One Fishy Bee Sting

Tonight while watering my shade garden, I was ruthlessly attacked by a huge, mutant critter of some sort.  I didn't actually see it, but from the post attack pain, I'm pretty sure it had a three foot long stinger made of rusty barbed wire, I have an allergy to bees, though I'm not sure if it applies to huge, mutant bees.  So I've taken some antihistamine and I'm betting that I won't die.  However, the incident allowed me to remember another very funny near death experience.

About a decade ago, I went with a friend to his lake house in northern Wisconsin. My friend was 6'4" and looked very much like a Viking.  (This is a morsel necessary to a laugh later in the story.)  I decided to learn to fish while I was there.  I didn't think it would be very difficult, since I could see the fish swimming around in the crystal clear water.

I bought a fishing pole, stringer, some plastic bugs, a really cute pink tackle box and a fishing license.  My friend wasn't the least bit interested in fishing and stayed up in the house reading.  The house was above the lake.  Twenty-one steps led down from the house to a grassy area sloped to the lake.

On the first day of trying, I discovered that fish in this particular lake don't care much for plastic bugs.  So on the morning of the second day I went to a little fishing shop about ten miles away across tiny, bumpy roads.  It wasn't much, but it was the closest thing to civilization for miles and miles.

The man there sold me a few dozen worms.  They were especially squirmy, slimy worms.  Nevertheless, I felt bad about sticking a hook through them. The fish liked the worms and ate them all.  They did not, however become attached to my line.

So on the third day, I went back to Fishing Shop Man, who asked how much fishing I'd done.  Evidently, there is a specific way to put the worms on the hook and one doesn't necessarily put a whole worm on the hook at once.  Well, really, how was I to know that?  By the way, I think if I'm buying a lot of a person's product, he should be required not to laugh at me. 

I also complained to FSM that the worms he sold me were not pleasant to handle.  He suggested I try leaches, which are not slimy.  He showed me how to let them attach themselves gently to my once beautifully manicured thumbnail and showed me how to hook them.  It may be some sort of prejudice against blood-sucking things, but I felt less bad about sticking the hook through the leaches. However leaches don't taste as good as worms to fish in that particular lake.

I went back to FSM the next day and got more worms and detailed instruction in putting them on the hook.  By day five I had a stringer full of little pan fish.  I was understandably proud and decided to go for just one more.

When I pulled the stringer from under the dock, I noticed that it was unusually heavy. A huge, ancient turtle was the only thing on my stringer!   He smiled at me with a prehistoric, satisfied grin and belched. At least I think he belched.  I can't be sure since I was screaming hysterically at the time.  I screamed so loud and so long that my friend made it down all 21 steps and leaped across the grassy area in time to see the very happy turtle swim away.

"Big turtle,"  he said and went back to his book and the air-conditioned house.

The next day FSM was interested in the big turtle and sold me a metal cage to hold my catch in the event that I ever caught another fish, and sold me more worms. I caught one tiny fish over and over and over again, giving him a good talking to and throwing him back each time. I eventually did catch an other batch of keepers and once again went for one last fish before quitting for the day.

When I pulled up my metal fish cage to put the last fish in, that damned reptile had his dinosaur jaws clamped on to the cage and several of the fish had fainted in sheer terror.
However, this time I was not terrified.  This time I was mad!

I grabbed my new fishing knife, still in it's fancy leather sheath, and beat that critter on its giant pointy beak until it let go of my fish.  I called it every bad name I could think of, many of which were not actually appropriate for a turtle.

But I won, dang it anyway.  The turtle had to actually go work for his dinner and I, sweaty and yucky from a day of fishing, trod up the long walk to the house to clean mine.  I showed my prizes to my friend, who was underwhelmed. 

While sitting on a slab of concrete trying to separate the edible part of the fish from the rest of them, a wasp who was evidently a good friend of the turtle, stung me a few times on my right hand.  I'd never been stung by a wasp before, but I knew I was allergic to honey bees and frankly, it hurt a lot. 

So I called to my friend and told him that he'd need to take me to an emergency room.  He, of course, had no clue where the nearest ER was.  He went from lethargic apathy to panic in a matter of seconds. 

While he was looking for his car keys, I decided that I had time to at least wash the fish gore from my hands before trying to find medical help.  I had tramped across the kitchen and was nearly to the bathroom when I realized that I had left a trail of blood on the floor.   Then I realized that in my frenzied attempts to shake the wasp from my hand, I'd failed to put my my knife down.  My left hand and leg were both sliced.  

My big, strong friend saw the blood and crashed out cold on the floor.

I managed to get most of the blood cleaned up while he was coming to.  We eventually we made it to an emergency room where the doctor wanted to know why a bee sting was making me bleed all over his exam room.  My embarrassed friend declined medical treatment.

