I.
II.

Today, we are roughly halfway through the public comments period for the National Forest Service’s reckless and ill-conceived massive land sale, which I see as a star in the constellation that is our current administration’s criminal activities. You can still write to the National Forest Service and tell them to find a thoughtful way to fund rural schools. Or you can hear what I do in the Blogosphere: …crickets…crickets…

Tough room.

After I stuffed the vegetables into my car’s trunk, I was out of my house already so I drove to Casa de Fabulous Ex-Husband(tm), where no one answered my knock at the door. I stuffed his Hanukkah presents between the inner and outer doors and drove off in the general direction of my place. Since vegetable shopping was such a rousing success, I pressed my luck and followed the farm roads to Home Depot for a sopping wet cart and indoor gardening supplies but I didn’t find everything I needed. I drove 100 yards to Target, where environmentalists should’ve lined up to slap me, and found another dripping cart. That’s three for three!

I shop to solve problems, and solve problems I did. I needed a casserole for the vegetables and fish I steam every morning, and I found a passable bit of Corningware. I needed wine glasses because I’d smashed the last one months ago and have been drinking out of jelly jars. Because I had some. I needed small shelves on which to sit my little kitchen garden pots because I haven’t learned to levitate. I needed a free-standing cabinet for the bathroom because I’m sick of looking at that pile of boxes in the living room which I can’t put away because the closet’s full so there’s no away to put things. Target had one. I’ve looked online all over the place and cabinets have been too big or expensive or beyond fugly. This one was simple, clean and less than $90. The cabinet would be sturdy once I built it, and I was sure of this because when I dropped it on my right hand I yelped and bled all over the place.

What? Nobody noticed. It’s Target. People walk through Target with these marvelous blank looks on their faces. It’s like a casting call for George Romero movies, minus the prop sausage. I picked up cat treats because why not?

In line at register 12, I was gleeful. My many problem-solving purchases formed a long line of optimistic ideas for my tiny home and carefully redesigned life. My cashier was a tall young man – right out of high school, I would’ve guessed. When he finished with the previous customer, I immediately began babbling.

Tata: Okay okay okay I get very nervous when I’m in the store because because I seldom spend money on myself, though you can see I spend piles on my cat. He’s very interesting, my cat, but in any case, I don’t do things like buy polka dotted soup bowls that later I’ll run from room to room with and try different colors next to because they excite me but see, there’s this one problem.
Target Guy: What’s that?
Tata: I can’t lift this thing here but I really really want it. I want it very much. I don’t know how I’m getting it into the car because I – like – injured myself getting it off the shelf but it makes me really happy. I want it.

He brightened up. In fact, he went from distracted to interested.

Target Guy: We’ll get someone to put it in the car for you.
Tata: You’re my new best friend!
Target Guy: Go pull your car around and I’ll put it in your car.
Tata: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Yes. Only dogs and Flipper heard that.

IV.

I.

It’s easy to forget we haven’t been blogging all our lives and that we’re working in a new medium. The limits for the medium have yet to be established and adventurers have created new forms of blogging right and left; one of my favorites is the artist blog. I read quite a few of them, and refer to my favorites all the time. It has been my great good fortune that their authors turn up in comments and I follow them back to – goddess help me – blogs so brilliant and fluid I should be ashamed to address their humans by their first names. Vanx’s Verb-Ops is a sterling example of what is possible through blogging that would not have been in any other form before except performance art. There’s an old joke.

Q: How many performance artists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: I don’t know, I left.

I felt the same way about college. It was possibly short-sighted of me to think interdisciplinary degrees weren’t just my cool idea but that other people would agree and let me learn what I needed to learn to make the kind of art I was already making successfully, and if I didn’t love the program in my head I could go to grad school later. Ah, so it goes. In a classroom, I’m a wrecking ball, so it’s probably just as well I dropped out. Twice. Anyway, what Vanx is doing with his blog is what grad school should be like. I want him to go teach little children they’re already artists, and I know he can do it because – if you can believe it – I already have.

