While I got ready to go, Doug and I were trying to recall how long it had been since I'd done any laundry.  We knew that I'd taken him with me because I was having trouble breathing.  That was probably early in the course of the atypical fungal pneumonia two years ago, before it became too severe for me to do anything that physically demanding.

Then, when I was beginning to recover from the pneumonia, I got the flu.  I took it easy, took care of myself, and I was starting to feel somewhat better when I caught a cold from Greyfox.  By then, it was December and just before the middle of December Doug called 911 for me and the paramedics took me to the ER.  A few days later, I was back home, in bed, depending on Doug for just about everything.

It has been a long, slow recuperation.  Getting over the acute illness wasn't made any easier by my several chronic disorders.  M.E. is the most challenging of them.  It slows me down, trips me up, impairs my sleep, fogs my brain sometimes, ties my muscles in painful knots at other times.  If all the symptoms hit at once, it might even impair my will to live.  But they don't, and so my will to live remains strong.

My will to dance is something else.  I love to dance.  I used to live to dance.  I danced for a living, even.  I sometimes spontaneously start dancing, but I no longer dance to fatigue.  It's a practical matter, really.  I can't justify it.  When I am unable to keep my house clean, unable to do laundry for two years, I can't justify expending much of my scarce and precious energy on dancing.  Dammit.

I do, however, venture into the yard occasionally, and bend, crouch, kneel, or lie on the ground to play with my camera.  A few days ago, I got my best shot yet of a bumblebee.

I also documented evidence (in the bronzed tips of these Spirea leaves) that we had some patchy frost on the night of the Summer Solstice.

And, I photographed a wildflower I'd never seen before:  Linnaea borealis, or "twinflower."
 

Also in my recent photos are a closeup of a mosquito, a shot of shelf fungus growing on a rotting log, plus a series of shots of the sky around the moment of the Solstice, 9:45 PM AK time June 20th...
 

...and a series taken around the same time, of a neighbor's lilac bush.
 

Meeting new "friends" on Facebook, I have been impelled to think about narcissistic personality disorder simply because there is so much of it apparent in the social media milieu.  Most people using social networking sites reach out for new contacts.  Other than keeping in touch with friends or reconnecting with old friends, that's what the media are for, essentially.  Commercial purposes give further reasons for networking outreach.  This is rapidly becoming the norm in our culture, and it is not necessarily pathological.

A moderate degree of narcissism is present in any healthy personality.  There can be too little self-interest, self-examination, and self-involvement, just as there can be too much of it.  The differences between healthy narcissism and NPD are distinct, and easily recognized when one is aware of the signs.  Reaching out for new contacts and friends is normal and healthy for a normal healthy person who is being social.  A person with NPD seeks out new people to provide the attention and "narcissistic supply" he craves, if he's not getting enough attention -- and "enough" is never enough for long.  To those with NPD, attention is an addictive drug.

A pathological narcissist might come on a little stronger initially than a healthier person, but where ordinary gregariousness shades over into NPD is most apparent after new relationships are established.  When people with healthy egos encounter interpersonal conflicts or clashes over beliefs, they tend to either take them acceptingly in stride or quietly and respectfully back away from the relationship.  A pathological narcissist ("N") is likely to interpret such clashes or differences as personal affronts.  Conflicts do, in fact, attack and threaten the narcissist's fantasy, and he usually reacts in one of two ways:  ingratiation, or rage.

In general, ingratiation is selected when the N has reason to believe that the "source" can be brought around to his way of thinking and will go back to being a good source of narcissistic supply.  Pathological narcissists in ingratiation mode can be some of the most personable and charming people you will ever meet, initially.  One clue that you have encountered an N is if he states an opinion or belief, you express opposition to it, and he immediately backpedals and agrees with you.  Ns tend not to argue.

