his old, blind, Aunt Tee

So, I went to the eye doctor a few weeks ago because, well, I need some new glasses. I haven't been in a few years, since I haven't had insurance and I've really noticed my vision getting very, very bad. Especially my night vision, which has always been really bad to begin with. So I'm in there with my pupils dilated, lights being shone in my eyes, and before I know it, three doctors have come in the room, each of them scratching their heads, each with that "ut oh" look, and each concurring that I most definitely needed to go see the retina guys, at the retina place. They would know more about what was going on. It's not the first time the eye doctor has been concerned about my retinas. They've been telling me for years that there was some "degeneration", but never has there been so much concern nor sense of urgency. They mentioned a suspicion of Retinitis Pigmentosa. Retin-what, you say?? Immediately my mind flashes to my dad's story about visiting his great aunts, the sisters, a deaf one and a blind one. His old, blind, Aunt Tee...Holy shit!
So I go to the retina center, and I saw what must be the kindest, most professional physician I have ever encountered. This was the man who would tell me that I do in fact have the dreaded Retinitis Pigmentosa, and that at best, I have 10 years before I'm left with only the ability to recognize light sources and general shapes with my best eye. My left eye will give out and be "legally blind" within 5 years. You know what my first thought was as I sat there in that white, crisp room? I thought, "how'am I gonna paint?" First thought. No shit. I mean, a million others flooded me, and I worried about how The Wifester would handle the news, or how the hell am I going to use my degree and DESIGN, when I can't friggin see?? I keep adjusting the color on my monitors. I even bought new monitors. Still cant get a good, clear image. I finally realized that it's not the hardware. It's me, my hardware. The doctor asked me if I was understanding what he was telling me, and I said to him, "Yeah, so I need to paint all that I can, like now." He gently patted my shoulder and he said to me, "Yes! Make all the art you can every day. Travel. Go everywhere you ever wanted to go just as soon as you possibly can. Don't put it off. Do it now, and enjoy your vision while you have it."
That was not a conversation that I ever thought I would have. I'm still trying to absorb it.
So today, I had to go in for my Visual Field Test. This shows us how much of my peripheral vision is affected. The way I understood it, you are considered "legally blind" when your visual field in your better eye is less than 20%. My best eye has a visual field of 10%. I didn't know I was so blind. I can still see! I can! OK, so you can sneak up on me pretty damned easily. Granted. And sometimes if you toss something my way, it's likely to hit me in the face, sure. I can't deny that...but I really can see...some stuff. Which has me seriously contemplating my art. I mean, I know what it looks like to me, but now I'm questioning how you see it. Holy crapola! I've been so proud of some of these pieces, and have been showing them off and uploading pics of them to facebook...and you know what, I realize now that they probably aren't nearly as good as I thought they were! Maybe I'm NOT a good painter. Maybe my About Me shouldn't boast "artist, blogger, poet, saint". But you know what? Screw that. I love to paint. I love to be creative. Even if every single thing I've ever painted is shit, I have enjoyed doing it, and I'm not going to stop. So if my art gets funky, and crazy abstract, and you are wondering what happened to the Marilyns and Joan Crawfords and mermaids and cityscapes that I've been doing, you'll know now that it's just that I'm going to have to adapt to my ever narrowing visual field. Man! Today sure has been a downer.

Places to go and things to do

What one thing could you absolutely not live without? I don't mean sex or chocolate...I mean senses or physical abilities.
Could you cope without your sight?
How about losing your hearing?
What if you could never walk again?

Lets up the ante. What is your absolute favorite thing to do? Now, take away a sense or physical ability that would result in the loss of your ability to do your favorite thing. Say, for example, you're a dancer, and now you can no longer walk. Never. What now? What comes next?
Claude Monet became blind half way through his The Water Lilies series, but he finished them up, even without the gift of sight.
Julie Andrews lost her glorious singing voice, and now writes books, she simply found a new outlet for her voice to be heard.
How would you cope with such life altering changes?

