Submitted for patent:

My next Nobel Prize will be awarded for the old sock I cut cleverly using my Möbius-strip-making skills into a longer rope to give my mom left-hand access to her right-side-attached electric recliner controller since her right arm is immobilized from her surgery.

I'm sure I'll also receive a Pulitzer for deftly crafting that last sentence.

synecdoche (sin EK doe key) noun: a metaphor using part of something to represent the whole of something or vice versa

examples:

fact: Donald Trump is a belligerent, puerile man-boy who doesn't know anything about anything; arrogantly thinks he can fake his way through everything; and spends his empty, appallingly entitled life sending meaningless, childish tweets, lying about his ongoing treason, ignoring his many wives and children, insulting and repulsing other countries to the point of diplomatic alienation, screaming FAKE NEWS! like an uncontrollably shitting toddler, and destroying America for his own financial gain.

synecdoche: The White House is an international embarrassment.

We unfortunately have all day for the pain

If you can tear your eyes away even for a second from the compelling irresistibility of my ever-thickening disco-fantasy mustache, you'll see I'm still wearing yesterday's other facial hair and mega-patriotic flag T-shirt. I stayed home from work today partly to keep taking care of Mom but mostly to maximize my wearage of my Independence Day shirt, which I spent five whole dollars on but I won't get to wear again for one whole year. You'll also notice in this photo Mom's new smart TV, which I finally got to work but Mom's asleep so it's off and I'm able to take weird selfies safely shielded from her selfie-questioning gaze. And never you mind the subtext in this post that I potentially haven't showered today. Because it's so none of your business that I won't even bring it up.

Oh -- and Mom is doing remarkably well pain-wise today, after a pretty rough night. She still has moments of gasping shock, but they're fewer and farther between. And my handy little 3-hour timer on my phone is helping me keep her pain meds right on schedule. Progress!

Shit

I was saving this meme to post yesterday and I totally forgot. I call a do-over. Fire up your grills, light up your firecrackers and patriot up your songs right now so this meme is contextual, timely and funny. Go America!

Midnight with my mom

I'm sitting in the half-dark watching and listening to my mom as she struggles to find a peaceful, restful balance between gasp-inducing pain and the loopy uncertainties of prescription pain medication 36 hours after undergoing shoulder surgery. She was told she'll probably need to sleep in a recliner for 6-8 weeks as she recovers, so she's now wrapped in an almost structural configuration of blankets and pillows arranged to keep her comfortable and stabilized and not too hot and not too cold on a borrowed electric recliner in our living room as I sleep on the nearby couch with a three-hour alarm set in perpetuity on my phone to ensure I give her her pain medications consistently on time.

This woman spearheaded a full-family battle for my health and my very sanity for years as my escalating bipolar depression clashed with a literally bewildering array of ramp-up and withdrawal side effects from increasingly desperate attempts to find the right cocktail of psych medications for me. My parents have helplessly watched me twitch and yell in my sleep, crawl like a blinded animal up the stairs from a drug-onset migraine, lie gray and unmoving in a hell of despondency in my bed, land in the ER after a blackout and a crash to the floor that was so catastrophic that the nurses assumed I was the victim of a violent assault, and stare emptily but gratefully back at them as they admitted me to a locked psych ward for what ended up being an eight-day stay. They've fought for me, they've stood by me, they've repatriated me ... and now it's my turn to start paying them back.

Mom seemed to be doing remarkably well in the first 24 hours after her surgery, but then the last of the nerve block wore off and waves of breathtaking pain started surging through her reawakened nerve channels, and we've watched helplessly as she's whimpered and cried and tried to keep a brave face through her pain and confusion and unsure self-awareness. But she knows she's loved and being cared for and watched over with the attentiveness she's given my whole family over the years. And she seems to be sleeping comfortably and productively at the moment.