We pulled up to the lake house in time to see a very happy couple of cats scamper away from my dented, empty fish cage.  Not that the fish would have been much good after all that time anyway.

I really can't show my face at that lake anymore. 

The Benedryl seems to be working, by the way.

Golden Years

An old man mows the lawn as his frail wife slowly picks up sticks that might be in his way.  He sweats in the hot sun and she brings him a glass of cold water. He drinks it, hands her the empty glass and returns to his work without words.

At the grocery he pushes the cart and she collects items from the shelves.  He pauses when they come to the soup section.  She doesn't need to tell him that they are out of tomato soup.  At the meat counter he stops to admire some steaks.  She keeps walking and picks up a package of chicken breasts.  He silently puts the steaks back and pushes the cart along.  They hold on to each other as they take their purchases to their car.

Ah, isn't that sweet?  Cute little ol' couple. They've been married so long they don't even need to talk.  She knows when he is thirsty.  They work together.  She is concerned about his cholesterol.  A gentleman, he takes the heavier part. They hold on to each other because they're so much in love.

Well, maybe.

Or maybe they met a few years ago on Match.com.  Maybe she picks up the sticks because she knows it's the only way he'll get the grass cut.  Maybe she brings him water because she doesn't want him  getting sick and laying around all week.  Maybe he hates chicken and tomato soup, but it seems to be the only damn thing she knows how to cook. Maybe he pushes the mower and the cart because he doesn't trust her driving. Maybe they hold on to each other because they're both so full of gin they're in danger of falling. And maybe they don't talk because he's sick and tired of hearing her nag and she's sick and tired of him not listening.

You just never know.

Losing It

For several days (ok, a couple of weeks)  I've been looking for my blood pressure cuff. I live in a small house and there really aren't that many places for it to hide. I thought perhaps I took it to work and it got mixed in with other bp cuffs.

I went to my nurse's cave and asked her if she had an extra cuff around.  She said yes and I thought my problem was solved.  But the extra one she had wasn't mine.  I checked with a doctor down the hall.

"Do you have your bp cuff? We have an extra one."  She pulled a stethoscope from her drawer.  I said, "That's stethoscope."  
She rooted around and found her cuff. Then she said, "But I lost my shoes."

"I understand,"  I replied.  I once lost only one shoe. By lunch time I'd forgotten to ask about my bp cuff. 

"Did you ever find your bowl?" asked one of the lunch group.

"No, and I can't find my molasses."

"Well no one would take your molasses.  No one else can stand the stuff.  Where's the salt?"

When my children were young and I did lots of laundry, I had a grocery sack full of lonely socks.  Never in the history of the world has anyone lost a pair of socks, mind you.

Where do these things go? Blood pressure cuffs, shoes, lonely socks, molasses, minds?

Sometimes things show up.  My friend found his sunglasses in the oven.  Alas, it was too late for the sunglasses.  A mysterious pig sheriff showed up on a boulder near my sister's house. I found my cup of coffee in my closet once.  My toothbrush appeared on the book shelf next to Robert Frost; an earring in the freezer.  I found my mouth guard behind the family room TV while looking for my  cuff, and I didn't even know I'd lost it.

But somethings just disappear, never to be seen again. I reckon it's a mystery as deep as the origin of the pyramids.

Bears and Bombs

I am not afraid of bears.  I've never seen a bear in the wild, though I keep looking.  I imagine that if I found myself in my back yard with a big bear, I might decide to become afraid of them.  It would probably be a good, healthy thing to do.

I use to be afraid of nuclear war but I got over that.  I didn't get over it because it's no longer a threat.  We didn't remove the "Sword of Damocles" that President Kennedy talked about when I learned to be afraid of The Bomb. 

We used to have drills in school during which we would hide under our desks and cover our heads with our hands.  Amazingly, this did not alleviate our fear of The Bomb.  What if The Bomb happened when I was playing outside, away from the safety of my wooden desk?

Eventually we stopped worrying about The Bomb.  I repeat, we didn't stop worrying because The Bomb no longer exists.  In fact, their are many more bigger, better bombs now.  We figured out that hiding under our school desks, in fallout shelters or even in our well-stocked basements wouldn't mean spit if someone actually dropped a bomb on our town, but instead of becoming more afraid, we became less afraid.

There are so many more things to be afraid of now, it's hard to choose.  We could be afraid of climate change, cancer, spiders, biological warfare, bird flu, being hit by a meteor, vampires, going to hell, bears, people who pray differently, the number 16.

Perhaps we have nothing to fear but fear itself.  Nah.  We have lots of things to fear if we want to.  We can't do it though or all we'd do all day is be afraid.  Being afraid won't get rid of climate change, bird flu, or biological warfare.  Hiding under your desk won't protect you from The Bomb. 

