party’s positions doesn’t sway us—we just look for ways to validate our opinions. I confess that I keep thinking that if I can just present the inescapable facts, trumpers will see that he is a thug and a criminal without knowledge and in mental health trouble. I know it really just makes them dig their heels in deeper, but I can’t give it up. The other thing he says is that as our country grows more diverse, representation will grow even less inclusive. Thirty per cent of the population, in certain states with heavy electoral count, will elect the president. It’s a lesson trump learned well in 2016. And what, to me, Klein was basically saying, is that the Constitution as written may not work in this bright new world. He made me re-examine a position that I had denounced as heresy, especially when it came from trump.

All this was heavy reading, but it sure made for an interesting day. Oh, and there was a podcast from “Pod Save America,” which pointed out that Tuesday evening, after the debate, some wag edited the Wikipedia entry on Mike Bloomberg to show his date of death as 02/18/2020. Cause of death? Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Sleep well in these troubled times.