Driving

There's a song I often find myself singing on my commute home;

"well I left my job about five o'clock
it took fifteen minutes to go three blocks
just in time
to stand in line
with the freeway looking like a parking lot
DAMN this traffic jam!"

I love James Taylor.

YESTERDAY it took me about 15 minute to go two blocks.  WHY you ask.  Stupid people,   They don't know how NOT to drive into the intersection of it is apparent they won't clear it before the light turns red for them AND they don't know how to merge.  MOST of theses people were driving luxury cars and Living room sized SUV s.  One woman pulled all the way to the right and tried to scoot down the turn lane until she swung BACK to the left and forced her way into the line of cars.  When I waited at the intersection to let some poor hapless soul who was trying to make a left onto the street, the jerk in the black Ranger Rover behind me leaned on his horn and went ballistic. It wasn't like we were MOVING or anything. Traffic was stopped.

Trying to MERGE is an interesting experience.  I was actually TAUGHT to do this in High School Driver's ed.  One car, one car.  That rule has apparently changed and people make up lanes and play "chicken" with one another. I tried to merge and this moron in a white van tried to edge me out. I realized I was in FRONT of him and if he hit me in the process HE would be at fault.  So I kept going.  Honestly.  The woman who had been BEHIND me played "what's my lane" made her own lane and zoomed in front of three cars.  If everyone just behaved themselves it would not be a mess, but no it's a free-for-all out there and it's  every car for themselves.  The guy in the white van ZOOMED past me as I tried to merge.  I moved over in a more orderly fashion and passed him, waving my fingers as I did. He looked pissed.

The bonus of this was it took SO LONG for me to get back to the valley, I missed the rush hour traffic in the construction zone.  I had forgotten what a mess the 2/210 connector is right now.  I hope they are done with it soon.

Stuff

I am sitting here with my breathing treatment, Wondering if THIS is now part of my daily regimen for the rest of my life.  I hope not.  I hope this is just until my raging asthma is controlled,  It is worrisome.

I got my surgery date.   June 12.  I am ready. This allows me to plan to do a few things before the surgery, no more waiting and wondering if I am going to be available for this or that.  I am done with this.  I am pleased to be able to go and see the play my friend and former co-worker Henry Ong is showing  called "a dream of the Red Chamber"  a six hour play!  FUN!!!!  I love Henry and his work is intricate and humorous, just like Henry himself. I made my reservations to see it, so I am now in the process of planning the PICNIC I will be taking.   You know me, it's all about food.

I need to get my tail in gear and go to vote BEFORE I go to work  This is a local election for a council seat that was vacated by someone who got a better offer and bailed on his commitment to the community.  Shameful.  The race itself devolved to nastiness.  I will NOT be voting for Monica Rodriguez for the following reasons:

Robocalls from Raul Bocanegra.  He's cut from the same cloth as the guy who bailed and I wouldn't believe him if he told me today is Tuesday

NASTY and I mean evil posts by her supporters about local activists were gone unanswered or apologized for.  When one of your "supporters" calls local women "Hos" and you say NOTHING, that shows me that you are willing to do anything to get elected.

NASTY mailers.  I am sick of the innuendo.


A LOT and I do mean a LOT of money is being thrown at this election.  I cannot think but the people who want to push the high-speed train through this community are somehow behind Monica.  She's for it and that alone loses me.  


I vote every election. I am involved in a small way in my community, not so much since I started having health issues last year and things got a bit dicey. It is even MORE important to vote on local issues than on National ones.  THESE are the things that will MOST impact your life.  Turnout is going to be slim, I fear.   I was going to work the polls, but am glad I stepped away as I am NOT 100% yet and I don't think I would have done anyone any good today.  Still Chris and I are proudly casting our ballots and I HOPE for a victory for Karo.  He was not my choice in the primary, I voted for someone whose pitch I liked but had a proverbial "Snowball's Chance" to win.  There were over 20 candidates so a runoff was pretty much in the cards anyway.  Whoever wins, it's gonna get "interesting" up here, as it often does.  I think of Tujunga as a small town, nestled in a larger one.  We sometimes forget we are part of the City of LA, I think.  

