How Babies' Names Are Chosen

                                            

Almost anytime Claire and I had a sleepover, we would get out our name books (we each had one; mine was called From Aaron to Zoe; hers was Beyond Jennifer and Jason; the title of her book was most fitting because we certainly ventured beyond the most common names of the day) and would name our future children. I believe both books were ones our own parents had used in choosing our names and those of our siblings. Sometimes we would do this when our other friends were present as well, but not often, as they quickly became bored with the activity. We never did.

It's not as though we would be in need of the names at any time soon at the time we started devising the lists. I don't think it would have been anatomically possible for either of us to bear a full-term child much before either of us turned nineteen.  Still, we were  proactive, well-planned, prepared sorts of individuals. Had we needed the names, they would have been ready. A few of the names actually did get used on Claire's cats, if I recall correctly.

My taste in names ran from relatively conventional to hard-core Irish to Americanized Irish, with one brief thematic deviation. Claire's names tended to be  dependent upon the theme on which she was obsessed or the boy on she had a crush at a particular moment. For example, I'll give you one of her lists (we both recorded both of or lists in composition books; someday her parents will come across hers and wonder what in the hell it is) from when she had a thing for a Japanese-American boy. I won't divulge his name, but it would be considered about as Japanese in origin as Andrew or Jeffrey would be.

Claire's Name List from October of  2009                           
Boys                                  Girls
Samaru                              Makiko
Toshi                                 Midori
Chihiro                              Tamaki
Sadaharu                           Chiyoko
Yukio                                 Kimiko

Claire went through a brief and unexplained phase of fascination with Hawaiian names a few years later.

Claire's List of Hawaiian Names
Boys                                  Girls
Tanieli                              Kanamu
Kekoa                               Makeila
Makani                              Keala
Kaleo                                Alihi
Kapono                             Kanoi
Nikono                              Liliukalani

Claire also went through a few different Biblical phases. I won't recount them all, One version listed the twelve tribes of Israel, feminizing half of them. I was really glad that she got through that phase long before her child-bearing years, as those were some ugly girls' names. She went through a heavy Christian martyr saints' name phase as well. I'll skip that one, too. you could guess if you tried hard enough, anyway. I will list the straight biblical list with which she came up. It lasted longer than the other religious lists,         anyway, if my recordings are correct.

Claire's List of Biblical Names
 
Boys                                  Girls
Matthew                            Mary
Mark                                  Elizabeth
Luke                                  Martha
John                                  Ruth
Adam                                 Naomi
Gabriel                               Eve

I would like to think that one of her later lists was entirely in jest, but I don't know for sure. Claire was mildly fascinated with the American gypsies featured on the TLC programming, and compiled one of her lists using their names. The women featured most prominently in these shows, but Claire watched enough even to know the men's names.

Claire's List of Gypsy Names

 Boys                                   Girls
Stanley*                              Nukkie
Heath                                 Ninnie
Pookie                                Mellie
Henry                                 Jettie
Gus                                     Lottie
Albert                                 Dallas

*Stanley was actually the major family surname of the group featured in one of the TLC programs, as opposed to a male character.

I should not let myself off totally Scot-free in this naming debacle. I, too, compiled lists, and they weren't necessarily comprised of names by which my parents would have been proud to introduce their grandchildren. I briefly toyed with a theme of musical terms to name my children.

Alexis' List of Musical Names

Boys                                    Girls
Basso Profundo                    Allegretta
Fortissimo                           Sonata
Adagio                                Cantabile
Giocoso                               Mezza Voce
Presto                                 Triste
Vivace                                 Appegiatura

Sometimes my list of Irish names was relatively hard-core Gaelic, as in names not all that often heard in the 

Alexis' list of Semi-Hardcore Gaelic Names
Boys                                     Girls
Amhlaoibh                           Aisling
Declan                                 Mairead
Enan                                    Lasairiona
Colm                                   Caitriona
Riocard                                Saoirse
Sleibhin                               Roisin

I should note that in regard to some of these names. I hadn't a clue at the time, or do I necessarily know now, how they are correctly pronounced. I just liked the way they looked.

I should also note that, although we both always chose exactly twelve names, neither of us had any intention of giving birth to any number of children even approaching twelve.  Our thought was that multiple births sometimes happen even without the intervention of fertility drugs, and we wanted to be prepared in the event that it happened to either one of us. Our rationale was that with our practically nonexistent midsections, there was no way possible for either one of us to carry any more than six fetuses, if that many,  to viability. Since we didn't know the gender or genders of these sextuplets to which we might give birth, it made sense to come up with six names of each gender in order to be prepared for any outcome.  I believe the intent of each if us was to give birth to somewhere between one and four children.

Middle names were discussed but not usually recorded. Depending upon whom I was angry with at any given moment in time, my children's middle names might have been John, Steven, Matthew, Scott, Erin, Victoria, Jillian, Alex/Alexander/Alejandro/Alejandra (I could never decide which form of the name would sound best).

The last lists we came up with were during Christmas vacation. Claire spent a couple of evenings with me as I was recovering from the malady of the month. I won't share my list, as it isn't important right now, but I will share Claire's list, as it is evidence of a major paradigm shift.

Claire's Final Name List
Boys                                   Girls
Ian (her late brother's name)          Laurel (her sister's name)
Steven (her father's name)          Elizabeth (her godmother's name)
Bradley (her brother's name)                     Anne (her mom's and my middle name)
James (her godfather's name)            Aubrey*
 Evan (just a name she liked)                          Adele (a name she liked)
 Ryan (her grandfather's name)                      Stella (I think just a name she liked)

*Aubrey was the name my parents had chosen for me before I was born. Shortly after taking her first look at me, my mom announced that I was not an Aubrey. In some ways I resented for a long time that she changed my name. I thought it was because I was too ugly a baby to have a pretty name like Aubrey. (Two-pound-two-ounce babies aren't typically things of beauty in the eyes of anyone but God.) I've long since reconciled myself with not being named Aubrey, but maybe Claire thought she could somehow make things better by naming her baby Aubrey. I don't know, because we didn't talk about it.
         

