Author Archives: Distractible Content

I am a dynamic proofreader and editor with a penchant for perfect spelling and flawless grammar. This site is designed to give me a space to share my work online, and more. I edit spelling and grammar by nature and am unforgiving in my editorial work, especially when editing my own work. I’m the person who finds editorial mistakes in books I’m reading and wonders what those lazy bums are doing at publishing houses. I also possess a considerable vocabulary and am always looking to express myself as eloquently, colloquially, or otherwise, as possible. I won an adult spelling bee sponsored by our local library district several years ago. Some of my editorial experience comes from the work I did for Intelligence Is Sexy, where I was regularly asked to edit other writers’ work. My command of American English and eye for syntax and grammar made me a helpful asset. I also got a substantial amount of editing work done when I worked for Madwire LLC as all of the Content Strategists edited and proofread each other’s work. I use Grammarly constantly (and disagree with it frequently) and read backward to catch stubborn spelling mistakes. Additionally, I proof and edit everything I read, and I am a voracious reader (since age 2). I don’t know how not to edit; I don’t have a way of turning it off. I’m highly familiar with style guides and have worked in APA, MLA and CMS at various points in my career.

19,000,000

Of us.

There are approximately 19 million people working as federal contractors in the United States. I am one of them, and I’m friends with a few others, too. About half of my colleagues are contractors.

When people start talking about slashing budgets in the federal government, we are not the employees anyone thinks of. When the clock is ticking on a government shutdown, nobody bats an eye at us… unless they are one of us, are related to one of us, or are friends with us. We occupy a wholly necessary but rather forgotten space in the federal ecosystem.

The scientists, doctors, lawyers, admin staff and various others at our many federal institutions are the ones people think of. And certainly, rightly so, but those affiliated otherwise aren’t top of mind. There are an estimated 2 million federal employees (not counting the military, obviously). We top their ranks by 17 million. And these people are absolutely vital, to be sure. But so are we.

When a shutdown is pending I’m gnawing at my insides. The last two near-shutdowns gave me and I’m sure many others unhealthy doses of anxiety. And I probably would still have had work, even away from my clients. For how long? No idea. What happens next? Well, my company is pretty awesome, and it bends over backwards to try to hang onto their employees. I’m lucky. Not everyone is in such a situation.

But imagine just moving along at your job and doing your thing, regularly being appreciated for what you do and being told your work is excellent, organizing your world and putting it all together, and then suddenly crashing into the monolith of an undecided, clashing Congress.

They still get paid during a shutdown. Their take-home isn’t impacted. They were going to go home for Christmas anyway. As agitated and frustrated as they might be, they’re not the ones potentially suffering. Also, federal employees get furloughed: they keep collecting pay even though they can’t work, and it gets appropriated back to them after the shutdown is over.

Federal contractors do not. There is no such mechanism for protection for us.

Yes, every job comes with its ups and downs, and I’m grateful that what happened in 2019 hasn’t happened again since. But we need to do this better. Congress needs to be held responsible. Their pay should be cut, too, and no furloughing for them. The current system disincentivizes them from giving a shit about people in my position and about federal employees.

I’m really glad I’m not sitting around twiddling my thumbs right now, or looking for work, or wondering how much longer I will have stuff to work on and if that number of days will be outdone by the Congressional smackdown or not. I’m grateful for my employer and my team and our client. I genuinely enjoy what I do and it appears I am mostly pretty good at it. I was not feeling so healthy on December 19, just a couple short weeks ago.

I don’t know how exactly to create this kind of change. I know Congress won’t like it. But I do know that it starts with participation. It starts with engagement. If anyone has any ideas about how I could speed the rest along, I’m SO open to them. Let me know.

This Particular Dumpster Fire

Whenever I start getting really down about the incoming twinsies (Presidency Trusk) or the fact that Congress is going to be a sea of red or the fact that tariffs are going to make purchasing things I need nearly impossible, I look back. In particular, I think of Depression-era recipes.

They can be gloomy. But they can also show how people who had next to nothing survived the extreme austerity of the time. They showcase incredible ingenuity and creativity, like using potatoes or cream sauces to stretch incredibly expensive beef cuts and grinds. They used beans in everything, and I mean everything. I found some such inspirations here; sorry in advance for the ads and whatnot. They’re really interesting to examine as an indicator of how we survived lean times. And in a lot of ways, they show us how much we rely on each other.

