…and now peace reigns

Seph and Matt headed back toward town a few hours ago.  I was on
the phone at the time, talking to my new NA sponsee, and there were no
formal goodbyes.  It’s hard to tell just what impact our
conversation had, but I’d be willing to bet money that it had some
therapeutic effect.

Expressing one’s conflicted and “negative” feelings is nearly always
therapeutic.  I guided the conversation that way as much as I
could and then listened attentively and responded honestly. 
That’s the best I can do.  It was a little disappointing to me
that early on in the conversation Doug moved to this end of the room
and focused on a solo computer game.  I know he was listening even
if he didn’t make much response.

We had started talking about the hard feelings over the game scenario,
but the talk soon sequed into something with which Doug has little
experience, but about which Seph and Matt both have unresolved
feelings:  relationships.  Seph is divorced and the marriage
was a nightmare for him. 

In Germany his wife’s erratic behavior caused problems with other
military personnel and dependents, and got the civilian police
involved.  Seph was ordered to deal with her, or else the Army
would and it would rebound negatively on him.  He sent her and his
step-son back to the states, and then dealt with the legal problems and
her erratic behavior long-distance.

Matt set himself up for something similar but very different, with a
woman he met while overseas and invited home with him.  Neither of
them lived up to the other’s expectations, and all weekend here he was
speaking bitterly about “women” in general.  When our conversation
had come around to the open and honest expression of real feelings, I
made that my opening to confront his misogyny. 

I told him I got pissed off listening to him badmouth women.  At
first he denied it, but he couldn’t maintain that for long in the face
of my confrontation.  Then he got defensive and told me about some
of his grievances against the young woman in question.  I pointed
out how he had set himself up for disappointment by having certain
expectations, and how he had encouraged her expectations by vowing to
“take care of” her.

All of us benefited, with the possible exception of Doug.  I
learned a lot of specifics about what’s been going on in the lives of
these two boys I love, and had the pleasure of resolving some issues
with them.  Seph (and to a lesser extent, Matt) got to express
some feelings and insights and get validation for his growth. 
Matt was forced, for a while, to be real.  That’s a biggie, when
one’s everyday persona is a mask. 

Doug… well, it’s hard to say.  Intuitively, I think Doug got
some positive stuff out of the weekend as a whole, but that is my own
unconfirmed guesswork.  As usual, when I told him how I perceived
the situation and asked him for his feedback I got a non-committal,
“Yeah.”  I pressed for more:  agree or disagree, confirm or
deny.  He said that what I’d said had been my opinion and he
couldn’t comment on it.  He has no opinion.  He also has one
of the most severe cases of alexithymia I’ve ever encountered.  He
could be the alexithymia poster boy.

My Wild
Weekend

As I typed that tagline, I almost laughed out loud remembering some of

the wild weekends thirty to forty years ago when I ran with a much

wilder crowd.  At the time, I valued excitement and
novelty. 

Novelty still  has some value for me, as long as it’s not too
wild

(bears and moose in my yard are not much fun), but in general now I

favor peace and quiet.  There’s been a lot of noise and chaos
here

since about 1:20 AM Saturday, when Doug’s friends Matt and Sephiroth

arrived for another weekend of gaming.

Innumerable phone calls went into the planning of it, and the last few

of them were a series of updates on how late they’d be and
why. 

The last call was from Matt’s cell just outside Willow, where they had

been pulled over by a State Trooper for speeding.  I was
reading

in bed by the time they got here.  They played D&D in
Doug’s

room for a while, and were all sacked out in various places when I
woke

up yesterday morning.

They moved their game into the front room yesterday, and I got my
first

extended exposure to their wrangling over rules and
procedures. 

The game wasn’t going well.  Eventually, they packed it
in. 

After pizza, they decided to take a walk.  It was when they

returned that everything got so noisy and confused.  Watching
and

listening to the three of them engaged in their separate amusements

together gave me cause to reflect on how these three boys (I’ve tried

thinking of them as men, even young men, and it just doesn’t work for

me), all loners, each with his own “social adjustment problems,” came

together in school and found a bond in role-playing games.

They introduced me to video RPGs years ago, and we spent some time

yesterday talking about them, particularly the Final Fantasy

series.  I, and my style of gaming, are a marvel to
them. 