There’s a program in New Jersey called Artists In Education. You apply. You are interviewed. You are seen not to be a public menace. I did all this, though I was in a very angry frame of mind at the time. Why they accepted me, I have no idea. I showed up for the interview with a 2 liter bottle of Diet Coke and with my underwear as outerwear; you would’ve thought they’d close the schools as I approached. No, the Arts Council sent me to I think four or five schools for four days apiece. I have a great deal to say about the evil that is the bad teacher and the marvel that is the good teacher, but that’s not the point.

In one classroom in a grammar school I don’t remember there was a little boy who did not speak. I was there with another artist to coach the third graders through writing poems. Most children don’t really need all that much pushing and will readily join you in writing of any kind. I spent a little while with this little boy, Alex. His teacher warned me off, saying he wasn’t going to write or talk, so I went back to him with crayons and encouraged him to draw a picture of something he liked. Then I moved on to some of the other kids. When I came back to Alex, I found this:

Alex’s 3-1 November 1993

If a person was two go out on a boat and Ride on the shinng sea and ruf waves to go fishing for fish crabs and lobster. If I was to Ride a boat I would have to Ride the dark sea.

summer spring fall winter

I can’t stress this enough: his teacher was shocked. A photocopy of this beautiful thing hangs in my cubicle in the library. I wonder where Alex is now but I am not sure I really want to know, since a person responsible for his care had so little faith in him.

We are emissaries from a possible future. We only seem to be here now.

III.

He drags tissue paper to the black sheepskin on the zebra print couch. When I hear mild crunching, I can’t see the source but neither do I expect to. He’s also dragged tissue behind the futon so when My Little Predator is on the crunchy prowl in the wee hours I’m not dialing 911 and searching my apartment with a big, big knife. So this evening, I noticed the rustle emanating from this new location and grabbed the disposable camera instead of the cleaver.

I’m making a concerted effort to take pictures of Larry, the little black cat bent on stealing your soul. Time is passing not just for me but for others as well, which I often foolishly forget. Every day, I suppose Mom and Grandpa bicker, three of my sisters and my brother look into the eyes of their small children and see the past and future without seeing that instant; every day, Siobhan and I compare notes in person, over the phone or via email. Little things happen each day. We are intent on them or not. It is possible to regard each day as a chance to change the world. Suppose I plant basil in my kitchen and to my great joy my home is perfumed with the sweet earthiness of growing plants and the verdant sensuality of living basil. It is a small thing but the world is now different by the power of one person, basil and joy. So I went shopping.

I hate shopping.

The key to my hating less the shopping nightmare is to go when the other humans are distracted by something else, like sleep, work and hangovers. Since I don’t sleep, work is many things but not on Sundays and I didn’t happen to go hog-wild Saturday night, on Sunday morning, I hemmed. I hawed. If I had a watch, I’d have tapped it impatiently. Then showered and got into my car in pouring rain, which was still pouring when I got out and picked a soaking-wet carriage which remained soaking wet the whole time I was dropping vegetables into it, so it was like being in the shower with real raspberries and honeydews and bags I can’t open. This place is usually a Lite-FM mosh pit and navigating the aisles with a small cart requires great tenacity. I think my strategy of showing up when other people clearly know better is a good one when I only have to apologize for bumping someone or something about a dozen times, and I get to the register and find no line! I mean no line at all. Cashier hoping to talk to me and everything. I looked around for Alan Funt.

When it wasn’t an ambush, I handed the cashier money, buttoned my raincoat and swam to my car with my flotilla of fresh vegetables.

II.

Wednesday morning, my hair was unbearably frizzy and the formerly blond parts were Big Bird-yellow. Unfortunately, everywhere I go I bring my head, so I walking around my office with my head when my co-worker Emily asked if I knew Matt had been in the hospital for two weeks. I said, “I didn’t know that…huh…I gotta go use my head to make some calls.”

