We are WE, we are US

Last we spoke it was just before everyone entered their annual tryptophan induced coma and things were dandy. Our Friendsgiving went absurdly well, thank you for asking. I shit you not the friend who hosted us literally said “Gosh darn it” on possibly more than one occasion. It was so wholesome. And then the Cards Against Humanity came out and re-confirmed that everyone is terrible and I cackled a lot. Also having a car makes traveling long distances a lot easier, who’da thunk.

Resolution(?) to illness

The one big issue to come out of an otherwise lovely day of gaiety was that I remained sick. I was beginning to have an awful hacking cough that knocked the wind out of me and I immediately thought it was definitely pneumonia. Fortunately I have levelheaded people in my life who remind me that I am not a medical professional and therefore should not diagnose myself. Also people who point out that one usually gets bronchitis before pneumonia and there are phases to these things.

Cool. So I went through the proper bureaucratic to get a doctor’s appointment for the Saturday after Thanksgiving and astonishingly I got in. Most of the time I change people’s names and give clever nicknames but I have to tell you about my nurse at Urgent Care. The name on her badge was “Nurselyn.” Her profession was nurse. I wasn’t actually sure that part was reality so I feel more comfortable sharing it with y’all.

After she checks my vitals (slightly above average pulse, everything else normal), she calls in the doctor. In walks Dr. TooAttractiveToExistinReality (Tater). I did a literal double take and immediately felt like the mum in Angus, Thongs and Full-FrontalSnogging (then gave myself a moment of pause and sadness that I was identifying with the mum instead of the main character). In this book series the mum routinely goes into the doctor, or convinces the daughter to go into the doctor because he is Dreamy. All of a sudden I could see her point.

Best of all, he concluded that it wasn’t pneumonia! And he did all of the proper doctor-y things that gave me the impression he was keenly excellent at his job. I have seen a lot of doctors in my tenure of being alive. They are not often keenly excellent at their jobs.

He concluded that it’s something called Reactive Airways Disease which is a fancy way to say “You never really grow out of childhood asthma, it just hits you with wonton cruelty at random points of your adult life.”

Dr. Tater escorted me towards the exit and gave me some papers to read up on the medication he was assigning me.  Then he proceeded to do something I have never seen a doctor do. He went over to Nurselyn and said “Hey, I see you’re really busy over here. Can I go grab your next patient and take their vitals so you have some time to catch up?” 0__o Dr. Tater, ftw.

So now I have fancy inhalers and I’m taking a bunch of otc medications so I can avoid further issues. I feel like a 80’s stereotype of a “nerd” kid. It feels weird but I can also breathe again so fuck the haters, I got my spirit back!

A Local Institution, Its Trials and Tribulations

There is a park down the street from our house in Key Route City that I love very dearly. It is the park I took the Little Bear to when I was her nanny. It is the park I walk through when I go to the grocery store. The recreational center was where I had my going-away party before I left for TLoTH (The Lab on The Hill, if you’re new to this blog). The same rec center is my polling place, with three precincts jammed inside and literally hundreds of people exercising their civic muscles.

On election day I gave out Free Hugs at the rec center. I stood next to the folks who work for the center selling buttons and coffee. It was very chill environment (with lots of hugs from voters who appreciated the support) and we all got to talking. The director of the rec center encouraged me to come to a planning meeting the next week because the park had some extra funds and they wanted community input on how to use them. Cool! Civic participation leads to more civic participation. So of course I suggested it to PartnerPenguin for our next Date Night.

We went to the planning meeting and it was…attended. There were 15 people, 5 of whom either worked for Key Route City or the park. The funds available for the park were designated for ADA accessibility but they were flexible so the floor was open. I should also mention that there is an old Victorian house on the lot. Let’s call it the Lichen House. It is really pretty but totally dilapidated and no one goes inside because the floors probably don’t support weight.

There is one guy in particular who is super-all-for getting the Lichen House repaired. He thinks that all funds should be diverted to fixing it so the City of Key Route can get revenue from the Lichen House as a venue. I chime in that one way of seeking additional funds would be that the city could ask a large new tech company, Potato Inc., moving into town to help out. (There is a complex relationship between what cities can ask of companies around making privately owned public spaces.)

