Having the day off of work, as I work in an office, made for a relaxing day spent with my spouse and cats.  We shared our Crimble goodies at midnight, he receiving many superhero-based items from me and me receiving a new digital macro lens for my Nikon D70s camera and a CD soundtrack from the movie Breaking Glass.  We went to sleep late last night content, happy and each to our bedrooms.

This morning we spent an hour or two in front of the happy box (the one you are reading these words on now) before showering and getting ready to go out.  We had nowhere specific to go, no family was awaiting our arrival, no halls needing to be decked with boughs of holly or any other ornamental, decorative or otherwise.  We do not celebrate christmas, kwaanza, channukah, ramadan or any other deity-based religious holiday, but that is beside the point of this story.

Today, we had a mission in mind.  Twofold:  1.  To find a restaurant that was open, and 2.  To find a person eating dinner there alone so we could pay their bill  anonymously.   Now, this requires some planning and some skill to accomplish quietly.   The first thing it required on christmas day was finding a restaurant open.  We only had to drive about eight miles or so to find one.  We sat close to the entrance and surreptitiously watched the folks coming in to see if any likely candidates would present themselves.  We didn’t have to wait long, as three minutes after our dinner arrived (a beautiful salad with walnuts, cranberries, bleu cheese and balsamic vinagrette for me, and a patty melt and onion rings for he who is not diabetic) serendipity provided the target; a lone gentleman, approximately 50 years old.

Oh, and I should mention that he was dressed as Elvis.

Two-tone brown and beige suit, custom fitted.  Cowboy boots.  Gold-rimmed aviator glasses.  And the hair, yes the hair.  We are still not sure if it was all his, but it was pure black, of a modest pompadour style and the sideburns went on forever.  Awesome.

Back in the car, we then sought out a place for a to-go coffee, while listening to Hazel O’Connor’s beautiful early 1980’s New Wave voice and discussed what circumstances might have brought Mr. Presley to the restaurant today.  We ended up down in Wyandotte by the Detroit River where we saw a lone man on a jet ski traversing the cold and choppy waters.  He drew large, slow loops in the water a hundred or so feet from the waterfront dock and I noticed that a man with a large-ish camera was standing next to his car, watching him.  On the way home we discussed what might have brought him out on a jet ski when the weather was about 36 degrees.

We pondered if he knew Mr. Presley.

All in all, we report a good day.

I went looking for something appropriately sinister to shake off the last of shackles of summertime–the happy childhood screams of panicky joy, the endless eternal heat, the traffic jams, the sense of desperate fun.  It all just sucks the life right out of me.

It is now early September and with the first freshened and cool breeze at night my thoughts turn forward to my most favored season of all.

Halloween.

I found what I was looking for.  Chilly, dark music.  Something to make you forget how the hot vinyl of the seat stuck painfully to your legs every time you got into the car over the past month.  Nox Arcana.

Delicious.

I have my annual physical done every fall. Last October, my fasting glucose was 116, BUN and creatinine were high, and my TSH was high. The only thing the physician’s assistant saw when she looked over the two pages of my bloodwork results was the high TSH, so that was all she treated. The diagnosis at that time was hypothyroidism, and I walked out with a confused expression and a prescription for Levothyroxine.

Fast forward several months, and I am still not feeling much better, so off I go for a follow-up with the PA. Yes, the thyroid is now very nicely controlled, but my blood glucose is still high. More bloodwork, and all she saw (yet again) was the thyroid. She sent me on my way.

I have had trouble thinking, trouble sensing any of my emotions, trouble sleeping, trouble seeing small print. I have a feeling of being disconnected from the day to day of my own life. I was lying in wait, just hoping she would try to throw some antidepressants at me. Silly physician’s assistant. She would’ve had to have the prescription surgically removed from her shapely posterior. Too many doctors prescribe the damned things, and with no real reason.

I knew it was coming, the diabetes. After seeing my lovely lady doctor a month ago (for what? I can’t remember) I told her I would like to have labs drawn so we could see why I was still not feeling well. She was the first to do an A1c, measuring my BG over the previous three months. And there it was. Fasting was still hovering around 90, and the A1c was 6.2. Not earth-shattering, but finally something concrete that could be treated. She gave me a prescription for 2000mg of Metformin per day, and 5mg of Lisinopril, a blood pressure drug that offers some vascular and kidney protection for those of a diabetic bent.

