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Wordless Wednesday - what I used to do

-30-

Really?

So, I'm supposed to just carry on?

Get my nails done. Get my hair done. Buy groceries. Cook supper. Clean my house. Fill up my car. Watch TV. Pay my bills. Love my husband. Take my daughter to the movies. Or shopping for shoes.

 And sleep?

I'm supposed to do all these every-day things between now and Tuesday... or Wednesday, if they don't get to me on Tuesday -- or maybe Thursday.

And then I'm just supposed to walk into a room and wait for a man in a tie to tell me, "Yes. We want you."

Or

"No. We don't."

Like they do to the contestants on American Idol.

And then I'm just supposed to get up and go to work the next day, and the next, and the next, and the next,  just like nothing has happened.

And then I'm supposed to read the Facebook posts and tweets and blogs from my friends and colleagues as they pour out their hurt and anger and say their farewells.

And I'm not supposed to cry when they tell us all what an honor and a privilege it has been to do what we've been doing.

But we won't be doing it any more.

And I'm supposed to just watch friends and co-workers disappear.

I don't know if I can.

Mother-Daughter Day

"It's a bitch to get old."

I see it in the mirror every day and night, feel it every morning in my hips and my feet, cover it up every few weeks with Preference hair color 5CB.

And I see it in my mother.

Oh I think she is still gorgeous. Well, when she's all fixed up and ready to go to work in her "Black makes you look skinny" shirt, pants and shoes, her endless dangle of gold chains (complete with Lucky Buddha), her dazzling display of rings and things, her "Kiss Me" red lipstick and her snow white hair. And her teeth in.

Yes, she still works, commutes even, driving an hour from the suburbs to the New Orleans French Quarter (then back), where she puts in a good eight hours a day, five days a week reading Tarot cards for the lovelorn and the confused at The Bottom of the Cup Tea Room. And she is very good at what she does.

But sometimes her 78 years knock her on her ass. And me too.

Like this week when I agreed -- naively enough -- to take Mom to her appointment at the local hospital. I told my boss, "I should be in around noon." And I believed it when I said it. Yeah. Like Gilligan's Island, it always starts out as a three hour tour.

Although she will argue the point to her death, Mom is very anemic.

"I don't know why they say that."

It's obvious by the color of her eyes, the whiteness of her skin and the endless cups of crushed ice that are always in her hands.

"That's an old wives tale."

No. It isn't. Chewing ice is a definite sign of anemia. But she also has been feeling very weak for the past few weeks.

"Well gee. I am 78 years-old, Lori. For God's sake."


So her doctor insisted that she have thisintravenous iron infusion three times over the next six weeks. But, coincidentally, on the morning of her appointment, her sciatic nerve got pinched. And no one else on the face of the earth has ever had this happen to them.

"Oh.My.God. This is the tortures of the damned! How can anybody stand it?"

So, at 6:30 on the morning of her 10 a.m. appointment, I get a call from my husband, who has gotten a call from my mother.

"I didn't want to wake you up."

 She may need to go to the emergency room because she is in so much pain she can't stand it.

"OHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

So, I get dressed, down some coffee, grab a breakfast drink, my iPhone and the charger (because the last time we went to the ER my phone died and I nearly did with it), my Kindle and its charger, leave my daughter with her babysitter -- the standard poodle -- and head around the corner to her house (close enough for ME to walk, but not for her). And assess the situation.

"OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

She is obviously in a great deal of pain, but has dug in her cabinet of old (no, I mean REALLY OLD) medicines and found some Tylenol 3 from back in the 80s when she had her teeth done.


"That took the edge off a little. OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

So, she decides that she thinks she can make it to her appointment, then we'll try to get to the ER next door to get her back checked out. And we head out s-l-o-w-l-y to my car and the short 15 minute drive to the hospital.


"Can you turn the air off so it's not blowing on me?"

I flip the vents closed.

"If you want me to find someone else to take me, just pull over."

"What?"


"I'm sorry to be such a bother to you."

"What are you talking about?"


"You act like I'm such a burden on you."

"Oh stop it."

"What are they doing to this road?"

"They are repaving it."

"Hmmm?"

"They are repaving it."

"Why are you yelling at me?"

"Because I HATE saying everything twice. I'd rather say it once, loudly."

"Well you yell at people."

Not Soon enough, I am pulling up this great big hill -- in New Orleans, mind you -- which is what you have to climb to get to the front door of the hospital. I'm thinking (stupidly) that I can get her out, to the bench right inside the door, then find a wheelchair to wheel her to reception. I start to help her out of the car.

"OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Wait. I can't. I can't walk."

"You have to walk to the bench and I'll go find you a chair."

"NOOOOOOOOOOO. I can't! I can't!"

"Mom. You have to."

By now she is about to fall down dramatically in the parking lot. I figure I have no choice but to try to pick her up.

