The Adventures of Sheila the Wonderbink

So as I briefly mentioned, I was dealing with severe and all-encompassing pain for several weeks. It was so bad I couldn't sleep--couldn't even lie down comfortably. About the only thing that didn't hurt so much was walk. I paced around my tiny little condominium and wished I had more space to move around in. I'm amazed I didn't wind up insane (or, at least, more insane than usual) from all the sleep deprivation.

Peter's death was an extra layer of suck on top of everything.

I saw doctors and phoned doctors and had so much blood drawn I'm surprised I'm not anemic by now. I had to beg for painkillers before they gave me any. Those didn't quite work, so I begged for something stronger and thus was reacquainted with what Not Being In Pain felt like. That was nice.

I also found another remedy that my mom suggested--laughter. I listened to some stand-up comedy albums I had on my phone and found myself able to lie down and listen. Being able to lie down without the immediate urge to get back up again was a huge step. And the pain did ease. I decided to take advantage of the three free months I have with Apple Music+ and avail myself of their comedy selection, which served as an analgesic for many long stretches.

After many tests (including X-rays!) the culprit was unearthed--the lithium I've been taking for over a decade had turned on me. Dropping the dose by half eased the pain and dropping it completely pretty much eliminated it. The downside is that my mood episodes are creeping back in to remind me why I was taking the stuff in the first place. I may be able to adjust things without adding any new drugs to the mix, but my psychiatrist is out of the office until Monday and the best her assistant could do for me was give me a list of crisis lines.

It's my birthday today, and because it's a Saturday, I'm having my birthday party on the very day. I think that being with friends and watching the Beatles will buoy my mood nicely.

Today I took pleasure in a nice, hot cup of tea. Several, in fact.

Today I learned the term "cognitive prosthetics" to describe the use of AI.

There's a lot of talk about shitty work environments going on right now, but there always is, so I'm not going to go into contemporary examples. This will remain true until there's a massive sea change in our society around the nature of work.

Work is essential for a functioning society, but there's this underlying assumption that work is misery, and if it isn't, you're not working hard enough. There's a certain variety of person that, when someone gripes about their job, proclaims that "Work isn't supposed to be fun. That's why they call it WORK!"

I checked my Merriam-Webster app and found about thirty distinct definitions for the word. So, what kind of work are they calling it?

The top definition is "to perform work [bit of a tautology there] or fulfill duties regularly for wages or salary." That's what we usually mean when we talk about "work." However another one of the definitions is "to exert oneself physically or mentally, especially in sustained effort for a purpose or under compulsion or necessity." Note that the final clause is attached with an "or" meaning that it can be for a purpose voluntarily.

The house I grew up in had a very large backyard that, when we moved in, was pretty much ivy and trees. Over the years, my parents transformed it into a garden. It took work. It took pulling up ivy and digging holes and putting in flowers and hauling gray water from the washing machine to water those flowers and so much weeding. They worked on it on the weekends and when they retired they worked on in nearly every day. They weren't paid a dime--indeed they put a large amount of money into it--but it was still work. And they derived great joy from it.

Now, supposing my parents did the same things with a ten-pound sack of rocks on their back. It means they'd be working harder, but not to any useful end. It wouldn't make them more effective or efficient. They wouldn't be able to haul as much water or pull as many weeds before they'd have to give up in exhaustion.

But if they insisted on not carrying the ten-pound sack of rocks (they wouldn't ask, they'd insist) and that certain kind of person said that they just weren't willing to work hard, you'd think that person was kind of an idiot, wouldn't you?

In the working world, there are a lot of ten-pound sacks of rocks--unnecessary things that make the job harder but don't make the results any better.

Dragging people back into the office when it has been objectively proven that the work can be done just as effectively--sometimes even more effectively--remotely is a ten-pound sack of rocks.

Meetings about things that could just as easily be sorted out on Slack are ten-pound sacks of rocks.

Bad managers are a ten-pound sack of rocks. Hell, they're a twenty-pound sack of rocks.

But if you ask to put the sack down, you're a slacker who doesn't really want to work, despite all you get done with the actual work. We've taken it for granted that the rocks we haul are what we must endure for our wages.

But what if we didn't? What if we made a point of firing the managers who make their employees lives miserable and replacing them with ones who know how to deal with people in a non-abusive fashion? It'll cost about the same and people are a lot more productive when they're respected. My brother holds an executive position at a multimillion-dollar company that is completely remote. It meant a company several states away was able to hire someone as amazing as my brother. And reducing information to text makes it easier to absorb in less time than listening to someone talk about it.

