(One month to Bloomsday!) Oh, and gas at Pt. Reyes was $1.80 a gallon.

Ten years ago my mother had started her last, steep, decline. She had been living with us since Vince's birth, in 1975, when she came to help me and wound up in the hospital herself with a bleeding ulcer and nearly died. There were a lot of reasons for that, mostly that she didn't follow doctor's orders. (She smoked. Her body developed polycythemia, too many red blood cells, to carry oxygen. She had to take diuretics every day and be bled monthly, and the diuretics reduced her potassium level. It's important to have potassium to keep from massive muscle pain, but she didn't like it. She therefore didn't take it, but instead swallowed massive and increasing amounts of Excedrin, and didn't eat much because she didn't want to gain weight. Hence, bleeding ulcer.)

On February 24, 1989, I had gone to the school district office to register Bernadette for the nearby junior high school, which is fundamental and has an honors program. Mother had come out to the kitchen, with its nice new tiles, to get ice and to see where I went. Now, either her hip broke and she fell, or the other way around. She had osteoporosis. Another thing she didn't do although the doctor kept telling her to, was to walk. Anyway, she couldn't get back up. She tried to get back to the phone, and had crawled into the doorway between the living room and kitchen before I got home.

I took one look at her ("Jan, get me an ashtray and a light!") and said I was calling an ambulance. No, she ordered, don't do that. So I became 6 years old, incapable of disobeying my mommy's orders. I called Rich and let HIM do it. He got home and informed Mother that we were calling 911.

Then what a zoo. My mother was lying on the floor, and the furniture was placed so that she was partly behind a couch. The paramedics came in and made sure she was OK, and then the ambulance technicians came in to strap her to a gurney and get her out. Meanwhile, the mailman arrived with a big package from Japan I had to sign for. That's 3 paramedic-firemen, 2 ambulance techs, me, Rich, Vince and Bernadette, and the mailman, all trying to get around in one little room. And besides, I really wanted to know what was in the box!

In fact, once the ambulance was on its way, we did take 5 minutes to tear open the box. In it were the top-of-the-line ceremonial dolls for Doll's Day. Hair made of silk strands, all the little bits and bobs for "Emperor and Empress Peacock." Wow. Then Rich and I dashed off in the car for the hospital.

Mother spent about 5 days or so in the hospital getting her hip set. Then the doctor sent her to a convalescent hospital for physical therapy and care. She should have stayed in there for about a month, but she hated it and agitated to come home so much she came back far too early. She'd promised to do her exercises, and we thought there'd be a visiting home nurse to help, but I was woefully unaware of the paperwork involved, so no one ever came. Meanwhile, we had cleaned up her back apartment: Rich found all kinds of appalling stuff in the kitchen area and I sorted through stacks and stacks of empty envelopes, bank statements from 20 years previously, and cut-up Kools cartons which she used for note paper.

(The FIRST way I refuse to become like my Mother, though at the moment the similarities are frightening!)

Mom was quite distressed to come back to someplace clean, but she adjusted fast enough. She had a walker and was supposed to do her exercises and a lot of walking. Instantly she agitated for a chair with wheels like my grandfather had had. I knew that if she got one, she would stop walking ever.

This is the second way I'm attempting to be different. However, I've pretty well stopped taking pain pills and it's apparent I DO have a frozen shoulder. I'm not avoiding doing things with the left arm because of the pain, I simply cannot do them. I have to exercise it a lot to regain mobility. I can't: touch the top of a doorway, put my hand on my hip, touch the back of my neck never mind scratch my back, brush my hair without bending my head, hold hands straight-armed behind my back, reach to the left without turning my body, deal with drive-throughs or parking garages without turning my body, roll down the left window with my left hand, or a thousand other things one takes for granted. I CAN, however, cross my arms, and there was a time a week or so ago I couldn't do that, either. This whole thing, though, makes me understand my Mom better, why she didn't exercise, or move, or TRY. Combine this with her comparative dependence on pain pills, and I know why she wanted the wheeled chair. I got her a wheeled walker with a place to sit and rest, but that still was more work than she wanted. Eventually she got on the phone and ordered one, and that was the beginning of the end. She only sat, she got leg ulcers, eventually she had to have a leg amputated and stay in a nursing home, and by May of 1991 she was dead.

I was thinking on Wednesday's walk at Pt. Reyes about her trip to England in December of 1969. We went to London during this visit and at one point we went to catch a bus and she couldn't lift herself up into it. She was a little younger than I am now. Once we had moved in with my grandfather and got a car, she never walked anywhere. I vowed long ago, when I saw the pain the osteoporosis was causing, not to get into this state myself. Hence, walks at Pt. Reyes, and I've signed up for Bloomsday this year as well as the Bay to Breakers. Also, on the Wednesday walk, I was swinging my left arm, trying to make sure I didn't end up with an atrophied withered stump. I'm also trying to keep it stretched out in my sleep. I positively refuse to turn into my mother!

And in the seventh week of the reign of King William the Rapist:

                 Issue of credibility

This top 10 list of similarities between Bill Clinton and
Slobodan Milosevic is showing up all over Washington:
1. Both are famous for telling lies and for reneging on their
promises.
2. Both demonize their opponents with false, distorted
accusations.
3. Both have reason to fear criminal prosecution.
4. Both use military action to distract from problems
stemming from their own misconduct.
5. Both have participated in anti-American demonstrations
in Europe.
6. Both promote conflict and enmity between ethnic groups
for their own political purposes.
7. Both have as the sole mission of their administrations the
objective of staying in power and preserving their legacies.
8. Both have no effective political opposition to their
policies.
9. Both go to great lengths to avoid taking responsibility for
their crimes.
10. Both have loopy wives who influence their policies.

Of course, it's not really war unless we commit ground troops, I suppose. This makes the three soldiers analogous to a certain stain.