              

One More Blog and Then I Promise to Move on If Only Just a Bit

Had the choice been mine, i probably would have sent her off a bit more flamboyantly.

People have been incredibly kind to me over this latest hurdle in my life, which really wasn't about me but certainly impacted me in a huge way.  I saw someone --  in a hospital -- on a Saturday, and we laughed and joked about the latest  preposterous happenings in both of our lives. I tiptoed around the indignities related to the sick person's illness and treatments but  didn't totally avoid the topic, unpleasant as it may have been, as I knew the sick person I was visiting needed to vent and would share what she needed to share about the subject in order to maintain her sanity. I also had an academic  interest in her situation this time, as I had studied the very foundations of her illness and the treatments she was undergoing. 

I still don't have my cell phone back, but I've been promised it will reappear in the morning.

I knew she was really sick, because in today's world it isn't easy to procure a hospital bed for a day, and she'd been occupying one for five days. I stayed for as long as I could -- for about five hours in this particular case -- but eventually she started to drop in and out of sleep, and I knew I'd overstayed my welcome and it was  time for me to go. Both my brother and my sort-of boyfriend Jared dropped by for portions of this time.  A couple of our close friends, both of whom had visited recently, as their schools were much closer to her hospital than mine was, stopped by briefly. It was almost a party-like atmosphere.  Claire's parents used the time to shower, catch up on rest, and take care of other things. I wonder now if I robbed them of valuable final hours with Claire. I certainly hope they don't see it that way. And it was not as though anyone asked either of them to leave, anyway.

Those of you who didn't know Claire personally have probably already read enough about her to last more than one lifetime. I promise that after this, I'll cease and desist for the most part with the posts devoted exclusively to Claire and to my memories of her.  I'm sure memories of her will creep into other posts from time to time, but i'm not going to change the blog to "In memory of Claire" or any such thing. 

This last blog I will share, however, as it ended up serving as the framework for her eulogy. The entire funeral was a colossal case of one person being asked to do something and then deciding that he or she could not do it, and conning someone else into doing the particular task for him or her. Such was the case with the eulogy. Claire's parents had wanted her brother, Brad,  to deliver it. At the last moment he decided he couldn't handle it. My brother was sitting next to Brad during the service. Brad knows that Matthew has the ability to speak off the top of his head to some degree without appearing as a total fool. Brad handed his notes to Matthew. He told Matthew he'd go to the pulpit to explain the change in plans. 

I had anticipated that, with the way things had been going in terms of nothing going off as planned or assigned , something of this nature might have happened. I've always been Matthew's best speechwriter, so I took a manuscript - completed copy along with bullet points, as Matthew usually speaks best from bullet points, and handed it to Matthew. He scanned it and nodded at me as if to say it would work. 

I'll share the manuscript essentially as I wrote it.  It's not exactly as Matthew delivered it, although I've written in a few of the additions and changes he made as I remember them

The Eulogy

It would be nice to begin this address with a light-hearted joke to break up the mood and put everyone at ease, but that's not going to happen here. I don't know how to take what has just happened and turn it into something about which we can all have a good laugh and then feel better.  A girl who should had her entire life ahead of her is no longer with us today, and the only emotion I can feel is one of almost indescribable sadness. Please forgive me if I dispense with the ice-breaker joke that would have put at all at ease. I for one am not at ease. I'm afraid I'll say something that might make things worse than they already are.

Still, in addition to all the religious rites and the kind remarks Father Harguindeguy has shared, and in addition to the religious nature of the ceremony, it's important that we devote time and thoughts to the the very real person who was  Claire as most of us knew her. We all knew her in different ways and have different memories of her. I'll share a bit of what Brad, my sister, and I remember as being the most salient memories of our memories of her and the essence of what it was that made Claire the truly unique individual she was.

I met Claire only briefly when she and my sister were enrolled in a gymnastics program. We presumably knew the family to some degree before, as they are relatives of relatives of relatives, or something like that. my sister could explain the exact almost-relationship, but she's not going to speak, and it's not all that  important anyway. What I remember most about those days was that brad and I were incredibly bored at the gymnastics competitions and found things to do to amuse ourselves at these competitions that had absolutely nothing to do with gymnastics. What I'm told about Claire as a gymnast was that - despite being the skinny little twerp that she was, she excelled at the strength events - the uneven parallel bars and the vaults.  In that regard, she was the one-hundred-eighty-degree opposite of my sister, whose strengths were the floor exercise and balance beams. The girls looked enough alike at the time - Claire was a bit taller and maybe slightly less thin, but if the two were not standing side-by-side, the difference was far from obvious. Their facial features differed a bit, but not enough at that age to be all that noticeable. The two of them could have passed as twins for more easily than Alexis and i did, and we actually are twins. I remember my mom saying that the coach joked that they could probably keep the two separated at all times and pass them off as a single gymnast, with each one doing the events at which she excelled. As far as I know, they never actually tried this stunt of pretending to be the same person, but then again, there's a lot the two of them did that neither I nor anyone else knew about. Some of those medals they both won might have been collaborative efforts. 

Claire possessed a degree of straightforwardness -- brutal honesty might more accurately describe it --   that cut right through any decorum. I'm told that when she was small, she was blunt to the point of being rude. When I knew her , such was no longer exactly the case, but still, she didn't mince any words to spare anyone's feelings. If someone didn't want to know what she really thought, they'd best not ask her. I recall a physics teacher asking the class's opinion of his mustache he had recently been trying to grow.  The rest of us squirmed uncomfortably on our lab stools. Claire told him that, in her opinion, it looked as though a centipede had been glued to his upper lip.

Both Claire and my sister stopped gymnastics for different reasons -- I won't go into the details at this time -- ask Alexis later if you really want to know -- but by then, we had moved to a house that backed up directly to Claire's family's home. At that time Claire  and Alexis were in different grades, but outside of class time, the two were virtually inseparable. (Alexis and I skipped seventh grade, so we were later all three in the same grade level.) Our families were close then and continue to be. I can remember my mom sending Alexis out the back door and across the fence to borrow baking soda or some other such ingredient. An hour or so later, my mom would have to drag Alexis off Claire's trampoline, or would give up and just get the baking soda herself.  

