No, not the medical condition, the things on the roof.

Let me tell you people. I do not need an herbal appetite suppressant. I have Little Old Ladies to put me off my feed.

Yesterday I was in a Big Box Office Supply Store looking for something R. wanted when the phone rang. The screen flashed “Empress,” and I debated about taking the call, but since the last time I heard from her, her daughter was sprawled out on the garage floor, I picked up.

Okay, backtrack two weeks. I see one of those shingle display boards propped up on the Empress’ front porch and had a frisson of foresight. I knew what was coming. Some out of work roofer knocked on her door and informed her that the shingles were shot and she should talk to her insurance adjustor.

I’m sorry, did I hear someone say, “Scam?” You in the back there? See the man at the door about your prize.

Well, sure enough, she calls the adjustor who is a personal friend and of course he tells her the roof is shot and that he’s going to get her a “free” roof and the rest of us should do the same.

I’m sorry, did I hear someone say, “No such thing as a free roof?” Congratulations. See the man at the door about your prize.

She was adamant that I call the insurance company to get my free roof. There are a few factors here that are relevant to my situation that she’s not taking into account, chief on the list being the fact that I raised the deductible on the homeowner’s insurance so we could qualify for the refinance last October. Follow that with, I’m on half wages and then add a dollop of, “No benefit for normal wear and tear.”

As I calculate these factors — and the fact that due to the noise, I’d have to check into a hotel with R. and board the cats at the clinic for the duration — I’m figuring my “free” roof would cost about $5,000.

People, if I get $5,000, the first check is going to the vet clinic.

We’ve had major storms this spring, but the hail has been no bigger than a pea and lasted less than 5 minutes. No shingles have blown off and there are no leaks in the house. A little curling on the edge of some shingles, yes, but nothing significant.

As I explained to her, we are in the middle of the worst recession since 1929 with unemployment reaching 10%. People are doing without health care for their children for Christ’s sake. We can take a gamble on the freaking roof, because there is no room in the budget for preventative house maintenance at that level with our deductible.

And what did the old bat say to me, “Well, of course, it is your decision . . .”

Careful, don’t get under that dripping sarcasm laced with disapproval. It’ll eat a hole in your shirt.

Consequently, I have been unbelievably annoyed for the intervening 18 hours or so. Missy J. recommended certain direct, two-word phraseology starting with eff and ending with off, but my annoyance is greater than that. I think it’s hard enough these days to make the right choices about expenditures without having to endure the judgement of the neighbors.

What I really want to say is, “You’re a little old lady who just caved to a hungry roofer’s scare tactics and the insurance adjustor, who is your personal friend, caved to the fact that you’re an 88-year-old elderly hobbit and is prepared to write you a check rather than deal with you.”

I predict, that of the six households in this complex, at least two will follow suit, cave, and pop for a new roof. (Teach put a new roof on her place before she sold it to get a higher asking price.) And you know what I’m going to get out of this? Noise waking R. up at the crack of dawn, traffic blocking the driveway for days on end, and nails in my goddamn tires. But a free roof? Oh no, baby, that’s not happening and it’s not going to happen for her either — “unexpected” fees and costs, happen Mrs. E. — but what do I know?

As always in these situations, I’m taken back to the poem Papa kept taped to his desk:

I’m not allowed to run the train,
The whistle I can’t blow.
I’m not allowed to say how far,
The railroad cars can go.
I’m not allowed to pick up steam,
Or even clang the bell.
But let it jump the goddamn track,
Then see who catches hell.

While some of you may find this news about as interesting as the latest weight loss pill reviews, I changed the template over on Red Blackberry (see link at top of the sidebar here) to accommodate the Versus Tour de France video streaming widget.

I am really excited about the race starting tomorrow and since I no longer have TV access here in my room, I’ve been looking for a way to watch online. Versus does a great job of covering the Tour and if I’m reading this right, the widget lets you watch the race and call up highlights of crashes, sprints, and the like.

Yesterday R. asked me if I’d ever want to go to France to see the Tour. Well, the thing is, you wait a really long time to see a lot of guys on bikes whiz past in a really short time and then you have to run like hell to get ahead of them to do the same thing over again. Frankly, I think you get more of a sense of the overall drama of the race watching it on TV.

Now, if somebody gives me front row seats for the final sprint on the Champs Elysee — you know, something nice right by the Arc de Triomphe — we’ll talk.