It is impossible to predict how many such cycles any particular N will go through at any given time before he feels he can't yield again, and erupts into rage.  Sudden, unpredictable, and apparently unprovoked rage is one of the diagnostic markers for NPD.  Rage, of course, is easier to detect in person, in video, or over an audio link, but it can also be seen in the chatty format of a social networking site.  Sometimes, but not always, there is vulgarity, profanity, all-caps, exclamatory punctuation, name-calling, and/or ad hominem attacks inserted into discussions that started out being political, philosophical or just casual discussions.

With or without those indicators of rage, there is always recrimination and rejection -- but, beware:  the pathological N is likely to cool off and come around again for more of the same.  NPD creates trolls and asshats and other forms of online aggravators.  I have no advice on how to handle these people when you encounter them.  Some people get their feelings hurt and withdraw from such abuse.  Others go on the defensive and seek to block them or have them banned if the abuse is sufficiently aggravating.

There are also those who bait the N and play with his mind, and I see theirs as a slightly different personality disorder, but still in Cluster B.  NPD is the disorder least likely to lead the "sufferer" to seek treatment.  Common wisdom has it that they don't suffer, they make others do the suffering.  If an N ends up in therapy, there is a higher likelihood that his therapist will give up and withdraw from the case than there is with any other disorder.

Ironically, one therapeutic approach that can be effective with an N:  consistent, repeated confrontation with reality, is probably the thing he's least likely to receive.  Not only will he shy away from it, few people will be willing to invite, or able to withstand, the abuse that such confrontation elicits.  Fortunately, neuroscience is discovering biochemical factors in personality disorders, and might eventually develop some treatments that really work.

I do so love getting right down into flowers with my macro lens!

As I was capturing wildflowers last week, I captured some gnats that I didn't even know were there until I looked at the images on my monitor.

...of course, they show up best if you click to enlarge.  Likewise, the camouflaged cat, below.

More of the latest shots are here.

Yesterday,  in Wasilla with Greyfox, I was going through shelves and bins at a thrift shop, looking for a camera tripod.  Greyfox's phone rang.  I heard him say, "Oh, shit!"  Then he handed me the phone, saying, "The dog bit Doug in the face."  Doug's voice was strained and shaky as he responded to my questions.

The first thing I asked was, "How bad is it?"  Doug said he had been afraid to look in the mirror.  I can laugh at that now, but at the time I was someplace between irritated and incredulous.  How am I supposed to evaluate his wounds, with only an audio connection, when he hasn't seen the wounds himself?  I told him to call 911 if he thought he needed emergency care.

He said that the bleeding had almost stopped.  I asked him if he had cleaned the wounds and he responded that the only thing he could find was alcohol wipes.  His tone of voice (and maybe some telempathy on my part) said that alcohol stings.  I told him there should also be some benzalkonium chloride wipes, and emphasized that he needed to clean the wounds thoroughly, even if it hurt.

I said that I would leave immediately and hurry right home.  He asked if I'd finished the shopping.  I chuckled and said I hadn't gotten anything on the grocery list.  I was saving the grocery stop for last, because there would be frozen and perishable items.  Doug told me he could handle the first aid and I should go ahead and finish the shopping.  I did go to the grocery store after I dropped Greyfox at his cabin, but my mind wasn't focused on what I was doing and I didn't buy everything I'd intended to.

At the gas station on the way out of town, I inserted my card backwards in the reader on the pump and was slowed further by having to go inside to the cashier to pay for my fuel.  That worked to my advantage, because I recalled that I needed to buy motor oil.  With my mind on Doug and home, I got back out on the road, but it wasn't long before my mind came back to the here-and-now.  I kept focused on the road, and made the 50-mile trip safely.  At home, I grabbed up the frozen food, left everything else in the car, and went inside.

Doug met me at the door.  I gasped at the sight of his face.  The image below is not the gory sight I saw when I walked through that door.  I had cleaned a lot of the blood off his face and beard before he asked, "Are you going to take pictures and blog this?"

