Personally Speaking

For reasons I'll leave with my family and close friends, I made a recent visit to the ER. Lenox Hill ER on the Upper East Side. I specifically chose this hospital because somewhere in my panicked subconscious I've heard they are the best in the city. Where did I get this conclusion? Jewish. East Side. Money. Expensive PR. They're near my doctor's office and I recently saw the nice new awning? I'm a sucker. You're a sucker. Wouldn't you like to be a sucker too?

We arrived at 10pm and I left the next morning at 7am. During that time I felt I got to know some folks at their most...honest.

For the first hour, we sat in a waiting room with two big, flat screen TV's both showing a Lakers VS. Nuggets game. More is new than just the awning. If the day prior you'd told me these two names were facing off in a game I might have said, "good for them...I don't watch much wrestling though..." As we sat there, I realized the few folks actively (and by actively I mean applauding and talking to the TV) watching the game were two teenage boys with snacks, two older gentlemen sitting together, a gentleman directly to Greg's right and the security guard who stayed past his shift to yell at the TV some more. I didn't mind the distraction except for how oddly important the TV became when the little girl sobbing at the top of her lungs was being passed back and forth between her parents. She was clearly in pain and her parents were clearly worried.

"Damn. Somebody put a bottle in that mouth." And as if he thought he were being funny he said it again and louder.

Dude. You're not at a sports bar.

The Security guard tried to wake up a woman telling her it was her turn. He jabbed her shoulder: "Hey! Wake up! They're calling you. Hey lady! They're calling you! Wake up!"

She did and very slowly, shuffled off in the direction he pointed obviously in need of some kind of help. I think we all were thinking mental help.

My name was called. We sit to register my reasons for being there. I'm asked the same question several times as I try to answer fast enough and watch the attendee typing incorrect information anyway. He's much too over worked and in a hurry. We surprisingly go directly to a bed...where there is another TV. We even have a remote and can flip through basic cable channels. We stick with cartoons mostly and regret we didn't bring our new Battleship board game.

I over hear a tall, tanned, fed up male nurse talking to a doctor at the computer directly in front of me: "I mean come on. She's obviously in her 11th ----- and she's freaked and called ----- and I mean why send her here? She obviously ----. This place is amazing. I mean can you believe how stupid that is?"

The doctor looks around and tries to genuinely explain why one would come to the ER. He needs a massage. From a man.

My nurse is a tough looking woman with a strong face and nice long, grey-blonde hair. Lauren. She asks me some questions, appears interested and walks away. Another woman pops up from around the corner and asks for my insurance info. Nurse Lauren comes back and puts a huge needle in my arm that literally shoots blood across the sheets of my bed. She apologies and pulls the blanket over the spots then places cotton under the needle. It is immediately soaked and red. Here's where I think I'm a tough chic. Blood and needles have never bothered me. I can even handle a significant amount of pain as long as I KNOW what is going on. I think fear is what drives many folks to the doctor and especially the Emergency Room. And I think fear is what is killing us. How do you turn it off?

I'm poked and prodded all night. More blood, more pee, more samples. I have a doctor take me for testing and I literally hear the angst in her first question. I crack a joke and tell her exactly what I think is wrong and try to sound like I'm not scared. She lightens up and connects briefly. After several hours, I have another doctor, cute, small, female, half my age, tell me in very monotone, over explained sentences that basically I'm fine. Not normal but I'll live. I CANNOT WAIT to get what now feels like a tree stuck in my vein OUT OF MY ARM. I overhear yet another patient complain and call out demands to Nurse Lauren. She quickly responds: "Just a minute. Let me finish what I am doing. There are many people in here just as sick or more sick than you. What's that? Whatever. Forget it. You just wait a minute."

These conversations went on all night. And she would always go back to them with a stern, quick scolding but give them good, kind care. A blanket. More drugs. Even the crazy ones: "I'm not laughing at your cat scan. Why would I laugh at your cat scan? Just sit tight and the doctor will be with you. There are a lot of sick people in here."

Nurse Lauren comes over to me and asks where Greg is. "He went home to free our little dog once we found out I wasn't dying... well not immediately as far as we know... I guess we are all actually dying everyday, right?" She pulls out the torture device in the crook of my dominant arm. I can bend it again. I'm reminded of photo ops I see on TV where baseball players stand next to a 'sick child's bed'. How must it feel to have the thinking of an active child and have the body of a disease riddled skeleton strapped in the white blah that is the hospital? I make a mental note to thank God for my health and hope I'll do something for a stranger stuck in a hospital bed some day.

