Sedation Dentistry

Two words that go together, in my opinion, like peanut butter and jelly, gin and tonic, steak and potatoes. At least that's what I think and by the end of the day I'll know. I'm having a bunch of dental work done today. If I told you how much you'd likely think how could someone with a fancy-pants doctoral degree let her teeth get to the point where she has to have so much work done. Fear my friends, fear and Dr. Stern and Stein, my childhood dentists. But that's in the past, and the future looks like a big fat smile.

In other news, it's been one week since I had the caudal epidural injection and I feel like I have my life back. I wish I'd known about the injection years ago. So if you have a back injury, you should let a qualified physician stick 6 or 7 huge needles in your back. More on that later.

I'm giving up on waiting for anybody to post a piece about a place,so I'm going to post another one as soon as the sedatives wear off. Maybe before, ha ha. Might be the best thing I've ever written.

Waiting, Still Waiting

Come on people, I'm waiting for you post a brief piece about somewhere you've lived. Don't be shy now; you know you wanna do it.

One Whole Year

ago my father, Vincent Murphy, left us. I can't believe that I made it through a year without him. When he was dying I couldn't help but think selfishly that I didn't know who I would be if I wasn't Vincent Murphy's daughter. A year later I do know; I am Vincent Murphy's daughter and he loves me still. He just loves me from afar.
MNYAGG

I remember

that my father, Vincent Murphy, went to sign up to fight in WWII and was turned down . . . the first time. He was told to go home and take care of his mother, something he'd been doing since he was 13 when his father died. But my father went back and signed up again, and at the age of 32 went into the US Army. Why? He told me "all my pals were doing it."
That in a nutshell was my father, never one to toot his own horn. But he was able to say to say such things because the larger issue, would he fight for his country, was never in doubt. Things like that were just that clear to him.
And so today I am thinking of him and his pals and all of those who deserve our remembrance. Odd that we say "Happy Memorial Day," isn't it?
MNYAGG

That's My Girl!

Thanks Jess, for stepping up to the plate. What a great piece! A tannery, huh? Only in CNY. I'll be excited to see (hint hint) if anybody else steps up to the plate. Remember my pieces are all unfinished, but I'm putting up what I have as soon as somebody else puts something up. And my goal is to write more description, so every piece will at least begin with description before I launch into my usual self centered narrative. So here's my next installment:

McCall: McCall, Idaho sits at the top of the world, or so it seems sometimes. At over 5,500 ft. elevation, it’s not a place where too many summer gardens grow. Once I sat in my brother’s friend’s living room and listened to “the boys” talk about how once they saw snow on June 23rd. I didn’t know then how much a place could do to you. The Tamaracks that grow so straight because there’s really not enough room for them, the jumping into Payette Lake on May Day even though the water was not too long ago ice.

I suppose McCall is where I grew up, after running away from New Jersey and all my teenage angst. It seemed at first like time had not, would not, touch the place. In high school the kids couldn’t understand my accent; fresh from Bergenfield I probably sounded like I was talking under water to them. In McCall I learned to call a bag a sack, a potato a spud. I learned about isolation and that people in small towns can think enormously wrong things of you – until they get to know you.

1977: at my high school graduation party I look over to see my family standing, mouths agape, around my school principal who has just told them all how proud everybody is that I graduated with my class after dropping out of high school in my junior year. Quite a frozen-in-time moment, considering that my mother, father and sister where the only ones who knew until that moment that I had left school, that I had been a rudderless, woebegone kid who didn’t know what to do because nobody liked her, and who had walked away from school and spent a year working at a fish hatchery waiting to get on with it.

You can’t imagine what the air felt like to me when I first moved to McCall. I came from 80 ft. above sea level, from a place where on certain days you could smell ocean brine. The air in McCall was a sword at first, jousting with my poor asthmatic lungs. I felt like it dared me to breath. I couldn’t walk ten feet without the eerie feeling of needing something that wasn’t there. But somewhere along the way that gave way to the feeling that this was right, this living so high and close to such clear blue sky.