Now I get to poke myself in the fingers several times a day. Since the diagnosis, it is damn near all I can think about. My husband has threatened to sever my internet connection if I do not stay off of the damned medical sites, because I get worked up and obsessively stressed out when I read about diabetes complications. Testing my BG so regularly is how I discovered that emotional and mental stress raises it almost as high as McDonald’s fries.

I made a pleasant discovery, however. Amazingly enough, exercise does wonders for a handful of my woes. Helps me think clearly. Lowers my blood glucose. Makes me lose weight. Relieves stress like crazy. Huh. Who knew?

Now maybe I can actually look forward to exercising five times a week. Or maybe not.

But I’m gonna exercise five times a week anyway.

Started out with me taking a week’s vacation from verk, melding quickly into my husband making an appointment with our family practitioner to discuss his recent (two months back) diagnosis of low testosterone.  A week after that I was on my way to the doctor to see why I was so dizzy and nauseated.  A week later, the mister was back in with the flu.  A week later, he was at the Emergency Room coughing up blood.  Ten minutes after I arrived at the ER, we were driving to the Urgent Care near our home.  My husband is unfamiliar with the lovely new rules of our bargain basement health insurance that state if you are not specifically spurting from an artery, or dying from myocardial infarction you should go to the Urgent Care center and not the ER.  Well, we have yet to receive a bill from the 15 minutes or so he spent at the ER cooling his heels in the waiting room, so I think we are good.

Anyway, at the Urgent Care center, he tested positive for Infectious Mononucleosis.  He was off work a week.  They called him yesterday and said they wanted him to come back in because one of his liver enzymes was a little higher than normal.  They told him they believed it was from the Mono, but wanted to make sure.  Back in to have more blood drawn.

Did I mention we also visited our dr.  because of my husband feeling massively depressed?  Yes, and the dr. did a quick down and dirty diagnosis of anhedonia.  Lack of joy.

Well, now I am starting to wonder about that original diagnosis, as since then he has had the flu, Mono, and some wonky liver enzymes as well as his original low testosterone.  Our dr. prescribed Effexor for him, to be started after he was through with his antibiotics.  Oh, I should mention he also went in for a sinus infection.  Yeah, forgot that one.

So, we started off the month with a sinus infection and the flu.  Moved to low testosterone (and he was given a shot of Depo-Testosterone–that will probably account for the liver enzyme issue later in the month).  Was told he had anhedonia, and mono.  And now we are waiting for results of the liver enzymes to come back.

And he thinks that I go to the doctor a lot.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - -

Work is…work.  That is why they call it work and not Happy Fun Time For Pay.  We are in the process of moving part and parcel to a new location nearby, and that is taking up most of the Director’s time and focus.  We are looking to increase my departmental staff by 50%.  Yay.

I have been making jewelry for the better part of the past year.  I find it relaxing, and a way to bring in an extra dollar or two.  I have a shop over at Etsy.  Look for MoodGardenJewels.  That’s me.  I create mostly for the plus size goddess, and for the woman who isn’t afraid to wear things that are a bit different.

We spent a day at the local yearly Art Fair recently.  One of my favorite artists was there, as he is every year.  Carl Lundgren.  We have several of his original paintings as well as many of his prints.  I have been collecting for about twelve years now, and I must say it is satisfying in a way that Sara Lee can never hope to be.  Now, if only Alex Ross would set up at the Art Fair…

I started taking vitamins about a month ago.  After being diagnosed as hypothyroid, I had assumed that being on Synthroid would fix me.  And I was wrong.  Synthroid only replaces some of the missing T4 hormone.  My levels are still not regulated, even 8 months later.  Of course, it didn’t help that my regular dr. moved up north and my new diagnosis was being treated by the physician’s assistant who is a little too skittish to agressively deal with an endocrine issue.  I am going in a week to see the doctor that treated my dizziness earlier this month.  The vitamins I am taking now are supposed to support good thyroid function, but even still I have days where the brain fog is so thick I feel my brain is wrapped in London.