They’re amazed that I can spend so much time in a single game,
leveling

up characters, creating superior weapons and equipment for
them. 

I’m semi-legendary among the young male gamers I know, for the time I

spent in the Monster Arena in FFX, making rods for my mages that were

capable of mugging Nemesis, the strongest boss monster, to
death. 

My propensity for stealing is another point of interest to the

guys.  Doug says that in FF Tactics, where there are options
to

steal armor, steal weapon, etc., if there was a “steal underwear”

option, I’d strip the characters bare.  What can I
say?  It’s

the best way to get the best equipment.

Greyfox is in Anchorage this weekend, working a gun show.  He

phoned in the evening after he got home.  Our conversation
was

interrupted by Doug:  “Mom!  Hilary has had her

kittens!”  Sure enough, her abdomen was slim and soft, and she
had

a “milk belly.”  She had surprised us with the pregnancy when
she

was little more than a kitten herself, and then surprised us again
with

her kittens.

I asked Doug where they were and he didn’t know.  I told him
to

keep an eye on Hilary and she’d lead him to them.  I was
still

talking to Greyfox when Doug came into the room with three gray
kittens

cupped in his hands.  We had assumed that the feral gray tabby
who

comes in through the open bathroom window to eat at the ladies’
feeding

station was the sire of Hilary’s litter, and it appears so. 
All

the kittens have tabby markings.  Hilary is the gray and white
cat

in the picture with Koji in yesterday’s blog.

At one point last night, while Doug and Matt were watching anime in
Japanese with English subtitles on the computer with the volume up and
Seph sat down about seven feet away in the kitchen with his laptop and
turned the volume up
on his preferred anime to compete with the noise from Doug’s, I blew
it.  Adding my noise to the cacophany, I yelled, “Doesn’t
someone
have HEADPHONES!?!”  The relative quiet was sudden, and the
expressions were shocked.

Seph
muted his laptop, and after a few more episodes of Vandread, Matt fell
asleep in Couch Potato Heaven hugging Seph’s Chee doll (or is it “Chi”,
the Chobits character?).  Where Doug was sitting, both boys could
see the monitor, but were out of each other’s line of sight.  I
told Doug that Matt was asleep.  Since he’d already seen all the
episodes of Vandread, probably more than once, he agreed to shut it
down, and finally quiet descended.  I said it sounded wonderful,
which got a surprised comment from Seph.  Apparently, to him
silence isn’t a sound.  It’s my favorite.

The guys woke up slow this morning.  I had some quiet time before
Doug stumbled out of his room.  Then Matt woke up on the couch and
finally Seph wandered in from his car where he’d been sleeping. 
When all were assembled, I made breakfast.  I don’t know how they
did it, but the PS2 never went idle as they ate.  Three guys, two
controllers, and the odd one out plays the winner of the next
round.  The current game is Street Fighter Alpha3: bash and crash
sound effects and a high-pitched feminine voice repeating, “Cut it
OUT!” over and over and over and…. 

I hope they can overcome their differences over rules and procedures
and get back to a quiet game of D&D.  That seems
unlikely.  Doug was set yesterday to DM a game.  He’d ruled,
“no evil characters,” but Matt apparently doesn’t do anything but
evil.  I wonder if Doug set it up that way on purpose.  There
was a telling moment here yesterday.  I was here at the
keyboard.  They were playing noisy PS2 games a few feet
away.  I said something to the effect that I’d like for them to
get back to the D&D and let me use the PS2 (a pretext for some
relative quiet).  That was before I understood that the D&D
was stymied by their conflicts over “evil”. 

Not long after that, Doug was in the kitchen talking to Seph and I
overheard some reference to me, don’t recall exactly what was
said.  The impression I got was that Doug was impatient for me to
get off the computer and onto the PS2.  I told him he could have
said something to me, instead of making me eavesdrop and pick up on his
oblique references.  He said, “…and what kind of teenager would
I be, then?”  Seph and I said, almost in unison, “a
twenty-four-year-old teenager.”

Just now, I confronted Doug, trying to get him to confront the
issues.  It has led to an interesting and enlightening
conversation, which I’m now going to give my full attention.

The Furry Life

My recent blog about my allergies drew a comment from my sister-in-law
about her allergies.  All the best people have them.  The SIL
says her doc told her to get rid of the cats.   “Not bloody
likely,” is a loose paraphrase of her response.