Fear just wears me out.  So what to do, what to do? Well, I'm certainly not going to waste time and energy being afraid of things that statistically won't hurt me.  I'm not going to fear spiders or vampires or the number 16.  I'm not going to waste elevated blood pressure on fearing bears unless I'm likely to encounter one.  And I'm not going to lose sleep over the possibility of The Bomb in the hands of bad or clumsy people.

BUT I'm not going to pretend that hiding under my desk makes The Bombs go away.  I hope that better brains than mine can figure out how to get rid of them.  I'm not sure how it will be done, but I know that forgetting about them won't work.

Just Say No To Medical Fluff

Would you go in to a car dealership, jewelry store, a realtor's office, a clothing store. . . . or anyplace and say, "Just give me what you think I ought to have. I don't care what it costs."

I wouldn't.  But when a physician ordered three MRIs and an EVR  it took several phone calls to find out how much they would cost. I guess when it comes to medical tests, hospitals consider that I am one of two kinds of people.  I'm either a person with medical coverage - in which case I shouldn't be so gauche as to ask how much something should cost; or I'm a person without insurance in which case. . . well, in which case I wouldn't have gotten as far as to see a physician to have tests scheduled in the first place.

As near as I can tell with the information I was able to rip from the strong, tight jaws of the hospital and my insurance company, my responsibility will be for 20% of the charge plus $75.  That means ol' Fay here, would end up spending $2441.60. 
That's right, the charge for the three MRIs and some test where I stare into a box with changing lights for a couple of hours - which by the way, sounds to me like something guaranteed to cause a migraine - is $11,833.  This does not include the tests on the three quarts of blood they took from my ever-weakening arm.

Well, I ain't doin' it.  I've had MRIs before. They showed some spots on my brain.  I reckon they'll still be there.  But this guy doesn't even want to see my old pictures.  Actually, I'm kicking myself for going to this neurologist in the first place.  Well, live and learn.

Seriously, what was I thinking?  This electrician doesn't care about symptoms.  He cares about numbers and locations of spots.  He's a spot-treater. 

Well I don't care about the spots. I would like to stop running into door jams and having blurry vision.  I'd like to stop toppling from personal earthquakes and I'd like my muscles to behave.  How will counting spots do that?  He can't answer that question.

So I fired him. 

But what sort of a system is this where physicians see you for 15 minutes and order $12,000 worth of tests?  Where it's so rare to ask for the cost of procedures that the hospital switchboard isn't really even sure how to forward the call? Where physicians don't care about symptoms, which are subjective but only signs that can be measured and calibrated.  Do you think this sort of practice has anything to do with why 40% of South Carolinians can't afford health care coverage at all?

I'm very grateful to have "good insurance" and I think it's too precious to use frivolously.  Just because my local hospital has an MRI machine and I have insurance isn't a good enough reason for me to have $12,000 worth of pictures.

I want to make sure that the main reason I'm having a test or procedure isn't because I have "good insurance."

I'm the one running the show when it comes to my health care.  I hire my physicians and fire them if they don't answer my questions.  I pay for my insurance and copay and deductibles and vitamins and medications and I am responsible for deciding what is necessary and helpful and what is just fancy, fluffy, unbelievably expensive procedures.

I don't have to be a physician.  If my physician can't or won't explain things in a way I can understand,  or if she somehow makes me feel as if I shouldn't be asking, she isn't doing her job.  And we all have to be responsible for understanding as well as we can, our health care and be willing to say "Enough is enough, already!"

In a Pickle

In early spring, when planting a garden, it's impossible to remember how big tomato plants get and how many cucumbers one vine produces.  It's inevitable, then, that I over plant each time. 

Why do cucumber seeds come in such large numbers anyway?  The only reason I can think of, is that the people who package the seeds expect us to lose at least three quarters of the produce hidden under leaves until they are just too big to do anything with except to look at them in wonder. 

This year I planted some little pickling varieties so I could pick them at a reasonable three inch length to make into dills.  But if I don't get out there to pick them twice a day, and if I don't find them in their hiding places under the wide leaves in time, they just become shorter, fatter, too-big-to-use, gold-green monstrosities.  I swear today a vine grabbed me as I was passing by and pointed at some of the little devils that were hiding from me. 

Zucchini will hide from a gardener, too.  But even a very large zucchini can be used for something.  I've stuffed and baked a couple this year with a sausage, Parmesan, onion, bread crumb stuffing. That was quite yum.  And I plan to grate a hider tomorrow and make some zucchini bread.  Once when I was very young, a zucchini got away from my dad until it was the size of a newborn.  I drew a face on it and wrapped it in a blanket.  But an overgrown cucumber would make one very ugly baby doll.  You just have to find them in time, that's all.

