Duh.

Finding out that a "No Dating" rule doesn't mean that boys will be completely gone from my life, and neither will thoughts/worries about dating. Why didn't I figure that one out sooner?

Sigh. And I thought I could escape it.

I am surprised every day

Interesting day at the clinic. This morning, Annabelle (who Ruth and I love) came in to get her feet done and brought her husband, Ron. They were so funny, joking and sticking their tongues out at each other and stuff. When Ruth told Ron she was almost 30 years old, he didn't believe her.

Then I asked him how old he thought I was, and he gave the answer I get most often: 17. When I told him that I am 22, his eyes got wide and his jaw dropped a little.

Right before lunch, some homeless guy I had never met before told me I was beautiful.

I went back into the office and was writing on a chart when his buddy asked how old I was.

"How old do you think I am?"

"Seventeen, if that," he said.

"I'm 22."

"Good," he said, "Then we can get married!"

"Uh, no," I said.

As we closed the clinic down a woman we have had some interaction with came and asked to speak to me privately. She is very sweet, but I'm pretty sure she is somehow mentally imbalanced. She's a lovable character, though, who is always asking the head nurse for something or the other.

We took her into the clinic and shut the door, and she asked if we had any cream for a yeast infection. We looked, but couldn't find any. Then she asked if we had any condoms. Ruth and I looked at each other and shook our heads no. She became distraught.

"Oh no," she cried, "What am I gonna DO?!"

I thought about it for a second and said, "Not have sex?"

She ignored my comment, but we finally got her out of the clinic and finished locking up. As we left, we found her standing in the hall asking all the guys in the rehab program if they had any condoms. (Just FYI, the program guys are required to be celibate.)

One of them said, "I could give you a disposable glove."

"Just because YOU'RE celibate doesn't mean everyone ELSE is," she yelled.

I honestly had never seen anything quite like it. It still makes me shake my head in disbelief, but I have to laugh a little, too. Not gonna make it through this year unless I keep laughin'.

Things in my life that have changed since 9/3/04

In no particular order:
1. I know how to knit.
2. When I say, "eating out," I now refer to McDonald's. (And, yes, eating out is still a treat.)
3. Going to Wal-Mart is also a treat, and I can no longer just waltz in and buy what I want.
4. I wear my hair in pigtails. Every day.
5. My friends in the area consist largely of homeless men and seven year-olds.
6. I only drink Dr. Pepper every other day.
7. I have developed an allergic reaction to California, I think.
8. I live under a "no dating rule, but am getting more action than I did this summer (namely hugs and kisses from homeless guys, but hey, it counts).
9. I miss things that, up until now, I have taken for granted. (More on that later, perhaps.)
10. I am now wondering how I am supposed to live the rest of my life, if I should adhere to this lifestyle or not.
11. I have seen the grosest sores, cuts and burns that I ever hope to see (but know I will probably see more.)
12. I have discovered that I have a pretty strong stomach (see #11).
13. I have now been "proposed to" by a homeless man and told by another that he and his friend will take me and my partner Ruth dancing.
14. I'm learning to be open and vulnerable with people I hardly know.
15. I'm learning new things about sarcasm and the word "fun."

By Langston Hughes

"Hope"

Sometimes when I'm lonely,
Don't know why,
Keep thinkin' I won't be lonely,
By and by.


(I like Langston Hughes because he was always looking for a home.)

Always a bridesmaid, lol

So I got the cutest card from one of my old college roommates today. (One of the two I lived with longest.) The return address includes her new last name, which has been different since May.

The other "old college roommate" sent me an email today asking me to look over her wedding plans. (She's getting married in January.)

It's just weird to think that they are both practically "Mrs.-es," and I am so far from anything remotely related to that. I guess I feel a little left out.

But it's an interesting dichotomy, because I really don't want to even think about a boyfriend or a husband. (Crap, I have enough roommates without thinking about getting one permanently.) Luckily, now I understand that boys are off-limits for the year, and it's kind of freeing, in a way.

I still have this weird feeling–and I haven't admitted this to anyone else yet–but I feel like Mission Year is almost preparing me to get married, somehow, helping me to be more vulnerable with people and ready to love and be loved. One thing people keep saying to us is that Mission Year is set up to make us all bump up against each other until our rough edges end up much smoother. I think that's true already.

And don't hold me to that "prepared to get married" comment–I just wanted you to know how I'm feeling, lol.

Blessings!

Etc., etc., etc.

