The Republic of T.

If my output is lower than usual this week, well, here’s why.

The Go-Go's – Vacation by EMI_Music

But I’m sure I won’t be quiet for the whole week.

As of today, I’ve been clean and sober for 19 years. Nineteen years. Six thousand nine hundred and thirty five days, one at a time.

I remembered last night, while watching Intervention.

It’s kind of amazing when I stop and think about it, as I did this morning while we were getting the kids ready to go this morning; Dylan to daycare and Parker to day camp. It put our usual morning routine into perspective, because today I’m living I life I’d never have had if I hadn’t gotten sober when I did. In fact, I might not have been here at all, and I’d have missed all of this.

Now, one of the things that keep me going is that I never want to do anything that would take me away from the people I love.

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I watched the Oscars last night, for what has to be at least the 30th time, because I’ve watched them every year since I was old enough to see movies and care about them. That would have been 1981. If I go back far enough, I can probably just remember the 12 year old, or nearly-12-year-old boy sitting in a darkened family room in Augusta, GA, watching as much as I could before it was time for me to go to bed.

Honestly, I don’t remember much about that 1981 Oscars broadcast. I don’t remember the speeches. I didn’t remember who Oscars won in 1981, until I looked it up. But I remember that 12-year-old boy, and more than that — much more, really — I remember his dreams.

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As my carpal tunnel issues — which go way, way, way back — continue, so does my search for the perfect mouse.

I think I may have found, if not the perfect mouse, then a close contender.

Sometimes last week I went, when I found myself reaching for another wrist brace, I went on another virtual search for the “perfect mouse.” How can there be a “perfect mouse”? Aren’t they all pretty much the same? Well, yes. Most of them haven’t changed significantly since the first computer mouse was invented. In the long history of the mouse, the essential design hasn’t changed much at all. Look at the mouse that came with your computer, and you’ve pretty much got it.

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It occurred to me last night that parenting turns the mundane into milestones, causing strange emotional reactions. I had one of those while we were folding the laundry during “Desperate Housewives” (as we do every other Sunday night.) I had folded a tiny pair of Dylan’s underwear, and was putting them on his underwear pile when the hubby noted, “Awwww. Dylan has an underwear pile now.”

We’ve been in the throes of “potty training”/”potty learning” for the past week now, and Dylan has transitioned from diapers to underwear most of the time. Needless to say, it’s been a week of outfit changes, and a bit more laundry on Dylan’s part, but he’s getting it. For the last few days, he’s kept his diaper dry when he had one one, and kept himself dry when he had his underwear. Last night, the big deal was that he did No. 2 in the potty, something he’d only done at school to date, which earned him a Thomas the Train sticker.

I found myself getting misty-eyed that Dylan has an underwear pile. It’s just another sign that he’s growing up, and isn’t really a baby any more, even though I still think of him as one sometimes. (And in many ways he’ll always be our baby, to me.)

Of course we realized that it means the day we change our last diaper is on the horizon, and the diaper genie will be a thing of the past. But I still had a slight lump in my throat over the new underwear pile in our lives. It signifies the beginning of something, yes. But it signifies the end of something too. Something precious I’m sure I’ll miss just a little bit.

But I won’t miss diapers. Period.

You talk about the president
Won’t stop the air pollution
Just put ya hand on ya mouth
That’ll help the solution

“Respect Yourself” – The Staples Singers

I’ve been fighting a chest cold for the few days, after finally going to the doctor about the nagging cough, that was the result of chest congestion, which was the result of sinus congestion that crept downard despite my best efforts at treating it with over-the-counter mediciations and prescribed allergy medicine.

Two prescriptions, one inhaler, and two day later I’m back in the land of the living. I decided to take my lunch break as an opportunity to get a much needed haircut, and have a working lunch at my desk afterwards. I was just about to get up from the chair when the strangest thing happened.

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I sometimes save things in Google reader that have interesting titles and that I want to read later. “The Wrestler and the Cornflake Girl,” written by a wrestler who fell in  love with the music of Tori Amos, is one that I actually did read later. I think it’s because of the the “WTF” factor — my reaction to a wrestler/Tori Amos fan made me realize I was totally stereotyping, something I detest and don’t want to do.

Sure enough, reading proved my stereotyping all wrong. I haven’t listened to much Tori Amos, but I completely understood how deeply Mick Foley was affected by Amos’ song, “Winter.”

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I knew it! All through my schooling I told my parents that I studied better (and learned more) with the radio on, or some noise going on in the background. I’m not sure whether they believed me or just decided not to fight that battle, though they did draw the line at having the television on.

Now it appears that, a couple of decades late, science supports my study habits.