The docs have been warning me to steer clear of dogs and cats since my
infancy.  My mother took it seriously and wouldn’t let me have a
pet until I was… oh, about eight years old.  By then, I’d worn
down her resistance.  She was an Aries, fire sign, instinctively
dominant and quick to anger, but I’m an earth sign, lots of
stick-to-itiveness, and a Virgo with an infinite supply of
well-reasoned arguments for anything.  Mama never stood a chance.

On
one of my recent visits to my not-doctor (my provider at the local
clinic is a physician’s assistant — the clinic is loosely overseen by
an MD in Anchorage and as far as I know there isn’t a doctor in
practice for miles and miles around here)–”recent visit” in geological
time and in terms of my infrequent visits to the clinic….  I’m
supposed to get annual checkups and reassessment for renewing my asthma
prescriptions, but by using my meds conservatively (otherwise known as
skipping doses) I manage to stretch it to about every year-and-a-half
or more.  Anyhow, one of the last few times I saw Sarah (the PA),
she told me to “keep the cats off the bed.”

Yeah, right, I’ll do that.  I didn’t bother explaining that my
“bedroom” is the big open front room of the house that is living,
dining and kitchen combined and I can’t just shut a door and keep the
cats out.  Perhaps she has never had a cat, and thinks you can
tell them to stay off the bed and they won’t sneak back on it when your
back is turned.

She
didn’t mention the dog.  That’s good, because the dog owns the
bed.  The cats own the house, which includes the bed.  Many
times, every mammal in the house is gathered on my bed.  When
we’re watching a video, Doug even sprawls across the bed. 
Whenever Doug and I, or Greyfox and I, are within a meter or so of each
other, Koji wants to be between us.  If a cat wants to nap on the
bed, it doesn’t care how many other mammals are there as long as that
cat’s favorite pillow is vacant. 

Koji only uses a pillow when I’m sleeping late.  He moves up from
his spot at the foot of the bed and lays his head on my pillow and
breathes in my face until I wake up.  Opening one’s eyes and
gazing into the nostrils of that big black leather snoot can make an
early riser out of anyone.

Koji was a cute pup.  “Cute” is in a puppy’s job
description.  At first, he’d have to run and jump into the chair
at the foot of my bed and from there onto the bed.  When he got a
little bigger, he could climb directly onto the bed.  Conditioned
by my mother and several ex-husbands to the axiom that dogs must stay
off the furniture, I’d always order him back onto the floor. 

Sometimes
as I was drifting off to sleep, I’d feel the little shake of the bed
that signaled Koji’s presence.  I’d say, “down”, and another
little shake of the bed would signal Koji’s compliance.  One
night, I was a little farther into sleep than usual when Koji decided
to join me on the bed, and I misinterpreted the slight shake of Koji
lying down on the bed for his jumping off the bed.  After that, he
knew that if he waited until I was asleep, he could get on the bed and
stay there until I awoke.  It didn’t take long for me to realize
that, and to notice that he was a good foot warmer as well. 
Sneakiness is no longer necessary.  Mama and the husbands are all
gone now.  The cats might prefer not sharing the bed with the dog,
but that uncouth creature is both big and persistent.

The
cats go wherever they want to go in here.  If it involves climbing
the antique Navajo rug hanging on my wall, or swinging from a hanging
plant, a stun dart from the blowgun will dissuade them.  Beyond
kittenhood, they’ve all got better manners than that, but nothing has
ever dissuaded them from using me as furniture when I’m sound
asleep.  It’s tolerable, as far as I’m concerned.  I can ever
accept a cat on my lap when I’m awake.  Okay, let’s get real…
I’ll stay put longer than I’d do other wise, if there’s a cat on my
lap, rather than inconvenience the cat.  I might not go as far as
the legendary Emperor who cut off the silk-and-gold brocade sleeve of
his robe rather than wake the cat who was sleeping on it, but I’ll go
out of my way to humor a cat.  Most days, I feel the cats are
worth the trouble.