There are so many things we could be doing (or not doing) to make life easier for people who work for a living. Don't make it so much work for people to do their work.

Today I took pleasure in delicious lemonade.
Today I learned how to set up a blog on a WordPress site after deleting the default blog page.

 Looks like Madam Vice President took my advice.

kamalaharris.com/issues/

I should think of something else to ask about.

Greetings Madam Vice President!

I know this inbox is more for official business, but I had a couple of suggestions, as a longtime voter, for your presidential campaign.

One, go with Tim Walz for VP. He's awesome.

Two, I see that your official website has your biography, which is a good start, but what would make it better is if you had some pages devoted to what you are GOING to do. When I'm figuring out who to vote for, I always check websites and always go with the candidates who have definite plans about what they'll do if elected. Trump is weird, in the not-good way, yes, but you have so much more to offer than not being weird. Hammer him on policy, hammer him on the ways you're going to make things better for all of us. Show us all why you're the better choice beyond NOT being a doddering narcissist.

I am really excited about this election and hope to offer my support in any way I can. Best of fortune to you.

Sincerely,

Sheila S. O'Shea

[Note, this was truncated from the original draft due to the 2,000 character limit, which is why it cuts off so abruptly.]

Dear Mr. President--

First, let me pause and remark on how wonderful it is that the leader of our nation is not His Highness or His Mightiness (as--true story---some of the founding fathers considered) but simply Mister, an ordinary person doing an extraordinary job.
Mr. President, my name is Sheila O'Shea. I registered to vote when I was 17 years old and voted in my first presidential election at the age of 18 in 1988. I am a lifelong Democrat, and I was proud to vote for you in 2020. I am deeply grateful for the work you have done with COVID-19 vaccinations, infrastructure, and climate change. It is clear that you feel that there is more yet to be done.
Mr. President, you are not the only person who can advance what you have started. To think otherwise is arrogance on the level of your opponent, who told his supporters that he was the only one who could save them. In the same way, you are not the only one who can save us. And your hopes of saving us have rapidly been eroded by the appearance--even if only the appearance--that your mind is not capable of handling the job. Every stumble, however small, is a nail in the coffin of your candidacy, and thus a nail in the coffin of our freedoms.
I know enough about Project 2025 to know that it terrifies me and that a defeat by your opponent would be far worse than a mere defeat in a typical presidential race. It would destroy every advance that this nation has ever achieved.
Mr. President, PLEASE do not sacrifice the freedoms of this nation on the altar of your ego. I know that you have stated you will listen to no one but the Lord God Almighty when it comes to stepping down from the race. As one who shares your Catholic faith, permit me to remind you of the words of Christ our Savior, words he quoted from scripture before him--"You shall not put the Lord your God to the test."
God speaks to us through others, Mr. President. Listen to your advisors. For the sake of our country and our future, LISTEN.

I got into David Sylvian by way of Japan (which I got into in turn via Duran Duran.) Japan, for those not cognizant, was a British band in the late 70s/early 80s, who really found their stride with the last two albums they did before breaking up. They were a huge influence on Duran Duran, and I traced things backwards to them the way I did with David Bowie and Jean Cocteau.

I remember tracking down imports of Japan CDs when I was in college. I'd been curious about David Sylvian, but hadn't had the chance to listen to his work. I took a leap and bought a copy of Gone to Earth, having been reassured by a friend that his music was quite similar to Japan.

Put plainly, it was not. Even with a couple of Japan members on board, this was something new and strange to me. But after the initial culture shock, I taped it and took the tape with me to the beach.

My parents bought a timeshare unit a little before timeshares had developed such a sleazy reputation. We'd been coming down to Florida each summer for so long I'd taken my first steps on the beach. A timeshare seemed the perfect arrangement--a fixed week in a fixed place by a beach we were intimately familiar with. We'd been going for many years when I trundled down with my taped copy.

I listened to it out on the balcony. Several times. In one week. The music blended perfectly with the scene--the waving palm trees, the swooping birds, the strolling clouds, the all-encompassing sunlight.

The next year, I brought the tape and listened to it out on the balcony again. And again.

I found out that Gone to Earth was originally a double album--one disc vocal; the other instrumental--and ached to have those lost songs. When I ended up living in Japan (country, not band) I came across a 2-CD version that had everything. I bought it immediately, but I had to wait until I'd gotten home to hear it, because I didn't have a CD player with me.

I updated the tape I'd made by adding some of the lost tracks to the spare spaces on it. I couldn't get them all to fit, so "Camp Fire Coyote Country" got tacked to the end of the tape I'd made of Rain Tree Crow (where it fit quite nicely, in fact). Eventually, I made a whole new tape with Disc A on side A and Disc B on side B. And I listened out on the balcony. Again and again.

