Hospice Nurse Finds Portal to Big Sur

I don’t know if you have ever been to Big Sur. It is a very special section of the Southern California coastline. It used to be called Big Surf, on account of the massive Pacific waves that bash up against the rocks all along the coastline. But as it came through Ellis Island, Surf was felt to be too difficult to pronounce, so it became simply Sur. 

But this was long ago, in another century. Now Big Sur is home to many golf courses, inns, and absolutely no internet service. I am lucky enough to be staying at a very special place, the Ragged Point Inn at...Ragged Point. This is an establishment where, despite the lack of Internet service, you can use the Wi-Fi. Because it is 2019. However, upon check-in the nice receptionist informs us that the Wi-Fi is brought to us by satellite (what does this mean? Isn’t that true of all Wi-Fis?) so it is very spotty. Plus if there is more than one hotel patron using it, you are out of luck, because although it is broadband, it is a very very narrow sliver of broadband, just wide enough for one lucky Internet user to balance on.

Thus I found myself at my hotel with no access to my daughter, the Internet, or Facebook. Except for those brief periods of time when nobody else at the hotel was trying to balance on the narrowband. At these moments, ten texts would come in at once, I would rush to answer them, and one response would go through before I got roughly jostled off the band by the heavier person in room 7.

Luckily my good friend and roommate Connie is an AT&T subscriber. These folks get service here. All other losers, such as me with my $54/month Verizon bill, are out of luck. So I quickly gave Connie’s phone number to my daughter. Text me at this number if you need to, I told her. Connie will keep her phone with her.

Connie forgot her phone when we went to dinner. I had to walk back to our hotel room to get it. Then I asked her for the passcode. 1113, she said confidently. But there are six digits, I said. She looked confused. I can’t really remember it unless I’m typing it, she said. I pretended this was a foreign concept to me, that it was really dim-witted for someone to forget a code they type a hundred times a day. She took her phone from me and stared at the passcode screen. 1113 13, she said. 

Later, when the screen had blanked again, I checked with her. 111 313, right? No, she said. 1113 13. This did not strike her as in any way odd.

Our room has one of those coffee makers with the small foil tubs of coffee that are directly causing the death of life on earth. Plus there is no half and half, only sachets of Coffee Mate powder, made by Nestle. I would really hate myself if I used a Nestle product just because I wanted a late-evening cup of coffee.

Overcoming my self-hatred with some bravery, I put the foil tub in the foil tub-shaped slot, poured a cupful of water in the water reservoir and pressed the flashing blue button to say that yes, I did want to destroy the planet. A tiny stream of coffee began to jet reassuringly into the waiting mug. Then, just when I was feeling that the joy of coffee was definitely going to outweigh the guilt of planet destruction, the foil tub slot shot open and the coffee stream stopped. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I gave a small scream when this happened. After a couple of attempts to close the foil tub slot, I noticed that if I held the slot closed manually the coffee continued to come, turning a muddy sort of grey as it mixed with Nestle’s life-affirming powder. Surely this is wrong, though? I shouldn’t be paying nearly $200 for a hotel room and then have to stand holding the coffee foil tub slot closed? While not going on Facebook? I make a mental note to write to my representatives in the morning. After the government shutdown resolves, this should be addressed.

The Ragged Point Inn property is a truly gorgeously beautiful one. There are many spots to sit and overlook the ocean and the crashing waves and the picture perfect sunset. There is also a curious wooden circle mounted on a pedestal and overlooking the cliffs with a little sign that says it is The Portal into Big Sur. I’m so relieved to have found it. Otherwise, I could have been just driving aimlessly up and down the Southern California coast for days.

Like its Northern California counterpart, the Mendocino Coast, Big Sur is a nebulous stretch of Highway 1 without clear beginning or end. No signs to tell you you are entering or leaving the bigness of it. The road is narrow, twisty, and hugs the cliff edges at places. Considering I am going to be biking it on the Climate Ride in June I tried not to look too closely at how very narrow, not to say nonexistent, the shoulder was in many places. They will probably widen it before June, I’m thinking.