I
was questioning that judgement the other day.  I sleepily plopped
down on the couch in my silk pajamas with my morning’s first cup of
coffee.  When my silken-clad bottom felt a definite cool, wet
squishiness, I popped back up.  It was a hairball that one of the
cats had coughed up.  I’m pretty sure that the particular culprit
there was “Muffin” (above, formerly known to Mark, the man who left
them here with us, as Prissy Pretticat).  The hairball was too
large to have been produced by either of the kittens, Nemo or Hilary,
and old Granny Mousebreath (left, whom Mark had called Sassy and we
briefly called Sassafrass the Dancing Cat, until Greyfox began calling
the two calicos Muffin and Meatloaf interchangeably because for a while
he couldn’t distinguish between them.  After he sobered up, he
could tell the difference.), Muffin’s mother, prefers leaving hers in
the dark hallway so they can squish up between my bare toes on my way
to the bathroom in the wee smalls.

Secrets and Lies

The last two NA meetings I’ve attended had as their topics a couple of
subjects I know a lot about.  Last night’s topic was
secrets.  Two weeks ago (I’m back to my regular schedule, only
going to town when I’m driving the rehab van), we talked about
lies.  The first person who shared last night (one of my favorite
dope fiends, an old guy, older than Greyfox and almost as old as I am)
referred to secrets as “lies by omission.”  That nails it, as I
see it.  He also talked about how it is inappropriate (according
to 12-step dogma) to tell all your secrets in open meetings, that this
is what a sponsor is for.

Greyfox and I both shared and were consistent with our usual
pattern.  He came right out and said he doesn’t subscribe to all
that 12-step dogma and pointed out where his beliefs and practices
differ from it.  I shared my point of view without pointing out
the obvious, that it differs from the 12-step dogma.

I talked about how I got clean with the help of group therapy and that
in working the steps my Higher Power is the only sponsor I’ve ever
had.  I’ve never been able to find a sponsor in the program who
has (as I was told when I started going to meetings that I should seek
in a sponsor) what I want and need.  I even told the long version
of that story, about how the only person I’d found, either in our NA
group or the AA group I attended, who had the requisite combination of
self-assurance and comfort with his sobriety, the ability to perceive
bullshit in others and the courage to confront it, was a man.  A
sponsor isn’t going to do me any good if he can’t see when I’m in
denial or won’t tell me about it.  And I certainly don’t want a
sponsor whose serenity isn’t at least a match for mine.  This man
seemed perfect for what I needed.  He was strong, blunt and
perceptive.  Unfortunately, the dogmas dictate that sponsors and
sponsees must be of the same gender.

I told the group that when I asked him if he’d be my sponsor, he
yielded to political correctness and referred me to his wife.  I
was so shocked at the time that my courtesy failed me and I laughed in
his face.  His wife possesses zero observable serenity, attends AA
regularly and shows up at an occasional NA meeting when she is
particularly afraid of slipping into active drug addiction or resuming
some other of her old self-destructive habits.  At AA, she’s
usually with her husband, but she slips into the NA meetings alone and
talks about wanting to go out with an old boyfried and get
loaded.  Yeah, she’d make a great sponsor, wouldn’t she?

After saying that my group therapy experience with the junkies from the
Family House heroin rehab program had taught me that the deepest,
darkest and most shameful secrets are the ones it is most important to
tell, I carried it a step further.  I said that having learned how
liberating it was to reveal all my dark secrets in that therapy group
with people I trusted, I had found a mental and spiritual liberation
beyond that.  I said I blog my secrets, and lay all my shameful
acts and worst mistakes out there for the world to see.

Reactions, as usual when I’m being frank and truthful, varied from
amused incredulity to stunned admiration.  I’m used to that
now.  That’s how it has been here ever since I started blogging my
memoirs.  Some of you recognized the truth and appreciated my
candor, while others (too politically correct to come right out and
call me a liar) said it was good fiction writing.  I’ve always
been able to tell convincing lies, but sometimes, for some people, the
truth is unbelievable.

Later on in the meeting, something one young woman said about the
comfort she found in telling her secrets to her sponsor meshed with
something the “old” guy had said about “good secrets,” about good deeds
and random acts of kindness that you don’t talk about, which give you
good feelings about yourself in the same way that shameful secrets harm
your self-esteem.  If there had been any lulls in the sharing last
night, I would have double-dipped and talked about that other kind of
“good secret”, other people’s secrets, the dark things my sponsees have
shared with me.  I didn’t get the chance in the meeting to talk
about that, so when the van was filled with the rehab clients ready to
go back to the ranch, I took advantage of the captive audience to talk
about it then.

