Friday, June 8, 2018

Order: Yes! Alphabetical Order: No!


If you want to have some fun, Google "type animation." That's what I did to make the Fleeting Glances graphic above. You can animate anything you want in thousands of different ways and then save it to your desktop to use in emails or on your blogs, on Instagram, Pinterest or whatever.
Now to brag: I went to the lab for my blood tests. The clerk asked for my requisition and told me to take a seat inside. I sat there for quite a while she generated the labels for the test tubes of my blood (there are thirteen). Then she came in to see me looking agitated.
“Can I please see your ID?” she asked. 
I gave her my driver’s license.
“Oh my God, it is you,” she said.
When I was a substitute teacher in 1973, two students said exactly the same thing to me. They turned out to be children of a Tyrell cousin I’d never met so I was expecting her to reveal some kind of family connection. But no:
“I thought Dr. Majic had given you the wrong requisition because it’s for a seventy-year old man. I was sure you were only about fifty.”
Her “compliment” really surprised me, especially coming so soon after a similar incident. Ten days ago a transit police officer saw me using a seniors’ transit card and thought I was cheating. She stopped me and asked me for my ID too, then dismissed me saying I had great skin?!
I see an old man in the mirror.
Snap! It’s over. I had five days of exhilarating fluency but I’m back to “normal” again. At the lab I used my Rand voice (to Amanda’s amazement and delight).
I scored! I passed a truck parked in a yard advertising wood for sale. I wrote down the number and called this morning so now I’m on his list for six cords to be delivered in July/August. I am terribly impressed with myself, clearing out all the woodsheds of junk and getting all of next year’s wood ordered — and from the island! It makes winter so much easier to contemplate.
I celebrated last night with a wee fire.
It was thrilling to have a day of rest yesterday — to just do as I pleased. It was cloudy but warm and I felt great because my yard is in order and wood is coming—my world is in order. Dr. Shoja says “order” is my church. 
C-PTSD has robbed me of my sense of control. Dr. S. likes the aviation analogy I use to describe living with C-PTSD: I and my co-pilot are flying a plane but sometimes my co-pilot takes control of the plane and does CRAZY maneuvers but our intercom is broken so I can’t talk to him to ask why. In the absence of order is chaos; chaos is a majortrigger for me. 
Returning to Dr. S. has been great. I go again Monday. My sense of understanding of my condition seems deeper. My knowledge is coming more from my experience than from her iPad and psychiatric theory.
The City of Vancouver is changing its ballot. No more alphabetical listing of candidates and thank God for that. Three counselors voted against the motion; their surnames begin with “B,” “C” and “D.” The “B” is Elizabeth Ball, an person with whom I’ve had the displeasure of working.
She’s a big step above Doug Ford though.
As has been written: A confederacy of dunces.

















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