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My Profile
Retro-retrospection - 2008-10-06
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11:20 p.m. - 2005-07-08
I am trapped in my office. Seriously. Whenever I leave my office my eyes tear up, my nose runs and within 5 minutes I'm literally gagging for air. I cough and cough and cough. I can't bring up whatever is choking me and I cannot draw in enough air at all. I get lightheaded and my chest pounds. It's not pollen, it's pollution. I am researching several possibilities. Whole house HEPA filters, portable oxygen, moving north of the Arctic Circle. The irony is not lost on me that my tobacco nasty office is made a 'breathe free' zone by the small window a/c unit. The larger central air system of the rest of the house cleans up the air some, like my kitchen is better than the outdoors, but it doesn't work well enough to allow me much comfort. Especially on a day like today when the outside temp is too cool to trigger the circulation pump. My window unit chugs along regardless of the outside air temp. I feel guilty running the a/c when it's 60 degrees outside, but filtering that ozone laden filthy air through the a/c is the only way I'm going to make it. My reaction to the airborne pollutants has gotten worse each summer. I first noticed it about 5 years ago. I'd like to discuss all the causes and wax wroth about wanton pollution and the Hudson Valley being the exhaust pipe for the industrial Mid-West and Bush's wretched energy policy and the gutting of the EPA, but frankly my head is too swimmy and I feel too lousy. I will say this though, all of you 'asthma' sufferers might want to keep an eye on the air quality where you live. Your lungs aren't defective, the air is just fricken FILTHY. The Neo-Cons and the Oil Fat Cats can debate global warming until the cows come home, but the plain fact is we have fouled our environment to the point of crisis. Pretty soon it's not just going to be sensitive types like me, it's going to be everybody who'll be staggering around gasping for air. And I honestly believe it will come to that before any kind of serious effort is made by those who have the power to effect real change. Now for something completely different. I need to do a nuclear winter shopping. I've run out of everything. All that weird stuff that lives in the cabinets and under the sink and you think you always have some and then one day you don't. For Pete's sake I'm out of elbow noodles! I have no Brillo pads. Or paprika. There's no canned corn! I need Jet-Dry and Comet too. And soup. I've never heard of anyone being totally out of soup. No matter how broke you are, you can be rock bottom stony broke and still there will be that one can of soup. Always something gross like Cream of Muskrat, but it's there. Not at my house. There is no soup. Somebody actually ate the Cream of Muskrat. So tomorrow I'm off to Sam's. None of our cars have working a/c either. This will be interesting. By the time I get to Sam's I'll be half dead from oxygen deprivation. I'll hacking and gagging as I stagger into the store. Doc Holiday does the grocery shopping. Ready for another subject change? My son is a single guy again. Yes, thank you, the conga line forms to the left. Is Alex devastated? Nope. Wiser and a little sad? Yeah. Relieved? You betcha. Not half as relieved as I am, but he's aware how murky and deep things had gotten and how narrow his escape. Fortunately his ex made things really easy for him. My son is a decent guy and despite his unhappiness was totally willing to keep working on things. She wasn't. Simple enough. I'll just say that they were wrong for each other. No sense in making a huge thing. Alex isn't crazy about being single again. He enjoyed being part of a couple. He had plans for this summer that would have been a lot more fun as a duo, but he's pretty sanguine about the situation. He and his other pals are still going to the shore and the Ren and Chinatown. Any awkwardness about being a 5th wheel will be more than offset by the realization that the ex-girlfriend would have been a total pain in the ass during these trips. She hated his friends and resented Alex's loyalty to them. Alex is doing well in other areas too. He and Mike seem to have hammered out a decent work relationship. They don't come in from the job glowering and muttering anymore. Nor are they clomping onto my office to complain. YAY! Also because Alex has been working for Mike and partly because he's stuck here in the House With No Snacks and with some gumption on his own, my son is losing weight. Enough to be noticeable. He's down a couple of pants sizes and his formerly sausage skin t-shirts are getting kind of floaty. He's been taking care of his hair. Deep conditioning it and he got a hefty trim. Looks much better. He even shaved off that dopey beard. He left the barely visible mustache, but the rest of his newly slimmer face is smooth and handsome. My boy is doing okay. Well, the older one is. Wolf told me today that he got in trouble on the bus. He was moved to the naughty seat behind the driver. Seems Wolf was always trying to kiss his crush. Kissing on the bus and at school are strictly verboten and the object of Wolf's affections objected strenuously to Wolf's advances. We had a heart-to-heart about it. Pepe Le Pew is funny in cartoons, but nobody likes a real life pushy smoocher. We also covered some ground I wasn't quite prepared for. My younger kid's crush is named Dante and he's in the 4th grade. Taken aback, but coping, ~LA
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