We’re nowhere near there. Most of us these days feel like we can’t survive without a mobile phone, which is interesting, since they’ve only been used widely for the past 30 or so years. Or Internet, which predates phones by only about a decade. Without access to relentless tech, we don’t know what to do with ourselves anymore. But for the first quarter of a million years of human evolution and existence, we managed without them.

We seem to have this worldview that’s only informed by the world immediately surrounding us. It tends to stop at the end of our noses. To say we’re lacking in perspective is a considerable understatement. And yet…if it came down to feeding ourselves versus paying our mobile bill, we’d let the phones go. Especially if it came down to them versus feeding our families.

What is most embarrassing about this time and place in human, but especially American, history, is our lack of willingness to throw any elbow grease at the problems. We mostly refuse to protest, refuse to contact our elected officials, refuse to vote. Then we have the audacity to turn around and play the blame game.

Anyone who has ever lived through a revolution will tell us we don’t want one. And we really don’t. The collapse of modern American society is not going to help us at all. We do need to figure out more inroads, however. We need to figure out how to take our power back. We have thrown it away almost entirely through scores of elections and non-participation. The Democratic process is on life support in this country.

A few things I think would help:

The media needs to stop covering absolutely everything Trusk and others do. We need coverage of the legislation being signed and the important things like that. We do not need eleven million photos of Muskie trotting about with his kid on his shoulders. The restoration of actual journalistic integrity is vital. Why would this help? 1: Show them they are not that important. People like Trusk wither and die without constant attention. 2: It gets us back to focusing on what’s important, instead of screeching incendiary rudeness to the rage bait that “journalists” supposedly write. A massive withdrawal of the paparazzi would be very useful. Get on them like white on rice when it comes to policy. But that’s it.
Building community for community’s sake. Lots of people know and trust their neighbors and that’s awesome, but lots of people isolate behind doom scrolling, alcohol, drugs, sex, other addictions. When we put the phone down and start paying attention to what is actually happening in our communities and in the world around us, that’s real engagement. That’s participation. And when we united on a grassroots level, that is the foundation of uniting on a national level.
Dare to be wrong. Instead of insisting your worldview is the only one that should exist, talk to people with opposing views and try to understand where they’re coming from. Or don’t talk about the incendiary stuff. Politics is a tiny slice of our lives; we have the whole rest of them to share with each other. Get creative and stay curious. I am not suggesting anyone give up on their morals and values, but I am suggesting that we all might relate on so many other aspects of our lives, our intelligence, and our hearts, than the flags we plant in our yards during election season.

To be clear, I absolutely don’t do any of this stuff perfectly, and I’m not suggesting you have to. These are just some ideas for building ourselves and each other up starting at our foundations. Who we are, what we want, how we gauge success, what makes us happy: you’re going to get a different bouquet of answers from every single person on the planet. How can we build each other up instead of tearing each other down? How can we stay curious and continue to invest in ourselves and each other in ways that are actually real.

Because the show in DC and government offices everywhere isn’t really real. The decisions being made can have devastatingly real consequences, but if we band together and determine that we call the shots, not them, we do’t need a revolution. Just an active, participating public.

Dondi

Bloganuary writing prompt

Write about your first name: its meaning, significance, etymology, etc.

View all responses

It rhymes with Gandhi, and is pronounced like it looks, or, phonetically, like dawn-dee. 🪷

There was a comic strip named Dondi that was syndicated from about 1955 to about 1985. I think my mom saved some of the comics for me from the papers when I was little. It was about a little boy with big eyes from Italy, a WWII orphan who emigrated to the United States and lived on dude ranches in the Wild West, and his adventures. 🤠

But I wasn’t named after him. I was named after my labor nurse, the woman who helped deliver me, and Dondi was her nickname. Her given name is Dorothy, and her older sister -who went to school with my mother, it turned out- wasn’t able to say Dorothy, so she called her little sister Dondi. And it stuck. 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

My parents could not choose a name for a little girl when I was born. They had a boy’s name – I was supposed to be Anthony. Tony. But they didn’t like Toni for a girl and they could not settle on a name. Dondi had gone off shift for a few days after my birth -I was a REALLY tough birth, with my umbilical cord strangling me and a cone head and feet that were turned in and then I got meningitis when I was 3 weeks old. My poor mom. 🤱