As if the Colonix reviews at suppertime weren’t bad enough, Miss R. spent much of last night obsessing about her 79th birthday, which is today. She awakened me several times in the night to beg me not to let anyone come to see her in recognition of this event. I didn’t tell her Missy J. is bringing burgers over and I’m not going to. If we don’t do something a little “special,” I’ll hear for a week how I completely ignored her birthday. Yes, my name is Rana and I am a specialist in No Win Situations.

For my part, I have an appropriately warm, but funny card complete with a cute furry little animal, a must in greeting cards for R., as well as a box of Lindor truffles and some calorie laden designer chocolate bar with toffee and caramelized almonds. We’ve pretty much reached that stage where edible gifts are the best and R.’s sweet tooth is always a sure bet. I’ve also promised a chicken fried steak dinner tomorrow night and bacon with breakfast Saturday morning. Those two things alone went over much larger than some shiny wrapped present.

Last year her birthday was rife with honest to God angst, mainly from folks outside the house who still just don’t get it. My main goal for today is pleasant calm. I certainly can’t make her enjoy the day, but I can do whatever is humanly possible to keep things on an even keel. Like many of the hot button issues in our lives (mealtime springing immediately to mind), dealing with R.’s birthday has left me all but indifferent to my own. I do wonder at times if I will be able to recapture pleasure in such things at some future date.

. . . would strangle me in my sleep and call it justifiable homicide.

I’m not sure when supper became the worst time of the day. Maybe it’s been a slow evolution over several months, but I honestly don’t think I’m ever going to eat another peaceful evening meal in my life.

It’s nothing for me to sit down in front of my plate and have R. pipe up with, “I read an ad for a new colon cleanser today and I’d like to try it.”

Too. Much. Information.

I’m already shopping with fiber and fruit on the mind in recognition of the difficulties of her digestive system. Do we HAVE to talk about it at the supper table?

Then there’s “Entertainment Tonight.” R.’s hearing is so bad that she picks up about half of what is said and comes out with something like, “Did you know they were having a joint funeral for Michael Jackson and Farrah?”

And there’s no arguing with her. I have to go with a response along the lines of, “Really, I didn’t hear that. Let’s see what they have to say about it after the commercial.”

[Commercial Break]

“Oh, no, I see what they were trying to say. Both funerals are in the same week. Boy, they really messed that up, didn’t they?!”

Today, I had the added spice of a panicked phone call from the Empress telling me her daughter had fallen in the garage and couldn’t get up. So I put down my fork, went over, and hauled her back to her feet.

I certainly don’t mind helping the Empress when she’s in a pickle, but it just amazes me that these things always happen at supper time. And now that it’s full summer, R. has an emotional “I just can’t eat” total meltdown on cue every day midway through the meal.

Honest to God, I don’t think I need to worry about weight gain in the future because with all this supper drama, I just no longer care. I’d as soon have a bologna sandwich as a sirloin if I could just chew the damn thing in peace. Grumble.

When a college friend with whom I re-established contact on Facebook told me she was going to be in the area and wondered if we could get together for coffee or breakfast it was, for me, much better than scoring New York Yankees tickets. The home run analogy is apt, however, because I am never afforded the opportunity to reminisce about my days working on the university newspaper at SWT. (Other people call it Texas University now, but I refuse.)

We spent three hours together over breakfast at Cracker Barrel and coffee at Starbucks. To put it mildly, I had a blast talking about folks I hadn’t thought about in years and dredging up memories of the late nights we put in — twice a week — getting the paper put to bed. We were working journalists. We had only infinitesimal faculty oversight and were completely responsible for content and production. Melody was the editor when I joined the staff and her husband, Roger, was in charge of the comp room.

For all the hard work, and the equally hard play that went with it, those were some of the best times of my life. I can remember walking out of the building in the pre-dawn hours, feeling the cold slap of a winter night on my face, and reveling in the satisfaction of knowing another edition was on the way to the printer. There is no feeling like it and I was then and am now, proud of the job we did. My time on the university yearbook, where I served as editor my final year, was nowhere near as satisfying.

This reconnection was spurred, in part, by the death of one of our most influential professors a couple of weeks ago. Jeff had a long history of heart trouble and in the end, following a second surgery, he simply couldn’t beat the condition. I will never think of him that I won’t see a round-faced, pear-shaped imp of a man with a graying beard and sparkling eyes. There was nothing conventional about him — he was the first professor I was allowed to address by his given name — but his influence over his students was broad and long-lasting.

