Remembering Molly

Posted on January 31, 2007 by Marchbanks

The word’s quickly spreading of Molly Ivins’s death today from recurrent breast cancer, at 62.  That’s a damned sight too young for someone whom I remember as a vital, lively person, telling stories and pitching off casual observations in her smoker’s-rasp voice, intermixed with a deep laugh that seemed to come all the way up from her feet.

Molly used to be one of my customers at Congress Avenue Booksellers, back when I was a lot younger and she was still a Minor Regional Columnist for the Dallas Times Herald.  We got to like each other, and one day I asked her if she’d come be the guest speaker one month for the Austin chapter of Mensa (I was a member then).  She said yeah, she’d be happy to, call her and we’d work it out.  So one day I called.

In the months between the time she said yes and the time I called her, she published her first book, hit the New York Times bestseller list, and became a hot property charging a fancy fee for her speaking dates.  Nonetheless she held up her end of the bargain, came to our monthly dinner meeting, annoyed several of our more tight-assed members by smoking at table (hell, we were in the smoking section of the restaurant), and gave a good, funny speech for no more fee than us paying for her CFS and Coronas.  That was the best attended meeting Lonestar Mensa ever had; more than 90 people came to hear her that night.  (All those extra people can’t have hurt the restaurant’s receipts, either.)

I still have her business card from those days in my business-card wallet; in royal blue letters on a pale blue ground it said

MOLLY IVINS
COLUMNIST
DALLAS TIMES HERALD

with her address (1606-B Waterloo, 78704—she always was a South Austin kinda gal) and her home phone number.  That was all.  No graphics, no fancy tarting up.  Just plain and straightforward—like she was herself.

Wherever you’re gone, dear, give ’em hell.  They probably need it.

 

She can’t SAY that, can she??  Fnord.

Posted in Austin, Current Events, Mensa, Personal History | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

There is heat

Posted on January 29, 2007 by Marchbanks

$675 later, there is heat.  The invoice says:  “1/27 Find PC control board bad.  1/29 Get & replace PC board – retrofit wire in – find heater combustion motor bad – get & replace motor & wheel – check heater & blower operation.”   As I understood it, after he got the logic board in he discovered the combustion motor (one of three motors in this benighted contraption) was rusted/seized/locked up SOME way or another and couldn’t be freed, so he liberated another motor from the company’s junkyard of “saved against a rainy day” spare parts, and installed that.  House temperature came back up to normal within two hours of turning the furnace on, and I can again sit here unclothed more-or-less comfortably (except my for feet, which are cold; the draft in this room is fierce).

He said now that it’s fixed we should be able to get a couple more years’ service out of it before it has to be replaced; he couldn’t read the maker’s plate very well but thought it was made in 1993, which would put end-of-service-life around 2008 or 2009.

 

Figure 5 is a schematic flow diagram.  Fnord.

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Searching for heat

Posted on January 27, 2007 by Marchbanks

The furnace man arrived about ten minutes ago and is now crawling around the attic, poking at the unit (if you know anything about forced-air heaters, it’s a Goodman/Janitrol GMP100-3).  Getting him to the point of “crawling around the attic’ involved taking every bit of clothing out of my closet, as well as both hanger bars.  This is why I hate furnace trouble so; aside from the problem itself, I have the annoyance of tearing apart and then rebuilding the entire closet.

ETA:  Bloody hell.  The circuit board is blown out so the venter motor won’t come on; without the venter running, the gas jets send flame where they shouldn’t and try to catch the unit afire; the blower motor also won’t come on without the circuit board.  Now the repairman has to go find out how hard it is to get a circuit board or even if a circuit board can be had.  It if can be, he thinks it’ll cost $125 to $150 for the board and two or three hours at $75 an hour to install it, and that no sooner than Monday.  On top of today’s diagnostic call we’re close to $500, which even so would be tons less than having to buy a new furnace. Still, ick.

Posted in House | 7 Comments

Popsicle toes

Posted on January 27, 2007 by Marchbanks

The temperature in the house is 65 degrees.  At this time of day it ought to be 68.  At ten last night it was 69 when it should have been 74. Setting the thermostat as high as 80 still failed to make the furnace come on.

I’m hoping this is only a bad thermostat, which I can replace myself.  (Those programmable Honeywell thermostats don’t seem to last worth shit.)  If it’s actually the furnace, I’ll have to have an expensive weekend service call today, ’cos we can’t do without tonight—not with a low predicted near freezing, we can’t.

The furnace man arrived about ten and went crawling around the attic, poking at the unit (if you know anything about forced-air heaters, it’s a Goodman/Janitrol GMP100-3).  Getting him to the point of “crawling around the attic” involved taking every bit of clothing out of my closet, as well as both hanger bars.  This is why I hate furnace trouble so; aside from the problem itself, I have the annoyance of tearing apart and then rebuilding the entire closet.