After he was cleaned up, and had checked the inside of his mouth and nose, we counted wounds.  There are fifteen in all:  one inside his right nostril, one on the inner surface of his upper lip, and all but one of the rest to the right of the midline of his nose, and on his right cheek.  Koji had been hovering right behind me as I worked on Doug.  Doug said that while he was doing his initial first aid, Koji had come to him and licked him a few times, licking at the blood.

As I finished the cleanup and bandaged his wounds, Doug speculated about what might have happened.  He had been asleep, and presumably Koji was sleeping beside him on the bed, as usual.  The first, most obvious possibility to occur to Doug was that he had rolled over onto Koji and hurt him.  This morning, as we talked it over, Doug said, "Maybe he thought I was a moose."

It seems a reasonable explanation.  Poor Koji has been showing signs of PTSD ever since the moose attacked him while he was out on his chain a few winters ago.  When he whimpers and growls in his sleep, I wake him gently, telling him softly that everything is all right.  If I don't wake him quickly, his agitation escalates.  As I sat here writing this, I heard his agitated breathing from over on the bed where he and Doug are sleeping again, and called out to him.  He started, raised his head, looked around, then his tail thumped the bed a couple times, he lowered his head, and went back to sleep.  Doug, who sleeps like a rock, never stirred.

Recently, I have had a series of dreams in which I find myself out and about without my I.D.  Sometimes in these dreams I have left my purse behind somewhere and don't have money or credit cards either.  Sometimes, it is just that I have no identifying documents.  Other times, I can't identify myself at all -- don't even understand the concept of individual identity.

A common thread tying all these dreams together is the kindness and helpfulness of people I meet under those circumstances.  There was one such dream quite some time ago, in which a whole bunch of strangers helped me track down a purse snatcher.

The dream last night was a bit different.  I found myself downtown in some city, on a bicycle.  The bicycle and my clothes were all I had.  I think it is significant to mention the clothes, because without them it would have been quite a different dream.

I was walking my bike around in a shop because I had no way to lock it up outside, and it got in the way.  The shopkeeper became annoyed, and then became solicitous when he discerned my situation.  His concern for me was in sharp contrast to my own attitude.  He and his wife wanted to take me in, give me something to eat, and help me find "my people."  I just pushed my bike back out onto the street, got on it and rode away.

I usually get that sort of self-examination out of the way before I do things.  Being rash and impulsive in my youth, I was often left wondering what I had been thinking when I got myself into one tight spot after another.  I learned to think things through before committing myself to a course of action.  I gave a lot of thought to the possible ramifications of hooking up with the psychic hotline before I hit "submit" and accepted the contract.  What clinched the deal for me was an oracle reading I did on the issue.  The oracle said I would gain from the experience, so I went for it.

Yesterday, feeling backed into a corner by the supervisor's ultimatum -- keep the customers (they call them that but I have always called them my clients) on the line a lot longer or be dropped from the listings -- I again consulted the oracle.   I switched over to working at night because the supervisor said I'd get more calls then since there were fewer psychics available.  I sat here all Monday night, nodding off a few times, and I received no calls.

On fully half of the eight days I was available for calls, I received none.  On days I did receive calls, many were either prank hangup calls or calls that failed to connect because of problems with the system.  That was frustrating, but the real issue for me was ethical:  the company's disregard for its side of our contractual arrangement, and their pressuring me to use tricks and subterfuge to keep customers on the line longer.  I asked the oracle if it would be in my best interests to cut my losses and quit right then, rather than spend the rest of the week trying to come up to the company's expectations.

The answer was yes, so I quit.  I told my Facebook friends yesterday, and spinksy asked me, "Why quit???"  I hadn't questioned why I quit.  I knew why I was quitting.  As soon as I saw the oracle's response to my question and made the decision to quit, I felt as if a load was lifted off me.  The sense of relief was wonderful.  What I was asking myself was why I'd ever gotten into that situation in the first place.

