PaperGirl Blog by Mary Fons

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26 Apr 2015

Finally! Answers! I’m Pteridophobic!!!

by Mary | posted in: D.C., Day In The Life, Story | 3

I do not know or care what kind of fern this is. I couldn't even put it into the post until I was ready to hit "Publish." — I do not know or care what kind of fern this is. I couldn’t even put it into the post until I was ready to hit “Publish.”

I took a pleasant walk with my friend Elle, her baby Miles, and her husband Brian at the National Arboretum on Saturday. This was after my first experience delivering groceries to seniors with We Are Family, which you can read about here; a full report on that tomorrow.

The weather was chilly — I have a knack for going to gorgeous gardens under steely gray skies — but the stroll was perfect. Brian stayed in the car while Miles napped and urged Elle and I to start off ahead. We went to the Bonsai garden and I learned a lot about Bonsai trees, namely that they do not grow like that on their own. It takes me awhile, but I get there.

We were remarking on life and plants and I thought I’d share something rather personal and embarrassing with Elle, something I don’t tell many people because it is just so totally weird. But in the circumstances… Well, I went for it.

“Elle? I have this weird fear. Like a phobia.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“I’m deathly afraid of ferns.”

Elle laughed, not cruelly, but in surprise. “Like, fern-ferns? Ferns.”

I nodded and tried to explain. “It’s the spidery-ness. The uncurling thing. They’re so big. And dark. Prehistoric, you know? They seem really, really old and really, really…intelligent. And they’re vascular. Like, they’re described as vascular plants. That is so…” but I shuddered and couldn’t finish my sentence. Elle granted that the fern characteristics I described had a slight creep-factor, but clearly she did not feel the same way about ferns.

Friends, I do hope you feel that when you read this blog you often come away having learned something of value, and not just about my hilarious family. But if you’ve never learned anything before, you’re about to: there is a name for my fern phobia. It’s pteridophobia. It’s a thing. It is so a thing that not only did spellcheck not freaking underline it — I’m not alone. In fact, there is a very, very famous person who also was pteridophobic. Would you like to know who that person was?

Sigmund Freud.

When I read this, I choked on my juice. Spluttering and coughing, I put my laptop to the side and jumped up so I didn’t get juice on my laptop or the couch, just on my pretty vest.

“What?!” I hollered. “Sigmund Freud was afraid of ferns??” I picked my laptop back up and wiped my chin. My eyes were big as dinner plates and glued to the screen, now; I clicked this and that tab, trusting but verifying. It’s true: Freud was deathly afraid of ferns.

Do you realize what this means?? Sigmund Freud was not just the father of psychoanalysis, he was also the father of phobic baggage. He made people feel worse about their phobias than they already did! Some nice guy was afraid of banana cream pie and then Freud got a hold of him and you know what happened to that guy. And here I am, a person with the same phobia Freud himself had?? And it’s ferns?? Do I not brood enough? Am I not hyper-analytical (emotionally speaking) enough? I am now bound to Freud in our irrational fear. We are sister and brother in weirdness, bound forever by unbearable terror when we step into a greenhouse full of…

Full of…

I can’t say it. Please don’t make me say it… Siggy! Siggy, I’m afraid… Run, honey! Run!!!

24 Apr 2015

To Those On The Fence (Or, “Tree Of Life”)

by Mary | posted in: Paean, Quilting | 0

The Tree of Life quilt block, currently up on my design wall.

Here was my day:

I woke up. I wrote for a few hours. I drank tea during those hours, tea with probably too much cream and honey. I don’t want to live in a world without pots of tea with cream and honey, so there you have it.

Errands were run. Dry cleaning. Grocery store, because I needed cream and honey. I didn’t get to the post office and I feel bad about that. I didn’t go on a walk to no place at all and I feel bad about that, too. I took a brief nap.

I did work. Emails, proposals, thinking-cap sorts of things. Correspondence. Invoicing. I called a friend of mine, I tidied the kitchen, I received a UPS box. It contained a quilt that has finally come home after a year of being out for editorial, or a show, or because it just needed to go find itself.

And at the end of all this, at the end of myself, what did I want?

I wanted to sew. I wanted to touch fabric. I wanted to turn on my iron to the hottest setting she’s got. I wanted to slice and dice the selected fabric and stitch it back together again, paired now with other fabrics, paired now with other patchwork in order to create a more perfect union. After looking at quilts, talking about them, reading about them, being steeped in the whole thing most of the day — more than anything in the world, I wanted to try a quilt block because I have wanted to try “Tree of Life” for about a year.

Isn’t it marvelous? Making quilts?