ETA:  Bloody hell.  The circuit board is blown out so the venter motor won’t come on; without the venter running, the gas jets send flame where they shouldn’t and try to catch the unit afire; the blower motor also won’t come on without the circuit board.  Now the repairman has to go find out how hard it is to get a circuit board or even if a circuit board can be had.  It if can be, he thinks it’ll cost $125 to $150 for the board and two or three hours at $75 an hour to install it, and that no sooner than Monday.  On top of today’s diagnostic call we’re close to $500, which would still be tons less than having to buy a new furnace.  Still, ick.

 

Predicate the promissor to the Black Madonna.  Fnord.

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Not asking for help

Posted on January 22, 2007 by Marchbanks

Saturday night, while Hero Woman and I were on our way to dinner, I began talking about how isolated I’d felt all the last week while L was in the hospital.  I said that aside from L’s family and mine, both of whom are too far away to be any use, no one had called or emailed to see how we were or to say, “Hi, read your blog and I wanted to check in with you.   Do you need something that I can do?” and that the lack of response had left me feeling very on-my-own.  Hero Woman replied, “I was reading your entries so I thought I knew how you were doing.”

It’s nowhere near that simple.  You see, even if I need—really need—help, I probably won’t ask for it.  The reason to that comes in several parts.  First, there’s the reluctance to admit that events have got beyond my own ability to manage them.  Second, and related to the first, is the feeling that if I ask for help I’m just whining about things I should take responsibility for and take care of myself.  Third, and related to the second, there’s my internal voice saying “Okay, so you say you need help.  You think your friends don’t have things they have to see to as well?  Their lives are just as full of stuff that has to be taken care of as yours is, so don’t go imposing on them and making them feel guilty if they can’t do anything.”  Fourth, if I accept help I believe I’m also accepting a responsibility to give help, to return favors, when asked and I’m never sure I’ll be able to do that.  I despise having to live with a perpetual feeling of undischarged gratitude.

Last, and perhaps the most personal, is something that’s related to the Alcoholics Anonymous mantra “one drink is always one too many.”  I’ve lived with myself long enough to know that if I get started accepting help, it’s too easy to go on taking and taking and taking, until no one wants to see me because it means I want to beg something-or-another.  I’m forever afraid that unless I ride herd strictly on my instincts, I’ll become a kind of J. Wellington Wimpy, always bumming hamburgers and promising to pay on a Tuesday that somehow never comes.

All of those things put together mean it’s rare I’ll ask for help or say that I’m going under, even when I need it and I am.  Sunday at M’s Girl Scouts meeting, I had to fight to make myself say “yes, thank you” when M’s kindergarten teacher asked whether some of the other parents bringing over cooked meals this week so L and I didn’t have to worry with it would be a help.  I did say “yes, thank you” but it cost me to say it.  So if something is going on in our lives and I don’t ask for help, that doesn’t mean I don’t need it.  It may mean I’m being too proud to impose my needs on others, or I’m afraid to say yes for fear of what it might bring me to.

Posted in Family, Personal History | 19 Comments

Out of spoons

Posted on January 19, 2007 by Marchbanks

L is home.  Doctor Jim Bob came by to see her about 6:30 this evening while M and I were visiting, looked at her throat, asked how she was feeling, wrote scripts for an antibiotic (Augmentin) and pain relief (Vicodin), and said “go in peace.”  We filled the scripts on the way home (the pharmacy appeared to have switched the pharmacist with a snail tonight; I was told 30 minutes’ wait and I know I waited far longer than that), and I got her some Diet Coke, which she has been pining for all week to cut the cotton out of her mouth.  Her mood didn’t improve when she told Doctor Jim Bob this tonight and he said, “Oh, you could have had that,” which didn’t help a bit ’cos nobody told her she could.  She’s crashed out on the sofa now, as she’s still too weak to climb into our enormous tall bed.  M’s next to her on the floor in her sleeping bag.

I ran completely, totally out of spoons today.  Trying to juggle caring for M, who has been as self-centered as only a six-year-old can be all week, fretting over L and running to the hospital daily, coping with being completely iced in for three days with M and still trying to get as many hours of work done at the Empire as possible by logging in remotely over an iffy connection (I worked enough that I only had to use eight hours’ sick leave across four days) and managing the demands of customers and technicians, all week long without any relief, any letup, any time out—I couldn’t do it.  I tried my damnedest, and I STILL couldn’t do it.  I managed, just barely, not to break down at work today, and to do almost all of a full day’s work.  (Being in chat with technicians, often two and three at a time, approving requests and handling case escalations all day every day for the past month has contributed a lot to grinding me down.)  When we got into the house tonight and I put down the groceries, I stood in the kitchen, held L, and cried.  I couldn’t make myself do anything else.