Anyway, when Dondi A. (her last name actually does begin with A…and mine with B, so…so perfect) came back on shift a few days later, she went to check on my mom. Still no name for me, and my mother barely remembered her helping when I was born, but she introduced herself brightly, “Hi, I’m Dondi A!” And my parents turned to each other in awe, and I was thusly named Dondi. Dondi Leigh B.👩‍⚕️

Childhood was a little rough. Crocodile Dundee came out when I was in kindergarten or so, and the playground taunt was “Crocodile Dondi!!” Kids can be bastards sometimes. I got so sick of it that from ages 10-14 I gave myself a nickname, Sunni, and required everyone to call me that. Including my parents, who were pretty broken-hearted about it.💔

At fourteen we moved WAY West and I met a boy who LOVED my name, and I dropped Sunni like hotcakes. The relationship eventually fizzled, but I’m still grateful to him for loving my name and helping me come back around.😍

Dondi A came to a lot of my birthday parties when I was really little, but my family fell out of touch with her and I had no idea where she ended up. My mom said Northern California, but as it turned out, she was actually in Southern California, in a town close to the town I was going to be traveling to when I visited a friend in a few months. By the power of social media, we were reunited, and by the power of my buddy being willing to drive an hour out of his city, we met with Dondi A and her husband for brunch a couple months after my 40th birthday.✈️

Dondi A is wise and beautiful and kind. She reminds me a lot of my mom and she is a really lovely person. After being a labor nurse for awhile she went to midwifery school, where she became a midwife (surprise! I know…). She also met her husband, who is a midwife, there. He’s a really cool guy too. We had a few moments at the table where either my male friend or Dondi’s husband said our name, and we both turned to see what they were saying. Something that doesn’t happen very often to us Dondis (the plural form of Dondi is Dondis. Dondi’s means “Dondi is/has”.) I had a great time with my dear friend, but meeting Dondi A for the first time that I remembered made my whole year. Possibly several years. She is a brilliant, vibrant, intelligent woman with a giant heart. I’m so happy and grateful that she gave me my name; I look up to and respect her immensely. 🥰💜💜💓💕💞💝💖

There are only 1140 Dondis in the United States, and most of them are male (65%). So I am happy to share my name with about 399 other women, most especially Dondi A. When the notable (male) graffiti artist Dondi White died in October of 1998, his obituary was the first time I saw my name in print, and I quickly became very interested in getting my own name in print (preferably not in an obituary).📰

Having my name means introducing myself to people multiple times, especially if the atmosphere is loud, coaching people on pronunciation, and simply giving up when some people keep mispronouncing it. My wonderful project manager, who I hold in high esteem, mispronounces my name every time she says it. She says it like it’s DOAN-dee. And it’s not, but I just sit back now. It’s not really that big a deal. 😹🤣

But being a Dondi is. Being a Dondi is really cool. People love my name, and once a couple in a nearby town where I used to live named their baby after me, which was such an honor. They just loved my name. I knew them because they shopped in the grocery store where I was a cashier regularly, and they raved over my name. Finding out that they were going to name their daughter Dondi made me incredibly happy. What an honor. 🎇🤩🎉

I spend a goodly amount of my time in gratitude, and I am so grateful to Dondi for sharing her name with me, and for the couple who loved it so much they named their daughter after me. I hope the name doesn’t disappear. Even though it’s sometimes a pain to explain or help others understand how to say it, it’s an incredibly special and unique name and, while I spent some of my childhood being teased and even made myself into Sunni for awhile, I love it now and wouldn’t give it up for anything. 🌞🌈🎂😁😊🥳✨🪄🧝‍♀️

a glacial pace

I started seeing a man recently. I shouldn’t say we’re seeing each other; we’ve met twice and it’s more like we’re getting to know each other.

On the first date he said that he wanted to take things slowly when we parted ways. I agreed, and he meant it. We’ve hugged four times: when we met, after the first date (coffee), when we met the second time, and parting ways from that date (climbing gym). We text a bit: not obsessively, but just to say hi and keep in touch. We’ve exchanged a few photos. He sent me a great photo of him in California on a sunny day. I sent him back one of me at that moment: pulled over on the bike path, sweating and smiling under my helmet. So many of his photos are outdoors. All of the one on his dating profile, and the others he’s sent me, except for pictures of his cats and his basement project at the moment. He’s building a woodworking shop in one area of his basement.