"Noooooooooooooo! I can't!!!! Stop it! Stop it! Wait!! Leave me alone!! Let me go! ARE YOU CRAZY?????"

I'm well on my way, Mom.

Now, I'm looking around for help. There isn't a soul. There isn't a doctor, a nurse, an orderly, a gentleman, a priest, a cop, a handsome man. Nothing. There is a middle-aged woman who is watching us, with her lips pursed and a scowl on her face. And I just know she is about to whip out her cell phone, dial 9-1-1 and report me for elder abuse. Seriously. And one of my fellow Times-Picayune reporters is going to be writing about me. And her.

Crazy mother, crazy daughter have throw-down in hospital parking lot

That'll sell some papers before we go out of bidness.

Eventually, I do get her back in the car, where I leave her (motor running; it's 90 degrees already) to go find a wheelchair.

Now, you would think that a nice, big suburban hospital would have wheelchairs all over the place for its patients. Right?

"Wrong."

 I head inside the lobby and look around. None. Just a whole bunch of people  -- a lady with a baby, a guy with crutches, a grandfather in a bathrobe -- obviously waiting for their own chair. Finally, I ask the lady at the reception desk where I can find one. She has one hidden behind her desk.

"You can take it, but please, please, please bring it back."

Really?

So I wheel it over to my car, get Mom out once again.


"OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Then park her off to the side while I go park the car. On the way, I dial my husband's phone.

"Hey baby."

"I am about to get arrested for elder abuse."

"(Chuckle). Well don't."

I climb the hill to the entrance (who puts the entrance to a hospital up a hill anyways?) to where Mom is parked and start to push her inside.  Guess what. The doors aren't automatic. I have to push the chair, and hold the door open. At the same time.


"What kind of place is this?"

"A F'd up one."

I finally get her to reception, take her ID and insurance card and stand in the line of about six people to get registered. While I'm doing that, she has made best friends with a couple sitting nearby, telling them the whole story of her current ailments and what an ordeal we just had just getting there, and what a terrible daughter I am.

I text my sister, who is NOT here: I am about to get arrested for elder abuse.

Sis: Tell her you will put her in a wheelchair and make her look like an old lady.

Really?

Somehow, I do get her to her appointment. And back to the car. And then the Urgent Care Center for her back.  And then to the drug store for the four prescriptions they wrote for her. Then back to my house for some food. Then back to her house. Then to my sofa for a long, well-deserved nap.

But never to work on this day.

That just wasn't in the cards.

Getting old is a bitch. Worse is watching my mother get old and need help but not want to ask for it because she doesn't want to bother me

"I don't want to be a burden, Lori."

"You're not a burden, Mom. You're a pain in the ass. There's a big difference."

 


Read and Be Read: Hanging out with the cool kids at yeahwrite.me.

Wordless Wednesday -- The future

The Fickle Finger of Fate

The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate

So, apparently, I have a week.

A week to wait, to worry, to lie awake at night, to hold my breath, to hope for the best, to pray, to be scared to death.

To win the lottery.

A week (give or take) until the men in ties (and let's face it, they're all going to be men in ties and not women in pencil skirts) decide whether or not I am a journalist worth keeping as my employer moves to the digital age, to decide whether or not I have kept up enough.

A week to ask, do I want them to keep me, even though this venture is filled with uncertainty and, some say, doomed to failure? Or do I want them to let me go, so I can try something new, break my mold? Even after 25 years.

This certainly has been an ever-changing job. I went from part time clerk in the sports department, putting together agate pages, answering phones (and really stupid questions) to full time clerk who made all the travel arrangements for the "real" reporters and answered phones(and really stupid questions).

But I got to write a story or two.

Night golf with Morten Anderson (the pins glowed in the dark).

A local softball team that went to Russia to teach them how to play.

How to become an umpire.

Then I went to full time "real" reporter, covering high school sports. Football one day, volleyball the next. Or swimming, golf, tennis,basketball, soccer, track.

Baseball on a gorgeous spring day.

Sending stories from pay phones, borrowed phones, coaches' offices. A Pizza Hut.


I covered some wonderful events -- two Super Bowls, a Final Four, the French Quarter during the Final Four.

I covered a high school game that went through five overtimes (and I STILL got my story in the paper!)

A baseball game where a kid hit four home runs.
 
And some amazing athletes.


Ed Reed.

LaRon and Dawan Landry.

The Mannings.

Ryan Perrilloux.

A whole bunch of former Zephyrs.

The high school kid with a 95 mph fastball and whose teachers encouraged him to quit school and go for the major league baseball draft. He did, and got a $100,000 signing bonus, but didn't make it through training camp.
 
Then a man in a tie decided I was needed elsewhere. I was benched. Turned into a clerk, who answered phones (and really stupid questions), took payments, handed out garage sale kits, ordered the toilet paper, shopped for the annual Christmas party and waited for the Mayhem Guy to strike. At least it gave me time to hone my skills as a social media specialist.