What if your doctor told you, "Go everywhere that you ever wanted to see, and do it now, your time is short."
Where's the first place your passport would get stamped?

Me? I want to see everything...I want to see Carmel, California again. It's so lovely there. I want to go to Germany, Aruba, and I really want to go to Hawaii! I'd love to visit New Zealand, and the Netherlands, and Glacier Bay National Park...
I want to paint in Mew Mexico's Painted Desert, and I want to watch the sun rise over Key West just one more time.
I want to see the lights on Broadway! And, oh, there only about a million places in between...I know I can never fit it all in before time and money runs out, but those are the places and things I want to see. Then, once that the day arrives, I'll just figure out a new way to paint those images that are in my mind, yearning to reach a canvas. After-all, The Water Lilies were painted by a blind man...

American Dream or American Nightmare?

I'm appalled.
My mom called me Saturday to tell me that after working for the same company for 45 years, my dad's company shut down.

Dad is 63 years old. He was trying to hang in there for two more years so he could retire on Social Security. Since the company has been going downhill, they knew that all of their retirement benefits had already been lost. At 63 years old, after 45 years of dedicated service, my father is without a job, without pay for his past 5 weeks of work, without his health insurance, too young yet to draw Social Security benefits, and plagued with a laundry list of health problems, including disc and spine injuries that have required multiple surgeries and chronic pain treatment for the last 30 years or so, and he has some serious chronic heart problems, too. He applied for TennCare, our state run health care, and was denied. He was told that enrollment is closed at this time. I guess that's what happens when Americans demand cut backs to all those "socialist programs".

My father has worked for 30 years, while being in unimaginable pain every single day. My father didn't roll over and give up when he broke his back. He sucked it up, picked himself up by the bootstraps, and carried on. He did it for his family, for his own sense of self worth, for his future, and for his company. It is absolutely sickening to think about how he is being treated now.

You know, I think back to my childhood, and my memories are of my dad working for that company, traveling all over the place to teach employees at this factory or that one how to operate this machine he built for them. I remember him coming home from work, blue prints in hand, and heading straight back to his office, to continue to work on his projects, even at home. He put in his time. He dedicated his life to them, and this is how he is repaid.

This is not the American Dream that my dad told me about when I was a kid. This is not the American Dream that makes this country great. And this certainly is not the way we should be treating good, hardworking Americans.

Did I ever tell you about Sakti?

I don't like to talk about it all that often, but I want to today.
My friend and coworker's father died in the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.
I watched the events unfold in my living room, as I imagine a lot of us did, while I drank my morning coffee and wiped the sleep from my eyes.
I remember sitting there at work later in the day, eyes glued to the TV instead of the medication cart, holding Linda's hand and saying, "It's gonna be OK," knowing, that awful, deep inside your gut kind of knowing, that it definitely was NOT going to be OK.
And it wasn't.

We had another coworker there that day, sitting on the other side of Linda, holding her hand... She was from Bali. She was a Muslim. I never met anyone from Bali before, and for some reason it surprised me that she was Muslim. I guess I just never thought about those things.

And we weren't thinking about them that day, either. Sakti sat there with Linda, holding her hand, crying, praying...asking Allah to bring Linda's father to her safely. We all watched helplessly while Linda tried and tried again to call her father's cell phone, home phone, office...all to no avail. It was a horrible day for everyone, and I can only imagine what it must have been like for Linda.

I can't possibly imagine what the years since have been like for either Linda or Satki...

Sakti stays in my mind today. Of all my coworkers, she was the one who always reached out to anyone who suffered with the most genuine, sincere, and heartfelt empathy. She was the one who never spoke harsh words about anyone else, or at least if she did, we never heard them. She was the one who never complained about how much work there was to be done. She just did it. And she was the one who never engaged in any of the numerous debates that occurred within those walls, she simply walked into another room and prayed. Sakti left an impression on me. I always respected and admired her for her gentle spirit, her caring nature, and her ability to maintain composure. She asked me once, weeks or months maybe before the 9/11 attacks, if I too prayed to Allah, and I told her I prayed to no god. She smiled and said to me,
"That's OK, Allah knows you have love in your heart."
And for her, that was enough. She accepted me and my lack of religion as is...and we forged a friendship that was based on mutual respect and trust. I know a few "Christians" who could learn a thing or two about the Golden Rule and loving thy neighbor from Sakti.

