Better Than Dead

Random quote of the day:

“A human lifespan is less than a thousand months long. You need to make some time to think how to live it.”

—A. C. Grayling, “This Much I Know,” The Guardian, July 4, 2009

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“Human beings live in their myths. They only endure their realities.”

—Robert Anton Wilson

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

I had a crappy week last week. I’d managed to pull a muscle in my ribcage the week before and not only had it not improved but by midweek last week, it was spasming and reflecting around my side and into my back. I missed work on Wednesday because of it, thought it a bit improved Thursday so went back to work. But by the time I drove home Thursday night it was flaring again. When I woke up Friday morning it seemed worse than ever, the spasming returned with a fierceness—and my stomach roiling and burning, too. Since it was also raining, I stayed home from work, called my friend and cancelled our dinner for Saturday night in Pasadena (I just wasn’t up to the drive), and went back to bed. I didn’t leave the house for three days.

I read and watched a lot of TV, ate bland food, took aspirin (which doesn’t usually bother my stomach and worked well for the muscle pain), wore a heating pad, tried to be as gentle with my side as possible. I had to resort to drinking chamomile tea to soothe the GERD-like acidity of my stomach. It works well. After that initial Friday, it was never as bad, but the heartburn never completely disappeared that whole weekend. Added to that, I couldn’t seem to get enough sleep. Even sleeping until noon, I was ready for bed again by 10.

Every television show I watched, including the news, was awash with Mother’s Day, Mother’s Day, Mother’s Day. I thought perhaps that might have something to do with my heartburn, but after three days alone in my house with nothing but my own thoughts and Mother’s Day, Mother’s Day, Mother’s Day, I started contemplating all sorts of exotic maladies.

“I’ll call the doctor first thing on Monday,” I thought, although he’d seen me the week before when the pain in my side was just a muscle pull and not radiating into my back, and hadn’t seemed particularly worried.

Sunday night about 10:30 I was ready to go to bed again. I crawled gingerly into bed (so as not to set the pulled muscle off). The cat came in and got on the foot of the bed and commenced to clean herself.

I thought, “I sure am glad Mother’s Day is over.” Out of nowhere—I swear I don’t know where it came from, perhaps the Otherworld for all I know—but out of nowhere a noise erupted from my throat, part cri de coeur, part animal yowl, part choking sob, long and loud and reverberating against the walls and ceiling.

The cat looked up from licking her butt with an expression that clearly said, “What is your problem?”

“Sorry, kitty,” I told her.

I’d swear she shook her head and said, “Just get on with it, for crying out loud,” and went back to licking her butt.

I thought it very sound advice. I closed my eyes and went to sleep.

The next morning I woke up and felt ten times, a hundred times better. The muscle thing hasn’t completely gone away, but mostly. The acidity is almost nil. I can face the world again. I am not cured, won’t be for some time, I imagine. But I am definitely getting on with it.

Random quote of the day:

“All actual life is encounter.”

—Martin Buber, I and Thou

 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.”

—Eleanor Roosevelt, preface, Autobiography

 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo, not a man.”

—Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, Vol. 1

 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day: 

“It doesn’t seem to me that life conforms to systems. Only systems conform to systems.”

—Wallace Stegner, The Paris Review, Summer 1990, No. 115

 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Donna Rae McDonough
April 7, 1921 – January 22, 2015

 

Donna grew up on a farm in a tiny place called Willow Creek, Utah, no longer found on any map because it’s now part of the Ute Indian Reservation. She became a cattle ranch cook at sixteen, even participating in a cattle drive one summer when the ranch owner was short on cowhands.

In 1942, Donna came to Los Angeles to work for Douglas Aircraft, employed as a riveter on C-54’s for the war effort. She was extremely proud of being “Rosie the Riveter,” as she should have been.

After her marriage, she worked for a time with her first husband, Lloyd Thompson, installing carpeting and linoleum. She retired from this activity when she was six months pregnant with her daughter, Pamela. For some years afterward she concentrated her considerable energy on raising her daughter, taking care of neighborhood children, homemaking, and being a horsewoman. She stabled her horses at a barn and equestrian center once located where the Marina Freeway now ends at Lincoln Boulevard.

Eventually, Donna went to work for General Telephone Company, retiring after twenty-five years at age sixty-two to spend more time with her second husband, Sgt. Major Thomas P. McDonough, USMC (ret.). For a time, she was the Governor’s Wife of the Santa Monica Moose Lodge.

She remained active at bowling, crafts, painting, gardening, dancing, Do-It-Yourself building projects, cooking, and reading. Until a stroke damaged her eyesight in 2011, she read almost a book a day, mostly romances and thrillers. She always maintained, “I don’t care what kind of book it is, you can always learn something from it.”

When Donna’s kidneys failed in 2010, she met the challenge of dialysis with courage and a generally positive attitude. She did her own peritoneal dialysis at first until her damaged eyesight made that impossible. She kept her courage and good humor, blessed with a sharp and active mind until the end of her remarkable life at age 93.

 

Random quote of the day:

“At first sight a man’s life is more interesting than his works. It constitutes an obstinate, taut whole. Unit of mind dominates. There is a single inspiration through all those years. He is the novel. To be rewritten, obviously.”

—Albert Camus, The Notebooks, 1942-1951 (tr. Justin O’Brien)

 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“People in mourning have to come to grips with death before they can live again. Mourning can go on for years and years. It doesn’t end after a year: that’s a false fantasy. It usually ends when people realize that they can live again, that they can concentrate their energies on their lives as a whole, and not on their hurt, and guilt, and pain.”

—Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, On Death and Dying

 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.