Monday,
October 7, 2002
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I look pensive on Omaha beach, 1999
"Delays have dangerous ends." |
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slow-moving front I'm feeling a little slow in my own movements. The cold front is slow in arriving today, too. I realized that I want to write more what I'm feeling, more little tidbits of description here. I should have said yesterday that Sixth Street at noon on Sunday smelled like garbage and that at 2pm there were some punkers with spiked green hair walking down the street. I want to say that I've been given the green light to call someone and tell them something that may be very important to them and that it scares me. And that when I finally dial and an answering machine answers that I want to laugh out loud. I hang up. It wasn't in my script...what to do if a machine answers. But hanging up feels right.
I drag a little today. I finally get to the club, do some biking to nowhere for twenty-five minutes or so and then do some lower body machines. I am trying, in retirement, to be more active. So I either need to work out or do some serious labor in the yard every day. The bamboo beckoned but not that compellingly. So the club was it. I dawdled when I returned then finally showered and then dawdled some more. FFP brought someone over who is an actress in a play written by a woman he'd interviewed before. The play is about nurses captured on Corregidor in WWII. The actress is also working on a documentary about women in WWII from all walks of life, on all sides, in all sorts of situations. I am really interested in WWII personal history. As we talked, her young niece was exploring the house and yard. She is deaf and was signing excitedly to her aunt and then wanted to take pictures of the yard and stuff in the house. She got her disposable camera out of the car and did that. She got me to take her picture with Chalow to finish up. Sweet kid, very interesting aunt.
Finally I get off to my Dad's. We have a confusing piece of paper from the hospital. Basically it says we can't process your request for medical records because you haven't paid $35.30. We aren't confused though because we were warned. We just have to go pay the amount and we get the records. Why the letter can't say 'come pay this and get the records' I don't know. Dad and I eat lunch. (He: some leftover ground meat and beans; me: a frozen dinner he has in the freezer that he didn't care for because it has a red pepper sauce and such peppers don't agree with him.) Dad says that he sorts through Mom's things until it makes him sad. He says he told his youngest sister this on the phone today. He chokes up a little. After lunch we take our paper and go to the hospital, march directly to the records area (which we now know the location of) and give them the cash and they copy the pathology report from the aspiration of my mother's bone marrow and generously (well..you have to pay for ten pages as a minimum) give me the discharge summary. In this they list ten other conditions besides multiple myeloma. I need the pathology report to try to get some money from a cancer policy. I have no idea if I will get any but I think I will. (Read: I don't exactly understand the policy.) The discharge report sounds ominous.
I collect everything I think I need to file for this cancer insurance and take it home to copy it.
I spend the rest of the afternoon futzing about, not really accomplishing anything. I don't attack the forms and copying nor the assignment to make a spreadsheet FFP has given me. I don't finish sorting the piles of newspaper in my office or controlling the other piles there. I watch snips of movie channels, get my car registration ready to mail, look through the mail with FFP. I'm avoiding something. I'm avoiding everything. For a few minutes anyway. And that's OK. I'm giving myself permission.
Forrest and I eat a spinach salad with chicken breast and some leftover queso. We settle in to watch Third Watch and Crossing Jordan. My buddies from last night call after the first and I invite them over for a drink before they go out to watch music. We talk about things for a while and they are off.
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179
JUST
TYPING