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In the wake of her breast augmentation surgery, Delia wasn’t supposed to lift anything over three pounds, raise her arms above her head, or really do anything at all for at least a week. But the first thing she did when she got out of the wheelchair and into the taxi cab was grab my heavy backpack and try to lift it into her lap (bumpy cab ride, sore boobs, she wanted a cushion). I was like, “noooooo!! What are you doing?!? You’re supposed to ask me to help you with things like that!!”

Clouds & sky the color of a Maxfield Parrish Painting

It wasn’t just that she was loopy from the surgery and still slightly sedated; during the time we spent in the hotel since then when I’ve been supposedly “taking care of her”, I’ve finally been able to see how extremely unlikely it is for Delia to ask for help. She just doesn’t do it. After more than eight years together you’d think I’d have noticed this before, and I have to an extent, but it never made the big impression on me it has in the past week.

I don’t know if it’s that she doesn’t think to ask for help, or doesn’t like asking for help, or is just doggedly determined to do everything herself. Or if it’s just ME that she doesn’t like to request help from. That would make sense, given the way that we met and our relationship was structured at the beginning with her as my “houseboy”; I told her what to do and she did it.

Normally I think that was a game that we stopped playing a long time ago, but I think I’m very wrong about that in some ways. It was never a game. Maybe it was a stylized way of expressing needs and personality traits that we’ll always have, that will always be a huge part of the dynamics of our relationship. And it was never about sex as much as it seems to other people or might have seemed to us at the time.

I have tried over the years to DEMAND Delia make demands of me when she needs or wants something or feels I’m not contributing enough in some ways. “Just TELL me if you want me to get off my ass and do something!! You don’t even need to say please — it’s not efficient! I don’t care!! Just tell me what you want me to do!!” It’s pretty stupid to hope for that (both because it is unlikely and because neither of us probably want to operate that way), and this past week is helping me see that.

Again, I don’t know what goes on inside Delia’s head and what the main obstacle(s) is/are to asking for help, but I can more plainly see through this experience that I really don’t like being interrupted to assist people. I don’t like nursing people enough to want to do it except on very rare occasions and in very limited capacities. I like the IDEA of being sweet and kind in that way, but mostly I’m just not.

It’s not that I don’t like physically attending to people or taking care of them — sometimes I love it — but I prefer to do it on my own terms (when *I* want to, not so much every single time someone requires it). I’m a very receptive person to people’s needs and demands and emotions and hurts and vulnerabilities and desires. Except for when I’m not, and then I’M REALLY NOT, and it’s very difficult for me to censor my impatience. I don’t like for people to feel like they’re putting me out, but I just hate being interrupted. My reflexive assholeness during these times continues to be a challenge for me to contain and a mystery to me of how deeply it may or may not effect my relationships with people close to me and their emotional safety around me: with Delia, most importantly.

These past few days I have asked her a million times if there’s anything I can do for her and checked in with her a billion times with how she’s feeling (for fear she won’t express it otherwise and I won’t know whether or not she’s healing awesomely or in total pain; she very very rarely tells me she is in pain, even when she IS). But maybe a lot of my millions of questions are my own anxiety-riddled way of trying to avoid being interrupted when it’s less convenient to me and just expressions of fear that I will not have enough control over the situation (whatever the situation is) if she doesn’t tell me what’s going on. I am not always being totally genuinely helpful or selfless, and I catch myself being irritated a lot. I don’t know how to explain this without sounding like more of an asshole than I am — I’m not irritated with her and I totally understand her needs and WANT her to express more of them, but I’m just really incredibly shitty about controlling my annoyance, no matter how tiny it is (if you know me at all, you know that LOTS of very little things grate on my nerves, things that other people don’t even notice; you should hear how much I freak out about florescent lights, for example, so it’s nothing personal).

The way I am in response to interruptions (even when I appear to be doing nothing but staring vacuously into space) is very much like normal people are in response to somebody sneaking up behind them when they think they’re alone and screaming “BOOOOOOO MOTHERFUCKERHAHAHAHA!” and tickling them really hard under the arms. It’s unreasonable to think a normal person will ever NOT (or ever SHOULD not) respond to that with an elevated heartrate, unsettling verbal protestation of some sort, and even resentment towards the person who startled them with that fright unless they’ve been broken down over weeks or months in a prisoner of war camp or something. Similarly, I’m not sure that it’s reasonable for me to think I (or other people with wiring similar to mine) will ever train myself out of responding with aggravation to intrusive stimuli. I do work on it and try to be aware of it and try to learn from experiences like this one of being in a hotel room with a loved one recovering from surgery for days on end, but I also recognize that sometimes the best thing I can do is acknowledge what is not my strong suit, try to explain my limitations with sincere apologies, and just avoid the hell out of situations that test me for extended periods of time (and thank the powers that be that I have that luxury).