Other suggestions included creating edible forestry/foliage and also putting in a giant sign with the time, date and temperature because a lot of people can’t find the park or know whether they’re in the park.

We left because the gym area was echo-y and there is only so much civic juiciness one can reasonably handle in an evening.

Cool cool. Fast-forward to Sunday. PartnerPenguin is browsing Twitter (as he does) and he comes across a post by the Mayor of Key Route City. The picture is of the rec center, in ashes! 0_____0 We are so numb to helicopters lately that we hadn’t noticed there was a two alarm fire going on 5 blocks from our house. 60-70% of the rec center is gone, but the Lichen House was saved.

PartnerPenguin and I immediately decide which Scooby Doo characters we are (I’m Velma because she’s the sexy smart one and he’s a mash of Scooby and Shaggy) and we get to work. We very vaguely, and without any actual intent of legitimately accusing, decided it was the angry man who wanted to divert all funds to the Lichen House. Definitely arson. Not the very realistic possibility that the electrical wiring was 70 years old and in dire need of replacement.

Tune in next week to see how the crime unfolds…

Lunch is a Vague Time Frame

I’d like to round out today by telling you about the excellent lunch company I had today. While a lot of my friends say they would travel from the ends of the Earth to see me, few actually have.

Today, a friend visited me from Chile. Yeah. The country not the pepper. And he was only in town for a total of three days. Friend. Win. Of. The. Century.

I’m going to call this friend The AndeanLawyer and his wife BilingualMomma. These were some of our first friends we made when we moved into the area. At the time their eldest son was 10 months old and they worked some kind of magic so that we never heard him fuss or cry. Like, I’m sure it had to have happened. But we almost never heard it. ¡Los vecinos fantasticos en todo del mundo!

The Andean Lawyer and I dined in the cafeteria we both used to take our lunch in while we were students (he was getting his JD while I got my BA). It was oddly nostalgic, but also really nice to see the folks I used to see every day and greet them fondly.

We talked about my mother and her new kitty roommate Muffin, and my brother who is now living in The Great North. We talked about his kids going to bilingual school and how important that will  an asset for them. We talked about PartnerPenguin’s work and how he and I have been discovering some of the challenges and benefits to my being an ENJF and him being an INTP and how that works in “off” time. We touched a little about how frustrating it can be to have culture shock when you’re back in a place you once considered home.

We talked a lot about the political climate and actions of democracy that America has been up to lately. He asked me how The Clown was elected. I told him what I suspected but honestly that I just don’t totally know. I told him how I waver between being scared and being ready for action. I would like to be able to do more, but I don’t quite know how. He didn’t have any good answers there.

I introduce him to a term I have invented and I definitely think everyone should use.

Agreeument (əgree-you-ment) 1) A conversation where all parties emphatically agree with each other in a manner that, to a casual observer, seems like an argument. 2) Reinstatement of the original point with additional observational evidence from all parties involved. 3) A circle jerk.

One of the things I miss from the city I grew up in (The Big Scrapple) was the ease with which I could find a person with a different worldview than my own. The way I was taught to interact with people who have different opinions to yours is that you listen to them. They listen to you. You do not speak for the purpose of convincing the other side to agree with you. You speak so that your position is fully understood and that further disagreements may be made with informed positions. You agree to disagree if you come to a point of impasse. But importantly, you can discover A LOT MORE nuanced points of view than if you never listen to an oppositionary opinion.

As a takeaway from this very serious conversation, The Andean Lawyer reminded me of something very important. When you have important and intimate relationships in your life, hold on to them. “We are WE,” he said. “ We are US.” Don’t let go of the important people in your life because of challenging situations or difficult times. The folks who matter, they matter. And that’s what’s important.

Music

Today I’d like to close out with Gaelynn Lea’s “Someday We’ll Linger In the Sun”. I loved her Tiny Desk Concert so I started following her on social media. This past week she posted about something really cool called Bedstock which is an entire music festival where artists record music in their homes for kids (and adults) who aren’t able to leave their beds.