October 19, 2005

• My hero…
  
  and some other stuff.

  Heroic action may or may not come easily and naturally to people with
  NPD (that’s narcissistic personality disorder, for those of you who
  aren’t up on psych jargon and/or have not read any of Greyfox’s or my
  previous posts about his work at transcending the disorder). 
  Usually, it depends on whether or not the guy (most Ns are men) thinks
  there is some narcissistic supply for him in the heroism.  In any
  event, heroism is in the eye of the beholder.

  A week or so ago, Greyfox announced to me in one of his daily calls
  from the free phone at the Big Lake Library that when his latest
  shipment of knives came in, since he would be driving to Willow, which
  is halfway between where he lives in Wasilla and where I live on the
  edge of the back of beyond, to pick up the knives, he would come on out
  here and bring me some supplies and take some of our dirty clothes to
  the laundromat for me.

  My immediate response was gleeful:  “Do a little bit of the Mighty
  Mouse!”  He’s a good singer and a great mimic, and I just love to
  hear him sing, “Here I come to save the day….”  We talked a bit
  more, and still feeling ecstatic at not having to go to town, or to the
  laundromat (at the time, I was living under the debilitating effects of
  the Killer Turtleneck Sweater), I said, “Do Mighty Mouse again.” 
  Again he indulged me.  We were both happy at the prospect. 
  He was probably happiest about the new knives he would be getting, and
  he surely hadn’t realized how much aggravation he would be going
  through to shop for me and bring the stuff up the valley.

  As things worked out, his knives came in yesterday, along with a
  25-pound bag of garbanzo and fava bean flour for me (I’m safely
  gluten-free for months to come).  He was concerned that he
  wouldn’t have enough room in his car to haul everything, so he picked
  up the knives yesterday and waited until today to bring my groceries
  up, stopping again at the Willow Post Office to get my flour. 
  Remember, I said he was doing all this because he already needed to go
  through Willow to get the knives?  Yeah.  

  Today he posted a blog entry
  about some of his adventures while shopping for me, and there are
  little tidbits to be found in the X-grams he has left in my comments
  for the last few days.  I had been planning to trim his beard for
  him while he was here, but in the chaos of unloading groceries and loading laundry, etc., we both forgot
  that.  I probably haven’t heard the final chapter of the story yet
  – there’s still tonight’s 9 PM call when his cell minutes become free
  – but he left me a brief message a moment ago on my CallWave:  he
  had just realized that he should have left all three of the big rolls
  of duct tape here with me, because he doesn’t have room in his cabin
  for the one he took home with him.  He’s only half joking. 
  It’s a tiny cabin and he shares it with a varying number of cats
  somewhere between half a dozen and a dozen, plus furniture and
  appliances… and knives, mustn’t forget the knives, swords and battle
  axes… oh, and guns, too.

  ---

  I posted my silly Halloween blog early for several reasons:

  1. I had finished getting it ready, not wanting to wait too
     long and
     then miss the holiday because it wasn’t ready.  Halloween has
     always been one of my favorite holidays, for the candy before I kicked
     the sugar addiction, for the costumes and general wackiness after that
     and, for the last fifteen years, because it is also my wedding
     anniversary (which fact might clue the alert among you to another
     reason why I posted the “Happy Halloween” blog before October 31st
     –like maybe I have something else I want to post on my anniversary).
  2. There was plenty of more serious blogfodder in the news, but
     there was too much of it for me to be able to narrow it down
     sufficiently to avoid overkillposting.
  3. After reading the news,  I was ready for some comic
     relief.  Now, after working on my post for Friday, in response to
     the Featured_Grownups challenge, “My Worst Experience Ever,” I’m ready for some news.

  And now, the news in brief:

  Alaska
  Here in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley Papa Pilgrim
  had his day in court last week.  In Anchorage, the city government
  is considering spending over  half a million $$ to determine the
  extent of the human trafficking problem
  in the city and study how best to deal with it.  The U.S.
  Department of Justice would provide most of the funding.  
  The U.S. Senate Energy Committee today approved a budget measure that
  would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

  Outside (that’s Alaskanese for elsewhere)
  Zambia is beginning an insignificantly small (25 test subjects) trial of several herbal remedies for HIV/AIDS.

  In Haiti, the first deaths from Hurricane Wilma have occurred.  More to come, most likely.

  In Baghdad — surprise, surprise — Saddam Hussein has pled not guilty
  and says he doesn’t recognize the authority of that court.  
  Yesterday on NPR, I heard several people talking about all the ways in
  which he is not going to get a fair trial, which also does not surprise
  me.

  In Switzerland, the pharmaceutical mega-corp Roche reversed its earlier
  stand and agreed to enter into discussions with countries and companies
  who want to produce their patented drug, Tamiflu. 
  They really had little choice in the matter, since many countries
  including the U.S., can legally overturn patents in exceptional
  circumstances.  I suppose someone there started thinking of a
  bird-flu pandemic as an exceptional circumstance.  D’ya think?

  Enough of this.
  

  • 10:43 pm
  • 5 Comments