That is, I believe, the power in the sponsor/sponsee
relationship:  the bond of trust.  When someone has done the
fourth step, the inventory of her life’s misdeeds and her “character
defects”, and then tells me about them in her fifth step, an exchange
takes place on the emotional and spiritual levels.  She is giving
me her trust and what she gets in return is a form of absolution, of
liberation from that burden of secret guilt she’s been carrying. 
I  have a small and growing store of such secrets. 
Individually, for my sponsees they’re a horrific lot of painful
memories that have now lost their power and most of their pain. 
In the aggregate, for me they are a treasure with which I’ve been
entrusted.  It’s a privilege to keep such secrets, and that’s no
lie.

Feeling better today…

I haven’t been complaining here, but I could have.  I have for
several weeks had one helluva miserable case of “hay fever” or allergic
rhinitis.  I sniveled and sniffled around home, and took ephedra
when I needed to go to out in public.  I thought it was caused by
pollen.

Last week, we had several rainy days in a row and I realized that any
pollen that had been floating around had been grounded.  That
meant that something else was causing my allergic reactions.  I
figured it had to be either some airborne pollutants in the house, such
as cat dander, dog dander, my dander, Doug’s dander, dust mites or
such, or else it was a food allergy.

I “asked my body” which it was (using muscle response testing, applied
kinesiology) and determined that it was “food”.  Actually it was
drink, tea, the “healthy” tea I’ve been drinking for months, off and
on.  I’m off it again now, back on coffee.  It’s my house
blend, one part Yuban Colombian to two parts cheap store-brand dark
roast decaf.

My sniffles have dried up.  Yaay!

In general, I think allergies suck.  I’ve got so many of them that
sometimes I wonder what life would be like on my home planet. 
Their many manifestations are bad enough:  the hives, the
sniffles, asthma and all.  What’s worse, in my opinion, is the
fact that the damned things don’t hold still.  They shift around
on me and things that were safe for me last month are suddenly poison.

Well, home has become somewhat like the library, only instead of having
an hour to use the computer, Doug says I have half an hour.  He’s
in the middle of another fanfic writing tournament and something is
about to happen there.  Later… maybe I’ll get to do some Xanga
surfing after he’s asleep.

One of my heroes is gone.

I seldom weep at death.  Maybe part of that is because I wept
myself dry over my father’s death when I was an ignorant and
ill-informed little girl.  Another large part of it is that in my
personal experience of death and reincarnation, death has never been
final.  I have no reason to pity the dead, and feel that if their
survivors are overcome with grief, that’s their concern and their
self-chosen misfortune.

Even so, today as I was listening to Talk of Alaska on public radio,
when Steve Heimel interrupted the discussion of marijuana’s legal
status in our state to announce the death of former governor Jay Hammond,
I wept.  I had very little personal contact with Jay.  He was
elected governor during the time I worked for the state, and I helped
in a minor way with his campaign.

Jay came to office soon after the legislature had managed to spend, in
only about two years, the megabucks the state had reaped from the
Prudhoe Bay oil lease sales.  He thought something should be done
to ensure that the oil taxes coming into the state coffers wouldn’t be
spent as profligately, and that they would benefit the people of the
state.  He created the Alaska Permanent Fund, the dividends from
which are still distributed to all qualified Alaskans, adults and
minors, each October.

He made an impression on me with his outspoken and plain spoken common
sense and his casual attitude toward the superficial matters of dress
and appearance.  He is known as the Bush Rat Governor.  We
usually saw him in jeans and a plaid shirt, and always bearded. 
His life’s real work was as a bush pilot, and after serving in Juneau
he lived out his life in a remote part of Southern Alaska.  We
only heard from him on those infrequent occasions when he felt that
some stupid political matter warranted his wise comments.

He was incredibly influential when he did choose to speak up, although
often money talked louder and the electorate sometimes ignored Jay’s
wisdom, to our public detriment.  Alaska is a much worse place,
the planet is bereft, with Jay Hammond gone.