We met on a dating site that rhymes with…grumble. He’s smart, funny, has a great sense of humor that I’m getting used to (it’s drier and more deadpan than mine, and I really love it). Taking things slowly translates to not even attempting to kiss me, giving friendly hugs, and not knowing where each other lives (we know the general area) or each other’s last names. He’s just insert first name here and I’m just Dondi. Of course, there are fewer than 1200 Dondis in the US, and I’m pretty easily findable. But I get the feeling that he has better things to do with his time than stalk me. I’ve offered to help with his project a couple of times. I’m not much of a carpenter, but I can measure things and hold things in place and whatnot. He arches a brow and nods in appreciation. He sometimes texts back right away, and sometimes not. He’s astute and intelligent, and smiles warmly when he cracks jokes and at my attempts at humor.

In case you weren’t aware, rock climbing has a certain intimacy to it. Checking knots and belay devices and such has you reaching for the other person’s waist area and standing closely together. One of my friends got her husband to start dating her by continually pretending to fall off bouldering routes into his arms when they were climbing partners. There was none of that at the gym when we went: we treated each other like regular climbing partners. Like a couple of straight dudes who climbed together. His jokes crack me up and he makes me smile. I genuinely appreciate his intelligence and candor. And I even more appreciate the glacial pace at which this relationship is progressing.

The last first date I had was horrendous. The guy was all over me all night (not in necessarily socially inappropriate ways; we were in a bar, but he was rubbing and touching my legs and arms and trying to kiss me all night). I never heard from him again and I am incredibly grateful for that.

With this new person, we text when it’s convenient. I’m freezing some apple cinnamon muffins I made for him, whenever I see him next -likely next weekend, but whatever works. My exuberance got me in trouble for a minute with one text message, but that got sorted and smoothed over.

It’s as if this guy has a life and expects me to have one, sends texts here and there when he thinks of it, and expects me to do the same. There’s no obsessiveness, no need to constantly be texting, and we don’t even talk on the phone. When we see each other we have a lovely time and when we’re away from each other we live our own lives. He knows that my regular partner is a guy I used to date (for two months, 28 years ago, when we were in 9th grade) and that he and I are planning to take some camping trips this summer, and there’s not even a whiff of weirdness around that. He’s encouraging and excited for my plans, genuinely. I’m not seeing anyone else, but I don’t know what his situation is, and it’s absolutely none of my business. My ego rages. “What if he’s seeing other women? Where do you rank? Do better!!!!!” And I smile and take a deep breath and get grateful.

I’m grateful for this unusual glacial pace. I’ve been wanting to take things slowly for awhile. What’s the hurry, anyway? I have plenty going on outside of him, and that goes both ways. And we respect each other’s space and needs, and enjoy getting together when we make plans. It’s really refreshing. I always look forward to seeing him again, and I wonder what we’ll do next. Maybe Meow Wolf? The Fort Collins Art Museum (tiny and somewhat decrepit, but cute and fun)? Who knows…

Vanity, oldening

My hands have spread to Large lately, just in the past year. Over all of the widening and spreading and thinning and whatnot over the years I still had small hands, delicate fingers. They’re fleeing now, too: the North Face gloves I got last winter are persnickety to take on and off, at best. Curses snatch themselves from my mouth as I spend inordinately long fiddling with too-tight fingersleeves…

I notice it in the mirror the other day: I am apparently flaking, much to my surprise. Hair, skin, lips, all of it just sloughing off. Where clear green eyes once set firmly below slightly edgy brows, they now peer out from asphalt under-eyes. I brush the cottage-cheese stomach and thighs I still need to lose 60 pounds from and find my face in the bathroom mirror, twisted into disgust. What’s wrong with you?

It doesn’t help that I’m going broke, spend nearly all of my time alone, have to give up lifelong writing dreams that were beginning to fledge, have no significant other or children, and that most of my family is 3000 miles away.

My mom is here though. She’s 68 years old, and she hates it when I mention her publicly. Somehow over the years, while she is visibly older in ways like her skin starts leaking blood as soon as a blade or anything else is within sizing9-up distance, and her hair is now grey and white, she’s gotten so much more beautiful. Ethereal, almost. I mean, don’t tell her that, at least not if you’re me. But she is.

While our highly dysfunctional relationship remains that, she is a model in so many ways. She may not like me, but she does love me, and when we make the tiniest effort, we get along just fine.