New Brunswick and the surrounding towns are actually one big small town. If we were all celebrities, Emily would be our Hedda Hopper. Emily knows all, remembers everything and everybody. When I think about it, the local paper should have a Batphone to her house and a signal light beaming her unusual hairstyle against the clouds, and four out of five articles should have accurate histories with the citation “according to Emily”. If it did I might even read that rag again, which I seldom read when it wrote about me weekly and not even on the Police Blotter. So it was confusing that Emily was weeks behind on events and not because I was keeping secrets.

Half an hour later, all the usual information sources compared notes. Matt works in the mail room and is a prog rock show promoter. I’ve known his wife Jan since she was in kindergarten with my brother Todd. Jan is a dedicated and skillful poet. Jan and Matt have a very young son. Our lives have intersected in many ways and places and times. Her friends are my friends and few people knew much of anything. I’d marched over to the mail room where a gentleman who used to work with my mother told me he didn’t know much of anything and I should call Mary. Mary, it turned out, was chasing Matt and Jan with the fireman’s net. It also turned out Matt had had a cut, it got infected, then the infection went to his lungs a week ago and he almost died. Matt was in Intensive Care, Jan was completely freaked and Mary was the only thing between Jan, the little boy and total disaster.

Mary explained everything to me several times and each time the story changed because so much had happened so rapidly that she simply hadn’t absorbed it all. I said, “Look, I don’t know how you’ve handled all this.” Fortunately, Mary and I see the funny in everything.

Tata: Break it down for me, Hot Mama.
Mary: Matt’s doctors are shocked he lived. I’m babysitting tomorrow night. The mailroom guys are going at lunchtime, the door guy is going after work. Matt wasn’t up to visitors but you could go see him now.
Tata: Why doesn’t anybody know anything?
Mary: Jan was so overwhelmed by how fast the situation escalated she didn’t even call the mailroom for three days. So I called and told them what I knew, which was nothing. Nobody knew anything.
Tata: So…the art chicks are in the dark, is that it?
Mary: Yup, far as I know.
Tata: Damn it!

That means a casserole. You know the rules! Tragedy strikes, but everyone’s gotta eat, so you cook something. You can’t cheat and buy a lasagna at Costco because everyone’s got dietary restrictions now and goddess forbid there’s peanut oil in anything because people drop dead. You’re not comforting anyone in anaphalactic shock, I’ll tell you that! You might as well bake cupcakes for the paramedics. So the first thing I did was email Julienne in California for advice.

Tata: She’s a vegetarian with lactose issues. He’s a little boy who eats everything. What do I make?

Nobody tell my relatives I asked a friend for a recipe because there’ll be weeping and rending of garments! Usually in questions food related I go to Dad and seldom to anyone else, but in this case I just wanted to chat with my friend, whom I assumed was sitting very still. Julienne’s so completely pregnant she could give birth answering the phone. I’m embarrassed to ask her to open her note files and take shallow breaths long enough to concoct a plan but of course I’m selfish.

Julienne: … … …

[Two pages later.]

Julienne: … … … You can do it! I’m off to the vegan sushi place! A bientot!
Tata: Thanks! What?

Julienne was gracious enough to bring her considerable knowledge to bear on my small problem and nothing else after lunch, and first thing the next morning. By Thursday afternoon, I was saying to strangers, “I’m going to make a casserole,” in a minor panic. My hair was getting taller with terror and humidity. By Thursday afternoon, I had given up any hope of conversation or frizz control. I went home, napped briefly and had scary dreams.

Miss Sasha: Guess what guess what! Mom, I am sosososososo happy! My friend and I are having the best day EVER and we got grants and rented a store front and it’s got great foot traffic and we’re opening a business.
Tata: Obviously, I’m having a terrible dream. Sweetheart, watch out for the giant squid.
Miss Sasha: Mommy! Wake up! This is real!
Tata: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Giant squid!