Meanwhile, when I woke this morning I was staring directly out a large picture window at the ocean and the cypress trees and the dawn stealing up the sky from the horizon. I watched the colors deepening, the whole show, it just got better and better and I hadn’t even bought a ticket. Down on the beach, waves kept coming in, just like the old day only newer. You could call them relentless; or patient. Mutely responsive to the gravitational force of the moon, whose tidal forces are twice as strong as the Sun’s, even though the Sun’s gravity on earth is so much stronger. I like this show of strength from our moon, it reminds me that bigger is not always stronger. The sky pinked down and got pale yellowish blue. Confident that the day had fully arrived, I let the quiet of being offline and the barely discernible whisper of the ocean rock me back to sleep.

Covent Garden to Elephant and Castle

I was just reading about La Befana, the old Italian witch who flies on her broom through the night on January 5th, the eve of the Epiphany, and leaves presents for children in their stockings. Just as some leave out cookies and a bev for Santa, the Italians leave a special cake for their witch. The Befana cake is a fruity golden cake with (of course) a dash of spirit and there are as many regional recipes for it as for the Mexican molé. 

What caught my eye was that the Italians hide a coin inside their Befana cakes and whoever finds it will be lucky all year. I was immediately transported back to the Halloweens of my childhood and the barm brack my mother would bake - a dense dark fruity cake in which she would hide a ring wrapped in tinfoil. Tradition had it that whoever found the ring would be married within the year. Being the youngest in my family and the only girl, my parents and all my brothers would go to whatever lengths necessary to make sure it was I who got the ring. I knew they did this but I was still excited each time to find it in my slice of brack. That ring has a lot to answer for.

Memory is a powerful force. I was talking with an English friend of mine recently. He was a cabbie in London back in the day, so he had The Knowledge. Before googlemaps, this was the hardearned ability of London cabbies to take a fare from any point A to any point B in London using only their mental maps of the city. Having lived in London for several years, and harboring a big love for that city and especially its cabbies, I listened spellbound as he told me how he acquired The Knowledge.

Cabbies in training would drive their cab all week but in their spare time and evenings, they would do ‘Callouts.’ This involved picking one of 164 detailed routes through the city, learning them by heart, and then traveling them on a moped (small motorbike). The cabbies before him used to do their callouts by bicycle. Before that, they walked. It took him 14 months of callouts to be ready to take The Knowledge. You showed up for your test in a big warehouse in Lambeth. You had to listen carefully for your name to be called. It wasn’t called twice. 

When your name was called you climbed the stairs and you stood in front of the examiner, who was sitting behind a table. He gave you rapid fire four or five routes: Get me from Picadilly Station to the Tower of London. Get me from Wembley Stadium to Richmond tube. Covent Garden to the Elephant and Castle. If you hesitated, he would say come back in six months.

To talk him through a route, you had to give precise directions. Head off East from the station, first left on Ely Street, past The Red Lion on your right...Bear in mind that unlike most American cities, London is not based on a grid system. It is a maze of small winding streets. The City of London is an area of only 1.1 square miles, but Greater London extends 45 miles from the center.

As I listened raptly, my friend told me how he finally passed The Knowledge. He had been studying List 16 the night before. That’s 1 out of the 164 lists. As he stood quaking before the examiner, he heard him ask for the exact coordinates of List 16, and he rattled off the entire route without hesitation. You’re done, mate, said the examiner, and he handed him the elusive cabbie’s license. He still has it. When he emigrated to the States, he brought his cab with him. He promised to show me his license and badge. The cab he donated a few years ago. Bummed. I really wanted a ride around in it.

Like all cabbies, he was also happy to regale me with a few good stories. One night, he picked up a fare in the East End whose destination was right over the other side of the city. The address just happened to be the next road over from where my friend lived. It was an obscure neighborhood. My friend said nothing, just nodded, and took his customer all the way across the city to his destination. When they arrived, the fare said incredulously I knew you chaps were good, but how did you DO that?!

Afterwards, I was thinking how we all walk around with our own Knowledge nestled in our grey matter. As a nurse, I have memorized thousands of details about the human body: the names of the bones and muscles, symptoms of diseases, side effects of medications. The doctors and pharmacists I work with can rattle off the strength, dosage, frequency, and indications of hundreds of medications. 