For the past two months, the mister and I have been gaga over a movie that came out last Fall.  Repo: The Genetic Opera.  A combination of Rocky Horror meets Blade Runner, it is fresh, new and the soundtrack is to die for.   We BitTorrented the hell out of it after seeing the trailer.   It  had a limited (very limited) release, and finally came to the local Art theater, so off we went at midnight to watch it on the big screen.  I think we were the only ones in the audience singing along.  I love that the mister and I enjoy the same types of movies.  Gives us something to discuss when neither of us can sleep, which is often these days.

Danielle, where the hell are you?  I miss seeing your smiling moosh in my Facebook.

The only thing I seem to want for my birthday is for everyone around me to leave me the hell alone and stop needing me so damn much for every little agonizing thing.  Yeah, go and try to get THAT written in frosting on a cake.

Okay, so maybe I have issues.

Where is the joy, the bliss?  Why does it feel sometimes as though I am either waiting for my life to catch up with me, or trying to find it in a cosmic drawer filled with mismatched cosmic socks?

I must have things in my life that make me happy.  Perhaps I forgot about them while I was waiting for the water to boil.   I must tease them out from the corners of my mind, like dustbunnies to a vacuum.  Since I will be 48, I figure that I need to have 24 things that are unique to my own particular peculiarity.  And here they are in no real order:

1. I have a job despite this hideously unstable economy.
2. I have a zippy little blue car that is paid for.  AND has no tint on the front driver and passenger doors now.  This is me, smiling about that fact.  Yes, I know it looks more like an angry grimace.
3. So,  I have a house.  Well–me, the boy, the cats and the bank have a house.
4. I have a decent education.
5. I have The Boy, my favorite husband thusfar.
6. I am filled with a quiet sense of inner peace for approximately three minutes per week.
7. I experience neither longing nor regret about any decisions I either made or ignored.
8. I have long since forgiven my parents for any wrongdoing or ignorance in their raising of me.
9. My health is good. Even considering that my thyroid has gone missing and left no note.
10. I am lucky to be married to a man who can make me laugh.
11. I have friends that I love.
12. I have cats.  Some of them even acknowledge my existence.
13. My best friend is also my husband.
14. I am convinced that the best food on the planet is soft, yummy white cake with white frosting.
15. Taco Bell is god.
16. I remember my dreams when I wake up.
17. One thing that is always guaranteed to make me grin like an idiot is being surrounded by my collection of depression-era glassware.
18. There is nothing in the world more fun than a room filled with skulls.  And that describes my bedroom.
19. I want to marry Stephen King.  I figure I could repay him for all of the joy he has given me over the years by halfheartedly ironing his shirts and making him pork chops once a week.
20. There is no better sound to fall asleep to than the sound of a cat contentedly purring in your ear.
21. Springtime.
22. Halloween!
23. Having an evening with nothing to do but light candles and blog.  The tippity-tap is comforting.
24. Being loved.  That is a big one, right there.

What will tomorrow bring?  Who knows.

That is part of the fun of living.

We started off the week by having a four-day weekend.  Always nice.  When I returned to work on Tuesday, May 26, I had a bit of a headache and the remains of a sore throat.  Meh.  I shrugged it off as being some leftovers from the flu bug of two weeks ago.

By Wednesday, I had the most amazing roaring sensation in my left ear, some loss of hearing and some vague nausea.  Meh.  Probably just the weather.  By Thursday, the roaring had turned into some brightly tuned tinnitus, the nausea left its vague state, and I was dizzy.  Great.  I came in to work late, after taking a couple of Guaifen pills to see if it wasn’t some sort of fluid in my ears.  The dizzyness eased enough for me to drive (drive!) the 25 miles to work.  After trying to sit through a readmittance meeting for students wanting to return to school, I realized that I was awash in a soupy mire of sickness.  Sweating, head hurting, dizzy and vomiting, I asked the Director if I could scoot out early and hit the after hours clinic at my doctor’s office.