We'll see what happens

I can't avoid talking about #45

I am going to stop asking aloud just how STUPID  Donald Trump can be.  Perhaps we should ALL stop asking that.  He seems to think it's some sort of "Challenge"

Presented for your contemplation:

He hires a law firm to categorically deny he has ANY ties to Russia and to state that his returns will bear this out. Problem One. The law firm has DEEP financial ties to Russia.    Problem Two  No returns were included for viewing when the statement was released.  Call me skeptical, but unless the returns are presented  BY the IRS and VERIFIED BY the IRS  anything he might pull out of the vault is well, suspicious in my book.

He invites a cadre of Russians to meet with him in the Oval Office, including one whom the State Department suspects is a spy.  NO American media is allowed, and Trump and his people seem SHOCKED  SHOCKED I tell you, when the Russian media splashed pictures everywhere.  He tired to deny meeting with the guy who is FEATURED in the photos.  Still shouting "FAKE NEWS" Donald?

He fires the head of the FBI, by proxy; sending his goon uh bodyguard to deliver the message.  A little too Godfatherish?  Where is the protocol? Oh yeah on "The Apprentice" that's how they did this.  Isn't this still my game show?

He fires Comey a day after he asks for additional resources to investigate the Russian interference; THEN claims he was told to do it by Jeff Sessions , who had recused himself and had no real say in the matter if recused means what I think it means.  Apparently Jeff Sessions has a different dictionary than I do.

He goes on the Nightly News with Lester Holt and ADMITS he fired Comey before he got the "recommendations".  People know he did it NOT because of the handling of the Hillary emails, which he has praised as a brave thing to do and credits it with assisting his "great Victory"

Trump had gone on record as saying the Constitution makes us look "weak"  THIS Living document, which he SWORE to uphold when he took the oath of office. I wonder if that fancy prep school Daddy sent him to actually covered history and the Constitution.  If it did, I'm sure teen aged Donny was busy trying to figure out how to get in a girl's knickers and not paying much attention.

I've got one more thing he might not know about; vocabulary.  While the man famously can't string two words together without tripping over them, I am concerned he never learned this word:

trea·son

ˈtrēzən/

noun

1. the crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government.

For as sure as I am sitting here, that man has been in bed with the Russians in more ways than one.  His party minions, on whom he must have some dirt, are circling the wagons and going so far as to publicly proclaim they will obstruct any effort to investigate.  Really?  These are the same folks who spent HOW MUCH investigating Hillary Clinton and Benghazi, Benghazi Benghazi for nothing.  You would think that they would WANT to CLEAR him with an independent investigation.   

This just looks like they are hiding something.

Me so far

I sit here with the mask from the home nebulizer AKA "My little Friend"  strapped to my nose and mouth.  I am getting used to breathing "normally",while the steam or whatever the heck the solution turns into goes into my lungs.

Getting old is a bitch.

The pneumonia is gone and I see my pulmonologist today for clearance for takeoff.

This means I can go back to work on Monday.

Oh yeah and have the surgery to remove the lumps from my right breast on Friday.

A month or so ago, my only concern was my knees.  I have severe osteoarthritis in BOTH knees and am working to get stronger so I can have them replaced.    THAT has become SO back-burner, I don't even think about it.

Well. I am ready to go back to work, even if I DO get tired.  I can go back to work slowly and not kill myself but I really need to get back into a routine and OUT of the house.  I have left the house for small runs, but mostly I go to the doctor.  I am tired of Kaiser.

I need to stop whining.  The lumpectomy will go fine, they will find nothing and I can get back to being me.  I need to find my energy. I seem to have misplaced it.  You know, when you reach down to get the energy to do something and it's just not there?  Baby steps

April 29. Disasters in Los Angeles

It's April 29.  Los Angeles, The city I love, live in and work for commemorates ( not celebrates)  two horrific events.

April 29, 1986. Central Library Arson fire.