Still, it’s really depressing to know that people I love have good cause to be nervous about what kind of peevish reactions they may get when they approach me. It’s not like I jump and backhand every living creature that gets within two feet of me — it’s more subtle than that, but still — over time it probably impacts them in unpleasant ways I wish it wouldn’t. I guess I can console myself that other people (even “normal” people) are way worse than I am about this and don’t even acknowledge it as a problem.

*****

Once I expel my initial big melodramatic sigh at being asked for help, I do enjoy helping sometimes (this is another problem I have: I take a really really long time to do things other people quickly rush through — this drives my little sister and my mom crazy, how I will take forever to chop up a vegetable or read a bedtime story to my nephew when apparently I’m supposed to know that you’re supposed to just make simple shit up to turn pages that have more words on them than three year olds can process but those are more reasons I hate helping people sometimes; they won’t let me do it my way or they get mad at how long it takes me or the questions I ask to perform the requested task). This also drives Delia crazy, I think, but she is better at censoring her irritation than my mom and sister are and is more sensitive to me getting really defensive about it.

Sometimes — actually, a LOT of times — I actually enjoy “helping” so much after I get over the pain of switching gears that I’m extremely averse to rushing through it. I don’t know how to do certain things without care or savoring their details. I want to do that thing to the exclusion of everything else, to be totally immersed in it.

You know how Delia’s hair is naturally super curly? She has to put a whole shitload of oils and cremes and conditioners in it to keep it from being a big frizzy monster bush. While she’s recovering, she can’t have her arms up and hands in her hair to do that, so she has sweetly asked me to dry her hair and apply these products.

So I try to choke down my .75 second annoyance with the poor timing of it all, what with me having finally gotten my fingernail properly placed to lift a scab off my scalp or tweet something I think is really pithy, and go into the bathroom where she’s sitting on the toilet. I try to sop up the moisture from her hair gently so I don’t damage her hair or break her neck, but I must be doing it wrong because Delia rearranges the towel to prompt me to go at it a different way. Then I start really getting into slicking my hands with oil and distributing it as evenly as possible through her hair, coating every frizzing spot. Then she has me put in her leave-in conditioner and comb both that and the oil through. She informs me that I can’t possibly apply TOO MUCH of this, but I still prefer to portion out gobs of it in individual handfuls instead of just dumping it on all at once. Then she has me put a clear no-frizz curl-keeper serum and I scrunch it through and shape it and fluff it even though she tells me I don’t need to do that; it will get big all on its own, but I still want to feel her cool, damp hair in my hands and move it around on her head.

I love her so much while I’m doing this and feel so tenderly and totally in love with taking care of her this way and protecting her hair (even though she’s chuckling to herself over how fucking long it’s taking me and how insistent I am that she just let me do it my way I never get to do this when she tries to explain I don’t need to be so careful about it and the way I’m doing it isn’t going to make a difference). And for a stupid STUPID heartbreaking moment I love it so much that I wish we had a child, a little kid with hair to comb and a head to pat and stroke and lavish love on and look up at us while we braid her hair or whatever.

I don’t know what the fuck I’m thinking, wanting a little person with constant need when I’m so easily aggravated, but then I think of all the daddies who are like, “don’t disturb me while I’m in my den/watching the game/working on my hobby car!” And I know everybody loses patience sometimes. And I know that my nephews don’t think I am mean or impatient or unapproachable. But they also don’t recognize that they’ve never gotten to stay over without their mom for more than one night because THAT WOULD BE TOO LONG FOR ME TO ENDURE. Anyway, I can’t even brain my OWN hair and have never wanted to learn to braid anybody else’s. If we had kids I’d probably shave their heads to make things easier.

So I guess thank the stars or whatever that we didn’t get pregnant.

But I confess, we’re still paying for sperm storage. JUST IN CASE.

*****

I remember my sister barging in asking what in the world was taking so long???? last time she was over with her kids and I was in charge of pre-bedtime with my oldest nephew, Mr. Squishypants. I’m like, we’re listening to music! and talking about the tree-guys! and just sitting here watching the candle flame!

She was like, JESUS, Trixie — hurry up! And I whined for her to just let me do it my way! I’m the aunt! I never get to have this special time with him!