In the early 1990s, a psychic I had worked beside at a psychic fair in Eureka, California, tried to recruit me for the hotline she worked for.  I had received solicitations from several hotlines during the time I was advertising in magazines.  After some brief investigation, I concluded then that the hotlines were not for me.  So, what the hell happened this time?  Why did I think for even a moment that it would work out for me now?  After having a day to think it over, I've decided to blame it on ascribe it to Mercury retrograde.  No blame, no shame

The retrograde of Mercury that is just past had hit me harder than any other that I can recall.  Astrologically, it makes sense that this should be so, because the whole time that Mercury's apparent motion was going backward through the Zodiac, it was transiting through a very sensitive area of my natal chart, part of that pattern that I have labeled, "intensity," or "curse/blessing."  That natal pattern of mine, with many different aspects, some "beneficial" and others "difficult", is the reason I have concluded that ambivalence is my dharma.  Nothing is ever all one way or another for me.  This life of mine is a both/and thing.

That's true this time, too.  When I cut my losses and cut my ties to the hotline, I came out of it in possession of a headset cordless phone with enough range from the base that I can work in the garden or walk on the muskeg while talking on the phone or waiting for calls.  Having the extra phone line means that we won't have to disconnect from the internet to use the phone.  I can phone Doug when I need to get his attention -- that's a plus that I hadn't considered until right this minute.

Last night when I told Greyfox that I had quit, he assumed that I would immediately have that extra phone line disconnected.  He was pissed off when I told him that to me that extra phone was one of the only gains from this whole experience.  He is worried about how we will pay the bill.  I'm not worried.  Worry is counterproductive.  I'm determined to find some way to earn more money so I can pay for it.  I think it is worth the slightly less than $1.00 a day it costs.

There is one additional gain from my time on the hotline.  One of the line's customers really needed a reading and I was the right person to give it.  We connected psychically and emotionally, and her attitude at the end of our conversation had turned from anxiety to hope and determination.  She doesn't know who I am, because the line required that I use an alias, and in the contract I promised not to reveal any personally identifying information to their customers.  I don't know who she is, either.  The way she hesitated when I asked her name suggests that even though she only gave me a first name, it probably wasn't hers.  Our paths might never cross again.  The important thing is that they crossed that once, when it mattered.

. . . prepared for nothing.

I was not prepared this afternoon for the news that I have to log an average of twenty minutes per call for the hotline in the next week or they will drop me.  Two-thirds of the calls I have taken were apparent prank calls that hung up as soon as they connected, or after saying just a few words  Two-thirds of the remaining third of my callers terminated their calls in 3 to 6 minutes.  If this pattern holds, then in the one call out of nine when I get a chance to do a reading, I'm going to have to s-t-r-e-t-c-h it long, or my career as a telephone psychic is going to be short. 

I'm ready to let this gig go if that's what happens, and I'm ready to do what I can to keep it from happening.  After consultation with my immediate superior, I learned that I'll have a greater chance of getting calls if I'm working the wee small hours of the morning.  Knowing this three weeks or so ago, when I first talked to her about hours and scheduling, would have given me some time to adjust my sleep pattern, but I haven't been sleeping much at night anyway.  This close to the summer solstice, nights are what in Siberia are called, "white."   Darkness is brief now, and two weeks from now midnight will be twilight.  Endless wakefulness is almost more natural than sleeping.

After my conversation with the supervisor, I changed my posted schedule and lay down for a nap, preparing to get up in the middle of the night to log onto the hotline.  Hearing a noise outside, I looked out and saw Doug carrying the two big tarps we had bought to cover the roof.  I heard him go up the ladder and assumed that he was going to start getting things ready for the roof work.

Lying there letting myself drift off to sleep, I was not prepared to hear him hammering.  Hammering in itself would not have been especially alarming, except that it was at the northeast corner of the house, right over my bed.    The logical place to start that job is at the west end.  That's where we started all three previous times we've done this job.  Even if he had started at the other end, there were several things that needed to be done first, before the hammer-and-nails part of the job begins.