Technology advanced. I went from a portable tape player to a portable CD player, then to a laptop, then to an iPod Mini, then to an iPhone, and then (this year) back down to the laptop because I forgot the little headphone adapter dongle to fit with my hastily purchased earbuds. And, when the weather permitted (it did not always) I got out to the balcony and listened.

Today I listened out on that balcony and it is the last time I will be able to do so. My parents have decided to sell the timeshares (we obtained a second one so we could host all the spouses and children my siblings have accumulated) and switch to renting units earlier in the year, when the heat is not so blinding. I will listen to Gone to Earth on whatever balcony we wind up on, but it will not be that place, where I watched the palm trees grow from obscuring the ocean view to framing it. It will not be the view I know by heart.

But I know this place well enough to use it as a memory palace. I can walk through all the rooms in my head. And if I really want to invoke it, all I have to do...

...is play Gone to Earth.

The birthday proper is Flag Day, June 14th, but I like to get started early. The Saturday before the day proper, I have my birthday party, wherein I open the doors from noon to midnight and play The Beatles Anthology DVD set to give me something to watch between guests, and to give the guests something to talk about in the conversational lulls. The guest count was small (one of the invitees had to call out because she'd come down with Covid) but the conversation was lively and I had a fine time.

A month or so before the party, I picked up a copy of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo in a little free library. I read it, and decided to actually try the KonMari method for myself. Given how relentlessly sentimental I am, I didn't think I'd get rid of much, but I ended up giving up four lawn-and-leaf bags full of clothes and eleven or twelve paper grocery bags of books. I found things I forgot I owned. I found things I didn't even remember owning. (What the hell was I doing with a Don DeLillo book? I didn't even like White Noise that much when I had to read it for a class.)

I purged every single article of zebra clothing out of my closet. I didn't need them anymore. I wore zebra as a flag to indicate that I was a Warren Cuccurullo fan during my time chasing Duran Duran around the country. Warren hasn't been part of Duran Duran for over two decades, so there really isn't anywhere to wear the zebra stuff, except maybe DragonCon or something (which I did do at some point). There was not a lick of regret when I passed it on to Goodwill.

It took me a couple of days to get through all the clothes. Books took me nearly a week. The main reason for that was that I had layers of detritus piled in the spaces in front of the books, and I had to sort all that out, too. I had enough candles to fill out the space underneath the bench I use as a coffee table. Lots of candles. I spent time rewicking several of the burnt-down candles in glass containers, a convoluted process involving boiling water in my old ramen pot (no longer suitable for cooking), a metal container with a spout that I picked up in a thrift shop, a spool of wick material, a bag of metal weights for the wicks, and lots of wax from dead candles and tealights. I was able to bring a number of candles back from the dead and now I might actually start using them again.

The Marie Kondo book says nothing about CDs or DVDs, so I just did them in the standard way--dump 'em all on the floor (well, stack them) and sort out what to keep and what to ditch. I didn't have a lot to get rid of, but I discovered more things I'd forgotten I'd owned, including two copies of the soundtrack for The Crow. (Did I forget that I owned it and accidentally bought an extra copy? Did my CD collection cross-pollinate with Britpoptarts'? I'm not sure.) I now have a little more space for CDs and they're all back in alphabetical order! The DVD collection now has a little more cohesion to it as well. Now I have room to BUY MORE STUFF.

The next section in the Marie Kondo book is about papers. That one's going to be a doozy.

On my 50th birthday, I made plans to see Cirque du Soliel LOVE, the permanent Las Vegas installation that uses the music of The Beatles. I turned 50 in 2020. So much for that idea. I was ready to try again in 2021, but the show was still closed in June, so I put it off another year. This year, the show is open, flights are flying and I've booked the trip.

I will be going to the show exactly on my birthday. I'm gonna have a good birthday.

Today I took pleasure in Coca-Cola with lemon. (No, not a new flavor, just Coca-Cola with some lemon juice tossed in.)

Today I learned how much is on the gift card that someone was kind enough to give me for my birthday.

Actually, a little over a week. This week, my family returned to our little timeshare in Florida after the beast of 2020 kicked it off the agenda. This year (as I have in years before) I left early to spend some time with Britpoptarts (this was her name on LiveJournal. Her journal is now a Russian spam farm, so I won't link to it) in Savannah. She lives in a beautifully decorated apartment with a pair of hyper ferrets near the cool part of town. We were roommates together for many years and we spent the evening of my arrival drinking lemon drops and talking and laughing as if no time had passed.