Brad was two years older than I was, but we were close pals as well. Laurel, the youngest of the children, probably felt left out because she didn't have a Rousseau of her own, but Claire and Alexis were good about including her in many of their activities.

By looking at Claire, a person might have included that she was a fairly average and conventional person, but not much could have been further from the truth. She had a greater interest in bugs and spiders than did any little girl that I ever knew. This interest carried into her young adult life. Despite having to take time off to receive treatment for her lymphoma, she was slated to graduate right on schedule with a bachelor of science degree in entomology this spring.

Her interest in Kingdom Animalia did not extend itself to rodents, though. Her brother Brad and I spent hours tormenting both her and my own sister with rats, mice, hamsters, gerbils, gophers -- just about anything we could get our hands on. Between the two of them, I'm not sure who was the bigger rodent-a-phobe, It was a war we never should have started, though,as the two of them were both much smarter and in possession of much more devious minds than Brad and I ever had, and we paid dearly for any prank we pulled for the purpose of scaring the two of them.

The time I remember most  that they got even with us was a time when Brad had a driver's permit but no license, and thus didn't have permission to use his mom's car while his parents were out for the day in Brad's father's car, and couldn't have driven legally without a licensed driver accompany him. Teenage boys  rarely know their limits where driving is concerned, though. and Brad certainly didn't. We had driven all over our small town, taking care to avoid major streets when we might be stopped by law enforcement. We left the car parked outside another friend's house and were waiting for him to join us in our joy-riding escapade. we planned a tip up road winding along the delta.

I'm not sure which girl was more responsible for the prank.  I have to assume Claire was the driver, as Alexis, even once she had a permit and could drive legally with supervision, was a horrid driver, and she knew her limitations. I can't see Alexis having gotten behind the wheel of anyone's car before she had her license, much less prior to possessing a  permit. Claire was a bit more confident and daring -- and competent -- in that regard, though. 

While Brad had left the car parked in front of a friend's house as we waited for him to change into what he thought was appropriate attire for our day on the delta, the car mysteriously disappeared. When the car was eventually found -- with information provided by Claire and Alexis,  in an area of the university campus near the pool area that would be locked behind an electronic gate from late Saturday afternoon after a water polo game, and might very easily have remained there until the following Monday morning, I assumed, the girls had found another key. (I learned later that the girls very quickly and adeptly hot-wired the car in broad daylight on a city street. Never underestimate the technical know-how of a woman or --even more -- of two of them.)  We emerged from our other friend's house to find no car parked beside the curb, and didn't know where to begin to look for it.  We didn't want to report the car as stolen, as the police report  would have clearly noted from where the car had been taken, and no one had Brad's parents' permission to removed the car from the garage. When we ended up on foot  at my  house, the girls were practicing a Scarlatti string piece on their respective instruments -- Alexis was a violinist while Claire was a cellist -- and quite a talented one, I might add. 

The girls appeared absorbed in their practice -- perhaps a bit too absorbed.  Eventually we determined they had to know more than they were letting on. We threatened, bargained, and bribed until they sent us off on a wild goose chase, eventually leading to a car locked behind an electronic gate.

Claire and Alexis agreed to help -- for a price. Both girls were divers -- former gymnasts often make good divers -- and had paid enough attention to know their own coach's code to the gate because from time to time they liked to get into the diving pool to practice when no practice was scheduled. For a negotiated fee of forty dollars each, Claire and Alexis plugged in the code and opened the aquatic area gate so that we could drive our car out and home safely within minutes of the time Brad's parents returned. The girls used their earnings to go to dinner and to the movie that we had planned to see that night, while we sat at home, essentially penniless.  

Many of you know of the stories of Claire and Alexis successfully simulating an earthquake in a shaky upstairs classroom at our high school, or about the time she and Alexis took a teacher's substitute lesson plans and substituted them with plans they had written themselves -- very different plans, I might add, than the teacher had originally written. In the note from the "substitute" to the teacher, Claire and Alexis indicated that all the worksheets assigned that day had been sent home with students as study guides. I don't think the teacher was every any the wiser. Claire would tell you that in, part, such was the case because the man didn't have  any particular wisdom in the first place.

Once when the school was undergoing its accreditation process, donuts and coffee had been provided for the accreditation committee. Claire and Alexis graciously left the coffee for the administrators and the accreditation committee, but took the large box of donuts to their first-period class and distributed them. Claire's rationale was that not only was it not wrong to have taken the donuts, but to have left the donuts would in and of itself  have been morally bereft. Bribing an accreditation committee was an act of corruption, Claire insisted as the box of the donuts made its way around Claire's and Alexis' first-period class.

While Claire could be mischievous almost to the point of being ruthless, she had a very kind side to her as well. Academics came very easily to her. She frequently took mercy upon classmates to whom the work did not come quite so easily. She used her knowledge and skill to make complex material more understandable to classmates -- may of them older than she was. She wrote quite a few research papers that she didn't turn in, and for most of those papers, she charged nothing. I realize that I'm speaking in a church, and extolling the virtues of someone who helped others to cheat their way through academia may be seen as less than appropriate to some than to others, but I believe that Claire's heart was in the right place when she helped others to pass classes they desperately needed to pass.

Claire was almost always on the side of the underdog. Neither she nor my sister, while not total social pariahs,  would have been considered "cool" in high school, and occasionally bore the brunt of teasing for being different because of their intelligence, though both she and my sister knew how to use words effectively enough that most of those who might have picked on them were afraid of the humiliation Claire's or my sister's words could have provided in response to any unsolicited bullying. Claire knew, however, that any teasing or bullying she endured was minimal compared to what others less fortunate had to tolerate on a daily basis, and was quick to come to the defense of others who  were victims in this regard. Any student was welcome at Claire's lunch table, including individuals with learning disabilities and sometimes even members of the "popular" group who found themselves temporarily on the outs with the rest of the popular group for whatever reason. Claire welcomed them with no questions asked. I would like to think that during these times, the temporarily exiled popular kids learned something, as in that they were not as different from the kids who didn't dress as well as tho most popular students and those who may have possessed learning disabilities as they might before have thought.

