Japan Vacation

 I've always told myself that I don't like to travel. I'm a stay at home kind of person. Adventure is not in my DNA. 

I lied.

I don't like the physical act of travel. Airports are too big, crowds are too pushy and airline seats are uncomfortable for more than an hour. But I really enjoyed being in Japan.

My visit was curated by my daughter so we went places that matched our interests. We went to anime shops, crane game centers, Korea town. We did karaoke a couple of times and we went to the bougiest place I've ever been: streets of stores with names you only read in Vogue. Places that they would probably spray me with antiseptic if I dared walk through their doors.

(When stores have a bare minimum of items on display, that is Rich people speak for Shop Here. The bigger the brand, the smaller the display.)

We went to the biggest crosswalk in Japan where Mollie and I held hands crossing because it was a sea of people and terrifying. I saw the video billboards looming in the Japanese night including the cat that knocks things off the edge. I walked on Godzilla Street (an actual street). 

My favorite experiences: a skincare shop in Korea-town where a salesman swooped in on me and guided me to a display for wrinkle care. "Wrinkles," he said pointing at my face. Yes, I bought some.

At the drugstore I was alone and suddenly had to pee. Found an employee and used all the words in English bathroom/restroom/toilet. And he pointed at the sign right next to me. I was standing directly in front of the bathroom. :facepalm:

A small jewelry shop that had the kind of earrings I adore and so many of the items were copies of jewelry from K-dramas. So cool.

We didn't take the bullet train but we took lots and lots of trains and I saw train stations that were two platforms only to stations that took up multiple city blocks.

The best thing was that I saw how my daughter navigates the city and her life and I couldn't be happier for her. She's exactly where she should be and it felt wonderful to share her life. I hope I'll get the chance to go again.

What I Ate in Japan

 We went to a cafe that had cat robot food servers. That was fun. We ate chicken and salad and it was fair. 

Ate a local ramen and disliked the broth.

Went to a Japanese Italian restaurant and ate a green salad with shrimp in it and it was so ordinary and crazy delicious. Had some pasta that was too spicy to eat.

Had hot pot. The meat was boring but the seafood was really good. This was a group dinner with Mollie's friends and one of her friends made shrimp paste/potato balls and put them in the broth to cook but they fell apart. That broth was delicious.

Went to a totally bougie place where I had hummus that was amazing. I really don't like hummus but this was fresh and just so good. I also ate Brussels sprouts with tomato and pine nuts which was the best I ever had. Also had zucchini and goat cheese fritters which were tasty.

Had Chinese food that was boring but had the best mango juice I ever tasted.

Had Korean fried chicken balls (good) and tteobokki (Korean rice noodle) which I fell in love with and bought some packs to bring home. (I also made a pack for me and Mollie which was delicious.) 

Honey potato chips. Really addictive. 

Spicy soy noodles and shrimp. Good.

Had a Burger King Caesar Salad. Boring. Had a McDonald chicken fillet with shaken cheese and that was so good.

Had much less ramen then planned. Made 2 meatloaf's. Made some stir fry. Couldn't make lasagna as planned because there were no lasagna noodles to be found. Drank a lot of cold lattes to handle my coffee addiction.

The Final Countdown

 Today is Monday. Carolyn did not get results today and her doctor is out of office until Jan. 6. We're getting ready for a revolution, at this point.

Megan, who texted me a week ago with the ALS news, is now ghosting me. Carolyn said to give her space and time and she can have all the space and time she needs. It's just that I have limited time since I get on a plane to Japan this Friday.

I'M GOING TO JAPAN IN LESS THAN A WEEK!!

This is crazy: I'm so excited to see Mollie and finally experience her world. We have so many plans and I get to meet her friends and see her old boss (I met his partner and was smitten). We have a few special plans made and I'm just anxious to finally go.

So during the time I am gone, I'm not planning to do anything but enjoy my child and have fun. Let the world burn, I'm eating ramen. 

Holding...

 So Carolyn had her PET scan a month ago. She'd had a CT scan which showed stuff in her lungs that shouldn't be there. So a PET Scan is to determine if it's cancer.

After the scan, she waited. Someone should surely call her with results. Nobody called. Finally, (after much nagging), Carolyn called the imaging center and asked if the report was sent to her doctor. It was not. It was sent to a doctor she had seen once and had no further appointments with.

"Please send it to my doctor, the one who ordered the scan."

And the response: we'll snail mail it because I don't have your doctor's fax number. (Seriously? One phone call will take care of that.)

More nagging and Carolyn finally makes an appointment with her doctor. She tells them it's to get the PET Scan results. Finally she goes to her appointment and nobody has bothered to get the results. As Carolyn is sitting in the office, nothing happens.

This was on Friday. 11am. So the doctor tells Carolyn to go home and she will call that afternoon with the results.

No phone call.

Now it's the weekend and the week of Christmas. Carolyn doesn't know if she has lung cancer. Nobody in her doctor's office is treating this as if it matters.

Just another way that healthcare in the US fails us.