Driving carefully toward home, with my head held at the angle that produced no dizzyness, I fould myself in front of a State Trooper.  I didn’t think much of it, as I knew I wasn’t speeding and ever since the head-on collision I had back in 1986, I always wore my seat belt.  But as fate would have it, he hit his lights anyway and over I pulled.

Now I am running various scenarios through my very dizzy head as I pulled over–none ended with me driving away without at the very least a field sobriety test.  I mentally checked the contents of my trunk.  Those of you who know me well will know why.  Nope, I was good there.

Naturally, I pulled off on a one-way street–going the wrong way.  Great.  I briefly wondered if I could use my credit card to post bail for myself after I got thrown into the pokey.  He turned his speaker on and told me to move forward, as we were on a one-way street.  Three minutes later I am thinking, ‘where the  fuck AM I?’, because I am still driving and looking for a place to pull over where I wouldn’t be bass ackwards.

I eventually came to the parking lot of a hospital, pulled in and cut the engine.  I rolled down the window and tried not to look dizzy.  That is not easy to do when you are actually dizzy.  Ran through my mind what one is supposed to do when one is pulled over by one of Our State’s Finest, and decided that I would leave my hands on the steering wheel and wait.  He got out and as he walked up to my car, I was struck by how pasty he looked.  I mean, doesn’t the State require their troopers to be decidedly non-pasty at all times when on duty?  Officer Pasty didn’t ask me if I knew why he pulled me over.  That was a good thing, because there is NO way to answer that question without sounding like a smartass.  And there is nothing worse than a dizzy smartass.  He asked for my license, registration and insurance, and I dug them out for him.  He took them back to his cruiser and ran my plate.  He must have ran it several times in disbelief at how sparkling clean my driving record was.  In fact, if my driving record was a dinner plate, one would be able to eat off it.  After about five minutes, he came back, handed me my license and registration and told me that the reason he pulled me over was for a tint violation.  I must have looked perplexed in only a way that a 48 year old woman can look, because he then explained that it is illegal to have tinted windows on the driver and passenger windows.

Blink.  Blink.

“Really?  I didn’t know that.  I wonder why the guy who did it didn’t mention it to me?”

Officer Pasty said, “Well, it was probably all about the money.”

Huh.  Well, he handed me something called a fix-it ticket, and told me that I have fifteen days to get the tint off and call the number on the ticket to set up an appointment with him so he could come in and check to make sure I had removed the tint.  He said if I did so, there would be no points or fines.

At this point, some blond twat in a SUV drove past with her driver’s side window half-way down and a big ‘you got pulled over, you LOSER’  grin on her mush.  I resisted the urge to flip her off.

Looked to me like she had tinted windows, too.

So, off I go with my fix-it ticket and arrive at the after-hours clinic just as they were opening for business.  I only had to wait about twenty minutes or so.  The doctor’s office I have been going to for about 26 years now has more than one doctor, and normally one can see whomever one wishes to.  There is no choice, however, when one is after-hours.  Luck of the draw.

As it turned out, the doctor on duty that evening was Dr. Jurasek.  I had seen her name countless times on receipts at prior visits,  as well as on the business cards around the office.  I had never before been examined by her, but kept my heart light in hopes she was not going to rush in, thrust a prescription for antibiotics and Guiafen at me and rush out.

Her MA was named Julie, and as she was taking my vitals, I told her she would need the long cuff if she wanted to get my blood pressure.  She surprised me though, because she wrapped the regular cuff around my forearm and was able to accurately take a reading.  She asked me who my regular doctor was, and I told her that I had been under the express care of the office Physician’s Assistant for about seven months.  My regular doctor there had moved out of state (yet again–what is it with me and doctors?) and the PA had somehow taken up the slack.  Julie asked if I had been having trouble getting a doctor to see me there.  I was impressed at this, as I had not had much good luck with some of the other MA’s in the office, but had never had one ask me that question before.  No one had ever noticed before that I was having my newly diagnosed hypothyroidism treated primarily by a PA.

So, already set at ease by Julie, she leaves only after telling me that I was next and that Dr. Jurasek would be right in to see me.