"Can you believe these people? Don't you feel sorry for me?" I laugh with Nurse Lauren and am struck by her honesty. Her eyes weren't kidding. She has a tough job and I think could use a kind hand and stern voice telling her not to be afraid. Everything is fine. Maybe not normal but you're living.

Strange Things are Afoot at the Circle K

Without realizing it, I think I've been officially jilted about the world of 'entertainment'.

Until now.

I stumbled upon an instructional video on YouTube today and was AMAZED at how many kind hearted people post their experiences with the world SIMPLY to share. The true meaning of the word share as I recall it being explained to me when I didn't want to give my cousin any of my ice cream. We were three.

I saw a post of a woman who recorded giving herself an insulin injection. You never saw her face but she explained everything from how she felt to little tips on how to make it less painful. How nice is that? And so weird. Before the Internet, I can't imagine a time when I would have seen a perfect stranger putting a needle in her stomach.

Wait. I live in New York.

YouTube and Reality TV. Warhol 15. You know what I mean.

I'm so used to being a performer that 'shares' but I think I was so used to judging my 'sharing' as selfish.

"I need to feel valued so please applaud after I've pretended to be someone else."

Strange. I can go to a show and applaud as my 'thank you' because I feel someone truly shared a gift with me. But I've so often been on the other side, trying to convince the audience I'm sharing that I think maybe I wasn't sharing. Or I'm just judging myself waahaaay too harshly.

That must be the true gift of entertainment. When you KNOW what you have to share is valuable and you don't judge it or waste it. You treat it like it is precious and pass it on to your observer. Handing over a child, per se.

Oprah started a school. Bono makes everyone hold hands. Come on people! Let's share some ice cream!

Creativity Crush

My instinct to discover and create comes almost constantly. It's like love. I just want to stare in it's face all day and when I can't it's torture so I have to find new ways to explore.

I just wrote a short play about punching a colleague in the face.

I need to lay on a mat like a kindergarten nap.

"The hip bone's connected to the..."

I think Perez Hilton was a little quick to jump on the name-calling train to Miss Cali. He had good points but I think his anger got in the way and now every clip of him has been edited to a sound bite of the 'B' word. But hey girl, this is America, thank goodness, and we are all allowed to love and hate each other as much as we want.

I can't even be angry at the Miss California's anymore. If your organization needs Miss T & A to make your point, your point must be a little difficult to make on it's own. Of course I think it is absolute lunacy that our country: founded on freedom FROM persecution supposedly with laws based on separating one's faith FROM one's government, actually has to pause and contemplate the validity of joining two adults in matrimony.

[Cue Wedding March.]
Are they of age? Check.
Are they of sound mind and body? Check.
Do they have all the right parts? [Record scratch. Silence.]

What if...two consenting adults of sound mind and body wanted to get married, but one of them had been in a car accident deeming him/her sexless? Would they be allowed to get married?

Or how about hermaphrodites? Can they get married?

I used to work for a man and woman who had a Star Wars wedding. They both went as Darth Vader. I'm not kidding. Is their marriage legal? They both dressed as men...or alien men...or something...and they were still allowed to jump the broom. Why does that count? And aren't parents allowed to give consent for their underage kids to marry in some states? I read that somewhere. I also read that our brains do not fully develop until we are 22. I would think that means we are not of 'sound mind' until then. But it's OK if our parents are? There are parents who SELL their children...but that is a whole other rant...

I just don't understand discrimination. We all silently judge each other and ourselves every second of every day. Shouldn't The UNITED States be the thing that levels the playing field? I guess we're only human. That is asking a lot. Unions have an agenda too.

I suppose certain rights are inalienable...depending on where you were born.

Life in the Fast Lane

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. — Helen Keller

Greg and I recently moved to a new apartment in our same building. We went from the fourth floor to the second, a living-kitchen-bath room to a separate foyer, separate kitchen, and a bathroom that isn't next to the stove...higher ceilings, quiet neighbors and a lot less rent. Who could say 'no' to that? Of course, we had just moved a year prior and had not planned on going through that again for a long long time and of course I had JUST decided I was going to be a martial arts expert and thrown down cash for a month-long course...I went once.

I think it is safe to say we are finally settled. Settled enough to go about our daily lives again but not settled enough to give back one of two mail keys for our old apartment. Big Brother doesn't know we still have it. I think it's illegal but we can't depend on the forwards to find us in time for the big Publisher's Clearing House payout!