Ten Fictitious Characters
with whom I’d like to have sex

I have seen this sorta quizzy thingie around a few times.  The
answers I have seen all seem to refer to actors who play fictitious
characters.  I, too, can think of more than a few actors who turn
me on.  Johnny Depp, Viggo Mortensen, and Ralph Feinnes come
immediately to mind.  With a little thought I could come up with a
few dozen more, but the object of this exercise is “fictitious
characters.”

Okay,
right off the top of my head, I can think of two.  They are Billy
Bob Holland and Dave “Streak” Robichaux.  Both men, Billy Bob, a
former Texas Ranger living in Montana, haunted by the ghost of his
partner and best friend whom he accidentally shot and killed when they were on an illegal
raid into Mexico, and Dave, a Sheriff’s investigator in Louisiana who
got thrown off the New Orleans PD for being something of a rogue cop,
are the creations of this man, James Lee Burke.  The author
himself is kinda sexy-looking and anyone who can write such sexy and
sensitive characters is probably a pretty good fuck, unless he puts it
all into his writing.

So, that’s #1 and #2.  For #3, I’ll bring up an oldie but goodie,
Travis McGee.  His creator, the late John D. McDonald, wasn’t
sexy-looking, in my opinion.  McGee was played (badly) by Frank
Sinatra in a stinker of a movie.  Ol’ Blue Eyes sorta turned me
off to McGee until I got back into the books where he was more himself.

As a very small child, the first fictional character who ever made my
heart race was a radio character, The Shadow (that’s #4), Lamont
Cranston, who had the power to cloud men’s minds and cream little
girls’ jeans.  He was voiced then by Orson Welles, whose looks
never turned me on.  Good thing it was radio, eh?   In 1994,
Cranston was played in a movie by Alec Baldwin, who also fails to
arouse any special feelings in me.

Hieronymous
Bosch is another fictional character who makes my knees go weak. 
No, not the late and famous artist.  I just put the pic in here
for shits and giggles because I don’t want to put any actors’ pictures
in.  I mean Harry Bosch (#5) who was tagged with the painter’s
name in the fictional orphanage where he grew up.  It was in LA,
where Harry was a cop for a while, then a private eye, and in his new
book is back on the force again, specializing in closing cold
cases.  Bosch was once played in a movie by Clint Eastwood, who
does excite me, especially in Unforgiven, but remember, we’re talking fiction here.  Michael Connelly creates the Harry Bosch books.

Hmmm… almost all my fictional lovers appear to be fictional cops or
detectives.  I wonder why that is?  Maybe it’s because I
haven’t been reading much fiction besides detective stories.  I do
read true crime stories, and some of those serial killers are awfully
sexy, but the problem set here was to come up with ten fictional lovers.  Yet another one, #6, is Liam Campbell, an Alaska State Trooper created by Dana Stabenow.

One fictional guy I’d like to meet and try to seduce in real life isn’t
a detective, but is a supporting character in a series of detective
stories.  Mick Ballou (#7) is a friend of fictional detective Matt
Scudder in Lawrence Block’s books.  Mick is the son of a
butcher.  He runs a saloon and sometimes puts on his father’s old
butcher’s apron to go to Mass or to go butcher some miscreant who needs
killing, public service homicide.

[aside:  Suddenly, a heavy downpour of rain, accompanied by small
hailstones, has begun here.  I'm glad we weren't working on the
roof, but I suppose that if we had been we could have seen the clouds
building.  This caught me by surprise.  Hail used to be
extremely rare here, as were thunderstorms.  Both meteorological
phenomena require more heat in the atmosphere than Alaska used to
have.  Just another of the effects of global warming....]

I’m bogging down here, gonna go browse my book shelves to jog my memory….

Two, #8 and #9, I can take from Jack Whyte’s Camulod Chronicles.   Uther Pendragon, father of King Arthur, and his cousin Merlin Britannicus,
are both very sexy.  How could I have forgotten them. 
Perhaps Arthur himself and Lancelot will eventually become fuckable
characters, but thus far Mr. Whyte hasn’t published their mature
years.  I do tend, at this stage of my life, to go for mature men.

Stumped and casting back over my youth for another character who turned
me on, I finally have come up with #10, Ayn Rand’s John Galt.  Who
is John Galt?
 

UPDATE on yesterday’s Mind Stuff blog:

I said there were some broken links on my KaiOaty page with all the info about brainwaves, shamanism and such.  I said that someday I’d fix it.  Today was that day.

Ta DAAH!