zanelle's Open Salon Blog

I'm Going to Start Drinking Booze

Mon, 20 May 2013 20:05:13 -0400

Tomorrow I take my mom to her home from rehab for a broken hip and it will be fun. I found myself thinking about the nice liquor cabinet she and Dad always had in their house. I think I will have to start sampling what is in it.

I was looking at the cases of beer for sale in the store today. They looked like fun. I thought of ice cold beer in my mom's refrigerator. She usually keeps a big glass stein in the freezer to pour the beer into. I might have to stock up on some beer.

There is a bottle of champagne on the lower shelf of the refrigerator door. One of the things I plan to do on her first day home is to crack that open and have a toast to one tough woman and her daughter who seem to be able to do anything.

My mother really should be studied by some scientists who want to find out how the human body can survive. She has some sort of German tenacity that is astonishing. I am watching the movie "Flight of the Phoenix" with James Stewart as the captain who landed the plane in a dust storm in the desert on their way to Bengazi. That plane looked like hell and most of the people on board died but a few strong ones worked with the crazy German to build a plane out of the parts and it actually started.

The German finally explained that he really had never worked on a real plane but only designed model planes. At the point where the little plane works and they are delivered from dying in the middle of nowhere you believe that life and hope are eternal. The little plane works. Just like my mom....it works. In spite of everything the little plane works.

So mom will climb up the four steps into her house and head straight for her bedroom. Maybe she will stop at the recliner. She will have to use a walker. The men in the movie harnessed themselves to the plane they had named "The Phoenix" and they pulled her along to the top of a hill for a good running start. It is hot. Mom can make it into her house.

There is no question that we will be fine. She just called me from the rehab facility and told about the lady in the next room who had the stretcher and medical team just come get her and how they were giving her oxygen. I told her to just enjoy her last night there. She is an old Navy Nurse. The medical world is fascinating. I told her she has a front row seat at the movie.

The little plane in the movie "Flight of the Phoenix" doesnt fly too far. Just to a little oasis around some water. Water. They are all pretty thirsty. They survived. Mom did too and I am proud of her. I wonder if this whole experience will make her more spiritual. I do know that she is still sharp as a tack and I am going to enjoy drinking and eating with her in her little house. "Our" house. Noooooooooo! Unless I can smoke pot and do Art there too!

This poster shows James Stewart and the guy who played the crazy German guy who built toy airplanes. He tried so hard to stay clean in the desert in spite of the water rationing. My mom is spick and span in the nursing home. She is up watching the parade outside her door and in the dining room. I hope she realizes it is a front row seat on the universe.

Actually anywhere you are there you are. Sitting down in the midst of it all and just looking around is okay. Have a drink and get a little buzz and thank the lucky stars that your hair isn't on fire or that you aren't stuck in the middle of the desert. Have a piece of chocolate cake and relax. The world isn't coming to the end...............yet.

There is always something more to learn. Look what I found in my search for images from the movie "Flight of the Phoenix".

http://jsbookreader.blogspot.com/2008/11/flight-of-phoenix.html

Elleston Trevor (born Trevor Dudley-Smith, and working under a variety of pseudonyms) is little known now, but was astonishingly prolific. His other best-known works are the "Quiller" espionage series, but I think The Flight of the Phoenix is still the most iconic. It's a good example of a book that makes what's basically an engineering story - complete with diagram, above - gripping through powerfully emotional character interaction. The historical/political context of the story (US/British post-WWII oil exploration teams in the Sahara in the days of the Kingdom of Libya, when Britain had a 20-year concession to maintain military bases) is of course long gone.

The movie, like my mother, is a classic. Somehow the superhuman strength to survive is in us all and we go on until we can't go anymore. So here is a toast to long life. They say the secret to life is to slide in at the last moment saying 'Wheeee what a ride."

I know my Dad is around too and I will have to make a toast to him. He was on a team of engineers who went into the jungles of Brazil and rescued a downed airplane. He was even on the cover of Newsweek way back when. Here is a toast to the human race! We have amazing strength to survive. The future will be okay.

In fact there is a revised version of this original movie that has my hero Dennis Quaid playing the Jimmy Stewart part. Woo.

I just poured the last of my old boyfriend's vodka into a cup. He died from his alcoholism two years ago. I wonder how he could have had a pint of this Citron Vodka straight every day. It ate his liver up. As I have a few sips here I can see why he liked it. It is almost a Russian thing. Vodka. It looks like water or everclear. It makes the room spin and seem like everything is going to be ok. Peter was always very nice to my Mom. It is ok right now and that is all I can ask. Cheers!

A nice cottage cheese salad distracted me from the Vodka. I am amazed that I have stopped binge eating. It just doesn't appeal to me anymore. A little escape is ok but there are lines you don't want to cross. In the end I don't like booze. It makes me feel heavy. I like pot better but mostly I like to just be me.

