LJ Idol Season 7 - Week 0 (Late) Faith in the Future Outa the Now
o/` "We're playing those mind games together,
Pushing barriers, planting seeds,
Playing the mind guerilla,
Chanting the Mantra peace on earth,
We all been playing mind games forever,
Some kinda druid dudes lifting the veil.
Doing the mind guerilla,
Some call it the search for the grail,
Love is the answer and you know that for sure,
Love is flower you got to let it, you got to let it grow,
So keep on playing those mind games together" o/`
-- "Mind Games" performed by John Lennon
The same man in another of his songs once said, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
I almost didn't make it this year. While sign-up was going on, I was planning an important religious rite. When the introductions were to be posted, we ad just finished our rite and discovered, to my dismay, that the telecommunications company was working on our wireless. When that happens there is no wireless.
This will be my fourth season entering this particular writing competition. For those interested, my previous introductions can be found HERE, HERE, and HERE.
I found therealljidol while recovering from a near fatal brush with MRSA. I had a gigantic hole in my side which had come within milimeters of preforating the intestines and far too much time on my hands and so I decided to give it the old college try. To my surprise, I made it into the top forty before being eliminated. The second year found me struggling with some critical health failures and loss of personal freedom. Once more, assigned writing came to the rescue. I found myself with an audience --- god knows why! --- and some loyal, supportive friends. This time, I made it into the top thirty.
My third year would be an unqualified disaster as far as the competition was concerned.
Last year, I labored to produce topics while undergoing a rigorous course of chemotherapy and making frantic dashes across three states so that I could act as a buffer between Dorie (pshaw_raven) and her abusive husband while she tended her brother Dee (diagenou) after a devastating injury in the line of duty. Injured law enforcement are, I think, among the most difficult of patients to treat. Their identities are so intertwined with their work that depriving them of it in any way usually results in severe depression. Almost anyone can tell you that a depressed patient has a higher chance of complications or death, even if the injury or illness is minor...and Dee's was neither. I teased and taunted him, playing to his ego, until he agreed to enter the competition as well.
Some of you have met diagenou; the rest of you probably would not want to do so. To say his style is offensive and abrasive is like noticing the Pope is Catholic. He did, however, begin to develop a writing talent which astounded even those who knew him. Dee customarily wrote profile reports, which are stiffly formal and impersonal, and so some of the pieces he produced were fascinating owing to the depth of heartfelt emotion and stark but compelling descriptions. He missed several deadlines and was eliminated in a spectacularly close write-off between two (or was it three?) other contestants.
By the fourteenth week, the chemotherapy had my number. I slept upright, next to a trashcan, most nights or slouched over the keyboard unable to even lift my fingers enough to type an apology. A contestant-only vote, I thought, would surely eliminate me. Even if it didn't, I wasn't sure I could continue writing; I was simply too exhausted and ill. When the opportunity offered itself, I brought my beloved back into the competition. Dee held on fiercely until he missed another deadline. While the poll was going up, he was having emergency surgery to resect his upper bowels in three places and remove shards of a bullet from the abdominal aorta.
My world has gotten much smaller since then --- I've been declared legally blind and I can no longer go anywhere without a wheelchair as the discs in my back have completely collapsed. I cannot drive my beloved Lone Star any more and so I rarely leave FoxHeart Acres. Don't feel bad for me, though. While the stage may have shrunk, the cast of players has expanded to a full house.
Back in May, I was hospitalized with another life threatening infection. Dorie wanted badly to come be with me and the doctors had already told Mr. Shapeshifter (simtra) that if I had family wanting to say goodbye, they'd better get there quickly. My immune system was so badly compromised that anyone entering or leaving the room --- with the singular exception of my husband, who absolutely refused to leave me in such an impersonal situaiton if I was indeed dying --- had to gown up according to infectious disease processes.
Dorie's husband refused to let her come. She was devastated.
I was scheduled for surgery the following morning; the doctors were hoping that by removing the infected tissue they might give my immune system a chance to marshal its defences and fight back. Dee, sporting an NG tube and surgical incision less than a week old, somehow managed to convince his superiors to let him borrow a plane. He was there when I woke up and he stayed just like Mr. Shapeshifter.
Two days later, they released me.
The next weekend was Memorial Day weekend and the three of us traveled back to New Orleans to collect Dorie's things and take her home with us. We'd expected trouble and both boys had loaded guns within reach but her husband let her go with a minimum of cursing and fussing. He even helped take some of the heavier things down to the UHaul we'd brought for that purpose.
Dorie is now a happy housewife who creates art, reads, and writes without fearing that someone will mock her for her choices or nag her about her 'useless' pass times. She no longer twitches in her sleep. We had originally intended Dee to get his own apartment closer to the city where he'd be working but continued health issues scuttled those plans. Instead he prowls around the kitchen reading cookbooks and occasionally trying exotic new dishes on his newfound family. On really good days, I sit in the yard reading while he putters among the plants. We've got the beginnings of a small herb garden (medicinals and cullinary) and he managed to salvage most of the household plants which had been dying of neglect. Mr. Shapeshifter comes home to hot food on the table and most days he goes to work with a hearty hand-prepared lunch. Dorie, being a Cajun, is adept at using a few inexpensive resource to make filling, tasty meals including things an invalid can eat.
