Month: June 2009

I Know You Are, but What Am I?

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Pacer Guy was back today.

I wouldn’t call him a rec center regular, because he’s not there every morning. He’s not even there on the Monday, Wednesday, Friday mornings, like the three Walker Ladies who spend more time yakking while they “stretch out” than they do on the weight machines or on the walking track, where they insist on walking three abreast, which annoys the people trying to jog in the outside jogging lane.

No, Pacer Guy shows up more or less randomly. Often on Friday mornings, however. He’s distinctive in the lemon green ball cap that never comes off his head. And his behavior.

Pacer Guy had just gotten off the leg press machine when we arrived. Knowing from past experience that this is his favorite machine, with which he has a tumultuous relationship, I took the opportunity to get on the machine, hoping to use it before he returned. Cuz that’s what he does — he apparently leaves. Sometimes he wanders around the central pulley machine to stand and watch Fox news for a while. (This is Wyoming: of course they play Fox News in the gym.) Other times he’ll head off down the hall, past the basketball courts, through the glass doors to the atrium. I’ve seen him get all the way to the front doors — a straight visual shot from the weight room — before he turns around and comes back.

As I worked my leg press repetitions, Pacer Guy circled back a couple of times and I realized he wasn’t done. In some ways, it seems he never is. I finished and he jumped on, quickly shifting the weight pins to his preferred load. He did three or four reps. And headed out the doors.

He came back, of course. Pacer Guy does this most with the leg press machine. But, when he was safely on the biceps curl, apparently done with the butterfly one (can you tell I’ve never bothered to learn the actual names for these?), I started in with that. Every time I stood up to increase the weight, he jumped up from the biceps machine, only to retire back to his seat when I saw I wasn’t abandoning the field. Finally, he popped up and paced off somewhere. I finished and Curiously Tense Blond Jogger Girl got on. Pacer Guy returned, saw someone ELSE was on the machine and took off again. Then New Overweight Guy, who’s being very dedicated and earnest so far, marking all of his weights and reps on the spreadsheet the personal trainer gave him, used the machine. This was the last straw for Pacer Guy, who disappeared after that. I thought he’d left, but David, who was dodging the Walker Ladies on the track, reported that Pacer Guy had gone upstairs to stalk around the treadmills and rearrange the Pilates balls.

Yesterday I went to Denver to visit my mom. She’s back in the neighborhood for the summer, so we went for lunch at the Bent Noodle and hit Nick’s Paradisical Garden Center for supplies: pink impatiens, tadpoles and water hyacinths. She said she didn’t know Ruth has dementia. And we talked about how hard those debilitating chronic diseases are on the caretaker. I saw how it drained her, during Leo’s long decline.

“I don’t think Mother had Alzheimers though,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because she always knew who we were. She didn’t forget things. It was more like…like her anxiety overwhelmed everything else so she couldn’t function.”
“That’s true.”
“I find myself doing that,” she admitted.
“Hell — I do it!” I told her. “I suppose it’s just a constant battle not to let emotions overwhelm what’s rational.

By 6:30, the weight room had cleared out. The machines quiet, ready for the next wave.

Nicely Done

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For someone who has a bit of a rep as not being a “nice” person, I sure do get myself into binds because I’m trying to be nice.

Monday afternoon, I heard a crash outside. I looked out the window, which is right over my desk and saw a beige pick-up pulling away. The back of the truck was very near our parked car, but the car kept going so I didn’t think much of it.

Less than a minute later, the doorbell rings. A woman with a red geranium perched in one hand and a little dog circling manically at the end of a leash in the other says “Is that your green car out front? Someone just hit it! Backed into it and drove away! But I got the license plate. Mouthed to the driver: ‘I see your license plate.’ She kept going. Turned right on Grand.”

I should have run out when I heard the crash, I suppose.

As it was, I went to our neighbors across the street first. Ruth and Mike are in their 80s, very pleasant neighbors. From what I saw, the truck had backed out of their driveway and was likely driven by one of their many grandchildren who come to visit. Only Ruth was home. Given her dementia, the conversation was unproductive. She can make neighborly conversation, but has no idea who’s been there visiting or not.

I called the police. Gave them the plate number. They said they’d look for the vehicle. Called insurance. The whole deal. The damage almost certainly exceeds the value of the car. (No, no — it was the Buick, NOT the Jag!)

When Mike came home, David talked to him, told him what happened. Mike immediately phoned up the grandson, who came right over. They examined our car and his beige pick-up, then came over.

We had the conversation in our entrance hallway. The grandson says he thinks he would have felt it if he hit our car. He is twenty-something and earnest. Mike clearly believes him. Mike says how’s there’s no damage or green paint on the grandson’s truck. I refrain from pointing out that the kid has had three hours to clean it up. They also note that the paint left on our car is white. I don’t ask how beige scraped over dark green looks different than white.

What I do say is that right now the cops have the kid as a hit and run and he should go to the cop shop. I figure they’ll deal with it, match the paint, etc.

The cops call later, say the kid is playing dumb and they can’t do anything without my witness. Whose name I neglected to get. The insurance company is not so sanguine and is talking about having the claims agent check the kid’s truck while they check ours.

