Friday, May 3, 2013

Blank Calendar

I love looking at my calendar for this week.  There is nothing on it (except my weekly Logos work afternoon).  No shows to review.  Nothing other than taking my mother to have her TB test read last Monday.  And other than lunch with a friend on next Thursday, there is nothing on next week's calendar either.   Be still my heart.

With nothing on the calendar, I was able to drop in on Ellen and Shelly.  I'm looking for a new Kaiser doctor for my mother, when she moves to Davis and the two of them had been talking about switching from their present doctor (who is also my doctor) to another one.  I was looking for recommendations.  We hadn't visited in awhile, so they invited me to come to their house and they would give me the results of their investigations.

I wasn't there five minutes before the phone rang.  It was a reporter for the Sacramento Bee, who wanted to interview them for an article on same sex couples who have raised (or are raising) children together for a Mother's Day special (Ellen and Shelly raised 4 children together, who are all now grown with children of their own).  I forgot I was visiting with "the famous Ellen and Shelly," who get called whenever a statement on gay issues is needed!

It was fun listening to the interview (Ellen put it on speaker phone so both Shelly and I could hear). She rememberd what it was like when they first got together nearly 40 years ago, when their lawyer told them they could never admit they were a couple, when they couldn't touch each other in public, when they had to pretend to have separate bedrooms and doors were always to remain closed.  In those days they didn't know a single other same sex couple who were raising children.  When one of their children was in an auto accident (Shelly's biological child), Ellen had to say she was Shelly's sister so she could go into the emergency room with Shelly and so she could visit the child she had been helping to raise. 

Ellen said that they could not even have imagined that things would be the way they are today, with Rhode Island just becoming the eleventh state in the country to approve same sex marriage.  They have lots of gay friends who are raising children and even having their own biological children.  It's definitely a whole new world.

We talked about their feelings regarding the current doctors at Kaiser and I found out that doctors who are taking new patients changes daily, sometimes twice a day, when you check the web site.  That was encouraging.  Maybe my mother would do better with a good looking male doctor that she can flirt with instead of a young woman doctor.

Interestingly, we also got to talking about strengths and weaknesses and I confessed my complete (and growing) inability to deal with math.  I confessed that I can't add and subtract a couple of 2-digit numbers without a calculator.  I always felt really stupid about that until I worked for a psychologist who did assessments for learning difficulties and typed so many reports on people whose math difficulties matched mine perfectly.  These days, you get extra time on tests or other helps if you are diagnosed with a mental impairment in one area of learning.

To my surprise Shelly confessed that she has always been a wiz at math, but her weak point is grammar and spelling.  Ellen and I are strong in that area and she and I talked about diagramming sentences.  

It's odd how if you have a weakness in one area of learning you see yourself negatively and dismiss your strengths as not important--because they are strengths and don't really take any effort on your part.  I found our discussion very affirming, to tell you the truth.
I got home shortly before time to have Walt drive me to Logos to work my afternoon.  It was a very quiet afternoon, with very few customers.  I had time to finish reading "A Little Princess," which I started reading after I saw the show last weekend.  I was reading it to find out what the musical was missing...and I found it.  You need to either completely rewrite the story and star Shirley Temple in it, or you need to find a way to put the magic that is in Hodgson's narration into it.  In this new musical, we don't get a chance to fall in love with little Sara Crewe or find out why she is a "little princess."

It was kind of fun that three different people I knew came into the book store during the afternoon, including a guy I worked with about 20 years ago, whom I see every day on Facebook, but have not seen face to face in all that time.  He was with his son, who, I think, was a toddler when I last saw him and is now a grown man.

Another guy came in with a dog, who reminded me a lot of Jeri & Phil's Lester.  The guy told me that the dog was part dingo.  Very sweet dog.

After work, the evening stretched out before me, with Bob Newhart guest starring on The Big Bang Theory, in one of the funnier episodes, an absolutely perfect role for Newhart.

I had an e-mail from the woman I work with at the Enterprise, pointing out how many errors I made in my review for A Little Princess.  I was appalled, but I realized that I saw the show after my 6 trips to San Rafael, my emotional involvement in getting my mother in the right places, and the fact that I wrote the review at night, after coming home from the show because I had to leave again the next morning.  I told Kim that I knew it was no excuse, but I did want to explain how I screwed up so badly.

Her reponse:  all is forgiven, no worries; i hope for you peace and rest.

You know what?  I haven't seen my mother in almost a week...and I miss her!!

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