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We’re on a bit of a family vacation this week. So posting may be sparse, though I do have one in the works.

Well, this has been quite a morning. I haven’t been able to keep up with the news, because we got hit with another storm this morning. The latest in a series.

Of course, we lost power again.

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"It" being a painful knot, that is. I wrote earlier that my eyes had begun to their/my age. Well, now my back is angling to get in on the act, with some stiff competition from my knees. It’s funny. Twenty years ago, I was probably barely even aware I had a back.

It all started innocently enough one morning this week. I was getting ready to head out the door with Parker.

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Right now, there are about three or four things, news items and such, that I’d like to write about. Some I’ve wanted to write about for more than week. In the meantime, I’ve actually had to read what everyone else has written about those topics — as I’ve been trying to find time to write about them — and realized it’s taken me so long find time to write about them that if I managed finally managed to do so now, I’d pretty much just be repeating what everyone else had time to write while I didn’t.

And, as I’m writing this, I’ve already thought of something I’d like to write about the Shirley Sherrod story that I probably won’t be able to find time to write about until sometime next week — when it’s not likely to be news anymore, and almost nobody will be talking about it. I’d probably be better off just linking to what everyone else has (and will) write about in a couple of digest posts.

And I find myself asking, what’s the point? Is there a point in me writing what most people can and probably have read somewhere else? Is there a point in just posting a link and a blockquote? (Again, something most people can and will read elsewhere before they find their way to this particular blog?) Is there a point to me writing an extra thousand words or so — as I have many times — in the course of even trying to find an angle or an insight that’s even just kinda sorta unique? When it comes to blogging, is there value to just being a voice in the choir? Does it help?

Lately, I’ve also experience deja vu upon reading about a story or topic that’s caught fire, that I wrote about weeks or even months earlier. (Sometimes I attempt to resurrect those posts from oblivion, by linking to them in a new post.) I’m reminded of the philosophical question, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

Is there a point at which having something to say is really having nothing to say? Is it the point at which it’s already been said over and over again? Does only become something to say when a somebody says it? Or is it nothing to say when a nobody says it?

Is there anybody out there?

It’s official. I’m getting older. It started, actually, a year ago. I went to my annual eye exam, and the doctor told me that I was just starting to show a touch of presbyopia.

Presbyopia usually occurs beginning at around age 40, when people experience blurred near vision when reading, sewing or working at the computer.

You can’t escape presbyopia, even if you’ve never had a vision problem before. Even people who are nearsighted will notice that their near vision blurs when they wear their usual eyeglasses or contact lenses to correct distance vision.

Presbyopia is widespread in the United States. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, over 135 million Americans were age 40 and older in 2008, and the country is growing older: The median age reached 36.8 in 2008, up 1.5 years since 2000. This growing number of older citizens generates a huge demand for eyewear, contact lenses and surgery that can help presbyopes deal with their failing near vision.

Apparently, the knees are not the first to go. Not always.

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Via Skippy comes the sad news of the passing of blogger Al Weisel, a/k/a Jon Swift.

this is the saddest news we have had to report in a long, long time.
the blogger who was known as jon swift has passed away far too soon @ age 46. his mother posted this message on the comments on his blog:

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I haven’t been following the Winter Olympics very close, except for perusing the news photos and figuring out who the hottest athletes are. (No, I don’t need to see they play to figure that out, if you know what I mean.) but I have been following the “controversy” regarding Johnny Weir.

The Associated Press reports that two broadcasters are under fire for derogatory comments made about the former world champion.

One commentator from French-language broadcaster RDS said Weir hurts figure skating’s image, while another said the skater should be made to take a gender test. The Quebec Gay and Lesbian Council has demanded a public apology from RDS, calling the remarks “outrageous” and “homophobic.”

Weir’s agent, Tara Modlin, says Weir knows about the comments, but he’s made no public response as of yet.

The Dish Rag thinks the much buzzed-about skater will most likely ignore the nasty comments and forge ahead with his plans to start his own fashion line (much to the French commentators’ dismay, we’re guessing) after the Olympics wrap up.

Well, he didn’t ignore it, and I’m glad he didn’t. Because I just became a big Johnny Weir fan.
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I admit, I’ve never had many great things to say about my hometown, Augusta, GA. In fact, when I was in high school, my classmates and I tended to call it “Dis-Gusta.” That was probably because it was a very conservative, sprawling suburban city with a very small town attitude — with a whole lot of nothing to do for teenagers.

Like the lyrics of “An American Dream” — that 1979 hit by the Nitty Gritty Band and Linda Rondstadt said, “Augusta, Georgia is just no place to be.” The title of a Pet Shop Boys track, “This Must Be The Place I Waited Years To Leave,” also comes to mind.