And I decide to go nuke some of the mashed potatoes she made for us for Thanksgiving, a little lumpy but SO delicious, and some of the turkey, too, before I head to my volunteer shift. The sixty pounds can wait, and I’ll be riding my bike here shortly, anyway.

Who Else Gets Sick From Grass Fed Beef?

So, grass-fed beef is absolutely better for you than conventional beef.

Grass-fed beef is much leaner than conventional beef. It’s got higher levels of antioxidants, vitamins, a beneficial fat called CLA (conjugated linoleic acid), and 50% more omega-3s, the super high-quality fats that most of us think about getting from salmon.

Grass-fed beef is safer, too. It contains much fewer superbugs -bacteria that has become resistant to 3 or more strains of antibiotics- so it’s considered superior from a food safety standpoint.

So I love eating as healthfully as possible, and as soon as I heard about grass-fed, I was onboard. Sign me up for some goodness the way nature intended! I was totally down.

My body, however, was not.

I get horrific digestive problems and stomach cramps when I eat grass-fed. I am in total torment over this. I want to consume this stuff. I want to support the industry. It seems, however, I’m going to have to take a backseat on this one.

I can’t eat this stuff. I don’t want to spend three days in intestinal peril after having a burger I paid 3xs the amount I would pay for the conventional alternative.

Cows say “Mooo”, and I say, “Noooo”. Yes, I’m grateful this is happening. Of course I will support it. But at the end of the day my McDonald’s-and-conventional burger-raised belly is not having it. I ate too much garbage for too much of my life, and I can’t handle the premium stuff now. This sucks.

Anyone else run into this kind of problem? I know grass-fed is nothing new and yes, this idea for a post has been stewing (or maybe mooing) for awhile. I feel like I have an inferior body. I definitely don’t eat McDonald’s anymore, but I definitely chowed down on plenty of Happy Meal burgers growing up. God damn you, McDonald’s.

The omega-3s thing was, for me, the most exciting part. I could get omega-3s by eating something I already loved!!

Alas, it does not love me. Ah, well.

Amazon

Maybe because I’ve had a bit of a cantankerous morning today. Maybe because I’m watching a specifically inflammatory episode of Criminal Minds, one of the ones that gets me really fired up. But whatever it is, I had to spill. I’ve been noodling on this topic for a long time and it’s just really starting to overflow. I’ll be posting this too on my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/dondi.

An Amazon driver just dropped off a package for me at 8:05pm on Sunday night. He had a kind affect and appreciative demeanor when I said I’m so sorry for the treatment he receives from his employer. He came into my apartment -at my invitation- and fed some treats to Sox (that he had with him…he carried treats in case he comes across any kitties, which just blew my mind). We shared a brief conversation largely centered around exploitative labor practices and I asked if I could give him a hug. He was such a truly sweet, kind, lovely man, and I thought, I bet there are things he would rather be doing on a waning Sunday evening than delivering packages for possibly the most horrible company -in terms of how they treat their employees- on the planet.

Anybody else around here want to gather as many Amazon shoppers as possible and go on a weeklong (or longer) Amazon fast so that we can all show Bozo who really runs his ship? Imagine, literally nobody orders from Amazon for a week. It might just bring it, and Bozo, to its knees (my friend Jon Murphy can probably better advise on this). Or at least send a wake-up call, that their terrible labor practices won’t be tolerated, that humans deserve better treatment, and that people’s lives are worth more than free overnight shipping.

I realize that there are plenty of people drinking the Kool-Aid and saying that Amazon has revolutionized so much, their employees are fairly compensated, etc. None of that is true. We all continue to be slaves to an enormous monopoly, consumers and employees alike. Slaves to ludicrously fast shipping, and labor practices that push employees to the brink or worse by the THOUSANDS EVERY DAY, and for what? The chance to be further exploited, ourselves?

I’m sick of the massively well-documented, brutal labor practices, the anti-unionization, the pee jars, the fact that they open up in labor deserts and people have to work there because it’s the only gig in town. I’m sick of us not being able to wait a few fucking days for our merchandise; the last time I ordered from them I was informed it would be there “overnight, between 4-8am”. Is it just me or does anyone else think this is a completely unfair practice? Do YOU want to get up at 3am to start a package delivery route for the most horrifically exploitative company in the world, which pays $15-20 an hour, while $25 is largely considered the base living wage at this time? Where employees have no voice, no backing, and management has next to zero accountability?

