M and I went to Vancouver Island for my sister’s internment this week. While there, we said good-bye to my sister while visiting the places she loved on the island where she lived for most of her life.
Goodbye, J. I love you.
M and I have been doing lots of walking around our new home in British Columbia’s truly spectacular Okanagan Valley. Lots of wine is produced here and the landscape reflects that. There are moderate, wet winters with very hot summers, great for grapes and all the other types of fruit that are grown here. There’s so much more, however. Here’s a sample:
We are continually oohing, ahhing and wowing as we explore this amazing place.
We feel truly grateful to be here. 🙂
As bloggers, we get all kinds of comments. They are intrinsic to the whole bloggy bit. I look forward to comments. I like making comments. They are the lifeblood of the blogging world. They range from the hilarious to the poignant. But every now and then, we can get comments that prompt a different range of reaction.
There’s the kind that sets your teeth on edge. The kind that pisses you off. The kind that creeps you out.
I publish comments that I don’t agree with. I try to address them the best way I can without being rude or offensive. Live and let live. Not everyone is the same and diversity is healthy.
The creepy ones? The ones that make you feel like you’ve stepped on a dead slug with your bare foot? Those get labelled as spam and sent somewhere.
Then there’s the kind that you don’t know what to do with.
I got one of those yesterday. It rambles and it’s contradictory. It’s confusing at times. It sounds like Sarah Palin.
It could be an honest attempt at expression from someone who struggles with that … or maybe not.
The other thing is that there are bits of it that I really disagree with, and that’s the problem.
Am I being a chickenshit? Am I being lazy? Do I just not want to deal with the layers of stuff going on in this comment? Am I saying that this is my blog, I don’t like that comment, and commentator, you can just stuff it?
Because what really gets me is that this is a comment about narcissism. And the writer ends this comment I-don’t-like with, “and I’m not a narcissist.” Which immediately makes me think that he/she is a narcissist.
But it also sounds like it’s coming from a narcissist. I feel like there’s an attempt to reel me in, to undermine, to, to, slime all over everything. Sometimes, narcissists like to troll, like to present themselves as victims. Sometimes, they do a sort of hiding in plain sight. Covert narcissists. Then, there’s the narcissist who claims to not be a narcissist. Just so they can press some buttons and laugh at the discomfort they cause.
But maybe I’m over-reacting.
This comment has made me uncomfortable. And because of that, the comment is hiding in moderation-land. And maybe that’s all the warning I need.
If it makes you uncomfortable, don’t go there.
What’s moderate? Letting this person comment and then possibly opening some floodgates to a conversation I don’t want to have? Or is it my duty to just take on the bad with the good and get on with it? Just because I don’t want to do it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done.
Do you publish comments that you disagree with? That you don’t like? That make you uncomfortable? What are we supposed to be moderating? What’s moderate, anyway?
This is for my beloved sister J, who passed away on December 26 after a short struggle with cancer. I love you, J.
You have always been kind and tough and thoughtful and practical.
And you learned early how to deal with the family’s narcissists. Before it was popular, you knew a kind of no contact and lived it. Your own kind.
Distance did it. Physical distance. Mental distance.
I, much younger, didn’t really know you.
Not until much later. Not until now, really.
And then, we faced another narcissist. This time, together. Looked at our heritage.
But you handled that, too. Adroitly, as you always have. Even as you grew smaller and smaller and your world grew smaller and smaller.
The one who wasn’t “smart.”
The one who always knew but didn’t fuss. Just lived.
I’ve had a good long life, you said.
I wish it was longer.
I wish I didn’t have to say good-bye.
When I realized that change was headed my way, I didn’t realize that it was going to be this intense.
In July, we sold our house in preparation for a move next year. We packed up all our stuff and trucked it to a rental. I whined about that a couple of posts ago.
However, life is not always orderly nor predictable (nor should it be). In late August, the opportunity for a great job came up. I interviewed, and a couple of days later I accepted their offer.
The job was 1000 km. away in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia. Wine country. Some of the best wine in the world.
Real wine.
I was on my way west (even though I’m not a young man) inside of a week with my car packed to the rafters, my poor Rudy dog parked in a kennel and my dear M left on the prairies to finish up a work contract.
Now I live near all those wine grape vines you see in the top photo.
After finding a long-stay motel to reside in and starting my new job on August 31, I immediately got sick. Go figure.
There was sniffing, snorting, blowing and wheezing. A cough that came out of my bootlaces. A jackhammer headache that doubled in intensity every time I coughed. Aches and pains in my muscles that could have been caused by digging the equivalent of the English Channel tunnel but weren’t. I sounded like a four-pack-a-day, 60-year smoker. If I laughed, I broke into a cough. Sneezing turned into a chain of mini-eruptions with attendant lava flow. I was feverishly hot and cold at the same time.