Friday, we went out to experience the American Prohibition Museum, which was a great deal of fun. They used exhibits of actual Prohibition-era stuff, wax figures (Carrie Nation and Al Capone, among others), and films (such as Billy Sunday ranting about the evils of alcohol). The tour ends in a speakeasy with pictures and words about the end of Prohibition and the celebrations that followed. And, of course, it had a full bar, so we both ordered some Chatham Punch to top off the day.

I learned from the Criminal Records Instagram feed that Saturday was Record Store Day, which was perfect timing as we were already planning to go out record shopping.

I barged into Britpoptarts' room. "Happy Record Store Day!" I exclaimed.

"Yes," she said, "Today will be our record store day."

"No, seriously," I replied, "It's Record Store Day."

We made it to two record stores, one hot and cramped, the other cool and spacious. The hot, cramped one had a dollar bin out front and we both pawed through it. I found a Patrick O'Hearn album (I've heard good things about his stuff) and Britpoptarts picked up a few things including a Pete Townsend album that it turned out she already had, so it got added to my spoils. At the cool, spacious record store, I picked up a couple of limited edition Record Store Day releases--one was a Miles Davis album I was curious about (outtakes from a soundtrack he was working on for a documentary about boxer Jack Johnson) and the other I couldn't resist--Live at Budokan by Duran Duran. Britpoptarts set about replacing some of the Beatles records that were stolen from her when she was in a less secure living situation.

We used Labyrinth Locator to find a labyrinth by a church not too far from where we were, which we both walked. We found a rusted, twisted nail in the center. I kept it. We had enough time for me to take care of my Catholic duties with a vigil Mass at a rather odd church (not the church with the labyrinth, she adds firmly). The priest had an odd cadence that it took me a while to figure out. He was e-nun-ci-a-ting e-ver-y sin-gle syl-a-ble he spoke. The stained glass windows also weirded me out a bit. Instead of one image taking up the whole window, there were a series of dinner-plate-sized circles with images that were linked to saints (Saint Jude had a boat, Saint John had a wine cup with a serpent coming out of it) and to virtues (one with a picture of a shirt that said "Clothing the Naked") And there was one with a picture of a cat-o-nine tails (or, rather, a cat-o-five-tails) with spiked balls at the end of each tail. The image had a single word on it:

Penance.

I left right after I'd taken communion. (Sneaky Catholic trick--you can do that and still get credit as long as you get there in time to hear the Gospel reading.)

We had hopes of taking the ferrets out to the beach after dark (they can't handle temperatures greater than 75 degrees) but Britpoptarts looked at the weather and determined that the temperature wasn't going to get that low until 1:00 AM. So we hung out on the balcony for more hours than I'd planned and I showed her the modest house I'd built for myself on Second Life.

The drive to St. Augustine Beach from Savannah was relatively uneventful. (Don't get me started on the drive from Atlanta to Savannah.) I got there in time to have dinner and go on a beach stroll, which was a good start to the week. The routine is quite steady at the beach, but one of the elements has had to be abandoned--the afternoon suit-up-and-sunscreen session on the beach now lies in the hottest part of the day, and what was once merely hot is now unbearable. Instead, we take a stroll on the beach around sunset, when the weather permits. (It does not always permit.) We have been able to get down to walk along the shore in the mornings, and it's been lovely. It would have been nice to have been able to sit and watch the waves when we got back from our walk, but my bladder, and my freelance gig, kept me from that.

Ah, yes, the freelance gig. I'm currently doing work for a business I shall hereinafter refer to as the International Marketing Firm (IMF). It's a strange kind of hybrid of employment and freelance work. I have a company email address, but I also have to invoice them for services rendered instead of letting HR handle it. Last week I had a meeting with a client and we set up the follow-up meeting for Monday. I told them "I can do that if that's the only way we can do it.", which they interpreted as "Yes." So I had to cut short my morning time on the beach to trundle back inside, shower off the sunscreen and get ready for a Zoom call. The appointed time rolled around and there was no call to Zoom. It had never gone on the project manager's schedule, so we rescheduled for Thursday and my dream of a relaxing vacation free of adult responsibilities was shattered.

Thursday morning arrived and the Zoom call actually happened. The client had largely liked what I'd done, but there was one particular paragraph she wasn't feeling right about. Said it felt "incomplete." I nodded and hmmed and agreed with her and generally kept myself away from pointing out that she was the one who actually wrote it. After asking a few questions and taking a few notes, I finished the call and knocked out a revision in about 15 minutes, then another 10-15 polishing it and sent it on its way (it wasn't a very long paragraph). I may master this gig yet.