When you see the tips of Ponderosa pines look like they’re trying to make a mark on a big sky you know why people can love a place, really love a place in a way that almost hurts sometimes. The East was worn out I thought, had been used up by its own excess. In my high school journalism class I wrote an impassioned plea, a manifesto of sorts to what my homeland could have been. It was intended as some clarion call, a sort of “don’t let this happen to THE WEST” tirade against sitting idly by while the place you love goes to hell in a hand basket .

Waiting

Come on people, I'm waiting for you post a brief piece about somewhere you've lived. Don't be shy now; you know you wanna do it.

The First In a Series of "Here Goes Nuthin'"

Pocatello sits in a gash that runs west/east through the eastern part of the southern part of the state of Idaho. Technically a gap, in places around the city of Pocatello the landscape looks like it was hacked out, made into something it wasn’t meant to be. Sourtheast Idaho is not hospitable looking; mostly treeless mountains ring the city of Pocatello in one way or another. The high mountain desert is formidable, stern looking when seen from the lower elevation of Pocatello’s downtown. The scrubby juniper and sage and rabbit brush don’t beckon “welcome”. But the people do.

1999: We’re in the state car driving back from Idaho Falls’ outreach campus to the main campus of Idaho State University. Of the four of us in the car, only two of us know that the driver is in the middle of a nervous breakdown. Terry knows, I know; I’m the driver. The two others, visiting assistant professors we carpool with twice a week, probably just think I’m weird.

There’s a place on I-15 where you crest a hill and see the Portneuf Gap just as you’re coming into Pocatello. And it is there where Terry leans over and whispers “beautiful, isn’t it?” Comic relief at a time when I was afraid to take the responsibility of driving anyone anywhere. When I was coming undone.

Just as you start to complain, remember that's why you call it home.

My new mantra. I was leaving D's house this morning, and in my head a little voice wanted to complain about all the wiggly thwigs (my neologism, I hope) the trees had left on my car -- all over my car to be precise. I know that little voice and how even though it can start softly it can, if left unchecked, turn into the heckler in my head. I'm talking about my tendency to become depressed.

Depressed in summer, to be more precise. Case(s) in point, the last two summers: first the summer of no promotion, then the summer of dad's death. Before summer depression number three hits, I thought I'd set myself a few ground rules.

1) I have a schedule: morning work on online class and/or fall classes, afternoon dig, plant, weed. You guessed it; I'm doing another feeble attempt at gardening. Some time in the day I read about service learning in tech and professional writing classes.

2) I have a plan that involves you, my beloved blog followers. Are you listening? Getting excited? Wait, do I have blog followers? I'm going to write posts about the places I've lived, the people I knew in those places, you know the whole literary thing. Now I haven't lived in that many places, but I'm not going to aim for finished pieces; instead I'll start a piece on, let's say Pocatello on a Tuesday then next I might write about Bergenfield, then back to Pocatello or throw a little McCall in the mix.
Here's the challenge:
If you're out there reading my blog, why don't you post a little somethin somethin in the comment section about some place you've lived? When I post, you post. Get it? Just do it, and who knows what'll happen?

3) I said I would devote the summer to my back and it has begun. I got a letter from my insurance company yesterday saying the caudal epidural injection had been approved. So on Monday (I needed a day to think about all this) I'll call to set up the procedure. There are no guarantees that this means I'll avoid back surgery, but it's a start, and frankly I'm sick of being in pain all the time. I'd rather inflict it than have it; just ask my students (bah dump . . . ).

So that's it for now, time to finish putting up the online class that opens Monday.
Will you take my challenge?
MNYAGG

When is summer coming?

I think that's a fair enough question. Summer will likely not come to CNY this year because I bought a 12,000 BTU air conditioner, yo. It weighs almost 70 lbs and will likely rip the window I put it in off the house.

Oh but I won't have to worry about that, will I? Who needs ac when temps are in the 60's? We'll all be pasty here in CNY if this keeps up, pastier than usual.

What's the weather like where you are? Is summer coming in all its splendor?
MNYAGG

When Will I See You Again?

Google tells me that song is by The Three Degrees, a one hit wonder of sorts. That's how I feel about you blog. When will we have a chance to sit down and catch up? The answer is when my grading's done. Until then . . .
Happy Spring to my faithful follower(s),
MNYAGG

Sick Leave

I'll be back when this cold is over.

Uh oh!