You do not, I have found, simply acquire one or two Cajuns; you inherit the entire clan whether you want them or not.
Dee's brother Callistus, an engineer based in New Orleans, frequently visits. As large and dark as his brother is slight and fair, the man can demolish anything edible in seconds flat and ask for more. When he's here he works on the aspects of the homestead I've had to let slide as my health declined: irrigation ditches to drain the property properly; gutters for the house; a grey water reclamation system; a deck with a ramp so I can get into and out of the house more easily or just sit outside if I so desire; a thousand other little things which add up to a major headache if left go long enough.
They've a younger sister, Lix (short for Alexia, but don't call her that unless you want pelted with something nasty or possibly injured in a wrestling match!) for whom the three of them hold legal custody. I've never managed to sort out Cajun relations so I don't know whether she's really a sister or a cousin (Dee and Callistus are, I found out, actually cousins who were raised together by the same mother) but she's a handful either way. At sixteen, Lix has a deadly combination of her brothers' brains and wit and her mother's beauty. She's been expelled from three schools in New Orleans and spends most of her time here. I home school her rather than turn her loose in the Florida educaton system, which I feel would not deal kindly with her free spiritedness.
Their mother, Illyria, also occasionally comes up to visit. She means well but none of us can ever do anything right!
I've also become accustomed to the needs of the nation occasionally invading our little family paradise here. The man who shot Dee also took out several other agents and their families. It may be a case of the barn being locked after the horses have been stolen, but most days when Dorie and I venture out we're accompanied by either MIB3 or MIB4, colleagues of Dee's assigned to make certain nothing happens to us or him. Neither were rural raised and so some changes had to be made; for a while it looked like the set of a spy movie had camped out in my driveway. I eventually convinced them that a beat up pick-up, jeans, and flannels would be less conspicuous around here than would a large black SUV with tinted windows and three piece suits. These duties would ordinarily be Craymar's and Kaz' (whom we also treat like family) but Craymar is currently on paternity leave and Kaz took time off to get reaquainted with his wife, whom the same lovely people who executed the others had taken hostage. They visit with Dee as often as their own family commitments permit.
Me? Still hanging in there and still the family storyteller, sometimes to their communal dismay. Sit back and enjoy for, as they say down in Cajun Country, I've got stories.
Pushing barriers, planting seeds,
Playing the mind guerilla,
Chanting the Mantra peace on earth,
We all been playing mind games forever,
Some kinda druid dudes lifting the veil.
Doing the mind guerilla,
Some call it the search for the grail,
Love is the answer and you know that for sure,
Love is flower you got to let it, you got to let it grow,
So keep on playing those mind games together" o/`
-- "Mind Games" performed by John Lennon
The same man in another of his songs once said, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
I almost didn't make it this year. While sign-up was going on, I was planning an important religious rite. When the introductions were to be posted, we ad just finished our rite and discovered, to my dismay, that the telecommunications company was working on our wireless. When that happens there is no wireless.
This will be my fourth season entering this particular writing competition. For those interested, my previous introductions can be found HERE, HERE, and HERE.
I found therealljidol while recovering from a near fatal brush with MRSA. I had a gigantic hole in my side which had come within milimeters of preforating the intestines and far too much time on my hands and so I decided to give it the old college try. To my surprise, I made it into the top forty before being eliminated. The second year found me struggling with some critical health failures and loss of personal freedom. Once more, assigned writing came to the rescue. I found myself with an audience --- god knows why! --- and some loyal, supportive friends. This time, I made it into the top thirty.
My third year would be an unqualified disaster as far as the competition was concerned.
Last year, I labored to produce topics while undergoing a rigorous course of chemotherapy and making frantic dashes across three states so that I could act as a buffer between Dorie (pshaw_raven) and her abusive husband while she tended her brother Dee (diagenou) after a devastating injury in the line of duty. Injured law enforcement are, I think, among the most difficult of patients to treat. Their identities are so intertwined with their work that depriving them of it in any way usually results in severe depression. Almost anyone can tell you that a depressed patient has a higher chance of complications or death, even if the injury or illness is minor...and Dee's was neither. I teased and taunted him, playing to his ego, until he agreed to enter the competition as well.
Some of you have met diagenou; the rest of you probably would not want to do so. To say his style is offensive and abrasive is like noticing the Pope is Catholic. He did, however, begin to develop a writing talent which astounded even those who knew him. Dee customarily wrote profile reports, which are stiffly formal and impersonal, and so some of the pieces he produced were fascinating owing to the depth of heartfelt emotion and stark but compelling descriptions. He missed several deadlines and was eliminated in a spectacularly close write-off between two (or was it three?) other contestants.