She just sighed and was like, “okayokayOKAY!” And it took me awhile to remember that she was waiting for bedtime with me, her sister, too and for both her kids to be asleep so she could relax and I was using up all of our time together because I don’t know how to fucking balance things or rush through what I love even if it’s to get to something else I love just as much.

I mean, just don’t get me started if you need to have something done in a big fucking hurry. And that is why I have such a hard time starting anything at all. Because I know it will take me a long-ass time and I won’t want anyone to interrupt me while I’m doing it.

I thought I’d be blogging a ton and going to museums and reading books and singing on streetcorners to make money to blow on sexy new outfits to clothe Delia’s new boobs while she’s recovering from her Friday surgery, but I haven’t done any of those things (surprised?).

Well, I *have* read some books.

Anyway, her fresh new boobs are looking big and . . . FRESH (that pic was snapped mere hours after surgery/the same day), in the way implants look when they’re new, plus a little gory underneath because of her stitched up incisions lined in blue marker and shiny/wet-looking with silagel steri-strips (I’m always confusing dildo materials with medical supplies).

Anyway, we’re flying homo tomorrow (these typos are what happen to you when you’ve been in San Francisco for a week, apparently) and we will resume our usual schedule of being boring on our voyeur cams, especially now that I can’t touch Delia’s boobs. That’s the part all of the proud husbands and boyfriends don’t tell you about, the way you only get to look at them for weeks or months while the little woman heals.

They’re awesome, though, and I’m so glad that I got that Ativan prescription for the plane along with an Ambien bonus. Even with the anti-anxiety meds I was a little skittish. I only wish I’d have thought to take it for the terrifying cab rides to and from the hospital. I am really just a frightened country mouse and this city is like a big piss-spattered blanket of concrete offering no solace except in the form of expensive foodstuffs. I like it, but after a week my nerves are frayed by all of the people and bustling and the alternating aromas of hot aged urine, delicious grilled meats, and skunky weed. Even the rotation of our room’s ceiling fan in the corner of my eye when I’m trying to read and block out the sound of the hotel’s pigeon mascot is about to give me a fucking seizure. But don’t feel sorry for me, I’m having fun and Delia is the one in REAL pain, not I.

I’m not complaining, just trying to make up for all of the crazy I haven’t been sharing during my period of blog silence! Because that’s what you come here for, right? To laugh at my hypersensitivity to stimuli that the rest of the civilized world tunes out? And the silliness of me feeling this way but denying myself the Ativan instead of using it during situations like this?

Seriously, it’s awesome being here I’ve just been having a hard time FINISHING blogging anything worth reading and if I don’t post something reflecting my curmudgeonly PRESENT, I may not post anything at all. Because it’s hard to do quickly-written justice to the sex dream I had about the frenetic pit bull and the way I almost passed out after I woke from it trying to jerk myself off standing up in the bathroom without letting Delia hear what I was doing.

Delia is just beginning to feel up to the challenge to venturing out to dine (just walking is painful after having 650 CC’s of silicone inserted under the muscles on each side of her chest) so we’re about to head out. All I’ve really accomplished over the past few days is 1) refilling her ice packs, 2) putting her hair in a ponytail when she asks me to, 3) helping her in and out of her button-up nightshirt and inspecting her incisions, and 4) taking her hair OUT of a ponytail when she asks me to. And making food runs!

Allow me to say another thank you to Tom for making these boobs and this trip possible, and for us not having to worry for a moment about how to scrape together the money for not just the surgery, medication, bras and stuff, but also the expense of the trip and food and everything for BOTH of us. Delia is a trooper and it sounds like I haven’t been doing anything very helpful, but it would have been really hard for her to be here alone and/or have to fly back right afterward. I don’t know how people manage on their own to deal with surgeries or broken bones, or even more challenging, how single women with children manage such things!

On a more serious note (speaking of ordeals and moms and stuff), AmberLily’s mom was hospitalized not long after having surgery (of the non-plastic/non-fun kind) and I don’t think they know what’s wrong with her so send positive vibes their way. So stressful, in ways that are much more worrisome than the effects of pigeons and ceiling fans on my fragile little mind.

Tomorrow Delia has her first follow-up appointment with the surgeon. I wonder if we should bring him flowers or a box of chocolates or something? I’m not sure what the etiquette of plastic surgery is in terms of thank-yous to doctors. I know presents aren’t NECESSARY or obligatory, of course, but very little in life IS (I mean, we’re dealing with something highly optional anyway, right?). One of the nurses told us he and his wife love pickles, so maybe some of those. That would be totally funny, to walk into his swanky office dripping green juice from one big, wet state-fair style pickle. Totally an uncitified way of giving thanks.