And through it all, I kept working. New job and all that. I was the queen of hand sanitizer, giant tissues and elbow coughing.
Then it started to go away.
I started to feel better.
I started to get cocky. I’m like that.
Then I started to feel really, really bad. I woke up one morning feeling like I needed to get the bolt in my neck tightened.
Which would have been all fine if my name had been Frankenstein.
But it’s not.
I decided to investigate by taking a look in the bathroom mirror.
I looked like I was wearing a turtleneck sweater with an inflation device inserted into the neck part.
The side of my neck was swollen from my ear to my shoulder and the pain that accompanied it was intense. My tonsils were swollen. My ear ached and crackled. I could hear everything inside my mouth but nothing outside.
A secondary infection had taken up residence. Yum.
It’s still not gone but I’m about to start my second round of antibiotics, for which I am eternally (and internally) grateful.
Nevertheless Continue reading Changing, Moving, Growing
I’m pissed off. About ageism, that is.
I was just at a store picking up some necessaries for my new abode and got treated like a doddering old fool at the till. And the thing is, I’m not much older than that cashier is.
I’ve noticed this more and more lately. The penchant for people to automatically think that I don’t know how to use a debit card. That I have no idea what the internet is. A couple of days ago, I was asked by a bank employee if I use online banking.
“What was that sonny? Speak up! I can’t hear you! Frontline spanking? Is that what you said? You oughtta be ashamed of yourself. What would your mother say if she knew you were talking like that to a customer?” Of course, I was just thinking this. But I felt like saying it. In a loud, high-pitched, whiny voice.
Yikes.
I’ve been using online banking for 15 years. I’ve had a debit card for, I don’t know, probably about 30.
People keep calling me “dear” too. Does getting older automatically imply that I’m in some sort of relationship with you? A few days ago, I politely asked a waiter to stop calling me “dear.” He kept doing it anyway.
People who use that word also have a special voice that goes along with it, too. There’s this patronizing, condescending tone, like they’re talking to a half-deaf half-wit. Just give me some pablum and a glass of warm milk and let me be on my way. Don’t let my clippy clop bother you as I head for the door, if I can find it.
Holy bloody hell.
And another thing is that my husband, who is five years older than me, doesn’t get treated like this.
He’s a guy! He still has all his faculties! His hearing! His virility! His drive! He’s vital and living!
While on the other hand, I have one foot on a banana peel and the other in my grave.
I’ve faced a lot of discrimination in my life. Nowhere near as bad as what some people have had to deal with, but still.
My guidance counsellor in high school told me that I couldn’t be a pilot. (You’re not a guy!)
People gave me suspicious looks when they heard my very French surname. (You’re not English!)
Military combat? (You’re REALLY not a guy.)
But the government says I can, so f**k off.
Yes. I’m 50-something. Yes. I’m female. It doesn’t mean that I live under a rock with only my walker and my knitting for company. And, I’m not a cheese.
So get with it, “youngsters.” Just treat us older people like … well, like people.
Have you faced ageism in action?
Rara will be back! 🙂
Sometimes, when something is broken, it should stay that way.
It’s difficult isn’t it?
Trying not to do something… especially once you’ve started doing it, whether physically or mentally. Many actions take place in the mind, more than in physical reality. It’s easier to stop doing the physical stuff, than the mental stuff. If the mental stuff is directing the physical… once you start doing something… it’s a ‘mare to stop!
And if your emotions are involved in your mental stuff… stuff is going to just keep happening and going and happening because it just can’t stop itself or you or others.
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“I took the other road, all right, but only because it was the easy road for me, the way I wanted to go. If I’ve encountered some unnecessary resistance that’s because most of the traffic is going the other way.”
― Edward Abbey
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I once read somewhere that the mind can’t process negatives.
My mind found…
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Some very sad news …
I have terrible news to share with the blogosphere today.
Horrible, no good, awful news.
Many of you knew him as Grayson Queen, author and artist extraordinaire. Perhaps you’ve read one of his novels. Perhaps you’ve purchased, or at least enjoyed, some of his paintings or sculptures… Perhaps you knew that he was also Rara‘s husband, Dave.
I don’t have a lot of details, but I can confirm that Dave passed away earlier this week.
Please share this post wide and far. Please say a prayer for Dave and Rara. Please send her every ounce of spare energy you can muster. She needs us. Dave’s family and friends need us.
And send her mail to show her your love, your RawrLove:
Radhika Jaini WF0124
CIW LA 249 UP
16756 Chino-Corona Road
Corona, CA 92880
You don’t need to know what to say. You don’t need to say anything…
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In the Net! - Pictures and Stories of Life 