Two minutes later, she came in.  She was dressed for summer, in capri pants, sandals and a short sleeved t-shirt.  Breezing in, she immediately went over to the sink and washed her hands while introducing herself to me.  I liked her already.  She asked about why I was there, having already read over my chart before coming in.  She sat for a moment while I described the symptoms I was experiencing and then asked if the dizzyness was accompanied by a headache and nausea.  After answering yes to those questions, she asked if the room was currently spinning.  I told her it was not, it was more like a boat rocking violently.  She immediately gave me a basic head-to-toe neurological exam (push against her hands on my shoulders, make faces, reciting my abc’s while tilting my head up to stare at the ceiling, testing my reflexes, etc.)  She looked into my ears once before the neuro exam and once after.  She asked if I had had the flu recently.  Yes I had and quite a good case of it, too.  Asked if I had had any head injuries recently, or fallen at any time.  Nope.

She sat down and said that she believes I have labyrinthitis, and then told me why.  She explained what it was in great detail (the labyrinth system of semicircular canals in the ears and such that deal with our balance in space and how they can get fluid in them when one is coming out of a cold, or the flu) and then told me that she was going to take me off of work for the next three days, because most times labyrinthitis resolves in that time.  She gave me a prescription for Antivert, an anti-vertigo drug that would help me with the dizzyness and told me to drink lots and lots of fluids and don’t drive.  She told me that most people get very sleepy on the drug, and that was actually a good thing–to just sleep through the worst of it.

Julie came back in and told me I was all set and I went to the front desk to settle my co-pay.  They actually charged me the correct amount (ten bucks) and I mentioned to one of the ladies behind the desk that Dr. Jurasek was a lovely woman and that it was a pleasure to have been seen by her.  The taller and more mature of the two ladies there said that she was going to tell Dr. Jurasek that, and in fact, would I please write her a note she could put on her desk because she believes that doctors need to hear these types of things from their patients.  I did so, even though all I wanted to do was get out of there and go home home home.

After writing the note I made my way out to my zippy little (dark windowed) blue car and drove off (VERY carefully) to the pharmacy to get my prescription filled.

After I got there and dropped it off, I had to use the facilities.  I made the mistake of walking too fast back there, and a huge wave of dizzyness and nausea was my reward.  I slowly wandered over to the pop aisle and grabbed a two-liter of Vernors ginger ale and gimped back to the pharmacy to sit and wait for the nausea to pass.  I had one bad moment when I believed I was going to make quite a mess on their nice clean floor, but I was able to contain myself.

Even though they told me it was going to take twenty minutes to fill, they had it done less than three minutes after I sat down.  I thanked them profusely for that honor–especially after seeing that it was only going to cost $2.65 for the medication.

Back home again, I crawled into bed with three-quarters of my cat population and was asleep ten minutes after the first Antivert hit my stomach.  I slept for four hours, woke up and stumbled into the frontroom to see my husband.  I sat and told him about my day and he brought me crackers to eat, since I hadn’t eaten at all.

He told me that the guy who did my tinting DID tell me it was illegal before he did it.

Well, damn.

I get like this every year before autumn digs its heels in. August has always been the month during which every day feels like the whole world is checking its watch impatiently, sick to death of the heat of summer and aching for shorter days and frosty mornings. The leftover picnic supplies, flipflops, and oscillating fans of summertime look nothing but sadly bedraggled, tired and disdainfully unwanted in the clearance racks of every single store I go in, shoved aside in favor of bright, shiny new school supplies and colorful backpacks. The honeybees know they are short timers, and get angry and sting-happy. The traffic surrounding me on my daily forty-five minute drive home from slaying the dragon carries with it an extra edgy sense of impending danger in the glint of sun reflecting off of hot, dirty window glass. I am tired of wasting gas to run air conditioning only to end up chilling the front of my business casual while my back is still sticky with a day’s worth of sweat. People around me are exhausted from trying to cram a year’s worth of desperate fun into three short months. I am sick to death of hearing the word vacay.

The whole damn thing just reminds me of that last quarter-inch of milk in the fridge that no one wants because it it is the day before it expires yet no one wants to throw out quite yet either. So it sits there, waiting for someone to make a decision.

The end of summer feels like the death of hope. Every freaking year. And the worst part? I detest summer.