I wanted to get an update (a boobs ‘n masturbation video) posted for members much sooner than tomorrow, but tomorrow it will have to be (along with Delia’s update, a very hot foresty photo set which I still need to edit since she’s in LA).

The reason my videos won’t be ready TONIGHT is that my day was totally interrupted by a couple of PROBLEMS. A fairly large problem with someone being a total shithead to me on the phone and threatening to remove our access to our favorite spycam site that we’ve been broadcasting on since 2002. It could be counterproductive for me to go into the details, but I hope he doesn’t fuck us and our members that way.

My heart was already pounding away even before that extended drama because the pit bull returned and was roaming around in our yard again. Fortunately it was totally chill with our (old, tired, tied-up) dog for the short amount of time they were sniffing each other before I got the owner to come get it, but in the space before that (seeing it first in the neighbor’s yard wondering if it was safe for me to go get the mail and let out our dog, etc.). Then I felt bad for being so fearful even though we have good cause after our first run-in with the dog.

Anyway, the situation with our spycams has been stressful and time-consuming today. I’m glad I started the day out right with some exercise and also some good news that our payment processor semi-fixed a big mistake they made which has been making it difficult to promote our sites the past couple of months. Still, I feel extra guilty now for not getting more work done earlier this week (which is stupid because I was totally sleep deprived and then my sister was here with her beautiful darling wonderful energy-requiring children and then I did REALLY need a day to catch up on sleep and silence and staring into space).

Someday someday SOMEDAY I’ll have a week to just blog. In more interesting ways. Someday, right? I thought this would be a week of either massive productivity or lots of book reading, exercise, and phone sex but it just hasn’t worked out that way. Instead it’s been a week of other mostly-good things (and TOO-good things, like ice cream, garlic prawn rolls, pan au chocolat, potato salad, pasta, and wonderfully stupid movies like Mall Cop and Interview with the Vampire).

Anyway, I’m sorry for not posting new porn for members yet this week and I hope our main spycams are still up tomorrow!

Nico is getting senile. We think her vision and hearing have both become impaired. The good part is she seems in good spirits most of the time. I guess it’s both fortunate and unfortunate that she wants to go in and out of the house about fifty times a day and has taken to WHINING and barking madly if we don’t comply with these requests. You think fifty is an exaggeration? Okay, at least twenty-five times a day. AT LEAST. It’s insane.

Sometimes I do lose my patience with her and feel so frustrated not knowing if it’s our fault for giving in to her or if she has genuine need (or perceived need) to go outside so often. This morning after she woke Delia up WAY too early to let her out and back in she then ate and pooped on the floor. She never does that (poops inside). I think she’s just totally confused and can’t get comfortable so she paces around. Then when she goes outside her rope gets hung up on rocks or stiff tufts of grass and for some reason she can’t pull free of those tiny hangups anymore and just starts going apeshit for  us to come out and rescue her.

Lately she can’t find the doors she wants and we’ll see her in the bedroom waiting at the closet door or the bathroom door (this makes no sense). Last night she was stumbling around in the dark doing god only knows what. This makes me wonder if it’s not really a vision problem, but something else; if it were her vision, wouldn’t she still have the layout of the house memorized?

So I asked Delia, “do dogs get Alzheimer’s?”

Delia’s response: “no, but they do get Barkinson’s.”

*****

In other mundane, un-sexy news of real life, we had to take one of our beater cars to the shop today. It is going to cost over $900 to fix it. We can’t afford it, but the main reason I felt compelled to go ahead with the repairs is that we’ve been really lucky with our vehicles for the past couple of years (aside from getting pulled over for having a stolen car, but that’s a totally different story) so I felt like it was time to pay tribute to the gods of car or whatever. We got this car for free and it should continue running reliably after this so . . . yeah. Goodbye, thousand dollars. Or rather, “hello, maxed out credit card that I was trying to clear room on to pay taxes”.

I also found out my mom went to the hospital last night. She’s (relatively) fine — it was an anxiety attack. One of those things we know is a serious problem for her but that she is in denial about. The only treatment she’s ever had for it was years ago when her way of describing the problem was that she had trouble sleeping. So our pill-happy family doc/gp prescribed her Xanax. Which she became addicted to.

