Bits of News

Demetrios is off in New Orleans attending the annual APA Meeting (American Psychiatric Association). He is not impressed by the local cuisine. Last night finally resorted to a MacDonald's.

He has received some very positive feedback on the theory he has spent his life working on, and some encouragement to get it published. We've made more than one false start on his book, but for about 10 days now he's had the outline that seems to work, that so far stands up to scrutiny. I'm so scared something may happen to him before he can get this stuff written that I am going to "interview" him about his theory, starting on the plane ride Monday, and I'm going to write down all the basics of it.

I keep telling him if he publishes this, then, just as Freud is the Father of Psychiatry, Demetrios will be the Father of Modern Psychiatry, which I believe is absolutely true.

"And if I don't?" he asks.

"Then you'll still be the Father of Modern Psychiatry, but nobody will know it!"

I've been all caught up getting us and the house ready to leave for England next Monday. That's God willing and the cloud of volcanic ash stays out of our way. Literally, it all depends upon which way the wind is blowing.

It seems there are hundreds of errands.  Cancel trash pick-up.  Put cars into "storage status" with auto insurance company.  Have cable cut off; have telephone and internet service pared down to the "basic" level until further notice.  Take stuff for dry cleaning.  Arrange for neighborhood kid to mow lawn and water the new grass in the back yard and get the mail.  Arrange for medical insurance to allow us extra amounts of all our prescription medicines.  Get mammogram.  Clean out fridge and freezer. 

In the past few days, I've TWICE received a Blast from the Past. One was from my old friend Gloria. (Type her name in the search box I've added to the top of my sidebar to read about our adventures together.)   She reminded me of a very silly incident, among the many we had.  It was the time she came over to keep me company once when my husband was out of town.  We had to share a bed, and "because of that whole gay thing," as she put it, referring to one of our pranks, story here), we were each afraid of giving the other the wrong impression.  So each tried very hard to stay on her own side of the bed, with the result that we got no sleep at all and were miserable by morning.  Served us right, I suppose.

The other Blast from the Even More Distant Past was Cathy, a friend from my college days. I think I was only 20 last time I saw her, and she was 22. Here she is as a grandma; so hard to believe. We shared an apartment for one, highly eventful summer.

"Do you remember the time you had Gordie [guy I was dating] lie down on the side of the road and we poured ketchup all over him to look like blood?" Well, no, I don't remember, but it has to be true; it sounds too like me in those days not to be.

"Do you remember the time we went to hear Martin Luther King speak?" Oh, yes. There were big crowds there in Raleigh, so we thought we'd be safe, which meant anonymous, but no such luck. Obviously the event drew the press, and those cameras zoomed right in on the white faces and blonde hair, picking us out of that crowd, and there we were on the front page of the Raleigh News and Observer.  Cathy's father, publicly humiliated, threw her out of the house, which is how she came to live with me in the first place.

"Do you remember when we went to the Ku Klux Klan rally?" I certainly do. The Klan came to town and Father Kendall had organized a counter-march. The Klan marched down one street and we marched up the other side of it with "Love Thy Brother" signs. And after that, we thought it would be of some interest to see what the KKK did in public rallies. "We should be safe," said Cathy. "Lots of police here."

I said, "Look again. Not police. Klan toughies in security guard uniforms." We did not stay long.

"And do you remember the time we had an intruder in the middle of the night?" she asked.   "I heard glass breaking, and came running into your room, and you grabbed your hairspray.  And you whispered, "When he steps on the heating grate in the hallway, we'll hear it squeak and we'll know where he is and we'll aim at his face."

"And it turned out to be some sort of mistake, didn't it?"

"Yes, just our landlady's fiance, who didn't realize we were still there and needed to come get something.  But he did get a big faceful of hairspray."

I don't know what would have happened had it been a real burglar, but I do remember having an inflated opinion of hairspray as a weapon.

And so it went, sharing tons more memories from that wild summer, two crazy young girls out on their own for the first time... very silly!  Which is what makes it extra fun to remember.