jaeleslie

Just stopping in, busy day today. (Of course some of these days seem to be busy if I write two emails and read the paper. So I'm still struggling, although no one would know to look.) Very hard to get moving, as the imminent weather change made my joints swell up, or at least that's my excuse. That's enough complaining now. Somehow an early trip to the gym actually was an hour or so later, which made me late afterwards getting to the pharmacy to pick up my friend Barb's bag of meds. Er, two bags of meds. Again I am the bagman, or maybe the bag lady. She makes far too many trips to the city for various doctor appointments, and has to get someone else to drive, so when she needs someone to do this errand the other direction I am on call, and happy to have a chance to help (a mitzvah I think that's called, a good thing both ways around).

Whitewater is maybe an hour down the US highway, if you dawdle along at 60 mph the way I do and follow the speed limit through the speed trap towns. I am/am not from around here. It was a dry sunny day for the drive, with only the usual idiots on the road who tailgate everyone to end up a half minute ahead fifteen miles down the road. I haven't brought that much focus to bear in weeks, and it's always interesting for me to go that familiar way back to where I spent the formative years.

Oh but she was glad to have a visitor. Felt kind of bad I had let that slip, although I've been sending her cards and stuff weekly since last fall. I don't know if you've ever been homebound, but the sheer lack of social connection makes you crazy. She and housemate have been struggling with upstairs tenant (who is now expected to move out), with their own personal difficulties, and Barb's overwhelming medical problems, so she badly needed to talk. Her sister stopped by later in the afternoon, and we all just blabbed away for hours about everything under the sun -- television, travel, books, dogs... and of course the latest chapter of the medical history.

I awarded Barb the Understatement Prize for "My quality of life has been seriously reduced the last few years." Yeah, four surgeries, a liquid diet, fighting with Medicare over her treatments, and then having to wrap both legs in compression bandages every day to keep the lymphatic fluids under some semblance of control might do that. Tune in for our next episode, after major diagnostic test set for Friday, with six glasses of nasty barium lemonade if she can keep it down.

So we didn't actually get around to playing with the barbiedolls, but I did take them along, with a box of gear. Barb had such fun last time I took them, crossdressing Ken and giving one of them the complete compression bandage lymphedema treatment with a piece of elastic. This time I took Jungle Girl and a couple of the anonymous blondes and Sven and Brother Ben, all loaded in a basket, so that they could peek over the edge and whisper, "Where are we going? and why are we in this handbasket?" just like everyone else on the planet.

Jungle Girl was dressed right down to her shoes, black platform shoes, a slick lycra lizardprint jumpsuit and perky ponytail -- only a little gray around the edges and worse for wear -- so when it was time to go she jumped out and stayed behind, casually lounging on a bookshelf. This is the bold barbie who a couple years ago spent the whole summer in the oak tree out back, and braved earwigs as long as your arm, so she can take care of herself.

The drive home was straight into the sun, and I'm still a little blasted with caffeine.