Bird and Bach

OK, I think I've gotten some of the nonsense of the new and unimproved Blogger.com down. Maybe I can write about something besides how upset I am with the new and ridiculous home page for Blogger.

Our bird, a parakeet named Maggie, loves classical music. So we keep WSHU--the last classical music NPR station we can receive--on by her cage all day.

I haven't done a scientific study (Lord knows I couldn't do a 'scientific' study given the NFP ending of my Meyers-Briggs scale) but I've noticed some things.

Like that organ music makes her lean against her cage on the side where the radio is and not move.

Bach, in any form, seems to have the same effect.

She dances back and forth to most of the Romantic stuff.

She sings along with Mozart.

It gives me faith in music to watch her.

It has similar impact on me. I really miss the great McManis organ at St. John's. I'd just lean into the side of my cage and be joyfully still.

I'm so frustrated....

So, I'm not even sure how to view what I've posted. The terms have changed--'publish' instead of 'post' is, I think, how to send stuff. In place of a spell check click, there is an ABC click with a line through it which simply puts a line through the word you want to know if you spelled correctly or not. And nowhere I have found, is their a 'view posts' tab. I'm sure no one--out of the 12-15 people that might read "Under the Castor Oil Tree" wants to read my rants about Blogger.com. But until I figure it out, that's all you'll get. IF I can figure it out.

OK, before I even get started....

OK, before I even get started. I noticed just now two things, it's getting harder and harder for me to get to this place a write a blog. Blogger.com spent 5 minutes tonight trying to tell me how they've made my blogging easier, better, more fun before I could get HERE and actually write a blog!!! Also, I've noticed my new, improved, easier, better, funner blogs are being written out without acknowledging my paragraphs. Their fault, not mine.... Being an English major, I write in paragraphs--on old typewriters there was even a symbol on the upper row of the keys that stood for 'paragraph'. It was a capital P with an extra leg. Who knows where that went. And typewriters had a key called "Return" which on computers is called "Enter". For my taste, "Return" trumps "Enter" every time. I'm going to 'publish' this and then view it to see if my careful use of pagination has been changed. I HATE CHANGE....

Dinner list

I have lots of files on my computer--hundreds and hundreds--and sometimes I glance through them to see what all I have. I found one tonight called 'dinner list'. What it is, I think, though I don't remember writing it or when--is a list of rules for children when going to another person's house for dinner. Surely I didn't write it so long ago as when our children needed such a list. I didn't have a computer back then. I suspect I went to what I expected was going to be an adult dinner party and sat next to a child too young to come to an adult dinner party. Who knows. At any rate, I share it with you tonight... DINNER LIST 1.You will not take off any of your clothes during dinner, lest you die. 2.You will not wipe your hand on your clothes after shaking hands with our hosts, lest you die. 3.YOU WILL SHAKE HANDS LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE…..Lest you die. 4.If our hosts have any pets, you will not twist their legs or ears or tails or otherwise annoy them lest you die. 5.You will take your napkin and put it in your lap. There it will stay, verily, throughout your meal. 6.You will accept anything passed to you in way of food—no matter how icky it is—and take only the smallest amount of the most icky things and not scream about how icky they are, lest you die. 7.You will not spit food on your sister/brother or on your plate or on the dinner table, lest you die. 8.If you must—lest you die—spit food at all, it will be into your napkin on your lap. 9.You will not comment on any body part of our hosts either to your sister/brother, or your parents or anyone else lest you die. 10.You will not say any of those 14 words we all know you know but have agreed you will not say, lest you die. 11.You will not—under any circumstances—tell any stories about your siblings or parents that will humiliate and mortify them…lest you die. 12.You will stay at the table throughout dinner, even if you think you are going to explode; especially if you think you are going to explode…and you will not mention your impending explosion under any circumstances, lest you die. 13.No matter how good dessert is, you will not eat dessert from someone else’s plate nor lick your plate nor say, GIMME MORE CAKE, nor do anything to humiliate and mortify your parents, lest you die.

Survivor...

