Shoulder Report and the Red Hat Party

I went back to the orthopedic doctor for my six-weeks-out-from-surgery checkup. He was pleased that I didn’t need or use any of the pain pills he prescribed and that my range of motion is almost to where it should be. I have a level two pain in my upper arm when I raise it out straight but he thinks that’s because of the arthritis and bone spur that was removed on the ball of my shoulder joint rather than from the labrum tear repair. I guess all the nerve ends from that part of my arm go through the area that was “sanded” smooth---I don’t know the medical term for that, but I’m sure there is one. He gave me a shot to soothe the nerves and if the pain comes back in a few months then he can shoot some jell-like stuff in there for a longer term solution. I have to go back in six weeks. In the meantime, no snow shoveling, picking up heavy stuff or bench pressing (like that’s was going to happen) but I can do anything else. He doesn’t think I’ll need therapy either but if I don’t continue to make progress on my range of motion, all I have to do is call and he’ll order it for me. I’m a happy camper. My niece’s daughter-in-law, who had the same labrum tear surgery on the same day, was leaving the doctor’s office just as I was coming in and she didn’t fare as well as I did. She’s got a frozen shoulder and has to have another procedure on Monday followed by daily physical therapy for a couple of weeks. Color me boastful but it feels good to do ‘recovery’ better than a person four decades younger than me.

This weekend, the gods of snow and ice were still on vacation so Saturday I hopped in my Malibu to go to a Red Hat Society Christmas party. I was excited about playing dress up with my friends and having a good meal at a cozy country restaurant with a huge stone fireplace. Technically, I didn’t look ‘Red Hat’ enough. I had no purple on and just one bracelet and ring. I wore (for the first time in years) a classic red sweater set that is piped with black, very expensive in its day. After my recent weight loss it fits perfectly again and who doesn’t feel kick-ass good in anything with built-in shoulder pads? I love that sweater set! It also matched my most elegant red felt hat. I threw a black crepe, fringed scarf around my neck, just to “tacky up” my look and keep my neck warmer at the same time. (I didn’t want to look too classic next to my feather boa wrapped and fully blinged out sisters.) Black pants, red shoes and a black purse with a Red Hat Society motif embroidered on the front completed my outfit. 

I tried to take some pictures at the party to share in this blog but I’m dumber than my smart phone and I ended up with photos of mostly my thumb. I wanted to show you the fur topped elf socks and booties one lady wore and the beautifully beaded red and purple collar that dipped down to our queen’s waist in the back and of course, a couple of photos of blinged-out hats. And how could anyone not smile at a purse that looks like Santa’s belted waist? There were twenty-two of us in attendance and can you believe it, twenty of us actually ordered dessert! I collect recipes for bread pudding (I have about a hundred) so when I saw it on the menu I had to have it. 

One of my very favorite Red Hat sisters has a great sense of humor. She’s ten years my senior and so fun to sit next to that I could eat her up with a spoon and ask for seconds. And she’s about as Tea Party radical as I'm a flaming liberal. She sends out these chain e-mails that are so full of hate for Obama, hate for Democrats, hate for liberals and hate for poor people. A glut of propaganda and misinformation. When I see her in person I just can’t mesh her online personality with her face-to-face personality.

At the party, as I sat listening to the conversations around me, I couldn’t help thinking about how brave (or should I say brazen) many of us are---myself included---about sharing our political views when we don’t have to worry about having a face-to-face confrontation with someone who disagrees with our thoughts. I've always subscribed to the principle that you don't talk about politics, money or religion in public, even though in recent years I’ve often wished I could do exactly that. I was also reminded of something I learned at my father’s knee: How to smoothly guide a conversation back to lighter topics with a well-chosen joke that breaks any tension building in the room. Not that I had to do that at the Red Hat party---well, just one time---but I’ve always been glad that I can list that as one of my skills. Being able to laugh and have a good time with people we fundamentally disagree with is a good thing in a world that seems to be falling apart at the seams. Isn’t it? I don’t know anymore. I'm so confused. ©

Politics, Parties and Tears

Tuesday when the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released their 525 page summary of their 6,000 page still classified report on torture, I was glued to the TV. I knew it would be a hot topic on the political site where I go to debate so I wanted to hear all the details firsthand. I was also getting ready to go to a “Spirit Party" at the senior hall and just when it was time to leave John McCain came on and I didn’t want to miss his speech. I thought about skipping the senior hall, then I remembered I could listen to McCain on my satellite car radio, so I hopped in the Malibu and drove to the hall. It was probably the best speech I’ve ever heard from Senator McCain---elegantly worded and heartfelt. He said he’d read all 6,000 pages of the report and he gave his full support to the findings of the committee and the decision to publicly release the summary report. His speech ended two minutes before “Spirit” was to begin which meant when I got inside the building I had no other choice but to sit in the front row.

“Spirit” was supposed to be about Christmas but the choir director in charge of the forty-five 8^th graders who came to sing for us only included two or three Christmas songs and the rest were music was from the distance past. I was so close that I could have literally reached out and patted the director’s fancy which made it really embarrassing when I lost control of my emotions on the second song the kids sang:

I'll be seeing you

In all the old familiar places

That this heart of mine embraces

All day and through

I'll be seeing you

In every lovely summer's day

In everything that's light and gay

I'll always think of you that way

I'll find you in the morning sun

And when the night is new

I'll be looking at the moon

But I'll be seeing you

I turned around in my chair, so I’d be facing my peer group instead of those fresh-faced, innocent looking kids and I couldn’t get my tears in check. I couldn’t get up and leave either, because the choir had the door blocked. The next song up didn’t help. “Don't take your love away from me. Don't you leave my heart in misery. If you go then I'll be blue....”