And got to write stories I never would have before.

The inspiring high school principal who danced at her wedding despite losing her feet and her hands to a staph infection.

The high school girl who left her tiny home in Gramercy to travel the country as a red-headed basketball player back in the 1960s. (That one hasn't run yet.)

The woman who had her fund-raising flock of pink flamingos stolen.

The local man I didn't even know about who died in the Pentagon on September 11th.

And some I never wanted to, like the man who murdered his girlfriend, left her body in a car parked at the local hospital, locked himself in a shed and then shot himself.

Or the men who molested children.
 
So now I'm preparing for change again. What shall I do? What can I do? Sell shoes? Clean toilets? Teach children?

I always wanted to live at the beach. I could sell seashells by the seashore.

Or balloons at Disney World.

This is my DREAM job!

But let's face it. All I really want to do is write. That's how this blog was born. Then reborn after my last job change because I needed a place to do it. To tell stories.

And I will continue to do so.

I just don't know where.

That's up to the Fickle Finger of Fate.

To be continued ....
 

Hanging out at YeahWrite... Read and be read.

Paper cuts

For weeks after I lost my beloved big brother, Rhett, to a dark night, a wet Louisiana road, an unbuckled seat belt and a roadside canal, our entire family walked around in a daze.

Stunned, pained, grieving and unbelieving, we all walked around like zombies,  our shoulders slouched, our eyes unseeing, our jaws slack, our feet shuffling under the weight of it all.

Barely two months later, on a bright fall day, a bunch of maniacs hijacked a bunch of airplanes and flew them into buildings, changing life as we know it forever.

Newspaper reporter that I am, I happened to be in the newsroom of  the venerable New Orleans Times-Picayune that day, trying to work, trying to fathom, trying not to scream my head off as those indelible images were burned into my brain. I sat in the sports department, mesmerized and completely unable to look away from the mounted television high above my head.

Every once in a while, a co-worker would  wander over and watch for a while, seemingly frozen in place. Eventually, when they had had enough, they would shuffle off with shoulders slouched, eyes unseeing, jaw slack. Like a zombie.

Sitting in the company cafeteria for lunch that day,  I turned to my co-worker/nephew from the I.T. department.

"Now everybody looks like we've been looking for the past two months," I said.

He simply nodded in agreement.

Today, we were reminded of that look.

Once again my esteemed co-workers, some of the most talented and hard-working people you have never met, looked like zombies, walking through the newsroom with their shoulders slouched, their feet heavy, their jaws slack after word got out (and not by us) that our newspaper, which just -- and  I mean JUST -- celebrated its 175th birthday in print was dropping its print schedule to three days a week instead of seven. And some -- perhaps a lot -- of us would not be moving with it into the future.

And as the long, sad day turned into evening, I happened to be in the vast newsroom following a tense meeting with the editor. And I watched as my colleagues gathered once again around the TVs, this time to watch stories about ourselves and our perceived demise. And, once again, we all looked like we were about to throw up, or like we had just been punched in the gut.  

(Just look at this photo shot by my esteemed colleague Ted Jackson) 

Because we had. By The New York Times, which broke the story late Wednesday night. Me? I found out thanks to Twitter while I cruising for reaction to the latest American Idol winner.

Sure we all knew that the newspaper was in trouble. We have already faced several rounds of buyouts, forced retirements, furlough days, cuts in benefits and, in my own case, job shuffling. In my 23rd year at the paper, a man in a tie broke my heart by forcing me to move from sports reporter to clerk-who-sometimes-covers-crime. Only recently had I made an uneasy peace with it and accepted my fate. Now this.

We still don't know exactly how this whole thing will work. Who will work. Where we will work. If we will work. Or for how much. Or for how long.  And that's the hard part. I won't know until early June if I'll be "invited" to remain with the company (as a clerk or as a sports reporter?) or sent packing with some sort of severance package.

Am I really supposed to peruse the classifieds for the first time since college, as a 50 year-old woman?  Apparently. I need a Plan B.

In the meantime, those of us who work at the paper or who have worked at the paper are reaching out to one another. And the community we all love is reaching out to us.

One local watering hole offered us all free drinks last night. There is a Friends of the Times-Picayune Facebook page, and a Save the Picayune Facebook Page, several Twitter hash tags, and hundreds of comments, tweets and Facebook messages from our readers, our colleagues, our peers and our even our competitors, who are telling us that they are thinking of us, hoping for the best for us and praying for us. And they're also pissed that this is happening to the newspaper we all love.

And we love and appreciate every single one.

Meanwhile, we are at work, doing what we love to do, what we all chose to do. Hoping. Praying. Worrying. And proud to say that we belong to The Times-Picayune.

What the heck is a Picayune anyway? It's a Spanish coin. These are my 10th anniversary earrings. I'm supposed to get a 25th year watch this summer.