In other news, I have been volunteering at an elementary school two days a week, which has been quite an experience already.

I spend a good deal of my day in a first grade classroom, where I work with some of the kids who are farther behind and just generally assist the teacher, Mrs. Buljko.

She has a pretty interesting story; she moved here from Bosnia eight years ago and didn’t speak a word of English. She wanted to teach school, though, because she had taught high school in Bosnia, and so she is working on her English and getting her teaching certificate. She still has some problems with spelling and verb tense, though, so I think it’s a good thing I picked her classroom to work in. She’s very sweet though, and hugged me when I told her how often I would come and when I told her that I worked with the after school program for free and every time I leave her room.

I also help out with the after school program by handing out snacks, yelling at kids when they need it and helping them with their homework. Apparently it’s a good thing I have a college degree to do all of those things. On Wednesday as I helped a second grader with her homework, she asked how to spell the word “friend.” I told her, but for some reason, she didn’t believe me. It didn’t matter what I did, she just couldn’t believe that there wasn’t another r in there someplace. Finally when I said, “I have a college degree, I THINK I can spell the word friend,” she said, “Really?” and copied it right down. Thank you, four years of hard work and thousands upon thousands of dollars.

I’m also slowly getting to know the kids in my class and those in the after school program. Mrs. Buljko told me that she was talking with her class about habits the other day, and one of the boys said that his habit was visiting his dad in jail. I expect to have a lot of stories like that by the time I’m done here.

On a more positive note, though, we are getting to know some of the people in our apartment complex as well. Last week one of the families had us over for a barbecue (and it was gooood) and this week we had them over for dinner as well. They’re all really funny, and we always have a good time together, so I’m looking forward to getting to know them (and eating at their house) some more.

And on a completely random note, I now have what I call “white boy radar.” Seriously. After being here for a little over a month, I can spot a white guy within a 50 foot radius. Sad, isn’t it?

Well, I think I’ll close this entry without telling you about our bathroom drain which is hopelessly clogged or the dance parties we have about once a week or how much candy I eat a day. Maybe next time, kids. Until then, stay safe and love everybody you meet like crazy. Oh, and send me mail, lol.

Again?

On Thursday Jared--a member of another team who volunteers at the shelter--came upstairs to the clinic to let us know that Ronnie was downstairs and wanted to see the nurse. I told him that I figured Ronnie would want to pull himself up the stairs and would only accept help carrying his wheelchair, but Jared told me that it didn’t look like Ronnie would be going upstairs with or without help any time soon.

Phyllis, the nurse on duty at the time, said there wasn’t much we could do for him, but that she’d go down and talk with him. I went with her as well, and we left Ruth (the emotional one) upstairs taking care of someone’s feet.

Phyllis did most of the talking when we got outside and found Ronnie sitting on the sidewalk. He said he needed more bandages, Q-tips (which he uses to clean out the huge wound on his face), socks and perhaps a sandwich. He also told us that he was losing feeling on the left side of his body as well as his vision. (As I leaned down to talk with him at the foot of his wheelchair, he said he couldn’t see my face at all.) Phyllis asked him if NOW he was ready to go into hospice care. He said no.

She left me downstairs with him as she went upstairs to get the supplies he had asked for, and so I talked with him briefly. Jared brought him an application to the drug/alcohol rehabilitation program run by the shelter, but Ronnie said he couldn’t see well enough to fill out the application. (He couldn’t even see the words to read them.) I told him that I could help him with it after Phyllis got him the things he needed. I could tell that he was quickly deteriorating; he was so much worse than when we had first seen him two days ago, so I decided to ask him about hospice and hoped I’d bet a better answer. He told me that no, he was not ready to go to the hospice hospital, because if he went there he’d DIE.

That was it. I was frustrated. Couldn’t he tell that he was DYING RIGHT THEN AS I LOOKED AT HIM? I mean, he was literally falling apart. Why didn’t he take the one good option available to him?

At this point I said, “Ronnie! We’re ALL going to die.”

Perhaps it wasn’t the most compassionate thing I could’ve mentioned or even the right thing to say, but my frustration had gotten the best of me. Luckily, at this point, Phyllis came downstairs and ended our conversation by handing him the things he had asked for.

We then decided that Ronnie and I would go into a room of the shelter on the ground floor so that I could help him fill out his application for the rehab program there.

I got to know a lot of things about Ronnie while I helped him fill out a ten-page application. I couldn’t really tell how much of it was true, but he said he had two doctorate degrees and had even headed the electrical and automotive department at a community college in my hometown.