I didn't hang out at their table, at least in part because it might have seemed uncool for siblings to be in the same immediate social circle, though Alexis and I did move in different social circles, but my friends and I often stopped by their table for brief exchanges -- usually somewhat insulting in nature, but -and I certainly hope Claire knew this -- always in jest. And I always directed my insults at Claire and at my sister, rather than at any less fortunate souls seated with them. I hope Claire understood it was my way of acknowledging them, as there was never anything mean-spirited in anything I had to say either to Claire or to my sister.

When my sister experienced some social difficulty at school, first because a boy off a prom date with her by announcing it to the crowd at large in the cafeteria, and later when Alexis was physically attacked by another student in retaliation for claiming original authorship for a paper the other student had stolen from a teacher's file cabinet containing copies of "A" papers, no one had my sister's back to the degree to which Claire did. When, following the attack, the football team initially sat in the tables immediately surrounding Alexis, further intimidating Alexis, Claire was quick to investigate and to discover that the football players were seated where they were for Alexis' protection. The thief of the paper had been a football player (whose association with the team was ended immediately following his attack upon Alexis). The football coach had told the team that every member of the team would pay in a major way if Alexis were to suffer any further retaliation. the team decided it could best keep that from happening by sitting near enough to Alexis to prevent anything further happening to her. Still, it was Claire who was willing to take on several male athletes in excess of two hundred pound in order to find out what was happening on Alexis' behalf.

Claire was the one who created and gave to my sister the dartboard with the picture of the boy who broke off his prom date with her because of her having been confined to the wheelchair -- an act which ultimately led to the "excommunication" of our family from the Toman Catholic church. The "excommunicarion" was soon cleared up by another more understanding priest. 

Some of you might also remember that i was invited by a girl three years older than I to the prom, reportedly because she wanted to get me drunk and conceive a child with me. When my sister could no longer go to the prom because of injuries sustained in her track and field accident. Claire served as my and my date's chaperon at the prom.  The only way any child could have been conceived that night would have been had the sperm been able to jump through my clothing, then a  full twelve inches before making its way into the intended mother's clothing. Claire took her chaperoning duties that seriously.

Claire loved her family -- her parents, grandparents , and siblings -- dearly. Her family wasn't much different than most of ours in terms of inevitable conflict, but there was never any question of the love she felt for all of them. 

Claire loved Jesus. Many aspect of religion she had yet to work out in her own mind, but her love for the Baby Jesus and for the grown-up jesus who died on the cross for our sins were not part of any doubts she may have had.

Claire was known in the high school orchestra for stopping the group because the intonation was off. The slightest deviation from standard pitch drove her to distraction. 

Claire was not overly obsessed with neatness. She liked having a  clean house, I've been told, but didn't have similar standards for the state of her bedroom. Before she wore them, her clothes were hung neatly in a closet, or put away carefully in a drawer. Once she had worn them, however, she saw no need for putting her clothes away neatly, nor did she have  any use for laundry hampers when she had an entire floor of her bedroom onto which to throw previously worn clothing.

Claire loved the outdoors -- particularly the mountains. What she didn't love was camping. She read once that TV chef Bobby Flay's wife Stephanie march, also known as  Law & Order SVU's ADA Alex Cabot, had actually put into her wedding vows that she would never go camping. Claire planned to have the same thing written into the vows her wedding someday. Hiking through the wilderness, fording streams, reaching summits -- all of these  were things about which Claire was passionate. At the end of the day, however, if she couldn't have the comfort of her own shower and bed, she wanted the comfort of a four-star hotel at the very least.

Claire loved her pets and everyone else's  (dogs, cats, and rabbits, anyway; with anything more exotic, she preferred to keep her distance).  She had  several years  ago expressed a desire to be buried with the family's dog and cat.  At the time, non one really gave any thought to the idea that both would outlive her. she now lives in part through them. 

Claire thought babies were cute, but preferred to enjoy them from a distance. She didn't, she would tell anyone who tried to hand her a baby, enjoy being drooled on.  She took more pleasure in children who were old enough to control their swallowing reflexes and who knew how and when to use the bathroom more or less independently. Children liked Claire as well. She had a way of communicating with them on their level without talking down to them. I remember once hearing her discuss global warming with a three-year-old. The child was one I knew, and I wouldn't classify him as being of unusual intelligence, yet the conversation was almost adult in nature. Perhaps Claire would have ended up in the field of education.

Most of us can only guess as to what Claire might ultimately have made of herself. She planned to pursue a master's degree in zoology, with an emphasis in animal behavior. Beyond that, she hadn't decided in what direction she wanted to go. Her cognitive ability would have allowed her to study whatever she wanted, and presumably wherever she wanted to study it.  Watching to see what education she ultimately pursued and what she did with it would have been fascinating. 

The Church has its ideas about where Claire is right now. Some of those present may have different ideas. All I can really add is that, wherever else she may be, I believe she is here with us as well.  I believe she's present whenever someone requests that a group of musicians tune their instruments more precisely. I suspect she's there whenever anyone reminds a child to cover his mouth and nose when he sneezes. I suspect she is near any freshly melted snow forming a mountain stream, and also at the nearest four-star hotel. Wherever a cello is being played well, Claire is probably not far away, particularly if the work being  played was composed by Bach.  Claire is with kittens and puppies. 

Claire is wherever she is, but she's also in the hearts of all of us who have ever loved her.

Rest in peace, Claire, and rest in our hearts and minds and souls.

I was wrong when i said the other picture was our last. this would have been taken in January, right after I lost braces and before she lost any hair.

Claire

I've been getting by, though barely. Fortunately there haven't been any exams this week. Professors have been in some classes kind, and in other cases less brutal than is typical for them. I walked out of anatomy lab because I just couldn't handle it. I can't avoid it forever, but for this week, I'm not going back. Theoretically, we're not ranked, so grades don't matter if I survive the cut, which shouldn't even be an issue.