It was like my three-tone curly hair had become sentient and decided my face was Captain Nemo. I wrestled my hair into hairband and set up brown rice to cook with bay leaves and cloves. Brown rice takes 45 minutes if you read the directions but that’s an awful lot like reading a manual so if I hadn’t memorized that in the seventies I’d never know. I still wasn’t sure I’d be able to cook for Jan so I sliced root vegetables: carrots, turnip, parsnip. Then onions, celery and Chinese eggplant. I marinated tofu in soy sauce and garlic. Soon, the timer for the rice buzzed and I faced the moment of truth.

I cook just fine for myself. As soon as there’s a group involved I have stage fright. Something burns. Something’s undercooked. My stir-fries resemble sautes and somewhere in the vast and growing history of Poor Impulse Control is a story about how when stress and grief enter the picture, you’d rather I point a gun at you than wield a pudding. I can’t find that story now. You’re just going to have to trust me on that one. So my rice is done, my vegetables sit in careful groupings and it’s now or never. I pull down a giant frying pan, jack up the gas and pour in some olive and sesame oils. Minced garlic. Sliced carrots. Turnip. Parsnip. Give them a minute. Onion. Eggplant. Give them a minute. Fresh ginger. Tofu. Soy sauce. More garlic. When I turn off the gas, I’m a little shocked.

The rice pours into a foil tray. I pour the stir fry on top and cover it with foil. There’s nothing to do but drag the tray and some homemade pickles to the car and drive over to Jan’s and Matt’s, where Mary’s babysitting. So…I do it. Mary knows in person and alone I might ring the doorbell, perch the tray on the porch and climb back in my car. Before My fingertip leaves the doorbell, Mary’s pulled open the solid inner door and handed me the coordless phone.

Tata: What…?
Mary: That’s Matt.

I’m shocked speechless and the signal keeps cutting out.

Tata: Matt?
Matt: Hey.
Tata: How are you?
Matt: I’m lucky to be talking to you.
Tata: Are you…Matt, how are you?
Matt: I’m feeling a lot better.
Tata:

If you can stand it, I have nothing to say! Nothing! This is Matt’s second brush with death in the last year. Moreover, I can barely hear Matt talk and I hate missing a syllable. I jump up and down in the kitchen to hear him better. I tell him to forget everything but healing up and hand the phone back to Mary.

In the living room, Jan’s and Matt’s son and Mary’s daughter run around shouting like healthy kids. I watch them, happy. My stage fright has not just dissipated it’s evaporated. I’m elated. I’m small and nothing here, humbled by my own fear and how unimportant it is. Mary and I do half an hour of morale-boosting team comedy before I bug out and drive home.

Today, Rosana slew the monster and dyed my hair back to fabulous black cherry red.

Depth charge for the rational mind: the super-duper-adorable panda kindergarten.

My heart grew three sizes. I soaked it in hot water and tossed it in the dryer.

Dear Americans,

How are you? Feeling well? Good, good. How’s your Mom? Up to snuff? Glad to hear it. Nice. Nice.

We have a problem.

If you know me, dated, married or lived with me, you know that I cannot add and subtract. In my adorably coiffed head, numbers are shapes and colors and covered with papier mache and filled with helium. I compensate for not being able to do this crucial thing kindergarteners can by mentally fitting together shapes, colors, forms and gases. This is what it sounds like:

…turkey cutlets are right-triangle right-triangle and I have a coupon for minus right-triangle so that’s right-triangle…kitten chow with the coupon is right-triangle, together they are square: 5 dollars…

It’s not foolproof, what with tax and store discounts and my microscopic attention span, but fool that I am, I can sometimes see how things will add up and turn out.