Fortunately she kicked that addiction all on her own. Unfortunately, she has never talked much about that and never did anything else that I know of to deal with her problems that she doesn’t really acknowledge. It’s not that my mom is reluctant to talk, or to talk about problems, but getting to the root of matters and deciding to make really important changes that start with herself? Not so much. Instead she’ll be like, “if I could just catch my breath for a couple of days and get that goddamned garage cleaned out it would help so much!”

How do you get a woman to realize that her problems go ever so much deeper than A FUCKING GARAGE? You can try, but it’s extremely ineffective.

So last night at the hospital she was prescribed Ativan. An anti-anxiety med that’s even MORE addictive than Xanax! And the doctor flat-out lied to her about what it was. He said it was a muscle relaxer she should take when she’s feeling dizzy.

Someone tell me again why pot and prostitution are illegal. I think someone misfiled RATIONAL THOUGHT in this country.

Anyway, I have a billion related and unrelated thoughts on this stuff and life in general and my direction in life and wants and desires and loves and blessings, small and large, and ways I’ve been ministered to online and off in beautiful ways and inspirations and insecurities and religion and porn and coming out and staying in and spycam projects and activism and writing and music and dancing BUT there are so many awesome books and six feet of girlfriend to go to bed with that I’ll leave it at that.

How long can I feel this super groovy? I hope a looooong time! The memory/deja vu/hopeful-excited-magic feelings I mentioned last week are still here and I feel GREAT. So great that I’m almost worried that I’m losing my marbles and trying to figure out what to attribute these good feelings to.

Is it the B vitamins? The D’s? The pressure being lifted from IRS after being forced to resign myself to accepting and even embracing whatever bad things might happen? Our deliciously mild winter (that could fuck up the winter olympics in Vancouver if the Pacific Northwest doesn’t get more snow)? Getting rid of DirecTV and reading more and enjoying each other more? Our new sound therapy machine with the delta wave inducing sounds (I usually dream so much that I don’t get deep dreamless sleep: a symptom of low serotonin levels/depression)? Is it that I’ve lost some weight? Is it going to twelve-step meetings? Is it just that I’m reading more and I FUCKING LOVE TO READ?!?

I don’t know, but IT IS GOOD! So I’m going to try to enjoy it and not worry that there’s something wrong with me. Goes to show how unhealthy I’ve been for so long that when I feel terrific for more than three hours I think maybe the sky is falling.

*****

I picked up my new weighted hula hoop today for more high jinks on the spycams! I also have a bollycardio dvd that we rented which I’ve only gone through once and am looking forward to doing more of. It’s jolly/silly camwatching goodness.

Speaking of camwatching goodness, we enjoyed some fucking yesterday and I hope our voyeurs did, too.

*****

On Friday and Saturday we had a great visit with my sister, brother-in-law and nephews which contributed to my heightened sense of awareness and positivity. Hanging around a three year old and an easily-delighted baby with a huge grin and dimples is like bathing in a clarifying happiness. Music sounds better, everything looks newer and more interesting and mysterious, and I have an excuse to read books aloud that were read to ME when I was little.

And hey, on top of that there is all of this boundless LOVE. On top of just loving those little guys to pieces, the amount of unconditional love I get from them is totally amazing. I’m forced to love myself more just being around them, in part because they do not see flaws but also because I want to always model un-self-conscious confidence to them; they make me love  myself more.

Maybe that’s what’s going on with me lately . . . better brain chemistry. Getting better sleep. Getting rid of the television — maybe having more oxytocin like from being around my nephews and my sister, but also from cuddling Delia and really being TOGETHER in bed instead of just staring at the tube all of the time. Maybe I’m just being flooded with a lot of girl juice: the loving, bonding chemicals, not necessarily the sexy ones.

Cuddling never used to help me fall asleep — it was more something I liked to do for a few minutes BEFORE unsticking bodies and going to sleep on my own side of the bed. Bizarrely enough, I’m actually finally starting to understand how great if feels to fall asleep nestled up to Delia. If I get in her armpit with her arm around me and my nose on her upper tit, I now get an instant jolt of SOMETHING I’ve never had with anybody else. Seriously, it’s some kind of a drug injection that I do think has something to do with oxytocin. Whatever it is, it’s BLISS. Tranquilizing and emotionally/sensually stimulating all at the same time.

It’s still sort of weird and foreign to me so I mostly continue my years-entrenched habit of nestling into my own don’t-touch-me space to sleep, but I think I’m going to try to get more of that business more often. I might need to work on my initiation technique though which consists of awkwardly trying to lift her arm up and demanding she “let me in”.