That’s because for gay teenager in the 80s, Augusta, GA was really no place to be. And I did wait years to leave it. And while I was somewhat shocked to hear that Augusta, GA may have a Gay Pride parade, I most likely won’t be making the trip down there to check it out.

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According to the new app I downloaded to my iphone, today is the birthday of Bill W.

Second Lieut. Bill Wilson didn’t think twice when the first butler he had ever seen offered him a drink. The 22-year-old soldier didn’t think about how alcohol had destroyed his family. He didn’t think about the Yankee temperance movement of his childhood or his loving fiance Lois Burnham or his emerging talent for leadership. He didn’t think about anything at all. “I had found the elixir of life,” he wrote. Wilson’s last drink, 17 years later, when alcohol had destroyed his health and his career, precipitated an epiphany that would change his life and the lives of millions of other alcoholics. Incarcerated for the fourth time at Manhattan’s Towns Hospital in 1934, Wilson had a spiritual awakening — a flash of white light, a liberating awareness of God — that led to the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous and Wilson’s revolutionary 12-step program, the successful remedy for alcoholism. The 12 steps have also generated successful programs for eating disorders, gambling, narcotics, debting, sex addiction and people affected by others’ addictions. Aldous Huxley called him “the greatest social architect of our century.

It occurred to me, when I read the bio above, that back in July I somehow managed to reach 17 years of continuous sobriety. That I should read about Bill W. on Thanksgiving seems somehow appropriate, since my sobriety is one of the things I’m most thankful for. Without it, I most likely wouldn’t be here, and if I were I certainly wouldn’t have the life I have now or the family I have now. To some degree, I have Bill W. to thank for that — and just about every alcoholic who walked into an A.A. meeting and kept coming back often enough to keep it going long enough for someone like me to walk in the door.

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I think I’ve discovered something. Not long ago, I wrote this, about what I’ve felt (and still feel) to be the “lost time” in my life due to untreated ADD, and feeling like it was truly lost time because I couldn’t find any value in it or anything that was gained by it.

And I know I’m looking at this through the lens of having lived with untreated ADD into my early 30s,but it feels like on one hand I’m dealing with people who are about to catch the train I missed long ago. And on the other I’m dealing with people who caught that train and reached their destinations. Somehow I missed it and got stuck at the station, just punching everyone else’s ticket. Or at least that’s what it feels like, and it’s a pretty familiar feeling. Last time it was triggered by seeing two law students studying on the Metro, and it launched me into wondering what happened to that time in my life, and what if anything it was for.

I’ve written about this before, but there’s a kind of virtual marker on the timeline of my life that divides everything into before my ADD diagnosis/treatment, and after my ADD diagnosis/treatment. I haven’t thought much about it lately — being more focused my my life now — but it came back to me this morning, brought one by these brief encounters with apparently twentysomething law students.

What was I doing in my twenties? It all seems like a blur now, but what I mostly remember was spending a lot of time and energy trying to keep my head above water, and not always succeeding. I remember watching other people advance in their careers and educations, while I seemed to be working hard just to tread water, and still occasionally went under. Now I look back and I wonder what happened to my twenties. What happened to those years? They happened, but what happened is something I’m still not sure about.

I tend to look at them as “lost years,” because it’s literally as if at or around 32 years a curtain was suddenly pulled away, and there was light where I’d previously been stumbling around in the dark. The obstacles I’d struggled with in the past were still there, but I could see them clearly now, along with paths around some of them. At thirty-six, I’m finally making the progress I felt I should have been making at twenty-six. It becomes obvious to me when I look up and see people around me doing incredible things at an age when I was stumbling around in the dark.

I’m not sure whether or not I wish I had those years back, knowing all I do now, mainly because there’s a lot in my life right now that I wouldn’t trade for anything — mostly my life with my husband and son. Whatever else might have worked out differently had things gone another way in the past, that is something I wouldn’t want to change. As far as I’m concerned these are the good years; very good years, in fact. What I found myself thinking about this morning is just what those years of stumbling in the dark were for.

But I think I just figured something out.

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I’m launching a new weekly feature here, for a couple of different reasons. One, I’m betting that it takes less time to write about the things that I want to write about, but am not writing about, than it does to even try to write about them. Two, I’m hoping that — since, as a result, I have trouble deciding what to write about when I do have an opportunity — any readers who might still be out there can tell me which of the things I haven’t written about they’d actually be interested in reading about.

Here are the things I’ve wanted to write, tried to write, or started writing this week, but didn’t have the time to actually write.
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