Claire and I met when I was eight and she was nine. At that point, she was a grade ahead of me. In middle school my brother and I skipped seventh grade, so Claire and I  were in the same grade from that point on.  We met before my parents moved us to the town in which we would eventually settle for the next eight or so years. The gymnastics program in which both Claire and I participated was located in the town to which I would soon move. There wasn't a program in the small town in which I lived before, so I was picked up in a van every day after school and driven there  twenty miles or so away. 

When my family moved to the small college town in which we would spend the next eight years, we moved to a home in which the back yard faced Claire's backyard, with only a very flimsy fence separating the two yards. We had known each other from gymnastics for nearly two years, then became very close friends once we were also neighbors. Not long after moving to the new house, I was forced out of gymnastics. Claire quit soon after for different reasons. both of us had reached the point in gymnastics at which you essentially choose gymnastics over all other activities or you quit. Claire, not being one-dimensional enough to forsake all other activities, gave up gymnastics maybe a month or two after my parents pulled me out of the program. I hadn't given it much thought, but I very likely would have made the same choice soon as well. I was a scholar first, a musician second, and someone who liked to have fun next. Gymnastics ultimately would have ranked a distant fourth.

Claire, too, was scholarly, and was a musician. She was a cellist -- something that often made me very jealous. If there were any instrument I would like to play, it would be the cello. I don't think I have the patience any longer to get through those ugly early stages of any stringed instrument. Claire played beautifully. She was also an athlete. She was a talented volleyball player as well; she was the team's #1 setter, and never hesitated to throw herself on the hard wooden floor to dive after a ball. I just couldn't relate to the masochism it took to be so good at such a position or even such a sport. (I didn't play volleyball at all because it jammed my wrists and took my out of commission as a pianist a few times, so my dad wrote me doctor's notes to excuse me from tje sport whenever it was required in PE.) One cannot lead as varied a life as Claire did  yet be an elite gymnastic. Claire chose the multi-dimensional life over gymnastics every day. 

She chose multi-dimensionalism in college as well, turning down a volleyball scholarship at a Division I school, much to her parents' chagrin. In the end, it wouldn't have mattered, as the first symptoms of lymphoma showed up maybe a month into her freshman year.

Our respective departures from gymnastics seemed if anything to give us more time together, particularly once  I was moved up to hear grade. we usually managed to have the same class schedules.  We were basically good girls who occasionally caused a bit of trouble. I don't know if I've admitted to this on the blog before, but  once in ninth grade, when we knew in advance that our biology teacher was to be absent, we stole his lesson plans and replaced them with ones that we had written ourselves. For our own period of the class, we just declared it a study period in which the teacher would go over exactly what would be on the next day's test. (The teacher always had the tests ready in advance  in his lesson plan book.) For some of the other classes, we directed the substitute teacher to lead the class in yoga and meditation. The biology classroom was to be used by another teacher during the last class of the day, so the sub spent her next period in the staff lounge. She left the plan book, the lesson plans, and a note she had written in the teacher's mailbox. Claire and I grabbed the materials out of the teacher's box and replaced them with the plans the teacher had originally written and a note we had ourselves composed, basically saying that nothing unusual had happened during the day. As far as we know, no one was ever any the wiser concerning the change in plans for the day.

This is just a stock photo, but it's pretty much what the classroom looked like that day.

We had a teacher who might be considered somewhat gullible our sophomore year for AP English literature. Most of the students were seniors and were too sophisticated for silly pranks, and it wasn't easy for a couple of little sophomores to convince them to participate in out silliness, but we somehow talked them into it once. We were in an upstairs part of a building that would be condemned and demolished in the next few years. anytime someone even walked across the floor, the room shook. It occurred to one or the other of us that it would not be difficult to simulate an earthquake in that room if we could get the seniors in the class on board with the scheme. It wasn't as difficult to convince them as we though it might have been. The teacher directed everyone to crawl under their desks as one or two of the boys managed to shake large sections of desks.One girl reached up  to the light switch and made the lights flicker on and off.  Even the students and teacher in the room next door were sufficiently alarmed to crawl under the tables in their classroom to protect themselves from potential falling debris.  

A prank of that magnitude cannot be kept quiet for long, and eventually word got out, but the administration couldn't really punish an entire class when essentially no harm had been done.  It's still a legend at our former high school, and kids who were probably in fourth grade when it happened claim to have been present and to have participated in the great earthquake.

Claire was with me during most significant moments of my life from eighth grade on. She was with me when I purchased the proctology textbook.  She was the one who gave me the dartboard emblazoned with the picture of the boy who dumped me as his prom date when I was wheelchair-bound. She wasn't with me when I was attacked in the restroom because she had volleyball practice. She swears things would have gone down far differently had she been there, although I'm not sure what she could have done about it at 5'3" and 100 pounds. Who knows? Maybe she had some moves that I didn't know about even then.

Claire lived an almost storybook existence until the beginning of her freshman year of college, when she noticed frequent bruising for which she couldn't account and swollen lymph nodes. She eventually got the non-Hodgkins lymphoma diagnosis. She received what most would agree was the best of medical care. two years later, things were looking good for her.   Then, just about  five months ago, symptoms began to reappear.  she was ready to fight the disease again. She did fight it -- very hard -- with the latest in treatments. A little over a week ago she developed pneumonia. In her body's weakened state, she couldn't fight the pneumonia. Within three days it was over.

She leaves behind a younger sister and an older brother, a dog, a cat, two parents,  four grandparents, and a whole slew of friends who will never forget her. I hope you're in a good place now, Claire. 

We had these ridiculous poodle skirts left over from some function. For some reason we used to put them on and wear them while jumping on her backyard trampoline.

as I will always remember her

Clinical Post of When a Friend Passes (I'll get more real later.)

flowers Matthew picked from yard

This doesn't really apply because it's probably about a much older person, and I also read it's really not about the loss of life, but to me it certainly seems that way.

                                                                       

the last picture I have of her, taken late  last summer - she's on the left

This post is rather melancholy as blogs go. I lost a friend to non-Hodgkins lymphoma today. She'd been fighting it for a couple of years. It looked as though she had it beaten, but it came back stronger than before, and she couldn't fight it off  it the second time around.  I was able to visit on Saturday. She was still mentally alert even with the drugs they had given her,  No one was giving up yet, and I don't think they did until it was over, which made her death all the harder for all of us to accept. Sometimes a family and the patient's close friends reach a point where they've seen the patient suffer too much and are ready for the fight t be over. Such was not the case in Claire's situation. She hadn't yet given up, nor had those around her. She would have been twenty-two in six months.

