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I fought hard to get my terrace off of my office during the design and construction phase, because I wanted a place to be able to walk outside during the work day. Since it’s usually way to hot too walk outside, I normally just look at the terrace from the inside and just knowing it is there makes me happy. But lately, since we continue to have our family visiting us and we are trying to deal with our changed living environment, we have been getting a lot of use out of that terrace. It’s our retreat suddenly – the place where T and I can go to catch up on things and spend time alone together.

When this old world starts getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face
I climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space
On the roof, it’s peaceful as can be
And there the world below can’t bother me
Let me tell you now

Mom was breathing on her own today and they said they were going to pull the tube out and they did around early afternoon, only she had a lot of trouble and so by this evening she was back on the ventilator. I had set up in my mind that she had to get off this ventilator because only then would she be making progress to get better, but I had to back off of those expectations and accept the fact that she is doing pretty good but she needs the ventilator right now.

One of my nieces had been going through a rough patch in her relationships and I sent her an email telling her you never know who is going to walk into your life and change it, so be open. That was on the heels of having met Tatjana. In recent discussions with her regarding the complexities of our adoption progress, she sent me back my own email to tell me to be open. What goes around, comes around. Ain’t that the truth.

Today’s Tao te Ching meditation is #10 – and it is a perfect ten for the day:

Can you coax your mind from its wandering
and keep to the original oneness?
Can you let your body become
supple as a newborn child’s?
Can you cleanse your inner vision
until you see nothing but the light?
Can you love people and lead them
without imposing your will?
Can you deal with the most vital matters
by letting events take their course?
Can you step back from your own mind
and thus understand all things?

Giving birth and nourishing,
having without possessing,
acting with no expectations,
leading and not trying to control:
this is the supreme virtue.

I went to yoga today because of this main reason – my back is killing me. And it’s killing me from sitting here at my desk and running back and forth to the hospital, but what was giving was my time to do yoga and since I believe my mother is the one who is going through the most discomfort, I’ve not been attending to my own needs. But I had to stop and take myself to yoga, where I dedicated my practice to her getting better.

She’s struggling right now with having just been taken off the vent – her anxiety has flared up, she has had trouble swallowing, and they are threatening to put it back in but I’m asking the universe to help her through the rough patch and to keep the vent off.

It’s hard to juggle caring for a loved one and continuing to do your demanding job, and pay attention to your loved ones, and on top of all that take care of yourself. But you have to – the cosmos throw down these juggling balls and you have to just start dancing or else. And you can’t drop the you ball either – because that is not a good short-term plan and it has long-term consequences as well.

Across the bayou, somebody decided to throw their ducks into our bayou and build a ramp so the ducks could come up and feed every day. Well wonders never cease. We hate the ducks – they look like they belong in Disney land with their big white pulchritude and the duck shit – everywhere!!! When I voiced my dislike a few people suggested I was being a curmudgeon but then someone else wrote about it so I got to sit back and watch the responses. Ducks suck.

Ain’t that the truth – we love OUR ducks, but these Disney ducks have got to go.

Everyone has been bitching up a storm about the canoes in the bayou. Well truth is that when I first docked my canoe there there were about three now there are 100 canoes. So I can see why it’s a problem. I shoved my canoe back under my house.

And the ducks – what if we all put our science experiments into the bayou? Floating hamsters, ferrets doing the backstroke, and a few iguanas chewing up the rip rap. Stop the madness I say – reclaim the ducks and make them go.

Okay, who would shoot a white fluffy cat? Some ignoramus with a pellet gun it seems. Here I was looking for Blizzard the white fluffy cat when I was out for walks with Loca because Blizzard had gone missing and its owners had posted a note. Then next thing I learn the cat was shot dead in front of its own house. Victim #2 of a retard with a pellet gun – I find the gun toting cat killer and I’m sticking the rifle up his rear-end and firing with glee.

Poor Blizzard. Deserved better.

I know we all know this but it really should be addressed with Obama’s health care reform. Hospital decor SUCKS! The ICU waiting room is these chairs that position you all to look at all the other frightened, grieving people waiting there and to soften the blow this particular waiting room at East Jefferson Hospital has a two sided fresh water aquarium. Well what happens and what happened to me yesterday is that I was on one side and I was in a trance when a woman with a white shock of hair moved into view on the other side and she was magnified to about 50x and she scared the bejezus out of me.

Whose idea was that?

I got back from the hospital late last night and we sat on the front porch to enjoy the breeze. I had received a text from one of my friends who was attending the memorial of my friend’s son saying that the firemen’s tribute for the boy was heart wrenching, but it was lightened up by the second line walk to Witt’s Inn afterwards. I had been sitting in the ICU waiting room with my aunt the whole time my mom was in surgery and we discussed everything from where my mom wants to be buried to gardening. I found out that when we were all over at my aunt’s house after my beloved grandmother died, that one of our cousins had gotten tweaked because we were all laughing and cutting up.

I told T that there had been a second line for our friend’s son and she said that was so good and it made her happy to hear. T said that in Eastern Europe, particularly around the mountainous areas of Montenegro, there are old women called “narikace” (“weepers”) who are paid to cry at funerals.

She thinks it is a pretty intriguing job to be paid to show up at a funeral and cry like there is no tomorrow. What happens is the crier comes and wails and wails and gets everyone so worked up to a frenzied pitch of crying and once they summit emotionally, then the crier backs off and the crowd begins to drink and party and carry on.

Now that is a funeral. I love this idea. When I die, I want people to put a boombox at top volume with Amy Winehouse singing Valerie and dance like there’s no tomorrow. And afterwards to laugh and to cut up and to cry from the joy of being alive.

I sat in the ICU waiting room from 1:30 till 8:30 yesterday and am here to say there has got to be a better way. But the good news is that mom came through the surgery with two metal plates in the left side of her face and no scar that is visible. And maybe this fall had a silver lining as now she will remain in the hospital until many of her issues are addressed. The next step is to get off the ventilator.

A social worker called me yesterday from the ICU department and was asking me all sorts of questions and I was not quite sure where it was leading, afterwards he summed up our conversation this way: Your mother has been going through a tough time but she once held important job positions and she is surrounded by people who love her and who are willing to support her during her recovery.

In 1998, I had been back in San Francisco for two years after a thwarted move home to New Orleans in 1995. My panic attacks reached enormous proportions because I didn’t want to be there, I wanted to be in New Orleans, near my family, having children with my husband, and living and breathing the architecture, culture, music, food, flora and fauna of New Orleans not being lulled to sleep by the sterile, overpriced, transient and tenuous San Francisco that existed during this time.

I was working at editing financial letters, had started investigative reporting for the predecessor of my company now, and had taken a night job transcribing at a law firm called Brown and Wood to earn extra money to pay the exorbitant cost of living in the Bay Area.

I was also reading the Tao te Ching interestingly enough. And at 1:30 AM in the morning on September 3, 1998, while working at Brown & Wood’s offices on the late shift with one large dyke with cow-like eyes and one effeminate yet cerebral man, I wrote on a post-it note:

Dejected and despairing over how to proceed – need the money? this bad? – get out? stay on?

I stuck this yellow post-it under the 9th entry of the Tao when I got in bed later that night – so for our meditation today here is #9:

Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people’s approval
and you will be their prisoner.

Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.