As we go through life, we build our own unique Knowledge. Sure, as time goes on there’s plenty of forgetting. I like to joke that every time I cram something new into my crowded brain, some old fact falls out to make room. But the truth of it is, our brains seem to have an almost limitless capacity to absorb and retain new information. Every day, I drive off on my own personal Callout, from patient to patient, making my way through the maze of my life street by familiar street. And every day, I learn new landmarks along the way.

As I nurse the dying, I frequently see how the Knowledge can be slowly erased by dementia. Little by little, the lists fade. One day, my 95-year-old patient can no longer recognize her daughter. One day, she forgets her own name.

But on the other end of the spectrum, my daughter fills her brain with calculus, nutritional biology, and how things work as she emerges from childhood into the adult world. She is building her lists. 

And I am somewhere in the middle. That memory of the ring in the barm brack was hiding somewhere in my cerebral cortex. Triggered by the Befana cake, it swam to the surface. Maybe next Halloween I’ll bake a barm brack in memory of my mother. Given that it will be me and my teen daughter cutting into it, I might forego the hidden ring.

Teen Brings Home the Bacon

My teen has never brought bacon home, I’ll just get that out the way up front. She did bring me $6 home yesterday though. This was change from a $50 bill I had given her to get some passport photos taken at Walgreens. That costs $15. Where did the rest of the money go, I wondered aloud?

Mom, I had to buy pens for school. And air freshener.

Where did she buy the pens, I wondered aloud. An art store! They are special pens. They are the only pens she can use. And they are for school. And that, as she well knows, is the magic word. School, mom. It’s about my education.

And air freshener? For what air? Why did she have to buy it? And why I am I paying for it? Sometimes the questions just mount up until it is easier to simply say Ok, fine. She’s no fool.

Yesterday there was a big Winter storm happening. Since this is America, and not the Congo, that meant that the power was out. Fairfax Police were kind enough to text us townspeople informing us that the power was out due to falling trees and wires. Also, the creek cam that monitors flood danger for the low-lying areas of our town was only working sporadically due to high demand. Happily my house sits up the hill a little. Many other Fairfaxians are not so lucky.

It was a long night and it was made even longer by repeated reminders of how dependent on electricity we are. Maybe I shouldn’t admit this here, but a while after the power went out, I used a candle to forage for some leftovers in the dark fridge. Then I put them in the microwave and turned it on. Nothing happened!

Power outages also mean that the Internet goes down. I don’t think you need me to spell out what this means on a long winter evening. That funny video about the fake Irish commentator at the Olympic womens’ dinghy event that I wanted to send to a friend? I COULDN’T! The phrase dead in the water was hauntingly appropriate.  

Also, for a number of hours I could not check facebook to see how popular I am. Nor could I message my friends in Ireland to impress them with the intensity of the California Winter. The power is out! There are trees down! In Ireland they routinely weather mad Atlantic storms that have travelled thousands of miles specifically to batter the western seaboard senseless. They call it rain, and a bit of an oul’ wind. Ireland came late to the digital age. Every square centimeter of the country is wired. The power routinely went out in the ‘70s when I was a child, but this is the next millennium and it never goes out now. 

Hardest of all, I could not read my daily Good News Network stories to counteract the stench emanating from the Oval Office. Young soldier saves driver using hoodie and ballpoint pen. I mean, is that not enough to counteract the shenanigans of Mr. McConnell? Ok, maybe a shade anecdotal. But if you dig a little deeper past the homeless man who saved an NFL player’s car and was made tearful by a gift in return, there are meatier stories. The Tanzanian island of Kokota, laid waste by deforestation so that its 500 villagers had to sail 15 miles to get fresh water, has been completely restored after their neighbors on Pemba helped them plant 300,000 trees. Now we’re talking ballast. 

I was in the middle of scanning cheery headlines in my Good News Network summary email when the power came back on. A burst of light and the return of the quite pronounced electric hum you don’t notice in your house till it’s silenced and then comes back on suddenly. It’s a bit frightening, honestly. Sort of like your house has just sustained a giant electric shock. I quickly sent my friend the video about the fake Irish commentator. And I checked Facebook. Not so popular today, apparently. Good thing I still have my teen to reassure me. 