Pretend we’re – millions of you and tiny, old me – walking through the produce aisle with $12.77 in our pockets. We think as clearly as we can about how shapes, colors, forms and gases come together. We can do it! Asparagus is one of my favorite vegetables but it is often expensive, though a grocery store bundle is usually about a pound, which I can stretch into several meals. That’s good and thrifty – if I can afford the blue right-triangle the asparagus will cost. Artichokes may be isoceles-triangle, and I’d get two, forming right-triangle, which would be two whole meals for me. So we – millions of you and tiny, old me – carefully pick from our dark, leafy greens, knotty root vegetables, firmest fruit and berries, fragrant herbs and fit together two squares – $10 – and approach the Express Checkout with ten nourishing items or fewer to sustain us for several days, in conjunction with staples we have at home. We even have a little change to drop in the Humane Society tin at the Courtesy Counter, because in real life, we are most prosperous when we live gently and passionately, and share.

Still, I can be a doofus, and sometimes I get distracted by some new confit or fleshy scallops. No one is sensible all the time! Certainly not I. However, we need to examine our current shopping bill, and I’m going to try helping you.

1. Our troops in Iraq are stretched thin and inadequately equipped. The engagement has not gone as expected by the Pentagon, and it threatens to go on indefinitely. Many soldiers have been retained in stop-loss programs and some branches of the service have relaxed recruitment criteria.

2. Medical care is better, so greater numbers of soldiers survive more serious injuries than ever before, leading to a greater number of disabled veterans. This has become so financially draining an aspect of the Iraq war that the Veterans Administration is cutting medical benefits to the surviving veterans, including counseling for sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder.

3. Last summer, a major American city was virtually destroyed. Thousands of Americans cannot yet return home and thousands more will never be able to. The economic consequences of the hurricane to all Americans will take decades to tabulate.

4. Engaging foreign companies of any nation whatever to safeguard our ports is financially silly and the stuff nightmares are made of. You wouldn’t give the keys to your house to a stranger; say this with me slowly, “Why am I handing over the keys to my entire country?”

5. As jobs are outsourced to foreign shores, middle-aged and older workers are losing health insurance and having a harder and harder time finding jobs to make ends meet. We are now a nation of individual debtors, one health crisis from bankruptcy we can’t declare anymore, with an aging population whose pension funds are increasingly tanking.

6. Our federal budget deficit is gigantic, and growing at a pace that should alarm each and every one of us. The war has been financed by loans from China, among other nations holding the notes. Our debt to China alone should keep us awake at night, but that’s by no means the only one.

7. We are thirty years late on getting off that oil habit.

Now, I want you to fit these shapes, colors, forms and gases together. It’s not easy, I know. When I fit them together, I see a monster floating toward us aimlessly. It’s gigantic, colorful, rock-hard and we can see it from a distance. Still, we sit here and do nothing to prevent ourselves from being crushed by it.

Now, behind this thing is an even larger thing in the distance, hard to make out because its edges blur, and the sunlight seems to have gone a little gray. This larger thing is War with Iran. The first thing we need to observe is the cost to our military, the human beings who protect our nation every day of our lives. The military cannot double in size, cannot afford to draft and equip the force it would require to conduct war in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. It cannot be done.

The human toll on our nation would not be recoverable. We cannot destroy an entire generation of Americans, as this war would. Well, we could destroy it, but we would have to be suicidal to do so. Who do you think would fight? Not your children? Precisely your children. They’re teens now? Perfect! Pre-teens? Even better.

What is the purpose of War in Iran? To prevent the Iranians from obtaining a fully realized nuclear program? Maybe the Pentagon should have thought of that before American soldiers marched into Baghdad and blew our war budget for the next thirty years.

The consequences of the path we are walking diplomatically and economically will lead to large-scale ruin. Looking down the list of items on our list, the first thing that must be observed is that one thing is true for persons and nations: one must take care of oneself before caring for someone else.

It is time to take a dispassionate look at the way we are handling our and our nation’s finances. We spent money like drunken sailors while we had it and kept spending long after it was gone, and now we keep spending as if it is our divine right to do so. This has got to stop. We are approaching a time of unparallelled destruction and economic depression the likes of which haven’t been seen in our lifetime, because when our economy tanks, it will take most of the world with it.

The bill is coming due very soon. The United States you know and love: kiss it goodbye. We cannot afford to engage in war anymore.