I hope no one is worrying that I’m still down-in-the-dumps and that’s why I haven’t posted since that last gloomy entry . . . I actually felt immediately better that night and my mood continued to improve when AmberLily and BigD got here the next day. It was nice to have Delia and AmberLily doing all of the work while BigD and I sat on the couch and in bed chatting and watching tv. It sucks we don’t all get to spend more time together.

On Sunday we had an early Thanksgiving with my family which included attempting to come out to my 90 year old grandma and explain that Delia is the same person she met before as Tucker. A story like that sounds like perfect blog fodder, but it was pretty anticlimactic after all of the drama leading up to it. I can’t even remember what I said or what she said: something like, “oh! well, nice to meet you . . . people do all kinds of things these days I guess” then to me, “it sure is nice  you have someone to go with you to the movies and on the ferry and things.” The woman is on so much vicodin for her arthritis and muscle spasms it’s hard to tell what she grasped, especially since she was totally blindsided by it since my mom pussied out on prepping her AT ALL. I think she was just happy to see me even if I appear to her to be some sort of a lesbian now. The woman has more pressing concerns managing her prolapsed vagina whenever she goes pee to give much consideration to my transsexual girlfriend (a term I don’t think really sunk in for her).

Between that excursion and a long trip yesterday for shopping-for-shoot-stuff and laser appointment, I’ve filled my quota for driving and ferry-riding/waiting and waiting for the bridge to open and being exposed to cat hair and flourescent lights and other things that run down people of My Delicate Constitution. Today I badly needed to shut myself up in the bedroom to read, snack, and watch bad television, blocking out all outside noises and people and light SO THAT’S WHAT I DID mostly. It annoys me how guilty I feel about doing things like that (and annoys other people because I constantly feel like I have to defend myself) especially when I realize most people with normal jobs have today OFF so maybe it’s okay if I do too (minus immediately dealing with computer/cam issues upon waking and doing a few minor tasks).

I feel like I should say something meaningful about Veterans Day or at least acknowledge that today is more than a “holiday” where I get to feel a-okay about being a lazy ass, but in a way that might be the best way I could have recognized the day this year by immersing myself in Americana like watching The People’s Court while eating skittles in bed and cracking open nuts at a frantic, OCD pace with my eyes glued to the boob tube. I hate the way the word “hero” is bandied about to describe every Tom, Dick and Harry who ever donned a fucking uniform but that’s not to say I don’t respect the enormity of their jobs and the huge consequences of doing them. I think the contemporary knee-jerk hero worship allows people to skim over veterans’ and their families’ losses and scars in the most superficial of ways that can’t even begin to address the lifelong damage and costs so many MANY people keep paying every day for the rest of their lives.

Since people are already playing Christmas music, here’s a quote and directive from one of my dad’s (a Korean war veteran) favorite Christmas songs:

Pray for peace, people. EVERYWHERE.

Normally I love fall, but it took so long for winter to go away this year that I’ve actually been apprehensive about letting go of the summer. Fortunately, we’ve had an extended Indian summer. Last week I *thought* it was over one night when I found myself craving heat, but this week it’s back. Sunny yesterday, sunny today . . . and clear for viewing the full moon last night and crone moon tonight.

It’s also been spider season with one lady in residence in our line of vision from bed in the corner of our sliding glass door:

Spider Lady & Half Moon

She’s been there every day and I know we should get rid of her big egg sac or we’ll have shitloads of spiders in our bedroom, but I haven’t been able to do that to her. I love seeing her there at least once a day and/or night. It doesn’t seem like the best place to have a web with us sliding the door open and closed and some of her anchors being attached to it. But I guess there’s no spot to weave a web that is completely invulnerable.

Lamp-lit spider on web.

Our dog’s much better after her trip to the vet’s. The x-rays didn’t show any arthritis but part of her spine had some degeneration, probably from aging in an area of past trauma which Delia thinks must have been from a time when she was a young dog and made a quick break out of the door of their house straight into the side of a moving car on a busy road, bounced off said car, then ran back inside never appearing any worse for the wear.

There have been times in the past nine months where Nico has seemed so old and uncomfortable and tired — and she IS old. Fourteen, I think. Everyone thinks she’s a puppy because she’s a runt of a husky and looks so young, up until recently when you see her walk, especially watching her from behind and her whole hind end just takes so much awkward effort to move. SOMETIMES. But if she’s excited? She’ll still bound and bounce and run around the house like crazy, even though, to me, her yips of excitement sound tinged with pain. I don’t think anything but the most debilitating pain can stop a husky from doing her husky things, so when we started noticing her having real problems has been at night when she can barely lie down and whimpers/cries like a squeaky wheel, circling around and around before painfully lowering herself down.

