Milliseconds all was well before this horrible thing happened: 0

I’m working on a Perl script in Unix, just for practice, that moves all the files in the current directory to another directory which must be specified but doesn’t have to exist. I’m trying to give my log messages a folksy tone, as in the above.

I’ve just called San Francisco Veterinary Specialists, who offer acupuncture for cats, to see about treatment for Thelonious. (Yep, I went ahead and made that call within earshot of my coworkers. No one snickered, plus it’s 60 degrees out while it’s 110 everywhere else, two major perks of living in San Francisco.) She is back to just eating her dry food and she seems sanguine enough, but she is definitely skinnier than ever before. She’s reached that losing-weight-even-if-you-don’t-want-to time of life. Before my grandmother died, she lost a good deal of weight. Her illness wasn’t diagnosed until just weeks before she died, when she went to the emergency room not feeling well. I’ll bet that while she was losing weight because she had cancer, all her friends were saying, “Oh, Shirley, you look marvelous!”

Friday night I went to see my acupuncturist. On Saturday Tom and I took the ferry to Sausalito, where the weather was gorgeous, and saw Wordplay, which was absolutely delightful, with his mother and her husband. I laughed way more than at The Devil Wears Prada on Sunday with P. The latter really isn’t a comedy at all. Saturday night Tom and I saw The Upside of Anger on DVD, which I wanted to see because Arthur Penhallow, a DJ at my childhood rock station, WRIF, is in it, playing himself. He started at WRIF in 1971 and is still there today. I hoped he’d say “Baby!” in the movie, but he didn’t.

Over the weekend, I suddenly became a devotee of Prairie Home Companion. I was reading a review of the associated movie that said that while PHC seems to be a lighthearted thing, it actually is very dark, so I listened to it one day this weekend and found myself chuckling a time or two and appreciating G. Keillor’s intelligence. I guess I won’t sue him for harassment, after all. I could do without the unfunny jokes about women’s bodies. I don’t mean the jokes aren’t PC—they aren’t, but they also aren’t humorous. (Ditto Car Talk’s mother-in-law jokes.)

P. looks absolutely terrible. His sister said I would find he had lost weight, but while he didn’t look smaller to me, he does look frighteningly corpselike. His expression is absolutely blank, his mouth hangs open, his pupils are tiny pinpoints. He is visibly receding from this world. One wants to say, “Hello, are you in there?” He said almost nothing all day except, “After the movie, can I get a deli sandwich at Max’s?” I imagine his last words will be, “Can I get a burger at McDonald’s?” Or maybe, “I love you.”

His sister says he’s calling her less, and when I call him each weekend, the conversation is brief:

“How are you?”

“OK, I guess.”

“What did you do this week?”

“Not much.”

“Did you go to the center?”

“Yes.”

“Was it fun?”

“Not really.”

“Did you go to the AA meeting?"

“Yes.”

“Did you see T-bone?”

“Yes.”

“Did you go with Jesse to meditate on Thursday?”

“Yes.”

“Do you meditate at home sometimes on your own?”

“Yes.”

“Is it calming?”

“Yes.”

“Did Carol call you on Wednesday and Saturday?”

“Yes.”

“How is everyone at the house?”

“They’re all fine.”

“Did anyone come or leave?” (That is, die.)

“No.”

“How’s Lourdes?”

“She’s in charge.”

“Did Barbara take you out on Tuesday and Saturday?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do?”

“We went shopping.”

“Did you get Reese’s peanut butter cups and chocolate pudding.”

“Yep.”

“I swear, your social life is busier than mine is.”

Then there’s a long silence, and then he says, “I don’t have very much to say, I guess.” Then we both say, “I love you.”

There’s one resident of P.’s house who actually leaves the place under her own steam (to panhandle), so I brought her some free movie tickets someone gave me. I asked her roommate, “Is Marina here?” Kay said, “No, I don’t know anyone by that name.” “The woman who sleeps in your room?” “No, I don’t think I know anyone like that.”

I feel perkier now, and potato-chip consumption has slowed noticeably. For one thing, I had started to feel not just generally terrible, but immediately terrible. A bout of eating like that doesn’t worry me anymore. I know it will end. Three things usually happens before it ends: I notice that I have been angry lately and marvel at how overeating and anger so often are joined. I give myself permission to overeat forever. I think of some ways to take care of myself that aren’t food-related. Then usually I make an effort to eat from physical hunger at least once in a day, as the OO approach at its heart relies on re-establishing the connection between eating and physical hunger, after we’ve learned to eat for so many other reasons.

Lately I also find that there comes a time when I just don’t feel like feeling so lousy. I feel like feeling good, and part of that certainly rests on what I eat.

Definitely I don’t resolve never to eat another chip. I bought a couple of kinds of potato chips from Rainbow on Sunday and noticed how, unlike Ruffles, they actually taste like little slices of potato that have been fried.