I love you, and want only your happiness,
Tata

Once upon a time in a hospital in Hartford, Connecticut, a doctor I couldn’t pick out of a lineup lifted a sheet, took a look at a watermelon-shaped thing I will never see and offered a pronouncement.

Dr. Who-ever: We’ll be here another hour.
Tata: Oh. No. We. Won’t.

Miss Sasha made her stunning debut eight minutes later. I’d had one epidural before the nurses lost Miss Sasha’s heart rate on some monitor and refused to give me anaesthesia for hours. When I tell you pain is bothering me I’m not comparing it to that time I spiral-fractured my hand and walked away laughing. I’m not comparing it to my arthritis, which has sometimes been so bad I couldn’t walk. No, those kinds of pain are relatively minor compared with the spine-splitting, bone-cracking, gut-bursting, blood-spattered agony that is pushing a human head down a birth canal, through the pelvic bones and out a fleshy little opening that often tears itself open in self-defense. She was three weeks late. When I tell you pain is bothering me I fucking mean it.

Maybe you’re one of the lucky ones with testicles who never gets mammograms. I don’t know how, but somehow this is your fault. If you work for an insurance company, this is definitely your fault.

Phone Guy At My Insurance Company: Just because your doctor prescribes it doesn’t mean the test is approved.
Tata: A mammogram?
Phone Guy At My Insurance Company: Yes.
Tata: That I’m supposed to get every year?
Phone Guy At My Insurance Company: Yes.
Tata: Do you realize how stupid that sounds?
[Silence.]

I have no doubt that asshole has a brilliant career ahead of him, denying poor women health care – bilking the elderly will just be gravy for him! So if you have testicles, keep in mind that 1% of breast cancers are diagnosed in men and they’re particularly dangerous because if you can believe it apparently men don’t grope themselves enough to notice changes in their breasts and follow through with doctor appointments so – men! Get groping and make an appointment. And then you had better make sure if you work in a health insurance company that you freaking take vigorous steps to retrain that idiot phone guy.

For those of you without testicles, which is to say non-men, or “women” – your health issues are apparently so complex and icky that whole frigging states refuse to treat your bodies like they’re human. And yet, once you turn forty, you’re going to march yourself once a year to a clinic or hospital with a radiology department, where technicians with varying degrees of skill and emotional investment in their jobs may or may not actually make eye contact when they ask a list of perfunctory questions before walking up behind you, grabbing one of your breasts in a decidedly untingly, romantic manner and no matter how many times you’ve done this it doesn’t get any better when the clinical hand on your breast squeezes really hard, places the breast on a tray, lowers a shelf onto the breast and smashes it flat. Then the technician says, “Now hold still and don’t breathe.”

Some people who get mammograms, which is to say mostly women, dislike having their breasts mashed between a tray and a moving shelf multiple times and from various angles but it doesn’t actually hurt them. Before today, the last time I went to the radiology to have my breasts mashed the technician was utterly indifferent, her technique was poor, multiple re-takes were required and though I don’t cry I considered weeping but would have preferred to punch her in the face until she pretended to care. Or pressed charges. Because it would actually be funny to be arrested half-naked for performing the service to womankind that would be assaulting a crappy mammo tech until she got the idea that perhaps philately – say – held a certain charm. In Borneo. Please note I did not cry, punch anyone in the face, or get arrested for the Cause. No. I did what my grandmother Edith did many times through painful medical tests: made meaningful eye-contact, gritted my teeth and said, “Finish your job. Now.” I am not a wuss. That really hurt. In the course of someone else’s cancer treatment, it came up with the oncologist that MRIs do a better job of detecting lumps earlier. My insurance company wouldn’t spring for it, even when my doctor insisted.

