One Week and Two Days Later

This post was originally written this past Friday, June 20, 2008.



So here I am once again, sitting at Starbucks, sipping on my still too hot Venti Pike Place Roast. It’s 8:09 a.m. and I’m due at work in less than an hour when I would rather be sleeping. I’ve been doing a lot of that since I got back from NYC.

I’m trying desperately to catch that same vibe I picked up on when I was there. The energy, the “real” weirdness rather than the faux, affected people I keep running across here in Fort Lauderdale. There’s some real weirdos, mind you, but the concentration is far less and much less effective. But it’s not even that. There’s a lot less people which only magnifies how annoying some people are. Like the guy sitting at the table next to me waving hello to everyone, laughing out loud, regaling everyone with his opinions and how he didn’t have enough money to get his second boat because of the market being so bad, blah, blah, fucking blah. WHO CARES????? SHUT THE FUCK UP, ASSHOLE!!!!

Jeez. I just can’t seem to get back with it. I feel . . . like I shark that’s stopped moving and is now slowly sinking to the bottom of the ocean floor. My mind is numb, my spirit dulled and my brain feels like it’s got cotton stuffed in the grooves and wrinkles.

Oh, fuck. Now the asshole has accumulated another loudmouth. No wait, there’s a 3rd who looks and sounds like Mr. Drummond!

I spoke with my mom last night. She is back home after surgery. After much debate and worrying and talking, she chose to go with the mastectomy rather than the removal of more tissue, radiation, and the possibility, years from now, that the cancer could come back to ravage her. It makes me wonder if I would be as brave as her if I were ever diagnosed with testicular cancer.

She’s in good spirits. When I spoke with her yesterday my cousin Noemi was with her as was my sister Gisela, and my nephew Chris. And mom was going to watch her telenovelas. Always a good sign! The rehabilitation will be difficult for her, though. At least I think it will be.

The stay at the hospital was, apparently, a horror. But then again, Coney Island Hospital appears to be the kind of place where you go to die. It’s oppressive and the people who work there don’t seem to care or know what they’re doing. The doctors who worked with my mom were good; she was very happy with both the surgeon who removed the breast as well as the plastic surgeon who did the reconstructive surgery. But the staff and administration leave a lot to be desired. They were supposed to have a room for but didn’t. Instead, they left her in the recovery room. They didn’t even have any pillows! I know hospitals are not hotels, but, come on! Not one pillow in the whole fucking place?

They pumped her full of morphine in order to get her to sleep but it caused her to throw up repeatedly. And, unfortunately, while throwing up, she peed herself from the force. The nurses were apparently very slow in getting her cleaned up and since she couldn’t really do it herself, she laid in it.

My frustration is and was immense. I find myself wishing I had been there, that I hadn’t left. But they jerked us around so much during the 6 weeks I was there. And then, the day before I was scheduled to leave, during the last appointment, the surgeon could not give us a definitive date because he needed to confer with the plastic surgeon. The “it could be’s” did me in and after talking about it with my supervisor, we both agreed it would be best if I came back to work at the Lauderdale office. This is the first time I wish I had not listened. But that’s all now over and I guess I just have to put it out of my mind. If my mom can do it, then so can I.

And now, I’m afraid I must end this rambling because I can’t take sitting here anymore. The lead asshole loudmouth has now accrued another 4 people; one of them a woman, and I can’t stand to listen to the verbal diarrhea of the ahem, non-ethnic people (a minority really) bitch and moan about their lack of money and yet talk about boats and Mercedes and Lexus and Porsche and all these things that conflict with their supposed lack of money. Oh and let me not forget the audacious comment, in a how dare he tone, about how Obama wants to put this tax on people who make all this money. Fucking bastards. Maybe they should be the ones left at Coney Island Hospital to lie in a pool of their own piss and vomit. Let’s see how quickly they’re humbled.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate the privileged. Envious to a degree, perhaps, but I don’t hate them. It’s the ones that have the attitude that they deserve, the attitude that anyone outside their social circle is far less than they, the attitude that they are the chosen and the righteous that piss me off.

I love people with money who have no pretensions. They’re just people who happen to have money. When I come across that, it’s refreshing and delightful and, because I established a relationship with them as a regular human being first, the money is usually not an issue. Not that I know that many people with money, mind you.

But it’s the people with money who are loud about it, rub it in your face and . . . ugh! They make me so fucking angry I can’t even find the right words!!

Let me close my eyes a moment and breath. Like Gary said, "Have you meditated today?"

Heavy sigh.

Life, I’m noticing, in all it’s beauty, richness and grandeur, contains so many injustices. There are the prvileged and pampered who can afford to have people cater to their every whim. And then there’s the rest of us, swaddled in pampers with no one to change us. Fuck.