I should be asleep right now too. The couch is all made up next to me and it's quite comfortable; this I know from endless days into nights into days that I spent on it as I fought my way back to sanity while sleeping as close to my parents as I could if I needed anything. But I'm rather enjoying sitting here with her in the dark, post-midnight quiet. The war-zone explosions of fireworks that kept alarming her and waking her up a few hours ago have died down, I just woke her to give her her midnight pain meds and a popsicle, she seems to finally be sleeping comfortably and restfully ... and her partial helplessness and need for me have me thinking that there will soon be more medical problems and more nights like this for both my parents ... until they simply won't have any more medical problems ever again. And I want to remember and savor these moments where I can care for and love them the way they have done for me.

When I got out of the hospital two and a half years ago and spent the next two years fighting to regain my own sense of normal, it became clear that I was going to spend this newest chapter of my life under their care. In return, I've promised them that I'll do everything in my power to keep them in their -- our -- home as long as I can as they get older. Because I can't imagine taking care of them any other way.

So here I sit. Watching the mother who showed me without fear or reservation how to love me and all my psychoses unconditionally as she suffers through what by all accounts will be a painful but successful healing process. But it is undeniably a harbinger of the future in our home. Which is scary in the abstract. But right now it's a present and a future managed with love and commitment and a deep, profound honor that I am able -- in no small part from the lessons and examples my parents have provided for me all throughout their selfless lives -- to care for them in the way they cared for me.

And it's all very peaceful.

Trust me on this

If you put something in quotes, you're either attributing it to some spoken or written source, you're being cleverly ironic, or you're too stupid to tie your flip-flops. Factor trustworthy consumer fireworks into the equation and my money's 107% on the stupid.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

PBS, you really, catastrophically suck.

First of all, do NOT get me started on that sixth-grade Blues Brothers medley that brought an irreparable pall of amateur stupidity to your "A Capitol Fourth" broadcast tonight. Or the fact that you clearly spent the evening devising newer and clumsier ways to sneak up on an unsuspecting John Stamos with your cameras.

But the 1812 Overture? As in Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's formally named "The Year 1812" festival overture composed to commemorate Russia's defense of its motherland against Napoleon's invading Grande Armée in 1812? There is nothing about that piece that is pro-America and everything about it that is pro-Russia. And if we didn't need further proof that our man-boy president or his drooling apologists programmed your music tonight, the fact that you skipped all of Tchaikovsky's early exposition and contextual narrative and went right to the loud parts at the end with all the guns and explosions and big hell-yeah booms tells us everything we need to know about your producers' and your target audience's attention spans, cultural awareness and knowledge of history.

I get more meaningful patriotism from the fireworks exploding meaninglessly all over our neighborhood all night.

Holiday greetings from our private beach vacation!

At least the flag is still there

Happy early July 4 from me and Bitch Kitty, who hissed at me and scampered off to no doubt make pro-Putin posters and buy more MAGA hats from China before my camera had time to auto-focus for our patriotic selfie portrait. So the key takeaways here are 1) Bitch Kitty is eliminating your insurance before she bites you, 2) my disco-fantasy mustache makes me positively irresistible even when I sit next to the empty spot where my heartless kitty humiliatingly abandoned me for our patriotic selfie portrait, 3) my Snoopy shirt has a red collar and blue sleeves but Bitch Kitty ran away and killed my patriotic spirit before I got my blue sleeves in the frame and we're all gonna die anyway so why bother, 4) isn't our needlepoint flag pillow super-cute? 5) Mom is stuffed full of pain pills and tucked cozily into her blanket-draped recliner for the first night of her predicted eight weeks of shoulder-surgery recovery while I'm climbing under a blanket on the couch next to her so I can re-pill her every three hours and it feels really good that I'm here to take care of her, 6) she's still hoarse from her nerve block so she has one of my marathon cowbells at her side in case she needs to wake me between pills, 7) she might lose a hand if she actually rings that damn bell while I'm sleeping, 8) she's wearing my pajama bottoms for reasons she describes as because they're much too big for her so they're easier to get on and off with one hand but we all know it's because the hospital vending machine was out of Diet Coke today so I had a real Coke, 9) is it bad to hope that everyone setting off fireworks right now plus all the legislators who gave them unfettered access to all those fireworks lose vital organs in incendiary ways tonight? asking for a friend, 10) seriously -- how super-cute is our needlepoint throw pillow?

Happy fishies!