Anyway, the vet put her on prednisone, a steroid, which seems to be helping quite a bit. We took her on walks in the woods the past couple of days, which she loved even if she’s slowed down a lot since I met her and Delia seven years ago. Now her pace is really pleasant and companionable. She still runs ahead a little bit, but there are times when she actually walks right beside us, or takes breaks so she’s always close by.

Watching her yesterday on the trail looking so much better than she has in a couple of months I thought about how long it took for my dad to die and how unprepared I was for that. How there were so many times where I was impatient for it to happen already, for all of us to be put out of our misery of waiting, and then having days where he was present and I was so happy he was still around and it didn’t seem possible he was anywhere NEAR ready. At least, not nearly as ready as I recently had been. I feel that way a lot with Nico where I can’t help contemplating the convenience of her death one day when she seems uncomfortable, lethargic, and droopy-faced, then feeling overjoyed the next with how well she’s doing — how alert and happy she is, how it’s so not time yet — how YOUNG (for her age) she looks.

My ninth grade (and seventh grade) English teacher did something pretty fucking progressive and unheard-of for kids as young as we were in a public school: she taught us a section on Death and Dying. Practical planning stuff about funerals and wills, the Kubler Ross stages of grief, and of course literature like some story about a brave young man  with a brain tumor (title escapes me, but not the memory of how much I disliked that book) and one I’m forever grateful for being exposed to and having TAUGHT to me (not just read on my own), The Plague.

I remember all of us talking about what we wanted to happen to our bodies after we died and everyone laughing when I said I wanted to be dressed up like the Chiquita Banana Lady and thrown into the woods to rot and be scavenged by animals. Since then I’ve changed my mind, partly because I loved my dad’s funeral including seeing him all dressed up in his coffin that we picked out with special things tucked in to go with him, including stuffed animals that were ours, but that he kept after we outgrew them. I was shocked by how much I did not want his eyes to be plucked out for harvesting; I’d assumed he was ineligible for donating because of his glaucoma (which he was, but they weren’t aware of it so the question was posed to me anyway) and I was just totally unprepared by the topic even coming up even though of course we are all listed as organ donors, but MORE unprepared by how viscerally opposed I was to having his body — especially his eyes — taken out of him when I’d been looking into them MINUTES before that.

So. Aside from it being illegal to throw costumed dead women into the woods, I realize people have emotional, albeit irrational, attachments to the bodies of loved ones and I’ve even become attached the IDEA of my own dead body and perhaps want a more traditional type of ritual to accompany me to my final resting spot. Plus I’m extremely fond of coffins.

I asked Delia if she knows if people can come to our house to put Nico to sleep when the time comes so she can be at home and we can bury her. Delia said she’d prefer to take her to the vet’s. When I heard that I experienced another one of those irrational, emotional reactions (especially since Nico is really DELIA’S dog, not mine) of not being able to bear the thought of taking her to a place she’s afraid of and have to die there. I know it’s over fast, but having done that (thankfully only once and with a kitten we’d hardly had for any time at all) the drive there is just too fucking sad and crying your heart out in a clinic standing around in that sterile setting is just not the ideal to me. I am so glad my dad died in hospice where we got to hang out with his dead body for a few hours afterward (I probably wouldn’t have understood it before, but that is incredibly comforting and helpful, not to have to be seperated physically from each other right away), but obviously a seventy year old parent is pretty different from a fourteen year old pet.

We’re all smart enough to know that television and movies are inaccurate and unrealistic, but I personally never realized how much until my dad took years to die, and then again especially during the days and hours surrounding his actual death. I felt and still feel very unprepared for the process of death by aging and protracted illness. My mind is still boggled by the concept that all of us, if we are lucky, have to watch our parents die. I don’t feel like I was taught to expect that or how to process that even though I’ve probably been given more tools and experiences to deal with that than most post-baby-boom American kids have. I’d had friends who lost parents way too young and I knew it was devastating to them and in some cases they even talked about it a little, but not nearly enough to ever intimate exactly how huge that loss was. I and my dad were not too young, it wasn’t a tragedy, and it’s still hard and has taken SO LONG. I mean, it’s still not over for me. I’m still shocked by the revelation that death is never over or never not coming and that it’s VISIBLE and active for So. Many. Years. I’m trying to accept that with Nico . . . even to use her as practice and I am flummoxed at how ill-prepared I still am . . . how disbelieving, impatient, sad, and scared I am in spite of feeling that’s not really in my nature. I feel like I’m the kind of person who should be able to embrace aging-towards-death gracefully, with serenity instead of blubbering.