Thursday night, I had a nicer Zoom chat with the Gentleman Caller. I spent much of the call adjusting myself in a quest for the most comfortable position with best lighting. I don't think I quite managed either. I told him about my adventures in Savannah and he told me about some hopeful news (not quite at the stage of good news just yet) he'd received. Once I get back to Atlanta, we'll be making plans to watch Dark City with a mutual friend of ours (a friend who will be hereinafter referred to as "The Eccentric").

But for now, I'm looking at the pool from my window and savoring this time left. Tomorrow, I take Anime Niece to Jacksonville to meet with Movie Niece and maybe check out the movie theater that she runs. Maybe I can recruit Anime Niece to handle the stack of CDs I burned while I was packing to go down and then realized that CDs are a bad music strategy for highway travel.

I could take a nap right now, if I wanted. I might.

Today I took pleasure in the view from the balcony.
Today I learned more about cataract surgery than I ever wanted to know.

Dear Senator--

Let me begin by stating how delightful it is to address you as “Senator.” I was too shy to knock on doors, but I did donate money to your campaign regularly, and I’m glad to see that campaign come to fruition. [A couple of lines directed to each Senator individually went here.]

I am writing to express my concern about something that may block all the potential progress that we hope to make—the filibuster. The filibuster has evolved over time but the purpose is still the same—allowing the minority party to stop a bill or nomination from progressing to a vote. Its best known use is perhaps its most shameful—an attempt to stop the Civil Rights Act of 1957 from passing. (Republicans will squawk that it was a Democrat—Strom Thurmond—who did this, and I will squawk back that Senator Thurmond was part of the subset of the Democratic Party that was later absorbed into the Republican Party under the infamous Southern Strategy.)

Now that the Democrats have a very narrow majority in the Senate, the possibility of the Republicans wielding the filibuster to stop any bill that they believe threatens their interests—the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, for example—looms large. The rule that establishes the filibuster in Senate procedure can be eliminated with a simple majority vote. It must be eliminated if we hope to get anything done in this administration. At the absolute least, the requirement that the Senator who invokes the filibuster must be present on the floor for the length of that filibuster should be restored. Someone who drags debate to a halt should not be able to do so without some kind of consequence.

It is my understanding that there are a few Democratic Senators who wish to retain the filibuster. I beg you to speak with those colleagues of yours and try to convince them of the imperativeness of eliminating it, or at least modifying it so it is used as a last resort and not a first one.

I thank you for your time, and wish you all the best as you strive to make the United States government one that serves all people.

Kind regards,

Sheila S. O’Shea

This one was pretty short and quite a few pages were taken up with written-down daydreams about meeting and making friends with members of Duran Duran.

Volume Two: December 8, 1986 (age sixteen) to June 13, 1989 (age eighteen).

It looks like: a slim hardbound book with pictures of the 1984 lineup of Duran Duran. My sister bought it for me when she went to England for a study abroad program.

What's inside? Written down daydreams, initially. Then I decided I needed a new diary and it was as good as anything for the purpose.

The time period covers the end of high school and the start of college, a period which is blurred slightly by the fact that for my senior year in high school, I was also starting college under the early enrollment program. (This meant I left high school early a few days a week to attend Composition 101 at Emory.)

The poem-slipped-in-locker incident that I allude to in the last entry is actually detailed in this volume, and, as it turns out, I'd slipped two poems in his locker.

This marks the transition from cursive to print, so things are much easier to read from this point forward. (Messy print can be hard to read; messy cursive is almost impossible.)

I write about my first concert experience--INXS at the Omni--but I spend pages writing about everything that led up to the band hitting the stage (including the opening act, Public Image Limited, purveyors of fine bottled sarcasm since 1978) without getting to the part about, oh, Michael Hutchence owning the entire damn room with the sheer force of his charisma. I have the memories to carry me over though.

I also write about another first--seeing Duran Duran play live. January, 1989 at the Fabulous Fox Theater. I do go into a little more detail about the show itself. A few entries later, after purchasing a copy of Big Thing, I write a letter to Simon le Bon about how "Do You Believe In Shame?" made me cry.

There are hints and signs of bipolar disorder creeping around the edges. Mostly in the form of low energy and inability to focus. At one point, I express astonishment that I got into Emory at all.

So, from here we leave high school behind and venture into the college world. I'm curious to see what other hints of my illness show up as we progress.

Today I took pleasure in raspberry flavored seltzer mixed with cherry juice.

Today I learned where to get tested for COVID-19. (I'll have results in about a week.)