I jumped out of bed, unprepared, but ready to charge up onto the roof and provide the necessary supervision to see that the job got off to the proper start.  Then I went back, crawled across the bed, and got my glasses.  I grabbed my shoes and went outside, where Doug finally heard me shouting.  I didn't mention, did I, that I'd been asking him all along, at the top of my lungs, what he was doing?  After I finally got his attention and the hammering stopped, I told him to wait a sec until I got my shoes on and I'd come up there and help him.

We sat there on the roof in the gloriously warm sunshine (He thought it was too hot, but he was born in Alaska so what does he know about hot?) and watched the first of the year's dragonflies, still skinny little hatchlings, swooping after mosquitoes.  Violet-green swallows were swooping and calling higher overhead, doing the same thing:  nourishing themselves while rescuing us from swarms of blood-suckers.  The swallows' arrival and the hatching of the dragonflies always come just in the nick of time as we are about to be driven buggy.

Doug sulked a while at my interference, then thought about it and realized that his partial, shoddy, Mickey Mouse (his words in retrospect) plan had not been adequate.  Then we got to work.  The tarp was dragged to the other end of the roof.  A few of the ropes along each side, holding down the old tarp at the west end, were untied at both top and bottom.  One end of each rope was tied into a grommet of the new tarp, which had been swiftly nailed down along the west end of the roof.  We got that back end secured with three ropes on each side before we tucked the remaining loose end of tarp under and quit for the evening, around 9 PM.

I came in and was preparing to log onto the hotline for my night's work, when the Old Fart phoned for our evening conversation.  My working nights and sleeping days is going to change our relationship.  I don't yet know how we'll adjust to it.  We are accustomed to talking together at least twice a day on most days.  On weekdays he saves his precious and few anytime cell minutes by calling me around noon from free phones at the Big Lake Public Library or the Wasilla office of our credit union.  Weekends, on our cheap and plentiful off-peak minutes, we might call each other six or ten times a day.  Living at opposite ends of this valley, we have a lot in common with some bi-coastal couples.

Adjusting to change is easier for me.  Greyfox likes to plan in advance and prepare for things, so he's seldom ready for rapid or unexpected change.  I'm mostly unprepared, but always ready.

For starters, "offensive" is the flip side of "defensive."  I'll try to remember to come back to that later.

Oooh, I like that word, "dysphemistic!"  I have been using "euphemistic" longer than I remember, but this word is going to be working itself into my working vocabulary now.  I endeavor to use terms that are neither eu- nor dysphemistic.  Some performers have based their schtick on dysphemism:  George Carlin, Don Rickles, Howard Stern.  The spiritual teacher Osho peppered his speech with dysphemisms to relieve them of their emotional impact through familiarity.  But that's not precisely the sense of "offensive" that brings me to my present subject.

What offends one depends on one's background, training, and experience.  The U. S. Supreme Court acknowledged this in their, "community standards," ruling on obscenity.  I know from experience that a smell that is pleasant one day can be nauseatingly offensive the next.  Eat enough of something to make yourself sick, or get a spoiled batch of some favorite food, and you'll know what I mean.

It's the "anger and annoyance" and morally judgmental senses of offensiveness that I am here to examine now.  One of my spiritual teachers taught me that it is equally spiritually unevolved to take offense as purposely to give it.  One who innocently "offends" another bears no responsibility for the offense... and I have covered that aspect of this idea ad nauseam.

One can choose not to be offended.  This is my point.  One can accept what is and decide not to let reality ruffle her feathers.  I perhaps had an inside track in coming to the decision to choose not to be offended, being an ultra-Virgo (Sun, Mercury, Jupiter, Chiron, Ceres and Vesta in Ninth House Virgo) attuned to any little flaw, omission, false note or anomaly in observable reality.  When one can't ignore shit, it is in one's interest to learn to accept it.