Oh, lovely dissonance! You are back again as you have been every agonizing year since I reached self-awareness somewhere in the stone age of the ’60’s. Except back then, I was usually just derided for being overly emotional and shoved out the door to have some desperate childhood summertime fun of my own, surrounded as I was by those who couldn’t feel the shifting of the sun from its summer axis to its winter axis. Or, if they could they didn’t seem to react to it the same way I did. Hurry the hell up, autumnal Equinox. I would like to be able to find my bearings again and be able to think without the overlay of fiberglass insulation surrounding my brain.

This time of year also finds everyone around me rife for lifestyle changes made desperately while one eye glances casually over at christmas. The holidays. They are a-coming. Like an insane, derailed freight train they are.

I quit eating meat two weeks ago. It still feels unreal, as though I merely read about it somewhere instead of having made the conscious decision myself. Vegetarianism has made several appearances throughout my life, usually when I am nearing some breaking point or other. Somehow, my mind sees it as a form of completely acceptable self-punishing behavior more socially welcomed than cutting. I will refrain from drawing a direct comparison to modern organized religion.

Synesthesia sucks sometimes. Anger feels like red sandpaper under my fingertips. Happiness, like the frothy, refreshing wake of a passing ship. But this weird void? It feels exactly like a flat piece of smoked glass, cold and featureless and obscured.

I can’t decide if it is terribly late, or hideously early.

—

What is the difference between a blonde and a washing machine?

A washing machine doesn’t follow you around for a week after you drop a load into it.

—

I would also like to state for the record, that while I find this one hilarious, I am also blonde. Under all this red hair dye, that is.  Just in case you were thinking of trotting off in a huff and a Chevy to leave me a scathing comment.

Our favorite is Bishop Park, located a few miles from our modest abode. My boyfriend and I grabbed our foldy camp chairs, notebooks, mp3 players and piled into my blue Ion with the dark tinted windows. Naturally, it being the Fourth of July I forgot my camera at home, but we made do.

Here is a list of things we saw today while we were out:

1. Nuns in training wearing flip-flops and looking sweaty.
2. Dappled sunlight filtering through the trees, falling on half-melted suckers that lay in the grass, glittering like rubies.
3. Guys on crotch-rocket motorcycles, wearing riding suits that matched their bikes. I believe none of them knew they each looked like Ultraman.
4. Two young Asian boys each on kid leashes and looking quite content being held captive.
5. A bald guy standing on a picnic table, trying desperately to get a signal on his cell phone. His wife looked nonplussed at this behavior, as though he often went through strange rituals to get a signal.
6. Clusters of folks in foldy camp chairs, all spread out in well-spaced islands of forced relaxation and enjoyment of a paid holiday.
7. Way too many Little Caesar’s Hot ‘n Ready Pizzas being consumed. Just because they are only five bucks shouldn’t mean that you must buy four of them to feed four people.
8. Women in bright yellow shorts who should not be wearing bright yellow shorts.
9. A small pontoon plane that flew so close to the water at the fishing pier that we thought he was going to land.
10. Three bright yellow Corvettes filled with beaming occupants.
11. A pipe band all wearing tartan filing out of the UFW hall and playing for a moment before disbanding. It was nice to see other kilts in the area beside the one he was wearing.
12. Tony was sitting with several mature folks. Tony looked to be a very hard nine years old or thereabouts. Most of the aforementioned Hot ‘n Ready pizzas were sitting on the picnic table between he and the three oldsters. Two of the oldsters were haranguing him something fierce, because he wouldn’t eat his pizza, but wanted only Twinkies and Coke. This went on for a half-hour while we sat and listened. Tony, on the other hand, was not listening very much. Since he would not eat his pizza, he could have no pop and no Twinkies. I am still trying to find the logic in there-he wouldn’t eat his fatty cheese and pepperoni, so he couldn’t have any caffeinated sugar accompanied by fat, sugar and white flour.

Shortly thereafter, two large blackbirds flew over our heads. The sky darkened momentarily, the wind turned briefly chill. If I were paranoid, I would have taken that to be an omen.

But we left soon anyway. Happy Fourth!