Mom doesn't want me blabbing about her ALLEGED surgery all over the Internets, so I'll just post this authentic deep-sea happy fishies picture that hovers over her ALLEGED bed in her ALLEGED the-surgery-went-just-fine wake-up room. See? All I posted here was a picture of authentic deep-sea happy fishies! Allegedly.

So this just happened

We were talking about cures for trump

Big. Gay. Gayness.

So Mom's in surgery and for reasons known only to the drugs she insisted I hold on to her lipstick for her AND I brought a mending kit to sew a button onto some shorts -- which I rocked like a boss, for the record -- AND I'm reading a big colorful book about big gay musicals AND my Diet Coke says Veronica AND I have a still-kinda-wispy disco-fantasy mustache so OF COURSE the anesthesiologist is totally hot and all but recoiled around me and my big gay gayness when he talked to us.

But hey -- look at that perfectly placed button!

Nothing good can come of this

 

We are the last family in this and three adjoining galaxies to finally drag ourselves kicking and screaming into the 21st century. The Netflix Empire is now complete.

Mom is having shoulder surgery in the morning and will have her arm immobilized and be sleeping in a recliner -- and no doubt confusing the hell out of the cat -- for the next 6-8 weeks. Our awesome cousins are lending us a recliner, which is now holding court pretty much in the middle of our living room. And I broke down and bought us a living-room smart TV -- the dark magical powers of which I am just beginning to understand -- which I just spent the last 17 decades tonight setting up, connecting to our WiFi, and repeatedly cursing to an eternity in hell as I've navigated the clearly intentionally confusing channel selection options in the 1,700-screen setup process that involves a remote so tiny that its buttons wrap around the sides so you inadvertently shut the sound and probably the blender and the nearest three pacemakers off and on as you press the top buttons to do all the primarily confusing stuff.

Anyway. We almost never watch TV so we've certainly never had a subscription to a streaming service, which has actually proven to be a bit of a social liability since lots and lots and lots and did I mention lots of everyday conversations sooner than later end up centering around the streaming TV shows everyone but me is watching. But the bone spur in Mom's shoulder is about to improve my social life exponentially -- YAY! -- because it prompted me to buy a smart TV and subscribe to Netflix to keep Mom occupied in her recovery and since I am drawn to the point of crippling distraction like a defenseless moth to a flame every time I'm near a TV -- which is the reason I avoid turning on any TV anywhere ever -- I will now end up bingeing on entire seasons of House of Thrones and Game of Cards and The Handmade Pail and everything else on Netflix every time I enter the living room while Mom is recuperating. I. WILL. BECOME. SO. POPULAR.

Unfortunately, the coaxial cable nipple in the living room wall appears to be dead so we can't watch the cable channels we never watch but we're nonetheless already paying for on the new TV. And as we're now the last family in this and three adjoining galaxies to find out, the "free" "smart" channels that "come with our new TV" involve complex opt-in and -out setup processes and out-of-nowhere commercial interruptions and I'm so frustrated by all that dark-magic "smart TV" chicanery right now that even as a non-TV watcher I'm about to scream so WE NEED OUR CABLE NIPPLE TO WORK.

But first: I have to pick an outfit to wear to the hospital tomorrow for Mom's surgery because you just KNOW there'll be someone there taking selfies to post on his blog.

My Billy Elliot Act I costume presets:

Sailor hat, technically-forbidden-backstage-but-it's-really-technically-in-the-adjoining-hallway Gatorade, badass Frankenstein-looking-pieced-leather biker jacket, bitchin' angled-piping pieced-mesh track jacket, magical surprise pants, cop uniform, not-at-all-no-seriously-not-even-just-a-little-bit-gay tap-dancing sailor outfit, extra hanger left over from last night, cop billy club I use to beat my friends savagely but lovingly on stage.

Unachievable Body Image(R) Lace Fantasy Wedding Barbie(R) sold separately.

I! Have! Three! Notifications! At the same time!

That's normally my cumulative total for one week.

Oh -- and as usual, Kellyanne is confirming that she's still too stupid to understand the directions on a box of water.

Toddler twofer!