While she was in the hospital, L was on a liquid diet—that is, when she could manage to force anything at all down her throat despite all the swelling, which was rare.  Tonight, as we were driving home from the grocery, she was talking about how she had only been able to eat soups and puddings, and not much of them, and then she said “You know what I’ve really been wanting?  I’ve wanted a soft-boiled egg on toast. I’d like to have that since I have to take my antibiotic with food.” So once we got home, I made her a three-minute egg.  With soldiers.

Posted in Health, Personal History | 4 Comments

The next chapter

Posted on January 17, 2007 by Marchbanks

Doctor Jim Bob was pleased with the outcome of surgery.  He’s keeping L sedated and ventilated tonight mostly for precaution, and plans to bring her to in the morning once the anesthesiologist gets in.  He also called in an infectious-disease specialist to consult, who looked at her lab culture (staph type A) and the antibiotic she was getting (Cleocin) and said he wouldn’t change the medication at all, just do more of the same.

I now officially have No Idea when the hospital will let L go home.  Maybe Friday if she progresses well; if not, probably Saturday.  She and I have both asked for FMLA paperwork; she because recovery is somewhere around two weeks, and she is gonna be STIR-crazy by the end of it, and me because there’s no telling how much I’ll have to take off odd hours to see to her.  The Tulip has been incredibly understanding, but he agreed that it’s FMLA time for certain.  You can’t beat legal protections in case someone wants to get shirty.

And speaking of stir-crazy, M has been bored absolutely to death with no school, nowhere to go, and nothing to do for three days straight during the ice storm.  She is just SO ready for school to take back up.  Tonight, since she was disappointed of getting to see Mama as she’d expected, I took her to McDonald’s for a Happy Meal (this breaks with my usual position on McDonald’s and their food, and M regarded it as a treat) and then to Quack’s for dessert—a very large, rather gooey chocolate cupcake.

Posted in Family, Health | 4 Comments

Can’t see her tonight

Posted on January 17, 2007 by Marchbanks

Doctor Jim Bob just called.  He did only pull one tonsil (the left) after all, but then he discovered and had to drain a retropharyngeal abscess as well.  (This, given the potential complications, could be a lot more frightening if not managed.)  He said she tolerated the surgery well, and he left her to stay in Recovery/ICU overnight, sedated and with a ventilator in her to prevent breathing distress while the tissues get over swelling from the surgical insult.  He dropped the call suddenly when the infectious-disease specialist whom he wanted to consult suddenly appeared on the scene, so I’ll have to find out the rest later.

Posted in Family, Health | 8 Comments

We’re going in, men!

Posted on January 17, 2007 by Marchbanks

L had another CT scan this morning which didn’t show enough progress in reducing the swelling to suit Doctor Jim Bob, so he decreed that instead of getting to have lunch, she got to have a tonsillectomy.  M and I are going to go to the hospital this evening to see how she feels post-surgery.

Posted in Family, Health | 1 Comment

Indeed it’s the tonsils

Posted on January 14, 2007 by Marchbanks

L continues on IV antibiotics at the hospital; she says she’ll be interested to see how much weight she’s lost by the time she leaves, since she’s unable to eat anything whatever.  (This is not a great concern; she has ninety pounds she could lose before she’s even close to being underweight.)  Doctor Jim Bob, the ENT specialist who’s caring for her, is the one who also sees me and is a family friend, so he agreed to see her at Saint Dave’s even though he normally practices at another hospital across town.  (Comanche Syndrome again; his mother-in-law and my mother were childhood friends.)  He ordered a CT scan to see what there was to see in her throat and what he needed to do.  The scan showed infection in the right tonsil and what appears to be a small abscess on the left tonsil, in an unusual place for one to form.  He thinks he can drain the pus with a needle under local anesthetic this afternoon, which would avoid surgery.  If the draining doesn’t work, then he’ll have to try to squeeze in a table time on Monday (harder to arrange, since this isn’t his usual hospital) to drain it under sedation, or even general anesthesia.

ETA:  A perspicacious comment by GumTree Canoe leads me to think that what L really has is the quinsy!  Of all the old-fashioned diseases to get . . . .

L called home two or three times yesterday, each time more hoarse and inaudible.  She says she isn’t feeling worse, but feeling better doesn’t seem to be hurrying itself along very much.  We’ll go by the hospital to bring her a newspaper before I go to the Land of Færie.  M has a play date for the afternoon so enteraining her is, fortunately, sorted out.

 

Parakeets wear perforated woven elastic.  Fnord.

Posted in Health, Personal History | 6 Comments