We discovered a marvelous product called Urine Gone, which was guaranteed to remove traces of pet or people urine from one’s humble abode, according to the package. To ensure that the Urine was indeed Gone, a small hand-held black light was included.

I have to admit at this point that all I was really interested in was the black light. I do not now, nor have I ever had the urge to scour my house in total blackness to make sure that there are no traces of either pet or people urine lurking about. Of course, what I did want was to see if the old saw was true; the one that all the crime shows state about blood and erm..certain other bodily fluids fluorescing in black light. Again, I must admit that there is no particular fetish nor habit of mine nor any of my housemates, either the two-or four-legged varieties, of leaving bits of randomly flung bodily fluids in my humble abode.

But I have always wanted a black light, and I now had an unexpectedly free evening. Enter Experiment #1; the nighttime search for fluorescence in average suburbia.

We decided that the first step would be to turn off every light in the house. It was at this point that we realized that the black light was battery operated, and that batteries were hard to find in the dark.

After filling the black light with four AA’s, we again turned off the light and began our quest, our tiny black light held in front of us, Diogenes-like, as we went in search of the truth.

Moving from room to room, we were amazed at how many different ordinary household contents actually did fluoresce. Like dust, for example. I am rather glad that it was dark so that the boy could not see how perplexed I looked as we discovered how well dust can cling to even the most innocuous of things. Like a cat. Yes, we did shine the black light on each of the cats. Mostly we shone it on Sin, who is the resident all-black cat, and usually right after we almost tripped over him in the total darkness.

We discovered that the harmless-looking vinyl tile on our landing and basement stairs glowed like something out of a Stephen King novel. I had one bad moment in the pitch-black basement where I flashed on that scene in Silence of the Lambs where Clarisse was wandering around Jame Gumb’s basement in total darkness and he was standing inches away from her wearing night vision goggles. The basement itself was relatively free from dust, having just been cleaned to within an inch of its life after having rainwater backing up into it to the depth of a couple of inches for the past three months. The cat box was also amazingly free from overspray, no small feat considering we have a diabetic cat whose daily liquid output is roughly that of the total yearly rainfall in Seattle.

We ran the light over our basement shelves full of DVD’s and assorted movie memorabilia. Thankfully, there were no body fluids on any of these, either.

We walked back upstairs to inspect the main floor of the house. We poked the light into the freezer, just for laughs. The only thing that glowed in there were my icepack migraine masks, looking like something out of a hypochondriac’s Mardi Gras celebration.

Did you know that candle wicks glow in black light? Me neither. Moving through the living room, the paint on my mini-blinds flared nicely, as did my Mah Jongg tiles and the boy’s Guns and Ammo magazine cover. We took a moment to shine the light at each other, and I noticed that the boy looks startlingly like Hannibal Lechter when he grins with glowing teeth. He was bummed to discover that my tie-dyed sleep shirt glowed more than his Hanes V-Neck.

I didn’t want to look in the bathroom. I really did not, truly. But when we entered and saw how beautifully the Battenburg lace curtains and shower valance glowed, it definately overshadowed the one area of the house that had the least dust, and the most body fluid residue. We regularly write on the mirror with chalk markers, and discovered that the white one glows, but the other colors do not.

Moving to the bedroom, I was startled to see how much the walls glowed from the dust. With the lights on, it did not appear as though any dust was present, but with the black light on, the truth was that the walls were a universe of reflectivity. At seeing this, I was torn between trying to feel a sense of shame at the sheer amount of dust and vastly relieved that I could actually find better things to do with my free time than dust walls.

Ending our tour of the house, we returned to the computer room and turned on the lights. Here with no apology or preamble is a list of our findings:

1. A black cat is never more interested in being around you than when you are carrying a black light and standing in a pitch-black basement that has black walls and a black floor.
2. Dust is inevitable, like death and taxes. And since death is a return of the body to dust, I can only assume from the sheer quantity of dust we saw tonight, that there are at least four other people inhabiting my house.
3. Any Barbie dressed in a white bridal outfit glows as much under a black light as any June bride does on the morning of her wedding.
4. Silence of the Lambs was a damned excellent movie.
5. A large collection of stuffed white polar bears is decidedly creepy when viewed under a black light.

There is no number 6.