Three days ago she texted me while I was at work. She had come home and found the house smelling badly of gas. One of the gas stove knobs was turned on. I thanked her most sincerely for preventing our house from blowing up. So now that the power was back on and I could see, I carried out my cunning plan to tape the knobs in place with duct tape. I have fancy duct tape with a sort of celestial design on it. I think it’s quite cool. She came out of her room a while later. She noticed the duct-taped stove knobs.

Mom. Seriously? That looks really stupid.

It does look a bit weird, but better than the house exploding, no?

Her look said that no, my celestial duct tape was not actually better than the house exploding. Then she commenced annotating a school paper at the kitchen table with her $41 pens. Still waiting for bacon.

Hospice Nurse Gives Mad Props to Dude Online

It is raining in California. Eleven days of it with just a couple of breaks. The word incessant is on the tip of my tongue but I’m trying not to say it out loud, because everyone around me is using words like blessed and miraculous and, most irritating of all, aren’t you loving this rain?

I know that I don’t have to love the rain. But my home state has just been parched and fire-stormed for 6 years so we all really need to be grateful for life-saving precipitation. And honestly, I am. I am not a mean, bitter, bad, rain-hating person. California’s severe drought was only downgraded to moderate-to-severe last Winter, so nobody needs me to drone on about how I grew up in Ireland where it rains 300+ days a year and is also windy so there is no point owning an umbrella. 

Apparently growing up in perpetual rain and then moving to the Golden State does not mean you are exempt from wet weather for the rest of your life. And now I live in a place where every time it rains, people bow down and kiss the ground. No matter that wet leaves stick to them as they do so. It’s elemental. It’s sacred. I understand it, and I succeed in keeping my big Irish mouth shut. But sometimes I secretly, and very briefly, want all native Californians to go live in Ireland, just for a couple of months, so they could fly back to San Francisco and bow down and kiss the parched dry earth and look upward to the frighteningly sunny skies and give endless thanks for the big yellow orb they see there. It’s very conflicting being an immigrant.

But wonderfully, it turns out that a rainy Sunday hard on the heels of a rainy Saturday provoked exactly the stir-craziness I needed to propel me onto an online dating site. I was out Saturday night with friends who met on OK Cupid. My careful questioning revealed that this may be the site for me because it allows for a more in-depth profile than Bumble or Tinder. As we parted ways on a sparkly Christmas-lit Mill Valley street, I decided: I do not care if the name of this dating site rhymes with stupid! Because it’s...OK!

So Sunday morning, over my first two cups of coffee, I downloaded the app and commenced setting up my profile. It was a lot less torturous than I had feared because they ask a lot of helpful questions. Plus I had Buddy curled up on the end of my bed, and as you know he is an excellent love coach. However, it turns out that when it comes to dating site profiles, he sucks. Who would have guessed?

[Me] Buddy, what is my current goal?

[Buddy, perking up, suddenly hopeful] To take me for a walk?

[Me] Buddy, focus. We’re working on my OK Cupid profile. What is my perfect day?

[Buddy, still perked up] You wake up, you take your dog for a walk...

[Me] Buddy! Snap out of it! Ok, here’s an interesting one. The most private thing I’m willing to admit?

[Buddy, ears back now, mouth open in silly dog grin] Remember that time we met that guy with the pitbull and I attacked him to protect you and then the guy called you a mad rat-owning bitch and you hit him with a rolled-up newspaper?

[Me] And we are ON to the next question! Without coffee I would probably never...

[Buddy] Take your dog for a walk?

[Me] Oh for goodness sake, just go back to sleep. I’ve got this.

I wrote my profile and then I got up and took Buddy out for a walk. Ten feet up the road, in the driving rain, he looked up at me, meh! and we went back inside. I’m not the kind of dog owner to ignore his signs. He doesn’t liking being out in the rain? That is only a small part of his excellence.