In Claire's case, as in many cases, it wasn't the cancer than killed her. Her only chance of beating the disease was very aggressive treatment, which in the end was too much for her body. She developed s raging case of pneumonia, largely because the drugs given her to fight the lymphoma left her immune system in a state too weakened to fight off anything else, and then pneumonia made its home in her body. there was nothing more that could be done. she came close to winning the proverbial cancer war, but not close enough.

At the request of her parents (I don't think they'e looking for a lawsuit;  I really just think they want to know for their own peace of mind that they helped Claire to make the best choices.) Since she didn't make it, one might assume that the wrong choices were obviously made, but such is not necessarily the case.  She's  a legal adult and was insistent on calling the shots herself, although she listened to what her parents had to say because she was frightened by what he was facing and knew that she was too young to know everything. Her parents  called my dad early in the process, and he offered to be of any assistance that he could. He was in contact with her doctors from the very beginning.

My dad read everything new and re-read everything he had read before. He says there's not a thing that he would have done differently.  He,  like Claire's doctors, chooses aggressive therapy in most cases. He says it's usually a patient's only chance. Sometimes the patient loses. Claire might have had a few more months with her family, and if they could have looked into that proverbial crystal ball, maybe they would have chosen that less aggressive choice in exchange for a few extra months. They didn't say that, though. My dad said that Claire's only chance was to fight the lymphoma hard  and fast. In her case, it didn't work out. My dad said the cancer was going to kill her in two months maximum time if she hadn't fought it aggressively, and that it was going to be a painful death even with drugs.  As it was, she died somewhat peacefully in her sleep.

We can all second-guess ourselves until our faces turn purple, but Claire ultimately made the call, and it was one that gave her a shorter life than she would otherwise have had. Only she knows for sure if that's the way she would have had it had she known the outcome.

This is the closest person to me that I've had die in my lifetime. It's also the only person  with whom I was personally acquainted who has died  when I actually understood medically what was happening. Though I don't want to make this about me, because it isn't. It does make me think about my own mortality and how few guarantees there are in life,

The funeral is Saturday. I'll be playing at it, but I don't know what, as kin what instrument or what songs. . I'll find out what the family has n mind.  Claire never had time to tell anyone what she wanted.

I have more to say about other topics, but they can wait for another post. I also have more to say about Claire. When I'm ready, I'll write my personal tribute to her. Right now I'm too absorbed with the details of her illness and death to think about the short but awe-inspiring life she led. Rest in peace, Claire.

Stuck in Folsom Prison: How NOT to teach Middle School Language Arts

Note: inspired once again  by one of Knotty's posts

In eighth grade I had a truly abysmal language arts teacher. I'm not sure how it's commonly being handled now, but back then,  in middle,  school language arts was typically a two-period class. The district knew they'd made a bad hire in the first week of school (or at least when district personnel learned a few weeks later about what had happened in the first week of school; kids have a way of keeping their mouths shut about even juicy school matter when it benefits them to allow the status quo to remain)  when they learned that  the teacher  had brought in issues of National Geographic and other more graphic nudie magazines to try to illustrate to us the difference between nudity and actual pornography.) That particular practice, or the district's knowledge of it,  signified the beginning and the end of the teacher's employment with our district.

The district became aware of the "nudity versus pornography" assignment when my mother found copies of Hustler and Playboy stacked between Matthew's other school books. On a typical middle school afternoon, Matthew might not even have brought home any books or other study materials.
The stack of books was left on the dining room table. Because Matthew had a headache following the day's football practice   (unenlightened coaches were still denying students access to water during practices, resulting in many student athletes feeling ill on a daily basis following practice), my mother moved his books from the dining room table to his room herself instead of calling upon him to do it. She noticed a magazine sticking out from the stack of books and out of curiosity, took it from the middle of the pile to see what it was. She was horrified to see that it was Oui magazine - a periodical slightly harder-core  than either Playboy or Hustler on the porno scale. She questioned Matthew initially as to what he was doing with such smut, When Matthew claimed it was from school and for a class assignment,  she was skeptical  at the very least, but asked me for corroboration on the outside chance that there was any truth whatsoever to Mathew;s explanation. When she learned that he was telling the truth, the whole, truth, and nothing but the truth, she went to work the next day at our school district;s main office armed and prepared to call an emergency meeting of the school board, which, according to the Brown act, had to be publicized X number of days in advance.

The meeting was publicized the required number if days and was held, but the governing board, according to my mom, totally wimped out. They agreed collectively that the woman was not fit to teach, but also agreed with the superintendent that terminating her before the expiration date of her contract would cost more than it was worth to fire her. They instead decided to sacrifice the language arts education of roughly one hundred students for the remainder of the year.

A district more concerned with student welfare and less concerned with finances would have fired her on the spot, or at least would have found her a menial job in the district office until the end of the school year,  but it was cheaper to tolerate her incompetence for the remainder of the year and simply not offer  her  a contract for the following year than it would have been to remove her from  her teaching position mid-contract. (She's the one who assigned the book reports so she wouldn't have to prep any teaching materials the time I did the book report on THE ESSENTIALS OF PROCTOLOGY.) 

Anyway, another of her low-prep teaching methods was to hook us all up with prisoners for pen pals.  I don't know if it was through WriteaPrisoner (I don't even know if the organization existed in my middle school days, through a similar organization, or if she just happened to be acquainted with enough prisoners that she was able to match one up with each of her students. My prisoner was Johnny McFarland. He sent me his picture, which I still have stored away in my box of memorabilia from middle school.He was a lifer at Folsom Prison, though I never found out what he was in for. We had to send our prisoners stamps so they could write us back. The project lasted for me through two letters, when my mom found out about it and made a few calls to put an absolute end to the project. The teacher hated me after that because she had been able to waste an hour per week for each of three classes on that assignment. Actually, losing the project was no extra effort on her part; it was just one more hour per week that the kids ran around the room screaming and chasing each other. It's not like she had to put forth any extra effort.