He also said he was addicted to crack cocaine, and wanted to get off it before he started collecting his social security check, because he knew that if he didn’t do something, he was going to spend his money on crack even though he really wanted to spend it on food and housing.

However, the rehab program run by the shelter lasts about two years, and Ronnie only has a few more months to live. Pretty soon he will lose the ability of cognitive thought, and someone else will be making his decisions for him.

I don’t think he can accept that he is dying, which is why he must not be ready to go into hospice yet. Even as his body wastes away he assumes he has plenty of time to do other things and straighten out his life. It’s understandable; he’s only 41, but what a reminder of how short life really is!

After he and I finished filling out his application (me reading the question and repeating it, him giving an answer, me cleaning up that answer and writing it down) I found the rehab program director and asked him what to do with Ronnie’s application, at which point he informed me that I should just give it to him, but that there was no way Ronnie could join the program even just based on the fact that the program guys live on the third floor of a building without an elevator, which would make it hard for Ronnie to stay there. The program director had just felt sorry for Ronnie and couldn’t tell him no when he had asked for the application.

Afterwards, Ronnie was told he had to wait outside until the shelter opened at two, so I found him another sandwich and wheeled him outside. I’m interested to see if he shows up again on Tuesday.

This is my life?

Tuesday (10/5) was a very slow day at the clinic in the homeless shelter. . .until about noon, when my whole week got turned around. A guy in a wheelchair showed up at the door to the clinic with a bandage around the left side of his face and over his left eye. He was about the thinnest person I have ever seen, at he was pretty much covered in dirt.

He took the bandage off his face to show one of the nurses his wound (from skin cancer which was slowly eating away at his skin), at which time I got to see the most gruesome sore I have ever seen--and ever hope to see--in my life. It took up almost all of his left cheek and was so deep that I was surprised no cheek bone was visible; I’m guessing it was at least a half-inch deep. He said that most of the nerves were exposed, and apparently he had woken up that morning to ants crawling in and all over it, and wanted us to make sure that he had gotten them all out.

As he sat in the clinic we found him some food--much of which he couldn’t eat since exposed nerves kind of hurt when you chew--and his story slowly unfolded, a little bit to each of us. He has no family members to speak of; his only sister is in a coma at M.D. Anderson in Texas, who is dying of the same cancer as he. He has Medicare of Medicaid--I can’t remember which--which will pay for his frequent visits to the emergency room (because of seizures) but not his medications as it is based in South Carolina. He needs a California mailing address to get his prescriptions covered here, but doesn’t exactly have one as he is homeless (we got that taken care of for him, too).

Apparently he came to California from South Carolina when he heard UC Berkley was performing experimental surgery on the kind of cancer he has, which is how he got stuck here. Apparently his cancer was too far advanced for them to operate on, however, as they would have to remove large parts of his brain--where it has taken up residence--which would basically render him a vegetable.

He became partially paralyzed and paired up with his wheelchair when he survived a jump off the Golden Gate Bridge--one of the few people in history to survive such a thing. He told me he tried it after his wife was killed by a drunk driver. They had gotten married when she was 13 and he was 14, and he told me that they pretty much raised each other. She was 23 when she died and he told me that he hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol since; hasn’t been able to, actually.

He was a very independent guy, though; he wouldn’t let anyone help him up the stairs or to the bathroom. He said he had worked so hard to develop muscle in his calves that he wasn’t going to let it go to waste (or let anyone offer him any kind of help, it seemed).

Apparently he had been working as a mechanic until recently, when he just couldn’t remember how to put an engine together anymore because the cancer in his brain had taken such a deep hold. He refuses to get a disability check because he says there is a difference between being disabled and being handicapped. I’m still not quite sure how I feel about that one yet.

We did find out that he had been offered hospice care at a very nice facility but turned it down because he would have to sign over all his assets (what assets?) to them, and he wasn’t ready to do that yet. It seems to me that this presents him with a viable and comfortable option, but who am I to tell him what to do or how and when he should give up his independence, which is really the only thing he has left?

So we filled his anti-seizure medication, got him a mailing address and a place to sleep for the night. We also prayed with him, as is our custom, but please keep Ronnie in your prayers and ask that God might give him the wisdom and the strength to do what is best for him.

Celibacy

So I am learning that there is a big difference between choosing to be single and being told you have to be. A big difference.