Today I Finally See the Flowers

You know how you can get so miserable sometimes, and your internal pain gets to be so extreme that you just stop seeing around you? I realized that's the way I had gotten.

This week I started really noticing my surroundings again here in L A. As I walk Benji, there is this profusion of flowers: bouganvilla, irises, lantana, carnations, calla lilies, tiger lilies, bird of paradise, gardenias, azaleas, jasmine, red roses, and yes, yellow roses.

I realized, hey, it's really beautiful here in a way. I had been focused on the dirty sidewalks and parking garages, the congestion and parking troubles. The Angelenos(?) have no problems with using lots of water and importing plant species - they're just worried about saving the rainforest.

And the people watching has just been prime. I saw Jesus again. And just today in 60 degree weather a woman wearing a fur Elmer Fudd hat as she drove to work. And this evening an older black woman in an all-white knee length dress and white shoes with a full-length black crushed-velvet cape with hood. Women in the office often have the look of the nightclub about them, with holey tops, cleavage bouncing, and strappy metallic and rhinestoned shoes. As soon as the weather climbs into the sixties you start seeing flesh exposed, buff chests on the gay men and everything on the women. I saw a young man wearing what had to be a woman's lacy ruffly blouse. At least I would assume it was a woman's blouse. With all the gay specialty shops here it may have been made to fit a man.

But it has been a good week. Work is going extremely well. I am getting really fast at cranking out code. A woman in Infection Control here loves me and will be presenting our project at a meeting next week. I put together a Powerpoint for her.

We are in a pre-implementation lull as most of the staff is getting ready to put in their physician order entry system at the hospital. So next week may be very quiet. I have a new cube neighbor who has personality plus - and lots of toys and llamas.

I am still dreaming about Mother sometimes but they are all good. In one, she was "back", riding in the back seat of my car, chatting away as usual, and we were telling her about some of the silly things she did when she was sick.

Dad is doing alright it seems. He is still getting hospital bills. He is doing a lot of rabbit hunting when the weather allows.

We all seem to be healing OK.

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