25 May 1999: Last Year

Last year, on the Friday before my birthday, my father sent me flowers at work. He couldn't send them on my birthday, a Monday, because on my birthday everyone would be busy staging parades in my honor. This is what I wrote to DEDBG about it (modified):

My knee had been stiff for a few days when, on Friday, I had an appointment at Kaiser for them to look at it. I took a bus the mile or so to the medical center, and the nurse practitioner told me to stay off it [I could have ranted at length here but restrained myself] and to come to physical therapy, but not right then because they'd all be at lunch. So I took the bus back (usually I walk back to work at least, if not from work too) and it was a slow Friday and who knows what the wait would be at the walk-in PT clinic so my boss said just go along. So I left again, this time taking the basket of flowers my father had sent me and running for the bus, which I might have caught had I been five seconds later, but not six. It only comes every 30 minutes. Back in the office, the desk clerk paged PT for me and I sat there reading for about a half hour until the clerk (who was new) noticed this particular sign that said PT was closed on Fridays. He said, "Ms. Houlihan? I hate to tell you this, but..." So while he and I were laughing weakly about this, another nurse came in, having suddenly remembered this fact and wanting to call me at work not to come, except I already had. But the nurse practitioner whom I had originally consulted, who was not new, who was my primary care giver, who had told me when I was first there that he had seen a lot of knee injuries that day because of the Bolder Boulder (a race) and therefore must have sent a lot of patients to PT, never clued in. Ask him about my bladder infection sometime. At this point I had missed the every-30-minute bus back to work. I debated.

I could wait inside for the next bus, but I was mad at Kaiser. Or I could stand in the rain (in my rain-proof parka) but the rain would ruin my book. Or I could walk a little bit and catch another bus that wouldn't take me closer to work, but that would be a) action and b) defiant walking and c) out of the rain. So I did the last.

Walking in the rain, in my rain parka, with my work dress poking out the bottom, with my knee in an Ace bandage, with my feet bare, with my backpack on my back and my flowers in one hand and my shoes in another. I must have been a picture. I took that bus to where it crosses an intersection with my commuting bus, which wouldn't pass there for about an hour. I could walk about a mile and wait in the bookstore, or stand in the rain. I walked. And most of the mile was in front of the country club, whose whole perimeter is lined with lilac, so in addition to the picture I was before (walking in the rain, in my rain parka, with my work dress poking out the bottom, with my knee in an Ace bandage, with my feet bare, with my backpack on my back and my flowers in one hand and my shoes in another), add now hail instead of rain (still bare feet though) and me sniffing at every few steps' worth of lilacs. I was cracking up--laughing and going crazy.

I am well on the way to becoming an eccentric old woman with a bird on her shoulder and mice nesting in her hair who rambles to herself. All I need are the mice. Do you think the ones from "Babe" are available?

By the time I passed the country club and crossed University to the shops, the hail and rain had petered off to sprinkles and the sun was out behind me, so I searched the skies for a rainbow, which I figured would be the last best thing of this craziness and something I deserved, but I didn't see one.

And the flowers were beautiful.

As was this year's bouquet. And it rained again. I wonder if this excess of rain is La Niña; it's way more than Denver usually gets.

CLH called me at work. I answered, "Dot Org, LJH," and she said, "Hello, hag" and I responded "Greetings, spinster."

I'm reading Francine Prose (a fortuitous last name)'s The Peaceable Kingdom, a book of short stories. In one, an ecologist gets to speak at a conference after the senator the conference was flying out tried to exit the plane when the movie ended. And a girl idolizes Gandhi, so her parents are afraid she's anorexic. Tee hee.

So Kat never existed. Gulp.

This is what I wrote to journal-l:

I didn't read Jessa, so I didn't share everyone's shock in November of 1996 when she came out as Shelly. In the past year I've read some of the archives of both Jessa and Shelly and didn't see too much difference between the two, although it's true I only skimmed and so could have missed a lot. Today I found out about Kat through a link of Diane Patterson's and again on Kymm and took about 20 minutes to recover. I don't read In Medea Res and therefore didn't know immediately that the author of Kat was in fact male--he reveals his gender somewhere in the middle of the obit. I was already stunned that Kat was fake--but a man too? I gaped. I muttered, "You're a man? Holy shit. Kat's a man?" while I read the description.

And I understood Jessa's audience sense of shock. If I had found out in November of 1997 before opheliaZ had faded to the background of my daily web, I might well have understood their sense of betrayal as well. As it is, I'm impressed. I can remember holes and inconsistencies (like consummation with "Derek"--I wondered if she knew her mother was reading or something--that's one thing I remember vividly, probably because it sounded so fake), but nothing that led me even to guess the truth--I'm glad I wasn't alone there! He's good!

I just resubscribed to diary-l purely and solely so I might read the archive of its discussion on this topic. What I want to know is how did Ryan come out? Was it because the oZ diary just got nominated for the Hall of Fame? Or what?