Now if you have engineering prowess and some acquaintance with breasts, perhaps you’ve realized by now you could make a fortune by designing an inexpensive, pain-free technology. Perhaps, if you’re really smart, you could redesign MRIs so a person with or without testicles but certainly with breasts could step into it like a closet, get scanned – NNNRRRRRRRRRRRFFFFP! – and be pronounced sick or healthy with a great degree of accuracy; bonus points for making it sound better than an X-soaked drum circle. As insurance plans go, mine is pretty good, reasonably priced and a bigger pain in the ass each time I try to use it. I suppose I could have an MRI if I could pay for it, but if mammograms don’t work on me – witness the re-takes – why am I supposed to keep dicking around with them? And for how long? It is cost-effective for the insurance company to pat me on the head until I have full-blown cancer?

Am I pissed? Yes, I am pissed. I am royally pissed. It’s not women operating insurance companies, medical technology firms, board rooms, courts and legislatures. I am sick of shouting from the rooftops while the basement floods and drowning people declare there’s nothing to worry about. If I ever, ever have a pile of money, I’m creating women’s scholarships to M.I.T., with a heavy concentration in civic-minded Get Us the Hell Out Of This Mess.

As Ken Lay’s trial proceeds, Tom Delay won his primary yesterday. I would like to maintain a positive outlook (these things will take care of themselves) but I see them as symptoms of corruption, selfishness and greed in our society. FEMA trailers are sinking into mud in Arkansas rather than house Katrina survivors in Mississippi and Louisiana. These events are not happening in a vacuum, and I can’t look at current events and stay calm anymore. It’s time for a giant game of Connect the Dots, starting with painful, inappropriate medical tests for which I’m supposed to be grateful, and ending with bankrupt energy companies in California, with stops for complaints about pesky trees at the National Forest Service, port insecurity, 2000 missing people after six months, anti-gay bills in dozens of states, secret wiretapping programs and breathtaking defenses that violate our Constitution, a Congress that has all but abdicated its responsibilities, a stacked Supreme Court and anti-abortion bills that will set back the cause of women 32 years. These things are all part of a pattern of behavior. A pattern of fear and greed. To oppose one thing should be to oppose the pattern, the disease in all its symptomatic forms. And yet, what I hear at every turn is, “Yeah, but if we just wait a little longer…”

And that is how we are beaten. Separated and beaten.

I admit it: the news of the last week has me a little down. South Dakota has apparently decided incest really is a game the whole family can play. Pundits quibble over whether a civil war is-is, in fact, is-ing in Iraq. Last night, a Daily Show rerun articulated my frustration and fatigue with the administration with a pop quiz: (paraphrasing) When Scott Mclellan said, “I’m not going to comment on an ongoing investigation,” was he talking about –

And though the answer was “D. the Plame Affair” the list of possible investigations followed the hurricane pattern into greek letters. I laughed nervously and hoped this wouldn’t compound my already weird dreams. What, you don’t dream about the hilarity of dropping bombs on whole flooded regions of unemployed Kanye Wests who should have evacuated when you told them developers needed that land? Christ on a cracker, the news has been so bad I’m tempted to switch to Telemundo to calm down.

Yesterday, I opened my datebook and realized I had an appointment today I’d made three months ago because making appointments three months in advance leads to a higher degree of “I told you you’d forget.” Well, I’ve beat the curve. I’m going to hop a bus downtown, braving the brisk river winds and floating construction debris, and I’m getting a mammogram. Expect the worst. I do. What do you think happens when a woman named Tata shows up to have boobs mechanically mashed?

By this afternoon, we can both expect I’ll be willing to shout down chickenhawks and warmongerers of all stripes. I’ll be ready to cut to the chase. If I can face a mammogram, I can face anything. Later: phone calls to senators. No sweat.

My charming assistant, a dear polyglot from Athens – the original Athens, and please don’t ask, “Georgia?” – trained for weeks and out of the blue received both an offer from her previous employers in Stuttgart and another from the Athens Conservatory. Of course, it’s not really called “the Athens Conservatory” but I don’t really know what it’s called because I don’t speak Greek. Anyway, a bolt from the blue cannot be fought with petty jealousy – no, this requires industrial-strength jealousy, and I’m just the gal to barely conceal it.