One girl in the class made the fairly serious mistake of giving out her home address to her pen pal. She thought since he was a lifer, it was no big deal, but he had a buddy in prison who won an appeal and got out of the big house, and he showed up on the girl's doorstep asking for financial assistance. It was a family with a single mother, and they ended up moving within a week. They moved in with grandparents until they could sell their house and buy another one. The girl's poor mother was totally traumatized, but I don't think the girl herself was all that bothered. She was a pretty heavy ditz queen and thought the parolee was cute in a rough sort of way.

Anyhow, if you choose to go into teaching and you want your students to have pen pals, you would do well to choose some facility or organization  other than your local penitentiary as your source of pen pals for your student. Write to prisoners yourself if you feel so compelled, but don't set your students up with pen pals from Cell Block H.

Judge Alex, My Touched Mother, Dirty Laundry, and Other Equally Weighty Matters

not my own laundry, by the way; I don't have a clothesline, and it would take three of me to fill up those granny panties or boys' briefs or whatever they are

I have what my mom considers a very obnoxious tendency of airing dirty laundry -- my own and everyone else's -- in public. In this particular case, i sent pictures of myself to Judge Alex for the sole purpose of showing him that I am getting fatter. you may think I'm a typical girl with typical-girl body image issues, and I think i'm too fat, and I'm lamenting the idea that I'm gaining weight. almost nothing could be further from the truth. My dad sometimes refers to me as an albino Somalian refugee, and he's not all that far off the mark. Such is particularly the case when he references one of the pictures of me from a year or two ago wearing a swimsuit.

One of the pictures I sent to Judge Alex was one of me wearing a swimsuit. Thie knowledge of my having done this very nearly sent my mother directly to the nearest psych ward. (All it take in California is , I think, two doctors signing an order to that effect, and the person may be placed in such a facility even against his or her will.  i'm not sure which two doctors in the family would have risked my mother's wrath by signing papers to have her temporarily committed (she's quite lucky my brother and I are not yet licensed to do so) but there was just cause from her reaction to my having sent photos of myself to Judge Alex.

"What in the hell are you try to do to the poor man? Break up his marriage?" she demanded

Let us be real for just a moment. If photos of skinny little me, looking all of seventeen on a good day even if I am actually twenty, were enough to break up any marriage, that marriage was destined for Divorce Court  just as much as if a voluptuous woman had sent nude selfies to the man.9(I'm neither voluptuous nor did I send nude selfies, just to clarify matters.)

I would like to think Mrs. Ferrer has more confidence in herself and more faith in her husband (who was, after all, once voted the most trustworthy man on television)  than to be threatened in the least by photos of a pale skinny little girl who looks like she's maybe but not for certain recovering from some life-threatening illness.  She is from all accounts a beautiful, intelligent, articulate, talented woman in her own right. What about photos of someone who is younger than her younger child and looks even younger than that, in addition to looking somewhat malnourished, would ever make her doubt her husband? We must face facts here: my own mother is touched in the head. (This is one of  my favorite Okeyisms.) 

possibly where my mother belings

I'm not going to post what I sent to the judge, but I'll post another one, and you tell me whether you would look at it and think the sender was trying to be a seductress or more likely begging for alms for the poor because of her state of thinness.

Bathtub Drownings, DMV Inefficiency, Phone Companies (chirp, chirp,) That I Now Hate, and Other Rantings

Perhaps this is the safest way to go; it's advertised as something called an "air bath." I haven't a clue as to how it differs from conventional sleep.

I do not wish to become the next Whitney Houston. I'd have no problem if I woke up tomorrow morning with, instead of  a voice that sounds like a moderately talented fourth-grader when I sing, something that sounded more like what the late Ms. Houston sounded like in her prime. What I mean is that I don't want to drown in a bathtub. In actuality, I don't want to drown anywhere, but  bathtub drowning is the current topic for reasons that will become apparent in the following paragraphs.

Today immediately following my two hours of E.R./clinic duty, I traveled to a nearby city so that I could stand in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles to pick up my temporary Handicapped Parking placard. In theory, I had an appointment. In real life, having an appointment at one of California's typical Department of Motor Vehicles offices means you wait for two hours instead of four. I suppose I am overstating it when I say that I stood in line. I stood in a random location waiting for my number to  be called, as opposed to standing in an actual line. Before my number was called, an elderly man offered me his seat, but I declined, as he seemed more in need of the seat than I. I don't know what the able-bodied people in chairs thought when they saw that the man, who must have been eighty-five if he was a day old, offered me his seat, but his offer certainly didn't shame any of them into giving up their own comfortable seats.

There's a certain demographic segment of our population that cannot travel anywhere for any sort of business without taking an entire extended family, including at least four minor children, two adults who appear to be the parents of the at-least four minor children, and usually at least one older adult who may or may not be a grandparent to the minor children. Three groups fitting this demographic description took up at least twenty-two of the DMV office's available chairs. (This was similar to my recent experience in the E.R. ) I wish offices and other places of business would set and post limits on the number of seats one party is allowed to occupy when the transaction doesn't require the presence of all of the individuals occupying seats. I'm going to suggest this to my relatives who have their own practices or other places of business. A pediatrics appointment may be an exception, as sometimes both parents want to be present for a given appointment, and it may involve bringing other children in the family along to the appointment. Even in those cases, though, each parent could hold at least one child in his or her lap if the waiting room happened to be crowded.

Anyway, following standing on crutches in a DMV waiting room, not to mention having to walk nearly two city blocks on crutches to the DMV because a business located adjacent to the DMV chose to have some sort of promotion where they were blasting loud music (which was so loud inside the DMV office that the employees and customers or whatever we were called were having to shout at one another to be heard) and handing out free nachos in vain attempt to entice customers into their place of business and took up at least twelve parking slots with their little impromptu fiesta/promotional event, I was exhausted. By the time I reached home. I'm not naming names, but, because of the headache I incurred as a result of the music of roughly the same decibel level of that one would encounter at a rock concert, I will never as long as I live, even if it's free or if the company pays me for the privilege, own a phone or use a phone plan from the company named for an insect that hops wildly and says "chirp, chirp" at night.