Uplifted

Sat, 18 May 2013 22:05:01 -0400

I was having spoiled tantrum thoughts about my Mother being back among the living and they were sinking me down into the dirt. Fortunately my daughter in Hawaii and I had a long wonderful conversation while my granddaughter played in the Zoo there. Uplifted.

Then I went out to check the mail and there was a package of stuff for belated mother's day from my other daughter in Alaska. Chocolate, flowers, and an eye liner pencil. She knows me so well. Uplifted.

I poked around in my garden, propped up some things that had fallen down and watered the iris plants. Uplifted.

The store up the hill has a machine out front where you can get a gallon of water for a quarter. I took my three plastic gallon buckets and filled them up. Uplifted.

After I loaded the water into the car I cruised down to the parking lot of the Alpine brewery where I put in a garden installation of my art work. There were people sitting around and enjoying the beauty of the place. I admired the bathroom door that I painted a deep green. People in the brewery bar make lots of trips through that door. My art work seems to uplift the place. Uplifted.

Then I stopped at the nursery where there is a sign that says Artists and Craftsmen wanted and it is under new management. I have been meaning to go into this place for months. Today I finally strolled thru the place and I was impressed by what the new owner had done. He is cute too. Uplifted.

I bought forty one dollars worth of beaded jewelry. The artist vendors were doing some very creative work. I will send him my website and do my magic to put a booth in there. I don't know what has taken me so long to get there but today was the time and the connection clicked. Uplifted.

Uplifted!

I am trying to stay away from listening to the news. Uplifted.

I have a little puff when things finally calm down. Uplifted.

I don't watch cop shows. I am watching a Comedy. Uplifted.

I bought some make up today on sale. Uplifted.

I hugged an old friend today, twice. Uplifted.

I got a sexy email from a lover. Uplifted.

I went for a walk with my camera and posted the pictures on Our Salon. Uplifted.

If you don't feed yourself energy you won't have any to give back.

Uplifted....................

Iron Mom

Fri, 17 May 2013 08:05:54 -0400

I saw my mother with her 'military' shirt on rise up to her full Navy Nurse status and order an appointment with the doctor in her Rehab facility. I saw her fierceness and intimidating mannars. It didn't work. The doctor just sent a cryptic note on her chart to sentence her to a month more of Physical Therapy six times a week.

Well, the trick in a rehab facility is to get honorably discharged so insurance pays for continuing care at home. It is possible to take a patient home without doctor's orders but it is risky. So I have been negotiating for an early release. She has already been in there a month.

What a month it has been. She almost died from a horrible Cdef bowel infection and was on drip IV's for a week. She recovered and became more active. Then a low dose of narcotic pain meds sent her into hallucinating pain hell. Two nights ago she was moaning in agony over pain in her shoulder, then it moved to her amputated leg. She called me with the details all night long. The thing is she is recovering from a broken hip and not an amputated leg.

The phantom pain had moved to her right breast when I got there at six in the morning. It sure looked like real pain to me. The physical therapist and I got her up and moving around even to the dining room. The pain miraculously disappeared. She was very weak the rest of the day but today she is back to her self and cooperating with the situation. They all like her in the rehab center.

However I worked with the social worker today to get that doctor's order changed to home and less physical therapy. We are doing the nursing home dance and I got back to my place just now thinking this was a lot like work. I now know how a patient's relative feels in situations where in the past I have been the staff. I can't imagine what it is like to be a patient in a crowded facility like that trying to make sense of it all.

I actually like all the energy. I had to take a break from the thought of another month there and so I went to see the movie "Iron Man III". It was the perfect thing to do and I am so lucky to be retired and able to have the time to deal with my mom's hip and take care of myself too. It reminds me of when I took my boyfriend to the ER and they told me he wasn't going to make it. I went to see "The Pirates of the Carribean" with Johnny Depp. Movies can save your sanity sometimes and give you the energy to go on.

Iron Man was like my stucco butterflies. He had all his different colored wings that he loved to create. What power he had and what evil he had to fight! It was magnificent and inspiring. I walked back into the nursing home after the movie a little taller and courageous. The message of the movie and the message in my life now is that this is a journey. The color of your wings might change but inside you are still that catapiller in the cocoon with good ideas. Flowers bloom and die without our help to force them open and pollinate them. Our future is ours to create every minute but with every creative push you make to control events there has to be an equal amount of time where you just sit back and listen.

The physical therapist was lamenting that she and her mother had not connected before her death. The PT lady wished she could have cured her mother's cancer and her mother wished she could forget all that and just have a nice mellow talk with each other.

