man the pumps...or something like that

When I was a child, women stayed home. They gave up whatever they were doing and were fulfilled as homemakers. This is what had been done for generations (well, actually, not quite but that requires an comparison of pre and post industrial revolution society, a few paragraphs about the evolution of guilds in the 16th and 17th centuries, the rise of the mercantile class and the growth of the middle class in the 20th century).

TV shows and movies told us this was the way life was and it would make everyone happy. If it didn't make you happy, well, then you just weren't trying hard enough.
I've been meditating on the differences in attitude between then and now. The biggest thing is that nowadays it is permissible - just barely - to admit to being unhappy. There are drugs available that help a lot and the stigma is, while not gone completely, at least at the stage where most people don't want to appear to be insensitive about the issue.

This spring I went through a medical assessment to see if the stew of pills I'm taking to keep me on an even keel are still doing their job or if things can be fiddled with a bit more. What fun.
In the time I spent chatting with the good doctor, it became obvious to me just how much attitudes have changed since I was a child. I'd long known mom struggled with undiagnosed depression because it wasn't something proper people got.

As we talked, I began to see how she was self-medicating with alcohol and at least one other member of her family had prescribed himself a continual rye & ginger drip (mum's favorite was brandy with a bit of warm water starting, usually around lunch just before 'sleepy time'). I never mentioned to him she got a sizeable supply of valium too, under the table, through one of my cousins when he was a drug rep.

I remember being locked out of the house, 6 years old, home from school for lunch and unable to get in. By the time Mom showed up I was panicked, crying and terribly embarrased because I'd had to go to the bathroom when I first got home and couldn't wait anymore - I ended up soaking my leotards and leaving a sizeable puddle on the steps. I still remember her look of irritation; she told me not to fuss so much and said maybe now I'd understand what it was like when I went to a friend's house and didn't tell her where I was.

It's just too weird. I know that's not like all the dramatic material out there about child abuse - the joke in my family is I got one spanking in my life and my sister thinks I'm exaggerating. I mean, is that the worst thing I can dredge up? There wasn't anything really big. But what is normal to a seven year old? I didn't grow up in some one else's house so I have nothing to compare it with.

6 degrees of meme

So, Rob Lee of Unconventional Wisdom blog has seen fit in his eponymous redundancy (yeah, I like big words...what of it...) to tag me with the "6 random things about me" meme.

I feel like Phylis Dyler in a hippie costume on Laugh-In....totally not right for a hip kind of show. Hmmm, I guess the modern equivalent would be for McCain to appear on Saturday Night Live blinged to the tits in a satin track suit performing a gangsta rap about getting repeatedly dusted at the Hanoi Hilton. yo-yo-yo y'all

Anyway, I have been tagged by Rob (may your beans increase) Lee and, after I list the 6 random things about me, I am to link to his blog and then tag six others so that they may do this too and there are some other details - rules to follow.

1. At the age of 53 I have started taking singing lessons.
2. I was born at the same location where my mother was born, in Edmonton. Her mother went to a "lying in" hospital (more like a small hotel with mid-wives included in the room service) located on the same property where, years later, the sprawling Royal Alex was built.
3. I don't like pickles or anything else preserved with vinegar except for sauerkraut.
4. I once cooked lunch for Peter Tosh and his retinue including band and back-up singers.
5. I don't drink but I swim like a fish that does.
6. I am one of probably 3 Canadians over the age of 6 who is unable to play Cribbage. Despite many tries, I can't remember the rules - every time someone tries to teach me it sounds like they're making it up as they go along: "15-2, 15-4, and a queen gives me 6 points - let's see, you have, um 15-2, 15-4 and, oh look, a red jack means you go back 10"...after a few hands I usually throw the cards in the air and yell "FIZZBIN" but no one else gets the Star Trek reference and I'm sent to room until I'm ready to play nice.

At this point I'm supposed to tag 6 people but I don't really know that many folk with blogs/pods AND Rob seems to have already tagged them.... Also, having been through a few years of talk therapy and told repeatedly by qualified professional (could tell she was a good shrink 'cause she was way more neurotic than most of her patients) to never participate in anything resembling a chain letter or I'd blow up in a cloud of tics and insecurities.

But because I've agreed to this thing my overdeveloped sense of obligation insists I tag at least two people. So I here-in-after name firstly someone I'd like to find out more about (and who, being a fellow Catholic, I know he is obliged to forgive me for this trespass...) and secondly the one other person I know hasn't already been tagged...



1. Sean McGaughey, aka the Duct Tape Guy and musician extraordinaire with his For the Sake of the Song podcast and his latest most excellent venture Catholic New Media Roundup.

2. Mark Blaseckie, at his brand new see[sic] blog the technical genius of my life and original resident at Babas Beach (who plays by the rules and thinks I should tag 4 more people but I'll leave him with that challenge...)

And now, the rules that this is played by - suspiciously like Fizzbin, methinks...

• Link to the person who tagged you.
• Post the rules on the blog.
• Write six random things about yourself.
• Tag six people at the end of your post.
• Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
• Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

you know you're getting old when

Some things just aren't funny any more...It's hard to say that because it echoes what my own mother used to say - talking about the brittle humour and facile jokes at surface appearances. It's happening right now with what is passing for political satire in the states.