I remember exactly where I was when I heard about it.  Although it may seem I have been there forever, I was working in the Department of Transportation, Parking Enforcement ( or as I call it "a Season in Hell")  One of the Supervisors, Birdie Westmoreland, called out that Central was on fire.  They knew I was "Library" having worked in branches for 6.5 years.  They got tired of me asking for updates and plunked a spare "rover" ( radio) on my desk.  I heard them say "There's smoke coming through the top of the tower".  I turned off the radio, put my head on my desk and wept.  I thought the collection was gone.

The fire brought volunteers from all parts of the City to help.  I could not go, as I had just had the surgery to "fix" why I could not get pregnant and was forbidden to lift anything over 5 pounds.  Six months later, I started working in Branch Library Services and seven months later became pregnant with Kate ( nice how that worked out!)  The Save the Books Campaign begun in the ashes of that fire, when the good folks at ARCO came to offer any and all assistance.  We had prime real estate in ARCO Tower for about a year.  I know my friends who were still working in the building did so under unfathomably filthy conditions, but did so with a love and a sense of humor and purpose that is unmatched.   I always say that the fire made the people in the City realize how precious library service, the Central Library and their local branch means to them.   Out of this tragedy came a newer, bigger and better library system.  We passed TWO bond measures and Measure L which grew, strengthened and improved library service for all who use our system. The fire allowed new technology for water logged books to be tested on an unprecedented scale.  Some good did come from it.

On a side note, I hope the firebug who did it is "enjoying" the fires of Hell.  He was never able to be convicted, but he did it. He's dead now.  Good.



The King Riots April 29, 1992

I remember being in the office with co-workers when the verdicts came down.   Literally, I felt the energy in the room shift, suddenly iced cold.  I ran to my phone to call the Day Care Center where my then four year old daughter was a student.  It was across the street from Parker Center.  The daycare worker I talked to said I was overreacting when I told her they should get the kids in the inside rooms.  I KNEW Parker Center would be some sort of flash point, but she dismissed my worries with a "pfft".  I called my brother-in-law, with whom I was commuting, told him NOT to dawdle and he met me at the Center at 5 on the dot.  I remember running to the car, my brother-in-law with my daughter under his arm, passing the Japanese Heritage museum who had had an event planned that evening.  Workers were hurriedly pulling chairs that had been staged and tossing them into the building.  The wind picked up and it smelled like chaos.  We watched from home as the mayhem began unfolding.  They tired to burn down Parker Center and when that failed, went on to City Hall South where the Daycare Center was housed.  I kept my daughter home with her father and went to work.  They sent us home at about three and we did not go back until the following Monday.

 We lost two libraries that were housed in mini-mall sites.  One neighborhood, the John Muir branch community. saw neighbors forming a bucket brigade to save the building. They saved about half of it.

We were told at the time to refer to the event as a "Civil Unrest "  How sweet and politically correct.  I'm sorry  THAT was a RIOT.  The things I saw and will always remember:

 A Mother proudly patting her son in front of tv cameras saying "He stole this shirt.  He's a man now"

Two neighbors, arguing about burning down the grocery store "Oh I have groceries I took before they burned it down, you can have some "  "YES, but you burned down the STORE. Where do we get groceries when THOSE run out?  Don't you see what you've DONE?"

The four people who risked their own lives to save Reginald Denny and countless others who tried to help stop the destruction, including King himself, looking tearful as he asked "Can't we all just get along?"


I understand anger.  I am not in a position or a place where I can say I understand the underlying rage in communities, because, well, I can't.  Did some good come out of all of this?  Maybe.  Maybe dialogues began, maybe friendships were forged and new organizations dealing with the issues that were brought to the forefront by all of this have BEGUN to make a difference.   We have a long way to go. If we learned anything, we have learned that.