Iona: I’m so sorry! We worked so hard on the purchase orders!
Tata: That’s okay, darling! Here, have some microwave popcorn and my best wishes.
Iona: I hate to leave you! You’ve been so good to me!
Tata: Darling, as much as I’d love to go to Athens with you – or frankly, without you – I understand why you have to go back to the Conservatory and take that last chance on a professional music career.
Iona: I can’t believe you’re so sweet about this!
Tata: Listen, you don’t have time to worry about me. The future is rushing up to meet you. Shoo! Shoo! Hurry!
Iona: I’ll never forget you!
Tata: That’s not a very interesting future. Forget me as soon as you leave the city limits. Happy life! Goodbye, sweetheart!
Iona: I just remembered I don’t have a microwave here or in Greece.
Tata: I trust your ability to drive up Route 1, break into a convenience store and microwave popcorn but you’ll need a getaway driver and at least one meat fork…
Iona: I’ll find a way!
Tata: Kiss kiss!

I’ve had shorter breakups. Half an hour later, John emails from twenty-five uninterrupted feet away.

John: What did you do this time? You train your student and just when she could be of assistance you frighten them off.
Tata: Dahhhhhhhhhlink, as with some things and all people, trying to hold them close after they’re determined to go only results in ill-feeling and restraining orders.
John: Oh yeah? What happened to “I’m evil, I get what I want, I made you up and if you don’t do my bidding I’ll imagine you back to eighth grade detention.”
Tata: Since you’re imaginary, it’ll be seventh grade health class. Bon appetit!

Yes, in real life, I stand up in the middle of staff meetings, point at John and yell at my co-workers, “Don’t answer him! He’s not a real person! You’re only encouraging that evil thing!” The first few times, people exhanged glances and mouthed words at each other. After that, they started ignoring him on command. If I can get the university to direct deposit his paychecks into my account I will feel I’ve accomplished something in life.

And speaking of Me, Ned phoned Me last week about the recording debate. Ned and I lived together for an unspecified number of years and a player to be named later.

Ned: So what did you decide to do?
Tata: I decided when Sean can throw his wife and two adorable daughters out for a few hours we’ll record. I haven’t seen anything about rights, so once it’s recorded we’ll take it from there.
Ned: Sounds cautious. I want you to remember something. That piece is really hard on you. I’ve seen what it takes out of you to do it. You think of it as your masterpiece –
Tata: My hit.
Ned: – but the real masterpiece is the life you constructed. Odds were against it. You should be very proud.
Tata: Thank you. That was right nice of you to say.
Ned: Repay me in cheeseburgers.

That is an excellent trade.

Busy, busy. I spent the afternoon in the store, where I had every intention of sitting in a folding chair, surfing the net and reading Johnny’s latest novella, but it was not to be. Alas, customers selfishly overlooked my needs and showed up in droves. My friends showed up in droves, though I hardly blame them. If I hadn’t seen me for more than a few minutes I might be traumatized, too! So deigning to talk to them is the very least I can do. Which I did.

An older gentleman who reminds me of my dad in twenty years asked me to an art show. If he reminded me of anyone else I might’ve accepted the invitation but the Dad association made it super-strange. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. I told him I was meeting my new wife in Oswego next weekend, and I hope Oswego’s a place or I’ll have to get in one. And a wife.

This is going to sound crazy but I’m too tired to complain. My family was throwing a baptism. Siiobhan’s family threw a surprise party for a ninety-something-year-old great aunt. I’d like a look at that will. Last summer we threw a suprise party for my 93-year-old Grandpa, and when Mom wouldn’t listen to the idea that at his age he might appreciate fewer surprises I got the idea that she wanted his Tupperware collection.

I mean, who wouldn’t?

Bless my buttons, I’ve pictured Mom on America’s Most Wanted, effortlessly turning the perpetually irate John Walsh to melted butter but trying to help, “John, I think you were asking why every judge in Somerset County recused himself and sent me a bouquet but, begging your pardon, you seem to have lost your vowels.”