I'll never purchase a phone or sign up for a plan from these people because I HATE them.

When I got home, I wanted nothing more than to take a warm bath and then to crawl into bed for a nap. I went through the tedious process of wrapping my casted leg in a garbage sack and sealing it with rubber bands, then  awkwardly easing my body into the tub of water. As it worked out,  the nap happened before I made it to bed. I fell asleep in the bathtub. I'm not sure how long I slept, but I woke up when I turned my head sideways and got a nose full of water. It seemed  wise at that point to vacate the bathtub. I went through the laborous process of getting myself out of the tub with one leg hanging over the edge, unwrapping my leg, drying off and getting into pjs, and eventually made it to my bed. I took a pain pill and had a semi-decent nap. At least the headache went away.

I would like to note that I deliberately delayed taking the narcotic until after I was safely out of the water. If I learned nothing else from Whitney Houston's experience, I learned that consciousness-altering drugs and baths can be a dangerous combination, even if the single lousy Norco I took paled in comparison with what was found in Ms. Houston's system in post mortem lab tests.

But what I would like to know is this: is it inherently dangerous to take a bath when one is a bit tired? Is drowning in the bathtub when not under the influence of any sleep-inducing drugs a common occurrence, or will the body typically wake a person up as soon as he or she gets a nose full of water, as happened to me.? I could ask this question in class tomorrow, but I'm embarrassed to ask it in person. Behind the cloak of  relative anonymity of this blog, I feel free to ask just about anything that wouldn't draw my blog into the direct headlights of homeland security.

What do y'all think? Are un-stoned people at high risk of drowning in bathtubs?

The Many Banes of My Existence by Alexis: Your Last Meal

The Many Banes of My Existence by Alexis: Your Last Meal: Knotty's post and my most recent blog, along with Becca's reply, have me thinking about last meals.  Most of us -- and I suppos...

Your Last Meal

Knotty's post and my most recent blog, along with Becca's reply, have me thinking about last meals.  Most of us -- and I suppose it's a good thing -- will not have the luxury of choosing a last meal.  A "last meal" situation is usually a "death row" type of thing or, I suppose if you stretched your imagination a bit, maybe you could have been kidnapped by the mob or some other nefarious force who planned to off you but benevolently decided you should have your choice of culinary delights before your execution-style shooting, hanging, or whatever manner of death was chosen for you. (Isn't this a most uplifting conversational topic?)

For the most part, however, God or some prophet or doctor doesn't appear in front of you and say, "Guess what? You're dying in 90 minutes! Now what would you like to eat?" And even if it did happen that way, you probably wouldn't waste your remaining ninety minutes eating. 

Actually, I think a death sort of happened in that way once on House, MD.  And we all know that House, MD, bomb ass series though it might have been, was the ultimate  
[ note:sarcasm font] realistic TV drama. House, MD was almost as true-to-life as any TV show featuring the Kardashians and Bruce Jenner. At least House, MD categorized itself as fiction, and the actors and writing were good.

a still photo from the actual episode "Wilson's Heart"

Anyway, Wilson's girlfriend, Amber  -- the one House hated with a passion and called "Cuttthroat Bitch"  throughout the reality series competition within the actual series that he held for the purpose of determining which doctors he would hire to replace Foreman, Chase, and Cameron on his team of fellows  --  was dying of some ailment brought on by a bus wreck, I think. Wilson had the choice of letting her die in peace or using drugs to bring her out of her coma so that she could say goodbye to everyone. Of course he woke her up; where would the drama have been if he'd just let her quietly die?

Anyway, she stayed awake as long as she could, bidding both friends and enemies fond farewells, before spending her final moments embracing Wilson until she could maintain consciousness no longer. Then she drifted off into sleep and death. The point here is that at no point did anyone ask Cutthroat Bitch what she wanted to eat or even if she wanted a final meal.  It's not a reality-based concept.  It's just something some states (not all, apparently) offer their condemned prisoners, maybe to somehow make themselves feel better about what it is they're about to do to the person.
My dad suggested it also hydrates the person, making veins easier to access if lethal injection is the means of execution. My dad is a cynic, as am I. We look for ulterior motives everywhere.

Anyway, getting back to the topic at hand: what would be your choice of a last meal?

I thought when I initially saw this photo that bobby might actually be eating some of his famous fried chicken, but a close look reveals a sesame seed bun. Doesn't Bobby Flay bear an uncanny resemblance to that Alfred E. Newman character from Mad Magazine.?

I told Becca that I would want four strips of crisp bacon, one very small chicken breast fried according to Bobby Flay's recipe, and one cherry-limeade from Sonic. If I could get one more thing down, it would be this: I would eat one teaspoon of vanilla butter cream frosting. My mom stopped asking me what kind of birthday cake I wanted a long time ago. She makes whatever cake Matthew wants, since we share a birthday. She either makes a batch or buys a can of white frosting - not that gawdawful whipped cream stuff, but real butter cream -- for me. Then everyone is happy.

colloid of the Gods

My mom can relate to my love of frosting because she likes 
it, too. She likes sugary stuff in general. When she was pregnant, she took a glucose tolerance test in which she had to drink a bottle of really sugary drink, then have a blood test right after, then a few hours later. Most people practically gag when they drink the stuff, apparently, and have a tough time getting the fluid down. Some don't get it down. My mom asked for an extra bottle of the glucose tolerance test substance and wanted to know if there was a place where she could buy it or from which she could order it.  We also eat brown sugar straight out of the box. Fortunately for both of us, our blood sugar readings are on the very low end of normal.  If either of us ever developed diabetes in any form, we'd probably last a week at best.

my mom's libation of choice except that she doesn't know where to buy it

Anyway I've shared my ideal last meal with you. Tell me what yours is if you have the time. Respond in the comments section here, email me at aleximerc@aol.com, or tweet me at
Alexis A. Rousseau @theangelalexis. I'm most curious as to what your answers might be.