I don't know what ever happened to my Balinese friend, but wherever she is, I hope that she is happy, healthy, and not suffering the effects of the viscous Islamophobia that has plagued this country in the time between then and now. She never judge me, or anyone else, and I hope she is being returned the same courtesy.

Introversion

I write
because my brushes have dried,
and I paint
because my pen has no ink...
I learn
because what they taught me were lies,
and I swim
so that I don't sink.
I recoil
because I know the pain of a burn
and I love
because it feels better than hate.
I guess it's been my life lesson to learn
how to master the path of my fate.

Angela J. Schleicher © 2010

Gay doesn’t Gray?

I've heard that "black don't crack," but did you know that gay doesn't gray? Well, according to The Family Research Council, that's the case. I wish someone would tell my increasingly numerous silvery locks that tidbit. Tony Perkins, of TFRC, posits that since the gay "movement is only a few decades old," there are no elderly homosexuals running around. He says this is because the people who are of the 80+ age range grew up without acceptance of homosexuality, they would not have identified with this lifestyle. Yep, that's what he says. Read it. But if acceptance of homosexuality was the determining factor, I never would have come out, nor would I be happily married today to the Wifester, so I don't see how this theory can possibly hold any validity. Not to mention the fact that it hinges on the idea that homosexuality is only a "few decades old." Really? I mean, come on. That bible those people like to thump in our faces and quote hateful, intolerant propaganda regarding homosexuality from is just a little bit more than a few decades old, so there goes that line of bull shit that TFRC is spoon feeding their sheeple.

It seems to me that a group whose name invokes the term "research" in its title would see to it that they, oh, I don't know, actually did some RESEARCH before making such spurious claims, but that's just me. While they are at it, they can fact check their other statement, "In reality, HHS has no idea how many LGBT seniors exist. No one does!" While that may be partially accurate, because true enough some people will still not identify themselves as gay/lesbian on a census and other questionnaires out of fear of discrimination from people like these tools at the Family Research Council, a great number are actually quite happy to identify themselves as gay/lesbian or in a committed relationship with a partner of the same sex. As a matter of fact, there are enough gay and lesbian elderly people that we now have gay/lesbian nursing homes available. The fact is, we're here, we're queer, and a great many of our population is elderly, get used to it.

The tragedy is not "unnecessary spending," as Tony Perkins and TFRC would have you believe, but quite the opposite. In fact, gay and lesbian specific health issues are one of the least studied, least focused on issues in the health care world. Lesbians have an increased risk for cervical cancer, one of the most deadly. Why? Because we often forgo pap smears just because we are not sexually active with men, or because often we are intimidated to tell a physician that we are lesbians, and face possible discrimination and judgment. Sure, AIDS gets a lot of attention now, but what people like this idiot neglect when they make statements like, "…given the risks of homosexual conduct, these people are less likely to live long enough to become senior citizens!" is that according to the CDC, researchers found that poverty was the most important demographic factor associated with HIV infection in inner-city heterosexuals. The lower the socioeconomic status, the higher the number of HIV cases. People whose household income was less than $10,000  per year are seven times more likely to have HIV than those whose household incomes were greater than $50,000 per year. And guess what? Marketing research has found that gays have about a 15% higher income than their similarly situated heterosexual friends and neighbors. Just sayin'. So, yes, while gay men still are the largest population of HIV/AIDS infected individuals, the fastest growing population is the inner city poor.

Tony Perkins and TFRC would rather see elderly people suffer in silence when a partner of 50+ years passes away. Unable to collect Social Security, unable to cover each other with health insurance, unable in many cases, just to find grief counseling that can help them with their specific situation.

I sure wish gay didn't gray, at least in regards to hair…but in reality, gay is gray, and it's here to stay.