Unexpected tears haven’t hit me that hard in I can’t remember when---a year, two years? In my first year of widowhood I cried over that same, I’ll be Seeing You song and maybe that’s why it struck me so hard this time? Was I also crying because I’d just spent several hours listening to such a heavy topic on TV and the radio? But I think it went deeper than either one of those things and here’s why I say that: I keep my wedding ring on the base of my computer monitor and I rarely ever wear it anymore. However that morning I slipped it on my finger. It wasn’t a conscious decision but for some reason unknown to me and I must have needed to feel closer to Don. One thing is for sure, if you’re going to cry in public doing so in a room full of mostly widows is a good place to do it. One woman handed me a Kleenex, another patted me on the knee and a third woman whispered comforting words. Afterward, several other women came up to me and asked if I was okay.

As usually happens when you cry like that I was exhausted by the time I got home. I took a nap and woke up in time to see Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. That reminded me of one of his best quotes: “If you don't stick to your values when they're being tested, they're not values: they're hobbies." And that, I thought, is a great rebuttal to anyone who thinks it was okay for our country to pay two psychiatrists eighty (80) Million dollars to design a program to teach over 100 other guys how to torture prisoners and then oversee the carrying out of so many heinous acts. As a country we are better than that, aren’t we? And don’t the 911 terrorists win if we let their barbaric act turn us into a country that no longer values or respects the rule of law? If, as a country, we don’t own up to our mistakes and vow never to let this kind of thing happen again then we have lost America's soul. The release of the Senate Select Committee's summary report goes a long way towards restoring our moral authority on the world stage. In the opinion of this teary-eyed widow... ©

Paying for My Crimes

Monday I had one of those days. You know the kind. The kind where you leave your grocery list and coupons home on the counter when you had hoped this trip to the store would be your last until after Christmas. I also took off without my cell phone. I didn’t figure that one out until I was writing a check for my groceries and I noticed the piece of red card-stock sticking out of my purse pocket with the words PUT CELL IN PURSE written on it with a magic marker. I could almost hear my mother saying, “You’d forget your head if it wasn’t attached!” How I ever got the reputation for being a detail person is beyond me. Actually, I do understand and I do deserve that reputation. But I’m also known for being a one-track person and when I left for the store my one-track was on a different road.

At the store I came upon something I’d never seen before---a beautiful layered tiramisu cake all boxed up for gift-giving, an import from Italy. I love tiramisu cakes and Italy but I couldn’t read 99% of the words on the box or find an expiration date. Even so that box was in and out of my cart a bunch of times before the you’re-on-a-diet side of the debate going on in my head won over the you-deserve-a-Christmas-gift side. Still, I couldn’t get tiramisu out my thoughts so when I got to the bakery section I couldn’t help buying a single square of American style tiramisu. (Punishment for my indiscretion would come later.) When the young clerk handed me the box he'd put the two inch square of cake in, I almost asked him to tape the lid shut---they usually do---but I didn’t want to sound like a fussy old woman. Big mistake.

When I got home I took two cloth grocery bags in the house and sat them on the kitchen floor then went back to the garage to get some more. When I came back in, the dog had popped the top off the tiramisu and was eating the chocolate layer and then some off the top of cake square. The top that is dusted in cocoa powder. Most people know that chocolate is toxic to dogs, the darker the chocolate the more toxic it is and cocoa powder is right up there at the top of the list. Coffee isn’t good for dogs either which tiramisu also has in its layers. I hopped on the internet and found a site that scared the heck out of me. Levi was going to suffer diarrhea, vomiting, low blood pressure, rapid breathing and seizures before his muscles got rigid and his heart failed. The site also said that once the symptoms start it was almost too late for treatment.

I called his veterinary, prepared to rush Levi down to get his stomach pumped and force it full of charcoal to absorb any left-over toxicity. The vet wanted to call me back after he did some calculations that involved Levi’s weight vs. how much tiramisu he had consumed. They have an app for that. Who knew. And who would have ever guessed math would play such a critic role in my day? When the vet called back he said he was quite sure Levi would be okay but if Levi started showing any symptoms over the next six hours I was to rush him down to the Animal Emergency Hospital. Yes, we have one of those in town and it’s very much like an ER for people.  Sad, tense, even crying people are in the waiting area and you wait forever while your pet is surrounded by specialty veterinaries prepared 24/7 to do anything from pull a thorn out of a paw to open heart surgery. Like any other hospital, though, the less critical patients wait while they take the more serious cases first. And you’d better have a credit card with you because you have to hand it over before your pet even gets rushed back for treatment. I don't know what happens if you don't have one and I hope I never find out.

After I got off the phone, Levi was acting like a brat, begging for treats that I didn’t give him. If he was going to upchuck, I thought, best not to have too much in his stomach. Do you know how hard it is to watch a dog for six hours? All kinds of thoughts ran through your mind. What would I do without him in my life? How could I have set that grocery bag on the floor? Why didn’t I act on the impulse to ask the guy at the bakery counter to tape the box shut? In the meantime, Levi ran around barking at squirrels and birds while I followed closely behind making sure he didn’t park any barf in the corners of the rooms. Perfectly normal---well, not the following part but you probably knew that. Then he took a nap. Perfectly normal even if I did keep annoying him by taking his pulse every time he twitched in his sleep. Finally, the six hours ticked by and Levi didn't show any symptoms that he would die by chocolate. To celebrate I ate the rest of the tiramisu. But I did not enjoy it...and I'm not sure I ever will again. What a waste of calories, a half a day and $2.99. Crimes against your diet plan just aren’t worth it! ©