I know bitchy gossip queens who demonstrate more maturity and impulse control than our dumpster-fire simpleton of a president-in-name-only.

Hiding stuff is so tacky

A competent president would ask these questions to maybe the FBI or a special investigator or something instead of to Twitter. A competent president probably wouldn't type random noun phrases in all caps while he or she tweeted on the toilet either. But that's just a quibble.

Red, white and gay

I just had a manly arm and shoulder workout but I also managed to dress myself this morning like a majorette at a bunting festival. I even packed a red workout shake bottle. If we had a daycare center at my gym, the toddlers would have beaten me up by now.

CedaRound: Scottish Rite Temple

Cedar Rapids' austere Scottish Rite Temple is an icon of Neoclassicism just east of downtown. Built in 1927 of bone-colored limestone, it adheres resolutely to the architectural principles of the Classical Revival period: flat walls, shallow projections and recessions, and modest ornamentation. The central portico of the building adds the only measurable adornment to the building, with simple fluted columns, Doric capitals (smooth, pilllow-like tops to the columns), shallow fluted pilasters (flat, unstructural columns used as decoration, often to add vertical movement to a short space) on the pediment (the triangular roof held up by the columns), and a low bas relief eagle sculpture over the door.

Cedar Rapids native and American Gothic artist Grant Wood was a Mason and a brother in the Temple, and the Masons have installed statues of the two American Gothic figures in the smaller east portico in tribute to him. I, too, am a Cedar Rapids native, and I have studied and learned everything I can about and loved American Gothic since I was a kindergartner at Grant Wood Elementary School. I even met Nan Wood Graham, Grant Wood's sister and the model for the female figure in the painting, when I was a student there. And Dr. Byron McKeeby, Grant Wood's Cedar Rapids dentist, was the model for the male figure, though he died 18 years before I was born. But the figures feel like old friends to me, and I didn't think Grant Wood or either of them would mind having them pose for a group selfie. So we all just did.

Progress

JULY 1, 2016:
The natural progression of bipolar disorder: depression > deep depression > despondency > recovery > fogginess > exhaustion > functionality > public panic attacks > Oreos

JULY 1, 2017:
A year ago right now, the not-entirely-tongue-in-cheek bipolar cycle -- including the binge-eating of Oreos -- that I described in this Facebook post was a regular part of my life, mixed in with painful ramp-up and withdrawal cycles from a constantly changing cocktail of ultimately ineffective meds.

Six months ago right now, I started yet another new med with a by-then defeatist predisposition to thinking it wouldn't work, just like all the meds before it. It almost immediately gave me an instant-onset blackout so severe that I crashed to the tile floor and ended up in the ER with a deeply lacerated face, loose teeth from biting through my lip and a concussion.

But then the new med started working. And while I waited for it to fail like all the meds before it, it actually kept working. And now -- six months later -- I've had only a handful of relatively minor bipolar episodes. Plus I've been able to show up for work and run errands and honor all the commitments on my calendar. My doctors are scheduling my visits at longer and longer intervals. I'm more present in my family's lives instead of sleeping all the time with my head under a pillow. I'm back to having intense gym workouts almost daily. And for some reason this is my gold standard of success: I'm doing shows again. And not only am I doing them but I'm opening my third back-to-back show this weekend. And I know my lines and my choreography without having to think about them and I'm letting myself believe that I'm doing a good job and people like me and I'M LOVING MY LIFE AND IT'S ALL WORKING THE WAY IT'S SUPPOSED TO.

A year ago I honestly didn't think I would ever feel so amazing for such a long amount of time. I honestly didn't remember what it felt like to enjoy life without effort or interruption so that you didn't even notice you were doing it ... or wonder when it would all collapse again. A year ago I knew people liked me but I didn't believe it ... or at least I didn't trust myself to believe it.

I'm so glad this memory popped up on Facebook  today. I had six more months of struggling and falling ahead of me after I posted it. But after that I've had six whole months of happiness and connectedness and functionality and honest emotion and feeling like my old self -- or at least the old self I wanted to feel like.

Six. Whole. Months.

And I haven't even been hungry for an Oreo for at least half of those six months. Which means the cycle is officially broken.