Kaye's Home

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. Kaye had to stay overnight even though it was supposed to be day surgery, but she appears to be fine, other than having a pain in the neck (thyroidectomy and intubation during the surgery) besides James and me. She's tired but she'll be okay, I think.

James is glad to have us home, and I'm glad he made it through the night.

Pray for Kaye

My partner is having a five-hour operation thyroidectomy because she might have thyroid cancer, and doing a biopsy is practically removing everything, so that’s what we (she, her doctors and I) decided to go with. It’s always nerve-wracking for me to hang around hospitals alone – and I’ll be alone for over five hours, wondering. You can smack me for being whiny, but if anyone reads this and believes in something, prayer would be appreciated. I’m always afraid something will go wrong with the anesthesia and she’ll wind up in a coma or something. (I watch way too much er .) So if you pray, please pray for Kaye. I need her back home, as does James.

Thanks.

Church Blog Down

After spending most of Monday putting up my new blog about my new church, I have destroyed it. The reason I put it up at all is that there's sort of a policy against flogging dead horses. The problem is, I always think the horse is viable. So I thought this would be a good way to lay off the priests and get my frustrations out in the open. But after a nap, I realized that I didn't want to do this. It's kind of like when my little brother and I went to school together. He was in the first grade, and I was in the fifth. At home, we would terrorize each other no end, but when we got on that bus, Chris sat with me. And I wouldn't have let anyone mess with him. So while I may disagree with some things about my church, it's my church, and I don't want to knock it. It makes me feel good, not that you could tell it so far. I've cursed (f word, which I'm not sure is permissible on the blogs) at a priest in an e-mail, and Sunday I had another sort of meltdown. Unexpectedly, I burst into tears and neither love nor Valium could make it stop. My best friend is dying, and I don't have a spare. But that's a lot of what drove me to church. If it's a psychological crutch, then I sure as hell need one. I need a psychological Jazzy Chair. So all you Zen people out there, lay off me. I'm an emotional time bomb.

It's going to be a long time. I'm running out of people to lose.

Episcopalian Underground

My new blog dealing with my tentative steps into the Episcopal Church -- actually, any church -- is up. I think the first entry will be the longest, so bear with me. It's not like you've had to read anything I've written since May. B)

All my heathen friends, do bear with me. I mean, they still might throw me out. There's hope for me yet.

I'm Back . . .

Sorry I’ve been away so long. Things have piled up, and I’ve let my responsibilities to friends and even myself slide. Loads of illnesses, crises, and just plain laziness have kept me away.

I’ve started attending church, a local Episcopal church, after about twenty-five years away. I grew up in the Methodist Church but left once I got too big for my parents to drag, and haven’t been back except for weddings and funerals – and few of them. Maybe not even a few – I went to my brother’s wedding in 1995 and my maternal grandmother’s funeral in 1998. I refuse to go to any of my parents’ weddings (there have been three, I think) on the excuse that I didn’t go to the one where they married each other. That’s not really the reason. I’m suspicious of anything that requires new clothes, to paraphrase Thoreau. The church I’m going to now has no dress code, so I can get away with jeans and t-shirts. Perfect.

My mother is married to a Lutheran minister, so naturally she wants me to find a Lutheran church. I don’t think they’re quite as gay-friendly as the Episcopalians, and, in any case, they’ve got prayer books, too, so I might just as well learn the ways of the Episcopalians as the Lutherans. At least the church I’m attending is gay-friendly without being a gay church.

I’m still baffled as to when to stand up, sit down, and find my place in either the prayer book or the hymnal, but I’ll learn. I’m starting a new blog devoted strictly to church questions, debates, and what-not, so I’ll leave that for now and give you the link once I have a post on it.

The great news is that Kaye is finished teaching! All she has to do is give two exams, grade them, and post the grades. She should be done for real by Thursday, at the latest, although she doesn’t officially retire until September 1st as there is some rule somewhere that you can only retire on the 1st of a month. (I assume months where the 1st falls on a weekend let you retire on the 2nd or 3rd.) We’re both looking forward to her well-earned freedom after teaching for some forty years. She’s been at NCSU since 1970.

Hope everyone (and everybody’s cat) is well. See you in the funny papers.

Flying vs. U-haul

My mother is in Minnesota (a long way from North Carolina) this week because her husband’s daughter is graduating from St. Olaf’s. (Well-done, Katie!) When I saw that my mother was to be out of the area for about a week just for one graduation ceremony (I didn’t even go the less than two miles to attend my last two, but that’s me), I asked her if they were driving, thinking maybe they were moving Katie out or something. No, they’re flying. You could not get me to fly to anywhere you couldn’t drive to. Before 2001, my flying experience has been expensive, hectic, uncomfortable, and unreliable (lost luggage, etc.). Since then, I’m not even going to try. Somehow I would be detained as a terrorist because I have screws in my neck that I could no doubt take out and poke somebody to death with in my last remaining seconds. Too much trouble. But no, they’re not driving that far. How crazy am I? (I thought maybe they were bringing Katie’s stuff home with a U-haul or something.) So I asked why she was staying all that time away from home, since she and her husband are flying. Her response was weird to me. She said she’d never been to Minnesota before and wanted to see as much of it as possible. What, she’s going to a giant mall? I always thought that the whole point of flying was that you could leave North Carolina Friday, see the ceremony Saturday (let’s say it’s a Saturday), and be back home Sunday.

Weird.

I’m feeling better but a bit butchered after Tuesday’s minor surgery. They always make it sound as if it will be just a little “discomfort” and not screaming pain -- and I always fall for it. Some of us never learn.

Train Wreck

I have not died, but I’ve been keeping pretty busy staying sick and even making plans to. So far this year there’s been a septoplasty, pleurisy, pneumonia, bronchitis, various lesser infections, migraine after migraine, and now I get to have a biopsy next week to make sure I don’t have some form of cancer (they don’t think so; they’re just checking), and then abdominal surgery. We are not talking laparoscopy here. We are talking big gut pain. I will be out of commission from whenever I have that (sometime in June) until around August or so. This is getting ridiculous.

The good news is that Kaye is practically retired. She just has the second summer session to go and then she’s free at last. She had a small party (she requested no party, but got a surprise party with just a few friends, and was flabbergasted, mortified and delighted) Saturday with some very good friends, whom she’s known longer than she’s known me, which is getting up there. Here’s the part I find hilarious: she got a brick on the brickyard at State. It gives her name, her department, says “Thanks!” and gives her dates of service. I don’t know if I have to go polish the brick (wherever it is) and observe a moment of silence every year or what. Her department was very generous and kind, and I’m glad to think they appreciate what Kaye’s done. She isn’t tenure-track, but she does lots of little things. Her students love her. I think her colleagues like her – I know some of them love her, anyway. She’s been there longer than anyone else in the department except one person who came in the same semester that she did. So congratulations, Kaye!

I feel very grateful to have her with me when she is so well-liked. I mean, what’s she doing with me? :p Look at the people she had to choose from.

So I’ll be sporadic through August, but I’ll be here when I can.