Over the very long, very very long rainy day, I busily added to my profile. Buddy busily wandered around the house choosing new spots for naps. What a productive day for both of us. I could get a boyfriend out of that day. Buddy got...more sleep. Both important missions!

I have a confession. I’m liking OK Cupid. Their questions are quirky and funny.  I could probably beat you at? Six things I can’t do without? Pick one artist to soundtrack your life? Jessie and I are constantly fine-tuning the soundtracks to our lives, so this last was a no-brainer. As the wind whipped all the ornaments off my Christmas tree out on the patio (more on this later), I had some serious fun compiling a soundtrack to my life. First track that came to mind, a surprise: Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto #2 in F Major, Op.102:II Andante. If you have never heard it, now is the moment. Do not delay. It is melancholy, but you could be hit by a bus tomorrow.

Next up: Caamp. Don’t throw your heart out, baby, you’re good for another round. Not melancholy. I think we’ve discussed this song already. There is also Florence and the Machine. A tad dramatic, but some of her lyrics are directed straight at me: I’m not scared to jump, I’m not scared to fall, if there was nowhere to land I wouldn’t be scared at all.

The Christmas tree thing. It has been on the patio since my New Year’s Eve party, when it was discovered that there was no room for it in the house due to the excessive number of party guests. So I moved it out there and it actually looked really good, with all its lights twinkling by the firepit. New Year’s came and went, and I made it a resolution that the tree would stay up until my teen took it down. It’s the 9th. She knows about this challenge. Watch this space, but do not hold your breath.

As for the title of this post? It’s from a message I sent someone on OK Cupid on Sunday. One of the guys I thought looked really interesting had recently had a haircut and he was asking prospective partners what they thought of it. Since I had no idea what his hair looked like before the cut, it was a little difficult to give him a considered opinion, but I thought it looked really good. I wanted to let him know this fact, but for some reason the words I typed were mad props on the hair, dude! What? Who? I don’t usually say anything remotely like this. For one thing, I am not thirteen. In her tutorial, OK Cupid helper Alice specifically advises users to just be themselves. I have no trouble being myself in the rest of my life. Why did I suddenly become someone else entirely to haircut guy? I have a theory, but no time to go into it right now.

He did not respond, and who on earth could blame him. Next time I message someone, I’m going to attempt to be myself. As Oscar Wilde said, everyone else is already taken. Clearly, he never downloaded OK Cupid.

Single Mom Gets Swiped into Dumpster of Love

We are four days into the New Year and the word tinder keeps cropping up. Unfortunately, so does the word swiping. But I’m trying to ignore that one, with its vivid image of some attractive guy taking one look at my online profile and swatting me away into oblivion. Of course, I don’t actually have a Tinder profile yet, so I’m safe for the moment.

It was fairly traumatic for me to even consider searching for the Tinder site online. Ever the researcher, I decided to read some FAQs about it to get started because that is how I do things. When I wanted to get into road biking, I first got a book from the library called The Drop Zone. Usually books make me feel safe, but this one scared me half to death as it was about racing and made me think I’d have to have to learn to slipstream in a peloton to get anywhere. Then I realized all I really had to do was put the book down and take my bike out for a spin. It got a lot easier after that. 

But the Tinder thing, I needed to know some basics before I open myself up to swiping. For example, is it free? You do not need Tinder Plus to get matches, I read in answer to this simple question. Nor are you guaranteed more matches if you pay. With a bad profile and Tinder Plus, it’s possible to be rejected more and faster without receiving any matches. Wait, what? Rejected more and faster? What is a bad profile? Is that one where I talk about my poor track record of keeping pets alive? I have had a lot of pets, but to be fair, many of them were quite elderly when I rescued them. Maybe I should not mention my two unsuccessful marriages either? Is a bad profile one in which you outright lie, or one in which you merely fail to hide the awful truth?

But back to the rejection thing. I just don’t feel it’s a word that should be used in the answer to a simple question about a dating site. It is a word that should be banned in all descriptions of online dating. I just wanted to know if I had to pay. Now I have the specter of rejection firmly lodged in my frontal cortex. And not just any old rejection. More and faster rejection. I am imagining a whole roomful of Tindermen all rapidly swiping me into the trashcan of love. This is not an image that is helpful to my journey.

