Home is where... Or maybe, home is where?

Yesterday I brought my mother home to Miami, a place she's never lived. I put her in a private home that is also an Alzheimer's residence. As I've mentioned, it's only three blocks from my own home. That home being where I hang my hat, where my heart is, where the pets are, where my books and studio are.
In choosing things to bring to make my mother's room her home, I brought the id badge from the library, where she had been a volunteer for more than forty years, as well as the plaque they gave her last year when she finally had to stop.

I brought a cross-stitch she'd made of Newport, R.I., her home town. A framed photo of the store her father and she opened in 1936. Photos of her and my father, a pin cushion I'd made for her in her favorite color. I brought her favorite stuffed animal. I brought a lap blanket that she'd bought in Norway back in the 70s: it's shades of orange and rust and brown, and she used to nap under it on the living room couch.

I brought her close to me. Like so much else this crappy, crappy year, this has been so hard. So difficult to navigate emotionally.

Home is where I can bury myself under my own blankets, and not come out until 2005.

I received another check from the hospital yesterday. It seems that despite the conditions of the letter of separation, the hospital has cut the checks for my sick leave and vacation payouts already.

They were supposed to be cut after the last regular severance check, which would have put them into next year. Better for me to get that lump sum next year, when my employment status, and tax status is so tentative.

Better for the institution to pay the debt in this tax year.
So it's a win-win. They can screw my tax status by paying me, thereby inflicting yet another insult or injury, and at the same time, benefit their own bottom line.

Oh, please. I know it isn't personal. It is a global disdain for workers' well being.

On another note, I am stalling as hard as I can, because today is the day I go get my mother and install her in her new Alzheimer's home.

I've been having nightmares all week. I know this is the best, if not the only possible course of action, but that doesn't make it any easier.

Last night I dreamt that I had these red, crusty, ring-worm type sores on my ear lobe, and my shoulder. Only they weren't whole rings, they were horseshoe-shaped, and the center was black and sort of leathery. Truly disgusting.

I'm not suffering from suppressed guilt, am I?

Fuck.

As I was trying to wedge my little VW into half a parking space with the word COMPACT painted in it, I'm guessing that here in Miami it means anything smaller than the full-sized Hummer.
On my left, filling every inch of width between the yellow lines, was a full-sized Land Rover. It was suitably ostentatious, with a name plate on the back that indicated this was no run of the mill, ordinary Land Rover, but an exclusive, distinguished, limited edition Westminster, or Buckminster or some other la-di-da-minster varient.

I was really impressed, and did my best to impress the edge of my driver's side door into their passenger door.

On the other side, taking up two spaces, straddling that little yellow bumper with the words "Compact Only" was some flare-sided pick-em-up truck.

Once I squeezed out, and got into the book store, I had a short dialogue with the clerk, explaining why I didn't think that buying a discount card was any deal. He kept telling me that it would pay for itself in no time. I kept telling him that it was the principle of paying to get a discount that annoyed me, and I didn't care how fast it paid for itself, I wanted them to give me an incentive, not make me pay for it. He didn't get it, he just kept shaking his head and telling me it pays for itself.

No. It doesn't. I pay for it. Give it to me free, and then it'll be worth it.

The woman behind me was sighing in exasperation with my bull-headedness, so I slouched off, and tried to chip the paint on the Range Rover again as I crawled into my tiny, little, used, economical car.

I clearly don't belong here.

I don't need to read self-help books about tapping into my creativity by getting in touch with my inner child. I am so in touch with my inner child that I have to give her time-outs to go sit in the corner and just shut up.
What this period of unemployment is doing for me most, it would seem, is putting me in touch with my inner sloth.

Who knew? I mean,I have been imbued with the good old protestant work ethic since I was old enough to work. In my family, that meant being able to handle a pair of blunt-nosed scissors well enough to curl ribbon for the Christmas package wrappers. Or, failing that, being able to fold corners on cardboard shirt boxes.

By the end of summer, we were already stacking pre-made shirt boxes under the display tables. By Thanksgiving, my cousin and I were living in the back of the store, curling ribbon and making alternating patterns of green and red curls, neatly tucked into some of those same shirt boxes.

By the time we were old enough to see over the wrapping table, we were the package wrappers. Even today, nobody wants to wrap packages with either of us. Three pieces of tape and less than three minutes and we're done. With sharp folds on the paper, too.

Anyway, I seem to have digressed. I am getting in touch with my inner sloth these days, by not working. I am not working in so many different ways. I am taking afternoon naps. I am lounging around on the sofa reading historical novels. I am going to the gym during the day. I'm taking long baths.

I am not making quilts, or jewelry or any of the other things I promised myself I would devote my free time to. I am utterly, and deliciously unproductive. This has gone on for a month, now and I'm starting to make myself nervous. I may have to start making things, or get a seasonal job wrapping packages.

But for now, I'm going to the gym.

And gentle readers, keep an eye open for massive changes coming to Girlyshoes, as I work my way through the stack of computer books on my desk.

I give you me, in all my fabulousness.

During my daytime stint as mermaid, at the Raleigh Pool Party, I was without my glasses. Because, really, who ever heard of a mermaid in glasses?

Nevertheless, I was able to see well enough to notice that I was surrounded by stunning, gorgeous men. I will digress momentarily to tell a story about my mother.
Mummy did her part for the war effort (WWII) by dancing with the sailors and the soldiers at the local USO. She would go with her friend Millie, who was from Tennessee, or Georgia, or some other deep south state. When Mummy and her dance partner of the evening decided to head on off to another road house, Mummy would tell Millie to pick one and let's go. But Millie couldn't choose, and she would, without fail, say to my mother, "But Florence, I cain't choose. It's just like picking flowers. Each one is prettier than the next."

At these White Party week events, I always think of Millie because, just as she said back in the day, each one is prettier than the next. And since they are all gay, the allusion is even stronger. All I can do is smell them, and not even pick a little bittie bud.

Anyway, so there I am, sitting on the edge of the stage, flapping my tail and waving prettily at the pretty boys. Many of them asked to take their photos with me, and I was only too happy to oblige.

But there was one man who didn't ask. I watched him all afternoon, and kept thinking that there was one major hottie. "If he weren't gay," I kept saying to myself, "I would eat him with a spoon. Yum, yum fucking yum."

He was dark. Black hair in white-boy dreads, little twisty ones. Black five-o'clock shadow and it was barely past noon. Built just so. I'm telling you, he was just edible.

So when I was getting ready to pack it in, I asked one of the roving photographers if he would take a shot of me and this gorgeous thing. In fact, I was quite specific: That one, the guy that I just want to lick all over because he is just so gorgeous.

I'm sorry if I can't come up with another word other than gorgeous, but that's what he was.

The photographer went over and, I assume, passed along my assessment of his looks and request for pictures. He trotted right over and sat down on the edge of the stage with me. I flapped my tail, and blushed prettily, and batted my eyelashes, and twiddled my finger in his chest hair and we started to talk as the photographer snapped.

I learned that his name is George and he is the manager for several of our DJs. I also suspect that he is not at all gay. This made things very uncomfortable for me, since I'm married and by no means available. I couldn't ask right out. I couldn't do anything except maybe pull my fingers out of his chest hair and stop flapping and batting, and so I did.

Anyway, I felt and feel like an idiot, but in my own defense, you have never seen anything as hot as George.