Me. so far

"The rabbits say one cloud is lonely" ( a quote from my favorite book, Watership Down)


I am sick.  I don't think I can ever remember BEING this sick.  Ever.   So here is what is going on:

On April 6, after two days of my asthma raging out of control I went to urgent care.  They sent me home with stuff to get the asthma under control , prednisone .  About a week later, I wound up seeing my primary care who gave me another round of prednisone.     After that was done, I wasn't getting any better, so back to urgent care.  An x-ray revealed pneumonia.  I was given MORE antibiotics.  Here is where it gets "interesting"  I'm allergic to penicillin.  It says so, right in my chart.  Both the doctor and the pharmacist said "oh this should be ok"  Well. it wasn't.  I dutifully went home and took both the meds.  Within ten minutes, my left hand swelled to almost three times it's normal size and the back of my hand turned black from knuckles to wrist.  I stared at it, wondering what the hell I had done.  It looked like I had backhanded someone- hard.  I kind of freaked out and called my sister who reminded me to take benadryl. Of course.  I took a double dose,  It does not affect me like some people, so I knew that I would be ok and called a friend to "babysit" me. She stayed with me until I felt better.  Back to urgent care, where the doctor told me that I could NOT have had a fever since I did not take my temperature ( I think I know when I have a fever)  and gave me advice contrary to what my pulmonologist  advises regarding the use of my rescue inhaler.    Enough.  I emailed him and he got me in right away.  We talked and he sent me to Emergency.  I hate going to Emergency, but I was so sick I was willing to do ANYTHING.  They sent me to the Observation unit and loaded me up with  steroids and antibiotics after a chest x-ray revealed pneumonia in my left lung.  You don't get any sleep in Observation.  They woke me up at midnight to give me a self-care pamphlet.  I was JUST sleeping good, as my father used to say, when they woke me up at 5:30 for a blood draw. I had fallen asleep around four.  Sigh.  The megadose seems to have worked. I am not coughing or wheezing, but will be off work until this (hopefully) last round of prednisone and antibiotics are done and my pulmonologist can see me.  I pretty much burned my sick time.  In the midst of all of this, my mother-in-love had surgery so I sent Chris to take care of HER.  He came home with- you guessed it- pneumonia.

We are both on the mend. I am profoundly grateful for the love and the help I have received during this time.  I am truly blessed by wonderful friends.

Judas and Easter thoughts

I've been thinking a lot about Judas Iscariot, the man who "betrayed" Christ.   I have been thinking about it, because there is such a dichotomy about him.  I went to a church as a child that vilified Judas. He was the most horrible human being . Ever.  But now, as an adult, I wonder about that.  IF we believe that God sent Jesus to die for us so that he might rise again and give us everlasting life, then WHY is what Judas did a bad thing?  Someone told me that "Judas turned away from God"  but I think Judas turned TOWARD God.  He, alone, truly must have believed that this was God's plan, for him and for Jesus and hard as it must have been, his pure belief in God lead him there.  If as Christians, we believe in the Resurrection being God's plan, in any case.

But it is Easter Sunday, and I am thinking about my beliefs and my faith. This day, for Christians, is the holiest of days.  I am not a "practicing Christian" I just try to live in the way that my faith guides me.  Me.  Not You.   I am responsible for me. I have no problem with people believing other things, or not having any kind of "faith" at all.  Faith is not necessary for some people, although it gets me out of bed in the morning sometimes.  The belief that things will be better if good people put good in the world.  Maybe it is naivete, but I think a little of that is good.  Being angry and suspicious  ALL the time is not good for the soul.

I was not raised in a "religious" household.  My mother was raised Protestant, my father was Irish Catholic, until the priest kicked him out- allegedly for sassing the Nuns one too many times ( He asked her in Sunday School how a woman could have a baby and still be a virgin, she tossed him out).  My mother had a quiet faith, believed in  the Resurrection and held close to John 3:16 as her favorite verse.  She had in underlined in her small pocket bible, which I found after she died.

When I think of Easter, I try to remember this is a holiday centered around the idea of forgiveness and reconciliation.   Most religions have some sort of rebirth celebration that coincides with Spring.  As I celebrate today, I will think about forgiveness, renewal and life.