Megan

Today during therapy, while discussing the choice to withdraw from political awareness for awhile and try to concentrate on joy, I got a text message. After therapy I opened it to find the message was from Megan, a friend I had lost contact with in the last year or two telling me she's in hospice, dying from ALS. She's reaching out before she passes.

Carolyn gets the results from the PET Scan on Thursday. Hoping it isn't lung cancer.

I was holding it together. I really was. I leave for Japan at the end of next week and I just needed to make it and so of course, I got a mouth/tooth infection. Horrific post nasal drip. 

Did I mention the fire Thanksgiving night when the apartment directly below me had flames leaping from the window and I woke up to black smoke and sparks?

This is life. Life is what happens when you're making other plans. My plans were to try and stay out of survival mode and enjoy life. To do more than survive. To live in joy.

Existing is an act of rebellion. Joy is controversy. Carolyn's paintings are on the wall above the couch. Megan was with me when I found Murder. She helped me start on my healing journey.

This is disjointed and I apologize. I didn't cry. I ate an entire bag of potato chips while flipping through funny videos on You Tube. I took one of my carefully guarded narcotics because the mouth pain was unbearable (I'm on antibiotics). It was horrible.

Then I texted Mollie and I started to cry. Megan is only about 40 years old. She's neurospicy, carries a lot of childhood trauma. She had muscle pain. Our conversations were free flowing, lots of "me too!" moments. She's artistic and smart. She's too fucking young to die. 

I don't know how to do this. How do you say goodbye to someone who shouldn't be dying? How do you forgive yourself for not cherishing someone who deserved to be cherished?

How do we find joy in life when life keeps tearing at our souls? I really don't know how to do this. Survival isn't just rebellion. Sometimes it's a gift we did nothing to deserve.

A Shooter, A Dilemma, What is Morality?

 The death penalty should be abolished. Murder is a sin. Health insurance for profit should be abolished. Health insurance for profit is a sin.

So the CEO of United Healthcare was murdered as he was walking into a meeting where he was going to brag about the billions of dollars in profit that was made by denying people life saving care. Murder is a sin. The shooter committed a sin. The CEO and their board/shareholders committed a sin.

Blue Cross decided to limit the amount of anesthesia available to patients having surgery so they wouldn't have to cover the costs of life saving care. A Shooter killed the CEO of UHC. The BC CEO said "hey, we were just kidding. Have all the anesthesia you need."

Deny. Defend. Depose.

Online the conversation around the assassination is a general lauding of the shooter as a modern day Robin Hood. He's Batman with a gun. Except that the 8am meeting the CEO was going to still took place at 8am. His job was posted the very next day. People who deny life saving drugs aren't really going to give a shit over a man bleeding out in the streets. The internet is giddy but nothing has changed.

United Healthcare will not be changing its practices. Blue Cross will provide your surgical anesthesia but no doubt will raise the cost of cancer drugs and deny MRIs. The new Trump administration will find a way to gut Medicare and roll back the $35 insulin to the astronomical previous prices.

What did he accomplish? There were a few more Eat the Rich memes. People celebrated a bad man having a bad end. But all that really happened is that as a society we sink a little further down into the murkiness of the least common denominator. We become a little more unfeeling, a little less empathetic. The divide between us grows stronger.

Billionaires are societal scourges. They're in it for the money. Some give back but the Musks and Zuckerberg s and CEOs of billion dollar profit organizations; they are in it for themselves. But does that mean we should shoot them as a protest?

What did this accomplish? Because I enjoy the memes but I also worry that I don't give a shit that a bad man was killed in a bad way. I worry that as politeness becomes a thing of the past, as aggression and anger become louder and more actionable that we won't see a new French Revolution but rather the end of our society and the beginning of our end.

I Predict

 My prediction with a Republican government with no oversight:

1. Trump will hand over Ukraine to Putin. He will withdraw all humanitarian support to Palestine and help Israel wipe out the Palestinian people.

2. Trump will die in his sleep after a year or two. JD Vance will take the presidency. There will never again be another honest election. Possibly never again any election at all.

3. They will gut all healthcare (Medicaid gone, Medicare too expensive with no benefits). Pharmaceutical and insurance companies will make healthcare decisions. 

4. No more Dept. of Education. No EPA. Our preserved lands will be drilled. We'll speed up the process of destroying the planet.

5. Women will go 4B hard in America and and things will get dangerous as fuck. Police will have no oversight and rapists will see no punishment. Women will be jailed for "false reporting" men. 

I feel, in my gut, this election was rigged. It just makes no sense. How did Kamala have such a perfect campaign and so much support? How did she get a billion in donations? How did so many Republicans say they were voting for Kamala and she couldn't hit Biden's margins?

I know Americans hate women and more than that, they hate black women. I mean, they HATE black women. Maybe she never stood a chance and we were too blind to what America really is.

A little advice: get a passport. Make sure you have available cash. Make sure you have your documents available. Don't trust white people. (I mean that, as a white person, just don't.) America is going to get a lot more dangerous and it isn't hyperbole to say that we have to be prepared.

And if you know someone who might face "special treatment" (deportation, loss of rights, unsafe living conditions), be prepared to help. There is no looking away. We didn't do enough to keep our country safe. We need to do all we can to keep our most vulnerable safe.