My life is ever so much happier now that I'm not offended by all that stuff, but there is an awkward aspect to it.  The stuff is still there.  I still notice it, and I tend to talk and write about it.  It is interesting.  That's something I discovered:  stuff that was once offensive is now interesting.  I might even want to do something about some of these things, and I'm more empowered to do so now that I'm not wasting energy on taking offense.

Oh, but then there is the way others react to my commenting on our interesting shared reality.  Many are offended.  Imagine that!  Often, people interpret my dispassionate reporting on things that offend them as either an attempt to offend or an expression of being offended.  If I tell them they are mistaken about that, they might even find that offensive.  It's an interesting aspect of social reality -- something to think about.

The YCYOR concept naturally comes to mind in this context:  you create your own reality.  All of us, thinking, dreaming, planning, plotting, fearing, desiring, working and playing, collectively create our shared external reality whether we like it or not, whether we're willing to accept the responsibility or not.  Each of us individually has the power to create his or her OWN inner reality or to allow others the power to manipulate our thoughts and feelings.

It seems reasonable to me that I am responsible for my own reality, since I have the power to create it.  From that, it follows that I am not responsible for anyone else's reality.  It also seems reasonable and prudent to teach children at a very early age that they can choose happiness, self-respect, adequacy and personal power, or not, but whatever we or they choose, we're responsible for our own creations.

Defensiveness -- the ubiquitous reliable marker for neurosis, guilt, shame and low self-esteem, might soon be extinct if everyone understood that nothing is necessarily intrinsically personally offensive.  Imagine a world where everyone knows and understands his or her own power.  Imagine.

Wild roses are not blooming around home, but there was one bush near the base of the bluff by the spring that was in bloom.
       

 

Across the highway from the spring are some trees, and beyond the trees is a muskeg a mile wide, with the Susitna river on its other side.

Our purpose, Doug's and mine, in going to the spring, was to fill our water buckets and jugs.  The mosquitoes had a different agenda.

 

In my mother's household, potatoes were part of every evening meal.  Sometimes they were mashed.  Very rarely, for special occasions, they were baked.  Usually, they were fried.

She would peel and dice the raw potatoes while the fat was heating in a big cast iron skillet.  A grease can sat on the back of the stove, to receive bacon drippings, and any grease that cooked out of hamburgers, steak, pork chops, etc.  It was spooned into biscuit dough and pancake batter, and strained into the skillet for frying fish, potatoes, or anything that didn't generate its own lubrication.

Mama's diced spuds got pushed around, flipped, stirred and flipped some more, until they were done.  I don't think she ever intentionally burned them, but I don't recall her ever cooking a batch of fried potatoes that didn't have a few black pieces in it.

Sometimes on weekends, by special request, we would have, "Daddy fried taters."  My father left the skins on, scrubbed the spuds and made thin transverse slices.  The big rounds were fried in bacon grease just like Mama's, but that is where the resemblance ended.  Daddy fried taters were more work intensive than Mama's

For part of the cooking time, Daddy placed a lid on the skillet to steam and soften the slices.  Each slice had to be slipped over or under others carefully so they wouldn't break up as they softened.  They were watched closely and tended carefully so that every one browned and none blackened.  For my father, a fried spud was primarily a ketchup delivery system.  His tastes live on in me.

Potatoes are not everyday food in my household, but we eat them at least once or twice a week.  Usually, I nuke one and eat it with a little salt and a dollop of yogurt.  Fried potatoes are a rare treat.  My method differs from those of my parents.  I dice them like Mama, but I don't let them burn.  Forty or more years ago, I stopped frying raw potatoes and started parboiling them first, so they would be soft without the time in a lidded skillet.  Now, instead of boiling, I microwave them lightly before dicing, leaving the skins on.  I fry them in vegetable oil and drain on paper towels.

Just like Mama, though, if there are any left on the Kid's plate when he's done, I clean up his plate for him.  Even cold, fried taters are tasty.