Even with the hiding vegetables, I always bring in more vegetables than seems possible, from vines that move around the garden like homesteaders. And I've got lots and lots of volunteer cucumbers as well as squash and melons that appeared where ever I used my home made compost.

And tomato plants!  When I buy them they are just tiny little things in four inch pots.  And those tomato cages?  Give me a break!  They are made to fit the tomato plants in my planting-time imagination, not the Godzilla-sized dark green trees that are crowded together making a jungle of my garden now.  Those plants ate my little tomato cages about a month ago. 

Tomatoes don't have the color camouflage thing going for them, so the plants have developed their own protection. Picking tomatoes in my garden requires courage.  I have to brave the mosquitoes and Grimm knows what else that might be lurking in the deep, dark recesses of the tomato patch.  But if ever there was a worthy adventure it's doing just that.  I could probably live on ripe tomatoes still warm from the vine. 

For some reason, I think pepper plants should be planted near tomatoes, so finding peppers is a trick, too.  But let me say this.  If I had to walk through snake-filled pits and jump shark filled water to pick fresh veggies, I would do it.

Yesterday I made 21 half pints and ten pints of a variety of pickles and canned 5 pints of green beans and a quart of tomatoes.  Today I made a big bowl of gazpacho.  And of course I eat fresh tomatoes and cucumbers at every turn. 

Having too many fresh vegetables is like having too many friends, or too much beauty, or too much smarts.  I'm learning to live with it. Is life good, or what?

Carthage With My Girls!

I'm back in my hometown, Carthage Illinois, for a few more hours.  I've been around for over a week.  Probably the best place to celebrate a Fourth of July is in a little Midwestern town in the middle of corn fields.  There was a street dance and a parade and lots of food and fireworks, of course.  Great good fun.

Of course, I haven't been back for a while so lots of folks didn't recognize me at first.

They'd say, "Weren't you Nancy's sister?" expressing some amount of disbelief. To this I'd answer, "Oh, yes, Nancy. Poor thing. But really, she's not nearly so ugly now."
(My sister was and is gorgeous)


My favorite is all the people who came up to me and said, "Oh, you're Phyllis Campbell, I remember you!  You used to be so cute!"

Excuse me? Used to be? Well, ok, I can see their point.  I used  to be cute, and now I'm hot and beautiful.  That must be what they are talking about.  Cause Babies, it's true.  I'm fully expecting 55, an age which I'll become in a matter of days, to be the slickest year yet.

I can't imagine what could be better than being 55.  I still got it and I know how to use it.  Life is grand!  The best part is that I'm not in competition with anyone anymore.  I know what I'm good at and I know what I'm not good at and what the heck, if it makes me happy I'll do the not-good-at things with gusto.  If I would have had this confidence when I was young, I would have been. . . .

Oh, who cares.  The important thing is that every single event that I've lived has led me to (drum roll please)  this living example of the Goddess I am today!

I got to see Richard, Mike. Roger, Shirli, Sherry, other classmates whom I believe have learned the secret. I talked with Amy, Dean, Brucie (just love him) Deborah Kay, Little Ricky, Robbie, and lots of people who were in other classes.  I could just hug them and hug them.  How fun to see us all grown up. And now it doesn't matter who's got the cool clothes, who has the clear skin or the longest hair or the nicest car or gets the best grades.  I don't remember who was a cheerleader.

But mostly, I got to hang with my girls.  When you've known someone since age 3 and have always had a special language; when you know their ickiest secrets and they know yours; when you've had angry times, and sad times, and silly times, and lonely times and somehow stuck together through it all - when you don't try to suck in your tummy or even have to put on makeup to sit comfortably with them - when you carry them daily in your heart and in your mind and in your soul - those are friends.

And it's not because we have that much in common.  We live in different states.  Jac has been married for a gazillion years to the same really cool guy. Graham has never married, and I have got the marriage thing well practiced.  No one brags about our marital status and I know we can all see the advantages in all situations.

We've all had very different experiences in life.  Whew!  And among us, we've covered enough experiences to keep a novelist quite happy for volumes.  We are different shapes and sizes, though we are all beautiful and perfect.  What we have in common is Carthage Illinois.  Go figure.

I can (and have) made and received phone calls from these women at what would be considered inappropriate times by other people without a second thought.  I have verbally cut down people who've said bad things about them and I'm sure they've done the same for me.  Heck, I've even been in (a much exaggerated, but nonetheless true) bar fight defending one of them.  I would gladly kick ass and take names for these women, or fly cross country to be with them, or give them my last piece of chewing gum. 

Being with them is precious and I'm so, so glad to have had this time.  I don't need a therapist, I've got my girls!  Graham, Jac, I love you.