He’s also the man who got me involved with computers, something that obviously changed my life forever. Although I have not stayed strictly in the field of journalism in my professional life, I have not been without a personal computer since about 1984 when my Dad bought me a TRS-80 Model IV. That means I’ve been at the keyboard for 25 years and never experienced the technological lag some of my contemporaries still suffer through. I have Jeff to thank for that.

I think Jeff would like it that his passing brought old friends back into contact. We laughed a lot about him this morning. I know he would have liked that. Often when I’ve sat through “The Big Chill” yet again, the scene in which Jeff Goldblume’s character cynically says that he and his friends only knew each other for a brief period of time always strikes me the same way. The same could be said of me and my friends at the University Star, but we spent so much time together — intense time — that a unique bond was forged.

It’s a special gift to be an alum of a group like that, it amounts to racking up cherished battle scars. I suspect had anyone been listening to us talk this morning we would have sounded like a couple of vets reminiscing about the way things used to be. But you know what? Sometimes the way things used to be was really good and going back can be a hell of a lot of fun.

When I first started reading websites that discuss bike gear of various sorts, I was puzzled to see gps systems thrown in among the saddles, grips, brakes, clips, bags, racks and the like. Okay, fine, if you’re an adventure cyclist riding the northern tier route to cross the United States by pedal power, I guess I get that, but otherwise, overkill much?

Well, now that I’ve put in 700+ miles on Slim, I more than understand the powerful lure to explore that sets in while in the saddle. I haven’t gotten myself in a situation to get lost yet, but I’ve lived in the Big City 19 years. (The official anniversary is July 5.) If I were on less familiar ground, I have no doubt I’d happily follow my nose and wander off into parts truly unknown.

I really wanted and didn’t want to go for a ride yesterday. I knew if I just made myself get up I’d be fine once I started down the path, but I really am not a morning person even though I now think there are things worth getting up at 5 a.m. to do — cycling chief on the list. Still, as I headed down toward the river, I was restless — indecisive about what route I wanted to take, my thoughts rocketing all over the place, bouncing off all the things worrying, nagging, annoying, and compelling me these days.

On the spur of the moment I headed east toward the city, reasoning I’d go for a 20-mile loop. With the exception of a stop to try to save a stranded baby bird — a failed attempt, I might add — I cruised right under University and into the area behind the cemetery without pause.

Then, as I was climbing a hill almost at the end of the cemetery, on a whim, I slipped through the narrow space between the gate chain and post and went into the graveyard itself. I’d seen joggers pull this off and had already ascertained a bike could do the same — well, Slim could do it anyway. He’s a hybrid and has suspension on his front wheel fork.

I rolled over an expanse of well-mowed grass, destined, I’m sure, to one day be more final-resting-place real estate, jumped a little curb, and was in. Greenwood is a beautiful cemetery, with a range of residents from turn-of-the-century cattle barons to police officers killed in recent years in the line of duty.

The morning sprinklers were hard at work while maintenance crews meticulously tended the grounds. I’m familiar with the layout of the graveyard and headed into the section with the older graves, reading names and recognizing favorite stones. It’s a much more hilly pedal than I realized and I got in a good up and down work out — but the quiet! You see, I like cemeteries and do some of my best thinking within their borders.

There’s nothing macabre about it in my mind. They’re just people, after all. If I know them, as I do in the Little Town, such visits are filled by memory — by an occasional spoken greeting to a silent stone. (I like to think the deceased knows I bothered to say hi.) If I’m among strangers, I wonder who they were, what dreams they entertained in life, if anyone other than a wanderer on a bike ever sees their marker and acknowledges that once they were here with us.

I find the thought of an unvisited grave rather sad. R., whose people are scattered in forgotten cemeteries here and there, thinks nothing of it. But I can go to one graveyard and be in the company of both sets of my great-grandparents and my great-great-grandmother. I never knew them, but I still visit their graves whenever I’m back in the Hill Country. R. always expresses puzzlement and I always offer the same Southern protest, “But they’re my people.”

Taking yesterday’s detour put a whole new complexion on a ride that had been, until that point, exercise. Starting back with a new attitude of “excursion,” I climbed to the top of the levy and was treated to broad vistas — some less than scenic, but fascinating, like welders taking apart scrap in a junkyard — others a wider view of the river I’d already passed as the sun was coming up.

