Shame

In September I was so crazy about writing posts on my new blog that I thought I'd never be able to stop, in fact one person told me I had written too many posts and should cut back, but that's one of the funny things about life: Sometimes a person can stop.

There is something I must do which I don't want to do, so much that my inner voices are telling me it is imperative that I write a post, instead. I'm pretty sure I've already written a post about this dilemma but I can't remember what it was that I was supposed to have done that I didn't want to do in September, so much so that I wrote about it. That's another funny thing about life: How much you forget right away.

My inner voice just told me, "Oh, for crying out loud, there you go again, writing the same stuff, over and over and over, no one wants to know about what you really should be doing instead of writing this post and no one reads this post anyway so why do you write it?"

My inner voice is always on my case. My inner voice muttered, "Shame on you!" last Thursday afternoon when a knock-knock on the glass of my front door interrupted quality time I was spending on my bed under a comforter with a crossword puzzle and my four foster teenage kittens. "Shame on you for being in bed on a weekday afternoon!" said my inner voice as I stumbled to the door to greet a stranger who looked like a Deadhead who asked me if I was who I am and when I said I was, he handed me an envelope with a Notice to Quit Premises in 60 Days in it. "Shame on you for being process-served!" screeched my inner voice as I watched the Deadhead walk away. He turned and waved and I waved back, wishing that he had the power to undo the process he'd served me with.

The sensation of realizing I've been process-served , and it's happened four or five times in my life, is similar to the sensation of realizing I've been hit in the face with a pie, and that's happened at least once. I wonder if it's the same feeling you'd have as you realize you're being thrown out of a moving car or that you've lit an exploding cigar: Shock. It's happening but you can't yet believe it.

When I was 19, I used to accompany a friend on his rounds as a process-server in seedy neighborhoods of San Francisco. I never saw the people he served but I assumed they were all men, deadbeats, skips, low-lifes. My friend and I thought it would be fun for me to serve a few. What guy would ever suspect that I, a beautiful young woman, asked to know their name only because I wanted to hand them an envelope that was going to wreck their day and possibly a lot of the rest of their life? It was mean, dangerous and exciting work and I got hooked on it and I never once process-served a woman. That is why, several years later, the first time I was process-served I felt ashamed, as if I was a deadbeat, low-life, skip of a woman. Actually I was being ordered to testify against someone who had stalked me and made my life miserable, but I couldn't shake off the feeling of sleaze I connected with having been process-served. Almost forty years later, it still feels sleazy.

I asked Google: Are there happy reasons to be process-served? There was nothing.

So now I feel shamed that someone doesn't want me to live where I've been living for almost three years, so much so that they've gone to the trouble of having a process server deliver the news. Am I that bad? No. Do I have a history of not paying my rent? No. Am I disorderly, loud, careless, do I sleepwalk, do I frighten the neighbors, do I ever make crack cocaine in my kitchen? No.

It's funny, the things a person can feel ashamed about. I knew a girl from Kansas who was ashamed that her cat had brought fleas into her home. "It's the stigma," she said. "In Kansas they look down on you for that."

I thought I'd finished this post until I remembered I never wrote about what it is I must do that I don't want to do, which isto gather up all the papers I need to take to a lawyer to protest this notice to quit the premises in 60 days. It took more than two months of looking on a constant basis before I found this place, and it was by chance that I found it.

I've got 45 minutes in which to write this post and it's going to be tough because I've got a hangover from not having blown my nose for six hours and from staying up too late watching YouTube.

There are many things I want to cram into this one post and they are bashing themselves against my brain, all wanting to come out at once in the same way the glop in my head that's been waiting for six hours for me to wake up wants to be let out when I have my first nose-blow of the day but I'm just not ready to do it.

I woke up with a cold a few hours after I went to sleep for the night after my birthday party ended last Saturday. Since then, I've been blowing my nose. There was plenty of coughing involved but it was nothing compared to the nose-blowing that's been going on for the past 8 days.

I want to write about the dream from which I was wakened just now, one which left me in a sad, lovelorn state. Its effect has been dampened by describing my cold but I won't let that stop me. In the dream, I had two roles: Observer and and actual star, a high-school girl in a rebound relationship with a tall, dull classmate. We were at a school dance where I was surreptitiously looking for my former boyfriend, and feeling annoyance with my new b.f. who was bossy. Whenever I was looking for my former b.f., I became the observer who had never before seen the b.f. and therefore didn't know who I was looking for. I, the teenage girl, was waiting for me, the observer, to spot him, hoping I wouldn't and hoping I would, all of which made for an emotionally tangled situation. My new b.f. and I strolled around the dance and came to the food table where high school girls were starting to make a chili con carne. One of them had just put a pound of bacon into a huge electric skillet. I wanted to know if she was going to drain off the grease, or drain off most and toss the rest, or use only the cooked bacon - there were so many things to be done or not done with that bacon, and as we were talking, my new b.f. disappeared, never again to be seen in that dream. I'll cut to the chase because there are 10 minutes left in which to finish this post: My ex-b.f. walked in the entrance to the dance as I was walking out. My teenage girl had to tell me, the observer, that this was him so we could get on with the dream. He was much shorter than my rebound boyfriend and he had a crew-cut with a large circle shaved into it, not very attractive, but he'd done it since we'd broken up. We looked into each other's eyes. I said, "Wait, don't go!", although I was the one who was leaving. He said, "Okay." End of dream.

Next on the list of things demanding to be said is that this morning I am taking my kittens to their first mobile adoption at the Home at Last site which will be located at one of the most trendy spots on Fourth Street in Berkeley. I will say, "Goodbye, my precious babies," leave before I get all wierded-out, and head across town to the Oakland fire training station where I am volunteering to be made up as a disaster victim and then instructed in how to act like one. When I was still going through menopause I was already a disaster victim and needed no instruction but things have settled down a lot and I need a refresher. With all the nose-blowing I am doing,