I really don't have a thing to say as I slide into the end of the semester, but blogging's in my blood, so I thought I'd better come up with something. A list perhaps, of all the mundane things that are going on in my life:
1) I called the doctor's office yesterday to find out that the nurse didn't "check the box" to order the MRI I've been waiting for. Way to go non-box-checking imbecile. After all, it's only constant pain I'm in.

2) I did some yard work and while I thought I might never walk again last night I am fine this morning, well as fine as someone in constant pain can claim to be.

3) Vincent got his claws stuck in a screen window on the back porch and lost part of one. No blood and one less nail to clip.

4) Last night I dreamed of my father's funeral and that he woke up in the middle of it. Not really woke up, more yawned and rolled onto his side and went back to sleep. I sort of liked this dream (not at first) because it gave me the idea that he might be sleeping (metaphor!) peacefully in Mt. Carmel cemetery.

5) I will likely not go to graduation on May 7th. Sitting for two hours in a metal chair will render me incapable of most movement and in wretched pain for days. I will likely go surprise Mrs. Murphy for Mother's Day instead.

In not-so-mundane news, D's parents are coming for a visit this weekend. I'll be taking bets on how long it'll take them to notice that gorgeous ring I'm sporting on my stubby little finger. Your bets?

Enjoy the spring weather, if there is some where you are.
MNYAGG

Come On, Really!!!!!!!!

Snow! When will winter end already? Think happy place; think happy place.

What Could Make Me Happier?

Spring coming, that's what. Yesterday as I was driving home from work it started snowing. It didn't stick, mind you, but it was enough to ice the cake of what the hell happened to spring this year. I, like many others in CNY no doubt, expected to be rewarded after this horrible winter with an early and beautiful spring. Alas, that is not what's happening, not here at least. The buds on my trees are probably wondering what's going on, but the little purple and yellow flowers on my lawn still insist on standing proud against the 40 mph winds that kept me indoors on Saturday and Sunday. They're tougher than I am, that's for sure.
What's spring doing in your neck of the woods?
MNYAGG

So I said . . .

to D "you know I don't just love this ring because it's so pretty. I love it because it symbolizes our life together." I also said something about him having to pry it off my cold dead hand. I'm cheerful like that.

I love it. I love it. I love it.

So why can't I get a decent picture of it? My new engagement ring, that is. I'm gonna ask D if he'll try taking a picture of it. And then I'm gonna put that picture here, so stay tuned.
MNYAGG

Dear Vincent,

I love you, you know I do, but you are really making me sneeze right now. May I please have you shaved, or would that do something to your cat dignity? Maybe I'll buy some antihistamines.
Your Owner,
Dr. Patricia Murphy

Spoil Sports

Don't you hate it when a few people just spoil "it" for everyone else? Yes, I'm talking about plagiarism, the reason my students didn't get both of their assignments back last night (online class). I said that it was because it takes longer to grade when I have to look for plagiarism, and that's true. But it also made me mad enough to not want to look at annotated bibliographies just then and have to determine whether or not some of them were also plagiarized.

Don't you hate it when a few people just spoil it for everyone else?

So, how big are these needles, anyway?

I'm going to have a procedure -- an epidural steroid injection. They will stick needles in my back, and happily two of them will contain anesthesia. I am calm now, but I suspect that when it is scheduled (and further, when it is happening) I will not be calm. I will ask for a sedative; of this I am sure. I fear too that I will start talking while sedated and reveal unsavory details about myself. Gawd knows there are plenty of those I could go on about. Mostly, I'm afraid that they'll stick the needle(s) in the wrong place and I'll wind up ...
well, I don't want to think about that.
How was your day?
MNYAGG

Yes,

I'm grading letters from my online bus com writers. I really am. I'm not blogging to avoid that, not me. But since I'm here I should tell you to check out a feature of Smithsonian magazine (yes, I have a subscription; yes, I'm a nerd) that's online. It's called My Kind of Town, and after reading Charles Michener's piece on Cleveland in this month's print version I had to go look for more. I found Anthony Doerr writing about Boise, Idaho and Mark Doty expressing his love for Houston. Made me miss that Big Sky. You should check it out http://microsite.smithsonianmag.com/content/my-kind-of-town/

You can thank me later.
MNYAGG