I told her I was just the opposite of her. I wish I had long philosophical conversations with mom that had nothing to do with really practical stuff. I have the theory that the details will take care of themselves. What I love to think about is the karma of a situation.

So here we were, two ladies who wanted different things from our mothers and now both were helping my mother to walk again. She could have the control my mother loved and I could tell her that the conversations with my mom are getting a tad bit more soulful. The spirals of life entwine around us all the time. What we need we end up getting on another level.

No one can be all to another. There are shortcomings.

It is not that people won't give us what we need....they can't.

Other people can.

Look for them and when they cross your path grab at the connection.

This Physical Therapist is not with my mother by coincidence. There are ties between people and we can use them to get what we need. Is she trying to save my mom's soul? It seems a battle to get her to release mom from the nursing home.

I still think that the tie between mother and daughter is very intense and unique. It is important to be as honest as we can with each other and find the love. Yeah, right. Love. geez. It is hard work just doing the right thing...do I have to LOVE too! whew

I had another conversation with this Physical Therapist about the Do Not Resusitate orders we have. She is Catholic and wants to go to heaven and not to hell. I don't want to go to a Catholic heaven and Mom probably wouldn't either. Too many hypocrites there. The social worker was very nice to tape a note to her doctor on the cover of her chart. "Do not use antibiotics to cure the C def disease if it comes back." That would have been a good time for mom to die but she didn't. I don't think we have much control over our own deaths but we have a little. Fate and destiny can be complicated. I don't leave everything up to God. I fiddle with my existance myself and try to shape it. Then I listen again.

I am not sure I am listening to the same God as others. I listen to Stephen Hawkings and Shirley MacLaine. I read Kubler-Ross and Open Salon to get inspired. Even Facebook helps me get through the day. I like this seat on the edge of the universe. When it gets my turn to jump I hope I can be as brave as my mom.

My dad is in me too. The buddhist in him calms me. He is my rock while I care for mom. Thanks Dad. I know you are not in Catholic Heaven. I imagine you are in all sorts of places and we just have to think of you when you are remembering us and we are together again. Mom is weak at 94 and yet she is Iron Mom too and could make it to 100. I'm looking for the cosmic ramifications of it all.

Old Car Show, Guys and Dolls

Thu, 16 May 2013 10:05:45 -0400

Walking through the crowds at this old car show in El Cajon, California has been so good for me after hours spent in the rehab center with my Mom. I love the loud rock music and the colors. There is a group of models posing with the cars every week and I got a few shots of them today.

I don't know if they charge to take a photo with the Babe but I think if you use your own camera it is free. There are two pro cameramen who make the actual posed photos. I wonder what they do with them?

I like to look at the guys too. They take the old cars very seriously.

I love this bouncing car. A blonde jumped in with the driver and they made several passes down Main Street. It is quite a show. Southern California loves its cars.

My Shocking Backyard

Wed, 15 May 2013 09:05:20 -0400

Recently my cousins came for a visit from Indiana. I took them into my little private backyard and they were such good sports. However the lady became a little uncomfortable as she looked at my nude stucco 3D paintings.

She gingerly sat down in the big garden chair and perched on the edge in case some of these wiggly green sprouts extended out of their frames and came at her.

I know she took a long look at my broken heart painting and thought to herself that my way of divorce and wild sex is a sin. She might be right. I think of the Leonard Cohen song lyrics..."Your lonliness says that you've sinned." Very possibly true.

She and her husband have been married 49 years. He seemed to be enjoying my backyard immensely.

He was sitting near one of the sexy sculptures I have by the chairs. You rock them back and forth for a nice rhythm.

I love my cousin dearly but she is the one who told me New Orleans is an Evil City. I can understand that but I liked the gleam in her husband's eyes when he told about the big black lady he saw there who just put her butt out the window and wiggled it. I think he enjoyed that.

So we had a nice visit in my backyard among all the fertility of the bunnies, eggs and butterflies. Then I saw him look down at my mermaid sculpture. He glanced away quickly and was uncomfortable. I could understand why. It started out as a mermaid and then grew fins instead of arms and then the head turned into a fish and it seemed to me to be a transformation sculpture of a fish morphing into a mermaid shape and it looks downright creepy. I really don't know what to do with something like this and that is why my backyard is usually just for me to work in. Sometimes the work never gets to leave.

I am always trying to understand the difference between a craftsperson and an artist. To me an artist gets into trouble. We try things that are totally unique and let the medium have its way with us. Quality is not my priority. I like organic growth and spiritual highs.

So if you are going to come and sit with me awhile in my garden you better be able to talk to me about what I do. I have had so many people come through and not be able to comment on the art work. I guess I am pretty far out. Ha.

My best critic was my granddaughter. I showed her that mermaid sculpture back when it was more lady like. She looked at it for awhile and then she said, "You got any toys?"