What can we do? What do you think? Are pee bottles and nervous breakdowns on shift the new normal, or can we be better…people, citizens, friends, more? Why don’t we strive to be better? Is instant shipping really worth that much? How can we sleep at night with the blood of so many on our collective hands?

Host John Oliver of Last Week Tonight, produced by HBO but available a few days later on YouTube for free (a comfortable arrangement if, like me, you’re looking to lower your entertainment budget rather than increase it) has produced many shows on Amazon, but I believe the best one on their labor practices is his show about “Union Busting”. Be warned: if this topic is already getting you riled up, this may leave you enraged.

I’m interested in hearing from anyone and everyone from this but especially people who love Amazon and consider their practices to be justified, or maybe just not bad enough to warrant action? To give up next-day shipping, free overnights? What is your reasoning? How does this work for you? I’m genuinely compelled and curious about this.

I love you all, and I hope to hear back from you.

Love,

Dondi & Sox

Cooking Yellow Rice

I pack books while the water boils, my bookshelves now nearly emptied. The move isn’t for a couple of weeks but I’m getting a jump start on the stuff I don’t use. My books I treasure, but I can treasure them secreted away in boxes until we arrive at our new home.

I pour probably too much oil into the pot and cut the bag open; it’s been awhile since I made yellow rice, years now. The bag beckoned my from the shelf in its shiny bright wrapping. Cutting the bag open releases the scents of the raw spices, the saffron, the bell peppers and other vegetables, the garlic, the hydrolyzed corn protein. Cooking processed food isn’t much my game these days but every once in awhile, I fall prey to remembering my mother cooking us yellow rice to have with tacos on special nights. I think they were special because we could afford all of the ingredients.

The pot beckons and I pull back from the bag, from the sharpness of the raw, the dehydrated chicken and the celery extract. Pouring and stirring with practiced hands, I inhale the spices and the fake food products as the boiling water releases their aromas. I inhale carefully, I don’t really want hydrolyzed corn protein to go directly to my brain, but it smells of childhood times with my family and, later, taco nights as a grown up. I’m cooking it now just to have with some cold cuts, but maybe the actual chicken I have slowly defrosting in my fridge will defrost quickly enough to enjoy with the remainder of it. I suppose I could gobble it all now, but the diet plan prefers that I don’t and really, so do I. The package says it’s five servings; I don’t think I need all of that to myself. At least not in one night.

My cat Sox howls at my left calf, pressing his silken body against my stubbly leg. It’s time for his dinner too, and I crouch to grab the container of his food from the bottom of the rack a few feet to my left. He is very interested in the container and I have to push him back from sticking his little face in and gobbling. He’s as adorable as he is persuasive, and I gently fill his food dish, one that is a kind of puzzle for him to get to the food. It pounds cruel but he eats too quickly, and I don’t want the food to form a brick in his stomach, so he has to paw the food out of the dish to eat it. It’s kind of adorable, him pawing his food out to crunch down. Sox is a tuxedo with a ‘milk chin”, a little white stripe that runs from the chest patch of white all the way to the tip of his chin. It’s beyond adorable. Excuse me.

Fortunately, that’s really all you have to do to make the rice, cover it, lower the heat to quite low, and let it cook for 20-25 minutes. I forgot to set a timer, but I’ll survive. It’s not like I haven’t done this before.

Of Gods and Dragons

Most of my memories start with, or heavily involve, my mother. This could be because I’m her daughter, a girl-child more impressionable under her mother’s influence, or it could be because I’m her firstborn and I’ve idolized her since the moment I first saw her. It could be because ever since my little sister was born, I’ve been trying to get her all to myself again. It could be because she worries a lot more about me than about Emily.

But probably it’s because I’ve spent more time with her than with any other human on Earth. Dad was wonderful, but he departed this planet’s shivery mortal coils fourteen years ago, when I was just twenty-six. I can’t believe I’ve spent so much of my life a half-orphan. Besides, while my father and I got along famously, he still made me nervous. He had a roaring temper and would get set off by the smallest thing. It got better as he aged…a little. But he was always unpredictable, and in some ways that was fantastic -whitewater rafting! Going to the beach! Cheering on the New Jersey Devils!- but it was also a little upsetting, a little unnerving. I was an anxious kid prone to bouts of depression; I love my Disneyland Dad but no matter how many times during my teenage years I told her -forcefully, practically spitting, sometimes actually spitting- that I hated her my mom was my first love, and I would never stop loving her.

