...
And I was in Ferndale in the middle of it, being taken care of by redneck strangers. Met maybe the love of my life there, but I was too wrecked to deal with it. He drove his Porsche 115mph into a redwood tree shortly thereafter. The tree is fine. I still have periods of being intensely right back in love with him... his ghost.
So I thought today that I should not just book it home from the "real world" as I usually do. I should goddam take my time and not let pinheads aggravate me. I went to Ferndale for lunch and a little cry. I commended a couple of young men on their glorious muscularity while digging out the perimeter of a huge lawn on a slope. Told them they reminded me of the good old days, and drove off into my future.
As I dreaded, the big thyroid thing will not just reveal itself on my schedule. I did that monumental trip, it seems, only to become a card-carrying patient of a hotshot endocrinology oncologist. She was impressive. Had gone over everything carefully before she saw me, and talked like a goddam cogent medical professional. Her CV is startlingly high tone and her voice is the EXACT duplicate of a very old friend of mine. It was sort of psychedelic to hear Clare's voice coming out of her.
So I have to do this trip over in mid-August. Nodules/tumors are extremely small and this kind is very slow growing and you have to really try to die of it, so I'm probably going to live. It's just a goddam drag.
The GOOD news is that as of right now I have awakened two days in a row at a respectably early hour, fully lucid within minutes. This makes maybe five mornings in my entire life where this has happened. You may not be impressed, but I'm stoked. It feels SO good.
The really demoralizing news is I am fully two inches shorter than I was before they bolted my head back on thirteen years ago. So my third millennium go cart has NOT got a faulty windshield design. The driver's seat is crap and I am radically shorter than I thought I was. I put a pillow on it. I can see out the windshield on the tight curves now.
Fuck. I can't tell you how upsetting it has been going north to the top of Highway One to get from Peggy and Jim's to 101 for all these years, when it was a goddam PILLOW that was needed all along. I am officially a little old lady now... if you are going by classical standards. If you are going by modern retirement age schedules, I'm not official until next February.
Whatever. I have things I absolutely MUST accomplish and if my psychopath sister has killed me, you must warn everyone you ever come across. Strangers on the street. In the supermarkets. Wherever. WARN them.
And, yes, he was spectacular. His jeans were tucked into his mud boots. He'd come to join up with his father's codger dairymen buddies at the Palace, and we couldn't stop trying to get nearer to each other. We talked all afternoon and night... we talked until it was time to get back to his dairy for morning milking. We kissed. I fell into my cosmos being near him. That was the entirety of our romance.
He killed himself.
I did not.
Maybe I should ask the local historical society if they have pictures of him.
pipe up any time....