I don’t even know how my mom has handled the past thirteen years, seeing her own dad’s decline and death, living with and taking care of my dad/her ex-husband (they continued to have a fond and extremely helpful dysfunctional relationship even after his death), packing up the house she grew up in and moving her mom out of it and into first one home, then another, and now a third offering an even higher level of care. I really do not fucking know. I don’t think she really knows either, but I know it’s a lot harder for her than she’s gotten help for, and my distance from her doesn’t help. What I still idiotically fail to GRASP is how this is THIS LARGE a part of life. Because tv never taught me that and even though my family has always talked openly about these things and plans for when we die, I still can’t remember exactly what I’m supposed to do with my mom’s ashes and I still can’t believe that IF I AM *LUCKY*, I will live through many more loved ones’ deaths. I read so many young adult books about death — GOOD books about a girl whose dad was shot about a kid with Lou Gehrig’s disease about drug addicted kids . . . about pretty much every kind of unanticipated death you or someone you know could have but not so much about the deaths we all aspire to without any proper planning.

What is the life span of a spider? I have no clue. I am still trying to brace myself for the day this season when I look out the window and in the cracks around the sides and she’s not there and doesn’t come back.

Some of you’ve been wondering how our family get-together with my brother went after my agonizing in this post; fortunately, it went fine but I’m still so glad it’s OVER so I can stop stressing out over it.

We made the trek out to my mom’s yesterday and had a fairly nice visit. Sometimes I worry that Delia’s just receding into the background and that some of that’s my fault, but then it always seems that one person in a couple is the quiet hanger-back. Like my brother’s wife who mostly hung out in the kitchen. Some people are so quiet and pleasant those of us who are more obnoxious just naturally steamroll them.

Anyway, there was no mean-spirited or overt bullshit to be had towards us, though I did wonder when thank you’s for the presents we brought came from the kids and I got all the hugs and thanks why that was . . . because I’m the one who’s actually related to them (though haven’t seen them in eight years, since one was newborn)? Because Delia’s trans? Because I didn’t do a good job of introducing Auntie Delia? Or just because I was the one standing there with open arms, like “HUG YOUR AUNTIE, DAMMIT!” while Delia was behind me on the couch and less accessible/approachable/talkative? And then that firm handshake my brother gave Delia after hugging me goodbye seemed to have an awkward masculine edge to it, but whatever.

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On our way home from our family visit we got together briefly with AmberLily and her husband (Tiny aka BigD) who is too witty and well-read for me to get his jokes which mostly seem to consist of teasing us for being Democrats. They go right over my head and I wind up staring at him, completely bewildered, wishing I could keep up. Fortunately he’s nice enough to try to meet in the middle, patiently reminding me, for example, of my Third Amendment rights (so I could understand the joke he was making) even when I obtusely ignored his explanation. Maybe if we got to spend more time hanging out then AmberLily wouldn’t have to try to translate for us, “and now BigD is joking; that was a reference to the obscure blank and blankety blank.” Anyway, I hope I haven’t gotten them banned from their local McDonald’s because I kept saying the “F” word and loudly talking about wet WET pussy, something I’m far more familiar with than our Constitution.

My point is, I love them and BigD should be an internet celebrity.

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Normally when we go back to the area east of Seattle where I grew up I’m thankful we don’t live there, but yesterday the summer air was too seductive and familiar for me to not want to have more of it. It smelled heavily of home, especially driving through shady places along rivers. My mom’s yard felt so lush and green and bushy and the porch was so . . . porchy? With the screen door? Our dog looked like she was going to melt right into the cool grass, unlike here where all the grass is dry, short, and totally dead. It smells like saltwater and high wind and dry things where we live, but where I grew up it smells like a humid valley in the summer where every dog bark is magnified – sounds don’t blow away where I grew up. I hate that, but it’s still home.

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Little cell phone pic on our way home.

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Delia’s putting the finishing touches on the letter she’s writing to her parents who still don’t know she’s trans.

Just a quick post to say that my sister and nephews will be here soon and staying for a couple of nights SO most of our cams and audio will be down, or up and down depending on where they are, etc. Our office cams will be up but we probably won’t be in there too much since we haven’t seen infant Skywalker since he was born last month or Mr. Squishypants since even before that. We even missed his three year birthday party, but that’s okay because now he can open his presents from us and they’ll be the ONLY presents for the day and his aunties won’t have to compete for his attention. Because that’s how you behave when you don’t have children of your own.