I’m torn. For us, there’s no fault. There is a $500 deductible. And it annoys me that the kid isn’t taking responsibilty, though I also believe that will catch up with him.

I keep seeing Mike’s face in our evening entranceway, the weariness on it. The need to believe his grandson wouldn’t lie. Mike and Ruth no longer make their annual trek to the sunny Southwest and instead have stuck out the last two long Laramie winters. Ruth is too far gone for it.

We’ve knocked on the neighbors’ doors, looking for the woman with the red geranium, who told me she was there visiting her dad on the corner. No luck. We’ll run a classified in the paper through Sunday, looking for her or her dad.

After that, I don’t know. Maybe it’s worth $500 to leave Mike alone.

Dying in Bliss

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Alas Air France 447. It’s looking like we’ll never get to know what happened. What with the whole black-box-at-the-bottom-of-the-ocean thing.

I’ve mentioned before that I have a plane-crash, well, “obsession” is probably a fair word. I find that a big part of this is the wanting to know what happened. I can’t help but envision those final moments. What was it like for the passengers? Were they sleeping when the plane hit the ocean? Had they already vaporized before that?

However, I’m finding that knowing doesn’t provide full satisfaction either. In fact, knowing too much can be a real detriment to enjoying life. I work on tap water — I know what I’m talking about here. Sometimes the illusion of safety is what gets you on the plane in the first place, and in the 211th place also. Which is why I’m kind of sorry that I read the cockpit recorder transcript from Colgan Flight 3407. You know the one, the turboprop plane that iced up and fell from the sky like a big rock onto someone’s house in Buffalo, NY.

The kind of plane I fly on all the time between Denver and Laramie, through blizzards, etc.

You trust in your pilots. You have to. And you make certain assumptions in that trust: that they’re not exhausted, that they’re well trained, that they know what they’re doing.

You can read the whole transcript of course. I confess I skimmed. The interesting part is at the end, of course.

Which is also the really scary part. For example:

“I’ve never seen deicing conditions. I’ve never deiced. I’ve never seen any–I’ve never experienced any of that. I don’t want to experience that and make those kinds of calls. You know, I’d’ve freaked out. I’d’ve like seen this much ice and thought oh my gosh we were going to crash.”

That was from the young co-pilot who was only making $16K and had to still live with her parents, commuting from Seattle.

The pilot has asked her to see if there’s ice on her side of the plane, too. He talks about being a Florida guy, how all his flying hours are around the Phoenix area, how he’d like more flying time in the Northeast before he upgrades to a bigger plane. He does the wrong thing when the plane stalls.

One of the worst parts is the top of page 55, where they reel of the standard spiel about cell phones, seat backs and tray tables. Meanwhile the pilots are saying to each other “son of a gun, look at all that ice — wonder why we’re not crashing?”

Not that any of the passengers could have done anything. Except trust that their pilots have the knowledge to take care of everyone on the plane.

Sometimes knowledge is power. No matter unblissful it might be to know.

Lilacs for Terry

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This time last year, I ordered flowers for David’s Cousin Terry.

I remember it because I called the florist in Seattle and asked if she could do lilacs. The shop was next to the big medical center performing Terry’s latest MOAS. (Mother of All Surgeries, as Terry’s sister dubbed them — a good name since the surgeries were too complex for a simple word like “bypass” or “extraction.” They seemed involve opening Terry up and scraping cancer off every surface they could reach and clipping pieces off of whatever organs were too far gone to clean.) So the florist was helpful, had a listing of patients, but wasn’t sure if she could find lilacs or not.

When she asked me what the card should say, I answered that I’d like it to say “The lilacs are blooming here — come home soon.”

She paused a moment. “I’ll find some lilacs,” she promised me.

I don’t know if she did or not. You don’t expect a thank-you note from someone who’s had her third MOAS. And by Thanksgiving, Terry was gone.

The funeral was Catholic and obnoxious, with the priest talking about how joyful Terry would be to be rejoined with her maker. How all the pain she suffered was for a reason. I wanted to stand up and shout that, no, there was nothing joyful about this. That she died far too young and in conditions no one should have to go through and that her death was a waste of a vivacious and beautiful woman.

But I bowed my head and pretended to pray.

Life Lessons

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I bought more flowers yesterday. It’s that time of year. When all the potted plants go outside and get supplemented with fresh annuals.

So, there I am, browsing through the Kmart offerings, since I’m all about the inexpensive and temporary this summer. Transient me. They have those tall, many-shelved carts, that they wheel out to the sidewalk on sunny days. One row against the brick building, one at the edge of the walk, creating an aisle between. (Tip: dig deep to the back for the impatiens that haven’t gotten sunburnt.)

This young mother and her little girl walk by. The girl is two or three, wearing a cute denim sundress. Mom has her hands full of petunia six packs. It’s a gorgeous day.

“I think I’ll just take this off,” announces the little girl.

I glance down and she is already slipping the buckles on her straps and shucking her dress to her ankles.

“No!” Mom yelps, shoving her flowers onto the nearest open ledge. She’s down on her knees, pulling the dress back up. “We can’t just run around in our panties! It’s indecent exposure.”

I laugh at this and the mother rolls her eyes at me.

We wonder how we learn things.