Consequently, I not only rode back to my starting point, but continued west to the opposite trail head, then took a turn through the neighborhood with dedicated bike lanes where a year ago I was making easy, cautious laps as I learned to handle a bike again after 30 years. When I finally did roll to a stop beside the van, my odometer read 25 miles and I’d undergone the attitude adjustment that is the magic of these cycling jaunts for me.

So, with yesterday’s ride and with what I did this morning on the exercise bike, I’m at 396 miles for the month of June. (I’ll probably lop off four miles on the Bicycle Going Nowhere before bed time since I have a thing for even numbers.) That’s almost 100 miles better than I did in May and I can feel the improvement in my body — on and off the bike.

New muscles are popping out in my arms from the increased time on Slim, my aerobic endurance has improved considerably, and the best part? The longer I pedal the more I love it. Other people may see that as crazy, but in my book, it’s a gift — one I truly appreciate.

Day 354 of 365

Originally uploaded by RanaW.

Every time I ride east toward the city, I pass a new apartment complex. I can see into the ritzy exercise room as I go past. The treadmill row looks out onto the bike path — currently unused — but I always have the same thought, “If I were in there, I think I’d wish I could be out here.”

Morning views like this one are the reason why. Today the river was like a mirror. At one point I watched a heron flying downstream, a perfect reflected replicant of the bird following along on the surface of the water.

It was a great ride, with some new twists I want to write about, but I’m all out of steam for the day. So, enjoy my reflected view until I have time to really write tomorrow. I plan to sleep in a bit and just use the Bicycle Going Nowhere for my morning workout, so the current plan is to blog over my morning coffee.

Thanks to some unexpected travel deals, I have friends who are spending the weekend at a resort hotel in the Hill Country. I just looked the place up and clicked through photos of the room they rented. All I could think was, “Damn I bet they have good air conditioning in that place.”

Yeah. Texans have heat on the brain this week. Mainly because ours are boiling out of our heads.

Long-time readers will recall that we replaced our air conditioner three or four years ago and I have to say that considering we have no shade on the roof to help out, the new unit performs admirably. When it’s 103 out there, I manage to keep it about 75 in here. And R. still says she’s dying.

Every fan in the house is on and in the afternoons I hand her a fresh ice pack about every 30 minutes. And this is what I have to look forward to through the end of August. God. The electric bills. [groans]

How am I coping? This is what I posted on Facebook this morning:

“You’d think it’d be too hot for me to be in this pissed off girl rocker musical mood I’ve slipped into. My iPod is begging for a shot of tequila and a hormone pill.”

Right now Cher is singing “Jesse James,” slightly mellower than the Melissa Etheridge I’ve had on for the better part of an hour and slightly more convivial than “Bitch,” which was yesterday’s theme song.

I know. Everyone else is listening to MJ, but I have to be honest. I never got into his music. Oh, I’ve seen the famous videos. How could you be alive in the ’80s and miss them? And the scandals since have been equally inescapable. His was a great talent plagued by great demons. I’m more saddened by the end of Farrah’s gallant battle with cancer and sorry that her struggle is being overshadowed at the moment.

Ah, the Dead just popped on. “Casey Jones” - Driving that train, high on cocaine. Casey Jones you better watch your speed. My mother would stroke out. But we take our altered realities as we can get them. Frankly, I’d love to be sitting in some comfortably beat up little road house drinking beer with the gals and solving the problems of the world. Not possible, but the music is.

Now Muriel plays piano
Every Friday at the Hollywood
And they brought me down to see her
And they asked me if I would –
Do a little number
And I sang with all my might
And she said –
“Tell me are you a Christian child?”
And I said “Ma’am I am tonight.”

Hell, I’ll bet it’s just as hot in Memphis.

The big plan for the day involves being still, maybe running to the library for R. and doing more iPod traveling . . .

Up in Memphis the music’s like a heatwave
White lightening, bound to drive you wild
Mama’s baby’s in the heart of every school girl
“Love me tender” leaves ‘em cryin’ in the aisle
The way he moved, it was a sin, so sweet and true
Always wanting more, he’d leave you longing for

Black velvet and that little boy’s smile
Black velvet with that slow southern style
A new religion that’ll bring ya to your knees
Black velvet if you please.”