Wow, that sounded pretty crotchety, didn't it? Well, unfortunately it is true. What is being satirized currently is little more than the surface issues. McCain is old, Clinton is a woman and Obama is running quickly in the opposite direction from his pastor.

By accepting these simplistic stabs at making fun of political leaders, we don't have to look deeper into issues and the more difficult solutions being called for.

What is the problem with the words spoken by Obama's (former) spiritual advisor? He wasn't saying the bombings of 9-11 were justified, but that perhaps there was a reason beyond one of blind desire to inflict unreasoning terror upon innocent people. It does tie back into the increasing use of guerilla warfare and the involvement of civilian bystanders. Of course no member of a western civilization wants to look at just how many of their civilians are killed by our unthinking actions - either by starvation or violence.

The need here is to examine why Americans have to demonize rather than understand their enemies. The love-it-or-leave-it philosophy leaves absolutely no room for examining constructive criticism and seeking a way to heal the past.

And I like Americans - my sister was born in Seattle, my dad went to the University of Washington and I can remember many summers spent in Washington, Idaho, Oregon and California. Canadians tend to get quite defensive about Americans, offensive actually, when mistaken for Yanks (which happens frequently-we share many similarities) but there are a lot of things we do share with them beyond television shows and blue jeans...but more of that another time.

Speaking of Greek - Doctor's have their own language

And it's all so we don't throw ourselves under the next convenient bus.
Anyway, the biopsy results were that there were no cells showing malignancy but lots of different cells that will happily continue to grow without restraint. Anyone here remember pictures of goiters from the good old days before iodized salt?










Okay, mine isn't that bad right now but, left alone, it will be and on both sides of neck.
Also, some of the cell structures in the biopsy are the kind that have a rather unpleasant habit of suddenly deciding to go to the dark side - Darth Synthroid....so I see a surgeon in a few weeks and find out about having yet another bit of the innards yarded out. It isn't working anyway and is starting to get uncomfortable, so what the heck, eh?

At least that's what I hope. I don't want to go through another year of playing the ultrasound, biopsy specialist boogey. It takes a long time, time off work, time driving to appointments, time sitting in waiting rooms, time wondering, wondering, wondering what's developed since the last time...

The Wheels on the Bus

keep falling off, falling off, falling off...

If my life was a Greek play, the Chorus would be humming that in the background through just about every day now. It starts when you turn 40; things stop working and other bits get scheduled for removal and maybe replacement - depending on parts availability for your particular model.
I've been joking for a few years now that I've had pretty much every disposable organ removed (except for the standards, appendix and tonsils) so now the medical professionals are starting to sharpen their scalpels for the semi-disposables, those bits that really have a function but can be replaced by medication or something mechanical.

I started this post when I was just about to head off to the doctor's office for the result of a thyroid biopsy - oh boy, was that fun but another story...in a long series of uncomfortable, painful and/or embarrassing medical examinations I have had over the years.

I've had a little thyroid problem for years, called Hashimoto's thryoiditis, that is responsible for a disparate group of symptoms from dry skin, lethargy - some days, when the thyroxine needs adjusting upwards, lethargy is more like wading through glue - constipation and and enlarged tongue, of all things. Actually that last item explains a lot of difficulty I've had over the years in simply talking quickly and clearly. Anyway, thyroxine is a synthetic hormone that replaces the thyroid hormone not being produced by the thyroid...Because the thyroid isn't producing enough hormone the brain secretes another hormone to stimulate the poor wee thyroid but only makes it grow larger - and become a goiter.

Anyway, long story short, I've been under control for a long time but last year my dentist noticed growth in the thyroid. That could mean an adjustment in meds but my doctor thought an ultrasound was in order. This led to a biopsy which meant lying on a gurney, my head hanging back off a pillow so my throat is raised. A total stranger walks into the dimly lit room, wipes the cold ultrasound gel off a part of the neck and injects a local anesthetic into the area of the thyroid he plans on sampling. It felt like my vocal chords were being pinched from the inside...weird. Then he roots around with a hollow needle sucking out bits of the larger nodules to send off for a look-see by a pathologist.

That's what's supposed to happen, anyway. The first time I went for the biopsy, the radiologist (i.e. man with many needles) looked at the ultrasound and said, "gee, you've got so many nodules, I think it's just a goiter." Off I scampered, happily free of the prospect of having needles jammed in my neck. The doctor said, "Of course it's a goiter: your thyroid is enlarged. That's what 'goiter' means - I want to know WHY!" and back I went.

Yesterday, when I started this post, I found out the why. With my history I have a statistically significant increased risk of developing one of four cancers in the thyroid. Three of them are quite treatable and have excellent prognosis, one of them means I'm dead before Christmas. But if it was that one, I'd be dead now. Anyway, there was more than a little apprehension waiting for the results to this one.

I'll post the results later. This is already too long and I've got a lot of housework to do in a very short amount of time before my friend from Edmonton shows up for a golf game. Man, I really need this - a few hours away from everything. I love golf, it's one of those few things that forces me to focus on one thing at a time and, while I'm not great at it, I am relatively competent - which is a nice change from just about everything else right now.