Over time, my love for her has just grown. Through a decade-long battle with the same illness she and my sister both had, there were multiple occasions where she thought she’d lost me forever, that the next time she would hear about me it would be a phone call from a police officer or worse, a drunk friend of mine. But alcoholism wasn’t going to kill me anymore than it was going to kill her or my sister; I was just a late bloomer. My sister got into recovery at 21 and stayed put. I meandered in and out for the better part of 15 years, acquiring 3 DUIs in the process. You never know how much you value your freedom until you wake up in a jail cell. And they’re never like movies with the black bars and the slamming doors. The last time I was in one they considered me a suicide risk -rightly so; I’m pretty sure I told them I wanted to kill myself- so they put me in this narrow corner rectangle walled in by Perspex or something similar. I slept eventually, probably right after I thought I would never get to sleep in that place.

Mom was there, too. She stopped by the jail after they called her to see if she could pick me up, but it was too late; they wouldn’t release me until the morning, so she left me a note. I still have it. “It’s not how many times you fall down, it’s how many times you get back up,” she’d written in her characteristic handwriting. When I was a kid I used to reverse-brag to other kids about how I could never forge my mom’s signature for a note for anything because her handwriting was so unusual. It didn’t occur to me that teachers had better things to do with their time than compare parental permission letters to make sure the handwriting was consistent. It was a strange thing to talk about, but I was a pretty weird kid.

Mom came to get me the next morning. I’d trashed the car that she had given me to drive; almost three years later, I still don’t have my license or a car. While I’m sure she was at the absolute end of her patience with me, she somehow knew not to lay into me. Maybe it was the look on my face. I couldn’t take it and she knew. Instead, she started railing against the disease, apologizing for giving it to me along with my dad. Saying how sorry she was that I got stuck with it, too. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion that both Emily and I would become alcoholics: both parents, both grandparents, and Irish/Native American heritage virtually guaranteed it. We were screwed. My sister got the memo pretty early on. Me…it took a while. But that was the last time I drank. Some of us just take longer than others.

…still working on this one

Dementia Sucks. Here’s One Way we can Fight it.

Imagine actually losing your mind. Suddenly things that were familiar aren’t anymore. You don’t remember faces or people in photos. You find it tremendously difficult to concentrate. You don’t remember how or when to prepare meals. Your child or spouse seems to be a stranger to you. You feel like you’re slipping out of reality somehow, and you don’t understand why. It’s incredibly terrifying, and you don’t really know what, if anything, to do about it.

For the aging population, which is at an unprecedented growth due to the Baby Boomer generation, the thought of getting dementia is a frightening proposition. Dementia is a general term for a decline in mental ability severe enough to interfere with daily life. Some early signs of dementia are memory loss and trouble concentrating. Dementia is progressive, in terms of the illness’ growth and spread in humans. Alzheimer’s is a common form of dementia.

We know that dementia comes from damage to brain cells. We even know that different forms of dementia occur in different areas of the brain. We know that the damaged cells wreak havoc on our memories, our concentration centers, and our ability to focus.

We know that we can’t stop it once it’s started, at least not yet. Recently, however, a study conducted by the University of Exeter found some exciting results. So exciting that the World Health Organization endorses them. As it turns out, eating well, maintaining good health, and exercising can reduce the risk of getting dementia.

What’s more, the Exeter study returned specific, promising results for the people who are at the highest risk of developing dementia. Lifestyle changes to include a healthy diet including lots of fish and vegetables, exercise, quitting smoking, and drinking in moderation can cut the chances of those with the greatest likelihood of developing dementia by a third. Those with the worst genes for it, and the greatest chance of getting it, those who have watched parents or siblings or aunts and uncles get dementia and are convinced they will get it too, have a one-third lesser chance of developing dementia just by making some lifestyle changes.

Or, as co-lead of the Exeter study, David Lewellyn, stated, “This research delivers a really important message that undermines a fatalistic view of dementia. Some people believe it’s inevitable they’ll develop dementia because of their genetics. However, it appears that you may be able to substantially reduce your dementia risk by living a healthy lifestyle.” Now there is some fantastic news for all of us.