We've established some dog rules for the new pad. Stewart now has a 'Crate'...a 'Den'...a little 'Cage'. We put him in there when we leave the apartment so he won't try to hang himself from the shower curtain rod when a fire truck goes by. He got used to it pretty quickly and now he even voluntarily goes in there...I suspect just to get a treat but hey, he's a dog. If every time I washed clothes someone shoved a spoonful of ice cream in my face I'd probably show up at the laundry a lot more often. I've also established a spontaneously new-found dog rule: no dogs other than Stewart in the house. Not because I'm afraid of them or them eating our dog, but because it is flea season and I don't want their little friends eating our dog...or us for that matter. The other day an old neighbor stopped by and had 'just come from the dog run' with his big, hairy beast. We quickly came up with a poor excuse about touch-up painting or something and made the dog stay outside the front door.

That night I purchased Sergeant's flea & tick pesticide for small dogs from Duane Reade and that night I poisoned our dog. Every year I've purchased a similar product for every year I've had a pet. Fleas are bad. I learned that the hard way in a little apartment I had in LA about 15 years ago. Two cats. Two humans. Two million fleas. Never again. What really struck me about this incident was that you can do something you think of as basic housekeeping year after year and never really think about it...

...until you watch your dog behave like he has been possessed, listen to him whimper, foam at the mouth, not eat and constantly try to bite his own skin off. I think we surpassed the total amount of baths we've given him in his life time in that one evening.

I think about things like my mother smoking through both of her pregnancies; the time my girlfriend and I 'laid out' to get some sun [sans sunblock of course] in the back of our friend's pick up truck, going 90mph on a two-lane, West Texas highway; my brother taking God-knows-what in the bathroom at the club when he was a teenager...

I didn't know that part of getting older was about waking up to all the toxins of the world! I already knew my '...sigh...kids today...' music/cussing/volume ear was developing but now even more than ever my '...groan...corporations today...' eyes are stinging. I called the hotline on the back of the Sergeant's box and the operator sounded like she was helping me through building a paper airplane. CLEARLY this situation is common. There is a HOTLINE to talk you through de-poisoning your family pet. They've hired operators to deal with just that. I don't know what I'll do the first time my kid gets food poisoned. I might end up in jail.

But see.....I can't make up my mind.

There is the other side of me that wonders just what was so wrong with all those scary things we did before we knew any better? Ignorance is bliss! No helmets, no seat belts, no smoke-free airplanes!

There is a rapidly growing group that wants to take Dodge-ball out of schools. Dodge-ball is the PERFECT metaphor for life!!! I think it's great we got to practice how to get dumped, fired, robbed and laughed at with a two ounce rubber ball. How do we prepare our kids for the real world when we continually make it virtual?

[New thought: Is our world less real now that it is so virtual?]

There is an elementary school in the mid-West somewhere that has a 'no touching' policy. Kids have to 'air five' each other when they want to congratulate one another. No hugging, no pats on the back...no Patty-Cake! Doesn't that stuff backfire on us? We know the 'ol Catholic-school-girl, son-of-a-preacher syndrome. Aren't those kids going to get shipped off to High School and aren't those kids going to show up to school one day with a handgun because someone slapped them on the back the day before?

K. I'm being an alarmist. I know. I should stop all of the negative, fearful thinking. I should relax.

BUT I'M 36 AND I POISONED MY DOG!!!! I DON'T EVEN HAVE KIDS YET!!!!

[For the record, Stewart is fine. A little bald on top but we tell him it makes him look distinguished.]

...all I ever wanted...

I will be 36 in two days.

Now that I am grown up, I am going to promise myself a vacation every year...even if it is in my head.

Happy Birthday to me on Mars.

My Wallet Has More Vacation Time Than I Do

This past Saturday my wallet fell out of my back pocket. After making Greg go with me to re-trace my steps throughout Chelsea, I finally gave up. I had already canceled my debit card and was already calculating the cost of things to replace. Not to mention the CASH I'd JUST put in there.

Sigh.

But worse things have happened. [Of course they have.]

Sunday morning I get a call from a friendly voice. A woman had found my wallet and had it with her but she was about to get on a plane. I could pick it up Tuesday morning. Which I did.

EVERYTHING was still there. Including the CASH. I tried to give her some of the money but she looked at me like I had eight heads and literally walked away waving and smiling.

People is good. People is nice. [Of course they are.]