"Free Government Money!"

The good news is that the house next door finally has people living it it again. So does the one across the street. There are now only two houses left on the cul-de-sac that are empty. That is, as Martha Stewart says, a good thing.
The house next door is a blended family, with a total of three children, one of them is only there part time, and one on the way. They are nice people. Their kids are cute. The first few times my doorbell rang, to be followed by, "Can Sally come out and play?" I thought it was endearing. I smiled and thought, "How sweet."
Then it became a daily event.
Not only did it become a daily event, but multiple times a day. And not only that, but I have become trapped in my own house, looking out through the peep hole to make sure my porch is not kid-laden before I embark on the task of getting an attention/concentration challenged puppy to go potty, much less with 3 small children vying for her attention and affections. Its not just the three of them, either. Kids come with friends, you know. They bring every other kid from the neighborhood with them to knock on my door, ask if Sally can play, ask if they can play in my house, and if they can watch my TV...I don't even watch my TV during the day.
After trying, unsuccessfully, to explain to children (who are too young to get anywhere near the concept of an at home office) that I have work to do during the daytime, and that when I am finished with my work I will be happy to bring Sally and Sunny outside to play, The Wifester suggested buying a toy box full of little goodies for them to pick from.
Her idea, which sounded so good in theory, was to tell them that they could choose a toy from the box as long as they promised to let me finish up my work and not ring the doorbell any more. Bribery. It always worked on me at that age.
We ordered this from Oriental Trading Co.


I thought it would do the trick...I mean, it's not a Wii or anything like that, but come on...I'm just that fat lady next door with the big yellow dogs. I don't have to hand out top quality toys, right?
I was wrong.
After the children began the incessant ringing of the doorbell yesterday, I went to the door and told them that I really needed them to stop ringing it like that. I don't mean it was a ring and 5 minutes later another ring.
Oh, no, no, no! This was

ding-dong! ding-dong!ding-dong! ding-dong!ding-dong! ding-dong!ding-dong! ding-dong!ding-dong! ding-dong!ding-dong! ding-dong!ding-dong! ding-dong!ding-dong! ding-dong!ding-dong! ding-dong!ding-dong! ding-dong!

accompanied by

knock!knock!knock! knock!knock!knock! knock!knock!knock! knock!knock!knock! knock!knock!knock! knock!knock!knock! knock!knock!knock! knock!knock!knock! knock!knock!knock! knock!knock!knock! knock!knock!knock!

Again, I explained that I was working...and as I tried to explain that I was working, one of the little monsters angels said to me, "What kind of work can you do from your house, anyways?"
I tried to put it in terms children of this age range can understand, so I simply said, "Well, I write letters for doctors, and I also have my own business baking dog treats like the ones I gave you for your dog."
To which this child replied, "You don't get free government money? I thought people who stay at home get free government money."

Ahhhh...out of the mouths of babes!

So after a good little chuckle, I told the kids they could pick out a toy from the box, but they needed to let me finish my work. Everyone agreed to these terms. Toys were selected. I was deemed the coolest neighbor on the street. Peace and quiet was returned to my abode...for a full 20 minutes and then

ding-dong! ding-dong!ding-dong! ding-dong!ding-dong! ding-dong!ding-dong! ding-dong!ding-dong! ding-dong!ding-dong! ding-dong!ding-dong! ding-dong!ding-dong! ding-dong!ding-dong! ding-dong!ding-dong! ding-dong!

I returned to the door to find the gang of pip-squeaks there, as though it could be anyone else.

"My toy broke. Can I pick out another one?"

With a sigh, I agreed and brought out the treasure chest, with another lecture on doorbell etiquette and another stern warning about my need to work...
Digging through the toy box, the boy seemed indecisive and keept hesitating. The girl told her brother, "Just pick anything, it doesn't matter. They're all cheap anyways, so they're gonna break."
Then looking to me, she says, "Hey, why are they so cheap, anyways?"

Maybe if I had some of that free government money, I could afford to buy better bribery-toys for the little monsters darlings.