In order to move ahead, I realize I need some girlfriend help. The last time I was considering going online, I met two girlfriends in a brew pub first. They had impressed upon me the importance of making a list before starting my search. I think I blogged about this already. My initial list had about 3 items on it. They centered on the necessity for my future partner to have his own home, a job, and some semblance of mental stability. My girlfriends gently encouraged me to work that list up a little. After a couple of drinks, with my somewhat over-enthusiastic girlfriend wielding the pen, the list covered one whole side of an 8x11 sheet of paper, including tiny writing in the margins. Then we accidentally left it at the brew pub.

This time I think I need help with my profile. I would frankly rather address the United Nations on global warming than write my own profile for an online dating site. So I plan to have my girlfriends write it for me. Unless they prove to be unequal to the task. Or possibly all too equal. I mean, they know me really well. We have done some very stupid things together. Maybe this plan needs revisiting.

But before I even write a Tinder profile, I think I should go up there and lurk a bit. Isn’t that what you do? See what kind of thing you are up against? Or perhaps I should just work on my UN speech instead?

I’m not usually a procrastinator. But I am looking at practically a year of impressive excuses as to why I could not begin online dating. First, my dad was coming to visit. That one lasted from January last year till April, when he finally arrived. Then there was my Climate Ride in May. Not much point starting to date when I was training 3 or 4 days a week. The poor guy would have been an instant bike widower. After the Climate Ride, my dad was still here for a while. After he left, I actually did go online, eventually, sometime around midsummer. I went on dates with two Bumblemen, and very fine human beings they were. It was all a great experience until I realized I hadn’t been really attracted to either of them and this meant I would have to continue looking at pictures of strangers on my phone and swiping them left or right. I had a hard time remembering which direction was the positive one. A couple of times I swiped great looking guys into the dumpster of love, and I could not get them back out.  

I do recall an exciting moment in my Bumbleswiping. It was early August and Jessie and I were on one of those busses that take you from your plane to the airport terminal. We were in Albuquerque, having flown in to stay with my cousin in Taos prior to the three of us doing a road trip back to California. On the flight, I had told Jessie how Bumble worked, and now, on the bus to our terminal, she was excited for me to do some swiping so she could help me pick the next love of my life. I wanted to wait till we got somewhere a little more private, but she did not. So I Bumbled, with her looking over my shoulder and going mom, no! Or him, him! The other folks on the bus studiously pretended they were not eavesdropping on a woman and her teen shopping in public for a boyfriend.

Trying to ignore the surreal nature of what I was doing, I got all excited by this one Bumbleman and Jessie did too. He looked really kind, and unless he just liked to dress up in spandex and pose beside Cannondales, he road biked. He was a dad and looked likely to have both a job and stable shelter. He clearly bathed regularly. I was all ready to swipe him, but shortly before we reached the terminal, we realized the disadvantage of this apparent find. Bumble locks in to your current location. This guy lived in Albuquerque. I live in Fairfax. It was a crushing moment and a good life lesson: never Bumble when you are out of town.

Since then, whenever I have been asked if I’ve tried online dating, I trot out the line that meetups are really more my style. But I haven’t gone to any meetups either, aside from one disastrous episode on a dark mountaintop. As I may have mentioned, waiting around for someone who is not available has been taking a lot of my attention. So. It’s a new year. We are four days in already. Time to write that speech on global warming!

Hospice Nurse Gets Really Pathetic Dental Bill

Being a sucker for nostalgia has its disadvantages around New Year. You are a sitting duck for all the retrospectives and the year-in-review photo montages. I’m just trying to read the news but I get ambushed by a tear-jerking video about all the standout individuals we lost in 2018, or all the ways women were awesome and broke glass ceilings. I have to stock up on extra Kleenex just to get through to the first of the year.

I was doing pretty well. I’m working most of the days around these holidays so I haven’t had much time for the retrospectives. But December 30th I put my back out riding, so I spent most of the day on my couch. Ice. Heat. Ibuprofen. Repeat. It was particularly bad timing given that I was hosting a New Year’s Eve party the next night and had to work all day first. But the worst of it was that I was fair game for every 2018 Lookback on the Internet. You could say I didn’t have to be online. I’m reading a really great book about Brunelleschi’s design of the dome for Florence’s cathedral. I could have just read my book.