I went to my urologist today. I took Ann Tyler's "Beginning Good-bye" and finished it in the waiting room and the exam room waiting for the doctor. I recommend it highly--or anything by Ann Tyler, the girl's a writing machine. In between the waiting room and the exam room, I peed in a cup and talked to the nurse, asking her how my PSA was. She wasn't supposed to tell me but because I am so disarming and charming, she did. It was so low it couldn't be measured. I was thrilled! That meant, I imagined that I wouldn't get an injection of Luprin--a drug I was on for over a year before last March. I haven't had it since then and my PSA actually went down! The doctor came in. We shake hands a lot. We shake hands when he comes in and when we leave and then again at the desk after making my next appointment. It's not bad because his hands are small and soft. The urologist who removed my prostrate 8 years ago had hands like an NFL linebacker. Since these are people who stick their fingers up your butt, small hands are a plus.... He told me that--after 8 years and after surgery and radiation (that messed up my bladder quite a bit)and hormone treatment, I was "essentially cured". I'd come back every six months for a year and then every year for a while, but what I heard him saying was that finally, finally I could say I was a cancer survivor! Praise the Lord and pass me another glass of wine! I told him in the last six months that I realized how lethargic Luprin had made me. He smiled, "well yes," he said, "I hear that a lot." So, I didn't go to them gym today as celebration. My seldom going to the gym over the year before the last six months (when I've gone 5 or 6 times a week) was due to the drug. I just didn't realize it until now. And the 15 pounds I gained and the occasional sweating spells and the lack of energy--all that was Luprin related, but I didn't realize it because in a year you can get used to how you feel and think it is normal, I guess. (He was so pleased with my progress that he didn't even put his finger up my butt. I had a cover story that I needed to have a bowel movement and a finger up my butt would be a problem, but I didn't need it. Truth is, whenever I think a doctor is going to stick his finger up my butt, I need to poop. That's just me and don't know if it is generally true....Women might be interested in this: whenever a doctor sticks his or her finger up your butt--I've had both male and female urologists--they invariable, like a knee-jerk reflex--say "sorry". My inclination, when they say 'sorry' is to say--though I've only said it once to my GP who've I had for a quarter of a century--"how was it for you? Want a cigarette?") I'm so happy about all this I could weep for joy...Probably, I'll get hit by a bread truck crossing the street next week....

My plans as a ghost....

I was out on the back porch smoking a cigarette when I looked inside and watched Bern come into the kitchen and take a fish oil pill and get a Klondike ice cream sandwich out of the freezer. As she left the kitchen, she saw me and gave that little side-ways wave we both know how to give because we grew up in southern West Virginia where people wave like they're gently swatting away a gnat--which they probably were--West Virginia having invented multi-tasking....

But before she waved, I watched her unawares for a minute or so.

(Before I go further, I should address the cigarette I was smoking with the porch light off while I watched Bern. I get so much grief and abuse from non-smokers about my smoking, you wouldn't believe it....Though you probably would if you are a judgmental and arrogant non-smoker who gives grief and abuse to smokers you know.

I was getting my teeth cleaned Tuesday afternoon and the dental hygienist asked me if I smoked. That was a rhetorical question, I imagine, since she could surely tell from the stains of my front teeth that I did smoke. God bless her, she didn't abuse me and give me grief. We had established already that she was a member of St. John's Episcopal Church in North Haven and I was an Episcopal priest so we had a modicum of politeness and mutual respect established. However, some of the most vicious grief-givers and abusers of me are Episcopalians who don't smoke. Perhaps it gives them some degree of self-righteousness to talk trash to a priest...I don't know.

After a lot of probing and rinsing, the dental hygienist asked me, politely and with respect, if I'd ever stopped smoking. I told her yes and that there have been long years, a decade once, when I didn't smoke.

"Oh," she said, "but you always went back."

"I always went back several times," I told her, "but the last time I went back was a conscious decision."

She was interested in this conversation and didn't stick anything in my mouth.

"A conscious decision?" she asked.

"Yes," I told her. "I'm a priest and I must, by my call, stand with 'the oppressed' and smokers are the most oppressed people in our society...."

She took that in. "You're kidding....." she said.

"I'm kidding...." I said.

"But not completely...." she added.

"You got it" I said. "Smokers are, in general, a lot less judgmental of  choices than non-smokers and especially 'ex-smokers'.

All those time I was an ex-smoker, I was abusive and grief-giving to the lower species around me who smoked.

I stand...and smoke...with the Oppressed....)

All of which was a smoker's rant of an aside. What I started writing about was watching Bern take a fish oil pill and get an ice cream sandwich out of the freezer before you noticed me smoking and watching her from the dark back porch.

My plans as a ghost lie in that direction--being able to watch the people that I love, unawares that they are being watched, do ordinary things.

I've never been enamored by the traditional views of heaven. Being in a place with streets of gold, being weighed down by wings, singing the "Santus" for all eternity. I want to be a ghost and visit those I love and watch them go about their lives--my daughter and my son and my granddaughters, but most of all, most, most of all, to watch Bern once I am dead--watch her take a drink of water and swallow a pill...watch her look in the freezer for something to eat, watch her reading a book, watch her dressing for a trip to the grocery store, watching her shopping, watching her with my daughter and son and granddaughters do ordinary thing, watching her laugh and be joyful and weep and be sad--perhaps because I am gone--and then remember what she has to do and going to do it. That would be heaven to me: standing on a darkened porch, watching the ordinary moments of life of those I love. I can't imagine an 'after life' better than that... Unless it would include a cigarette or five while I was watching...and a glass or six of wine as well....