By the fourteenth week, the chemotherapy had my number. I slept upright, next to a trashcan, most nights or slouched over the keyboard unable to even lift my fingers enough to type an apology. A contestant-only vote, I thought, would surely eliminate me. Even if it didn't, I wasn't sure I could continue writing; I was simply too exhausted and ill. When the opportunity offered itself, I brought my beloved back into the competition. Dee held on fiercely until he missed another deadline. While the poll was going up, he was having emergency surgery to resect his upper bowels in three places and remove shards of a bullet from the abdominal aorta.
My world has gotten much smaller since then --- I've been declared legally blind and I can no longer go anywhere without a wheelchair as the discs in my back have completely collapsed. I cannot drive my beloved Lone Star any more and so I rarely leave FoxHeart Acres. Don't feel bad for me, though. While the stage may have shrunk, the cast of players has expanded to a full house.
Back in May, I was hospitalized with another life threatening infection. Dorie wanted badly to come be with me and the doctors had already told Mr. Shapeshifter (simtra) that if I had family wanting to say goodbye, they'd better get there quickly. My immune system was so badly compromised that anyone entering or leaving the room --- with the singular exception of my husband, who absolutely refused to leave me in such an impersonal situaiton if I was indeed dying --- had to gown up according to infectious disease processes.
Dorie's husband refused to let her come. She was devastated.
I was scheduled for surgery the following morning; the doctors were hoping that by removing the infected tissue they might give my immune system a chance to marshal its defences and fight back. Dee, sporting an NG tube and surgical incision less than a week old, somehow managed to convince his superiors to let him borrow a plane. He was there when I woke up and he stayed just like Mr. Shapeshifter.
Two days later, they released me.
The next weekend was Memorial Day weekend and the three of us traveled back to New Orleans to collect Dorie's things and take her home with us. We'd expected trouble and both boys had loaded guns within reach but her husband let her go with a minimum of cursing and fussing. He even helped take some of the heavier things down to the UHaul we'd brought for that purpose.
Dorie is now a happy housewife who creates art, reads, and writes without fearing that someone will mock her for her choices or nag her about her 'useless' pass times. She no longer twitches in her sleep. We had originally intended Dee to get his own apartment closer to the city where he'd be working but continued health issues scuttled those plans. Instead he prowls around the kitchen reading cookbooks and occasionally trying exotic new dishes on his newfound family. On really good days, I sit in the yard reading while he putters among the plants. We've got the beginnings of a small herb garden (medicinals and cullinary) and he managed to salvage most of the household plants which had been dying of neglect. Mr. Shapeshifter comes home to hot food on the table and most days he goes to work with a hearty hand-prepared lunch. Dorie, being a Cajun, is adept at using a few inexpensive resource to make filling, tasty meals including things an invalid can eat.
You do not, I have found, simply acquire one or two Cajuns; you inherit the entire clan whether you want them or not.
Dee's brother Callistus, an engineer based in New Orleans, frequently visits. As large and dark as his brother is slight and fair, the man can demolish anything edible in seconds flat and ask for more. When he's here he works on the aspects of the homestead I've had to let slide as my health declined: irrigation ditches to drain the property properly; gutters for the house; a grey water reclamation system; a deck with a ramp so I can get into and out of the house more easily or just sit outside if I so desire; a thousand other little things which add up to a major headache if left go long enough.
They've a younger sister, Lix (short for Alexia, but don't call her that unless you want pelted with something nasty or possibly injured in a wrestling match!) for whom the three of them hold legal custody. I've never managed to sort out Cajun relations so I don't know whether she's really a sister or a cousin (Dee and Callistus are, I found out, actually cousins who were raised together by the same mother) but she's a handful either way. At sixteen, Lix has a deadly combination of her brothers' brains and wit and her mother's beauty. She's been expelled from three schools in New Orleans and spends most of her time here. I home school her rather than turn her loose in the Florida educaton system, which I feel would not deal kindly with her free spiritedness.
Their mother, Illyria, also occasionally comes up to visit. She means well but none of us can ever do anything right!
I've also become accustomed to the needs of the nation occasionally invading our little family paradise here. The man who shot Dee also took out several other agents and their families. It may be a case of the barn being locked after the horses have been stolen, but most days when Dorie and I venture out we're accompanied by either MIB3 or MIB4, colleagues of Dee's assigned to make certain nothing happens to us or him. Neither were rural raised and so some changes had to be made; for a while it looked like the set of a spy movie had camped out in my driveway. I eventually convinced them that a beat up pick-up, jeans, and flannels would be less conspicuous around here than would a large black SUV with tinted windows and three piece suits. These duties would ordinarily be Craymar's and Kaz' (whom we also treat like family) but Craymar is currently on paternity leave and Kaz took time off to get reaquainted with his wife, whom the same lovely people who executed the others had taken hostage. They visit with Dee as often as their own family commitments permit.
Me? Still hanging in there and still the family storyteller, sometimes to their communal dismay. Sit back and enjoy for, as they say down in Cajun Country, I've got stories.