So, in no particular order, the 18 best moments of 2018. Are you ready? Because this is my personal list, and it is culled from hours of not reading about Brunelleschi and his dome.

1. A woman in the UK gave birth after carrying her baby in a transplanted uterus. 
2. We heard what the Sun sounds like. Actually, I haven’t heard it yet. Is it very quiet?
3. NASA’s InSight Lander took a selfie on Mars.
4. Mexico sold a $218.7m presidential plane and gave the money to the poor.
5. Researchers developed a 10-minute cancer test.
6. An Ebola treatment trial began.
7. We discovered 157 new species in Southeast Asia. (That’s “we” as in “someone else.”)
8. Scientists came up with an idea to stop glaciers from melting.
9. North and South Korea marched under one flag at the 2018 Winter Olympics.
10. Scientists discovered a plastic-eating enzyme.
11. A ghost particle that travelled 3.7 billion light years was found on Earth. (WTF?)
12. For the second time in history, a human-made object reached interstellar space.
13. A new peanut allergy drug was developed.
14. Saudi women got behind the wheel.
15. Ireland repealed its abortion ban.
16. India’s Supreme Court decriminalized gay sex.
17. Iranian women were allowed to attend men’s sporting events.
18. Bump stock ban. I know. America’s contribution: seriously?!

Despite all of these heartwarming events and developments, it was a bit hard going back to work today. The streets were nice and empty, because pretty much everyone else in the world was not going back to work, but enjoying the so-called Sunday afternoon of the year. Mine had been rudely interrupted by the necessity to return to work. People don’t quit dying just because it’s the Sunday afternoon of the year.

So I was driving through the quiet sunny streets of Fairfax, feeing unabashadly sorry for myself, and I spotted a big gang of road bikers rolling out from the Good Earth parking lot. Now I was feeling really sorry for myself. Why could I not be rolling out of the Good Earth parking lot instead of driving off to see someone with day/night reversal? I pulled in to the post office to pick up my mail and I remember muttering to myself as I cut the engine Could something nice maybe happen to me today? Classic self-pity line, complete with emphasis on the nice. 

In the pile of mail were two letters from Kaiser and one from my dental insurance. Now that is not a good sign even on a day when I’m not in a self-pity spiral. I opened the dental insurance one first to get the really bad news over. My last bill from them was $4200 after insurance paid. This one? $10.50. I scoff at such a bill! I tossed it on the back seat to show my contempt at them not being able to bill me more than eleven dollars for a periodontal exam.

Then I opened the Kaiser letters. The first one informed me that I do not have one type of cancer, and the second that I do not have another. It’s a good day when you find out that you are free of not just one but two kinds of cancer. Someone in the world was undoubtedly not so lucky today. Someone somewhere probably opened a letter with a very different kind of news.

On top of my happy letters, there was a Christmas card from my eldest brother. It was a picture of Santa’s sleigh high above some glittery winter trees. Inside he had scrawled in his very distinctive scrawl Here’s Santa showing Brits how it should be done. (He lives in England.) Rather than throwing the toys out of the pram, put them in the sleigh and leave the North Pole! Norexit! Easy! That gave me a laugh that firmly extracted me from my self-pity-spiral.

Plus I had encountered a local guy in the post office who lives on his bike with his possessions in a backpack and couch surfs his way around the town. We exchanged new year greetings and he asked me what I did for work. I listened to how his aunt just died on hospice. He was opening a letter from the Sierra Club and told me he spends a lot of time writing letters for them, but that it is not paid work so he needs to ask for donations to survive. I was happy to donate to his survival. I see him at all hours of the day and night in his all-weather gear pedalling his bike slowly around town. 

An opportunity for grace, three happy letters, and a card from my bro: maybe 2019 really is going to be better than 2018! And next year, I’ll be able to list my favorite nineteen great moments. My dental bill for $10.50 just might be one of them.