Ruby red at Ruby Tuesday's

I'm NOT out of battery. The cute barman at Ruby Tuesday's said I could move my laptop to the bar, pass him the cord, and I'm plugged in (is that another Freudian thing?). He's from Parkersburg but lived away for a while--in Clarksburg (an hour away). In Ireland, when people go away for a while, they go to Australia or the U.S. This poor guy went 66 miles east on Rt. 50.

He spoke highly of Sen. Robert Byrd, patron politician of West Virginia. For the rest of us, he's the Poster Boy for Pork Barrel politics (passing up higher office to stay on the committee where one has power over the feeding trough).

Where was I? I'm well into my second glass of a stiff red wine, so the writing is well lubricated. Yesteday I read a few essays in The Sun magazine, the only periodical I read. One essay was by a woman who suffers some strange frontal cortex malady--some type of epilepsy. She thinks doctors are hopelessly lacking in empathy for their patients (she's had plenty of experience) and is horrified when her husband gives their small daughter a red doctor's bag filled with "implements of torture." She compares the red bag to an organ and notes sardonically that no one carries doctor bags anymore because doctors don't make house calls.

I love the part in the essay where she's beating herself up mercilessly (bad mother, neurotic, romantic, epilectic, her children should be taken from her, etc.) right before saving a man's life at a bus station in NYC. Everyone wanted to call the cops but she saw an epilectic having a seizure and helped him. Turns out, he was diabetic and needed a hit of sugar. She still saved him (rather than give into the crowd-sourced demand to call the cops). Of course the result was her daughter saw her as a hero and was more committed than ever to doctoring. But she didn't riff on herself-as-bad-mother vs. herself-as-hero. She riffed on how she assumed the stricken man was like her--an epilectic--rather than a diabetic. So her conclusion was she is no better than her doctors--projecting her self-referential solution rather than being empathetic.

The Sun is like that. I highly HIGHLY recommend it to anyone wanting an intimate look into the daily struggles of mothers, prisoners, poets, recovered everythings, and so on. Some of my friends have found it depressing. There are A LOT of child abuse victims in its pages. At the end of the day, I find it incredibly hopeful that people who have faced every flavor of adversity have found a way to forge on with grace, flaws, and a somewhat perverse sense of humor.

Saturday night, we had dinner at an expensive restaurant with Aunt K. She has a table waiting for her any time she wants. She didn't like the veal (veal!) and sent it back. Her pasta came with red sauce, not the olive oil and garlic she requested. I was handling the bill on my mom's behalf. It came in at $50, probably half what it should have been. I tipped $40. That was at last $10 north of sane. Here I am, two strong glasses in, and I'm likely to do the same.

P.S. I've asked my husband, techie extraordinaire, to add the ability to leave comments to my blog. I got the online tutorial from my blog host, however I didn't "get" the tutorial, so this has been outsourced to my Belfast back office. If he figures this out (something about downloading a particular language and using a particular template??), you will be able to comment on my drivel. Yikes. Be careful what functionality you provide in your little sandbox.

P.P.S. My dear mother--perplexed by how to provide for a vegetarian--is making quiche for dinner tonight (oops--I'm late). Those of you who comment on my excessive quiche consumption will find this humourous (N.B. UK spelling of humour).