The hum of the machine as it sews is something close to maternal. The snip of thread scissors does something important in the brain. The steam that rises from the iron, if I may be a little woo-woo, is purifying. And the thing about the process of making patchwork is that it’s fun and engaging and satisfying, but at the end of your efforts, you have a quilt. You don’t have a puzzle that needs to be scooped up and put back in the box. You don’t have a model airplane, the function of which is now to collect dust on the top of a bookshelf in grandpa’s office. A quilt wraps around a body. A quilt is functional art. A quilt is for you, and for me, and forever.

To those on the fence or those who are stumped; to those who are searching for something that will make it all better — or increase the joy factor in an already wildly fun existence — I strongly recommend making a quilt. It works for me.

23 Apr 2015

Come See Me: Uptown Poetry Slam @ The Green Mill, 7pm, May 3rd

by Mary | posted in: Art, Chicago, Poetry | 0

Me at the Mill, but years ago. I gotta get a new picture next Sunday.

Hi, Chicago peeps and anyone who wants to make a pilgrimage for poems and possibly Scotch.

I’m honored to be the feature poet at the legendary Green Mill Cocktail Lounge for the perhaps more legendary Uptown Poetry Slam on May 3rd. That’s a Sunday night. The open mic starts at 7pm, then I do a half-hour of my classics (!), plus new poems and a couple covers, too. If I had more time, I’d absolutely love to do Prufrock, but that would be downright indulgent. After my set it’s time for the slam.

If you’ve never been to the Green Mill for the slam, you have not lived. Oh, I mean it. That’s not hyperbole. There is nothing like the show at the Mill, a blend of poetry, bloodsport, make-you-cry beauty, and possibly Scotch. It’s hilarious. It’s not too long (7pm-10pm, tops), and the Green Mill itself is gorgeous and historical. If it was good enough for Al Capone, it’s good enough for us, right? You could make a night of it and stay for the jazz trio that comes in after the show. And hey, I know many people have dreamed of reading a poem at a microphone. This is your chance.

So come over. Get there early for a seat. I’d like to see lots of friends, of course, old and new. It’s a powerful, humbling thing to have a half-hour at the Mill microphone and I intend to kill it.

See you in the crowd.

22 Apr 2015

Hang On, Hang On: A Gallstone?

by Mary | posted in: Day In The Life, Sicky | 0

Cheesecake with berries, because you do not want me to use a picture of a gallbladder or a gallstone. Trust me. Photo: Wikipedia

I must confess a strange sense of embarrassment when I the surgeon told me he saw a small gallstone on my CT scan. Aren’t gallstones what obese men in their late fifties get when they eat cheeseburgers all day, watch SportsCenter and smoke Pall Malls? My brain also connected “gallstone” with “kidney stone” and boy, I’ve heard some horrific stories about those things. Really, any time a doctor says the word “stone” in conjunction with the words “inside” and “your,” you’ve got some thinking to do.

When I got home and stopped barfing, I read up on gallbladders and what can go wrong with them. A person can get gallbladder cancer, but this is extremely rare. (There’s a terrible, terrible joke here, barely: Q: What did the gallbladder say to cancer? A: “What am I, chopped liver?”) No, it’s mainly just gallstones that afflict our gallbladders. But why and how? First, we have to understand what the gallbladder is for: it does stuff with bile. That’s it, that’s all I can tell you. It’s not important. Well, it isn’t! You can have your gallbladder removed, so how important can it be? Your honor, I rest my case.

Still, you don’t want things going awry in there, and then things do. Gallstones are hardened deposits of digestive fluid. Considering that my guts are made of cotton candy and popsicle sticks, that I would have a digestive fluid problem isn’t a huge leap. Many people have gallstones; most people don’t know they do and don’t have to know because most gallstones are small and harmless. They form for various reasons and yes, one of the reasons is having high cholesterol due to many, many cheeseburgers and no exercise, Pall Malls, etc. But some gallstones form because…well, why shouldn’t they? Don’t judge a gallstone for wanting to live. Gallstones are just like you and me.

My friend told me this morning that he had a terrible time with his gallbladder and nearly had to have it removed; he avoided this in the eleventh hour thanks to medicine and fluids. He did say the pain he experienced was the worst of his life. He passed out and he’s no fainting goat.

I have zero symptoms, though. I think I’m one of the people who will never have to deal with my stone (I like to refer to it as my little “gallpebble,” thank you.) If they have to take it out, though, I ain’t scurred. Actually, it would be kind of exciting. Taking out my gallbladder would increase the number of organs I’ve had excised from three to four. If you count tonsils and four wisdom teeth, now I’m getting to be a real conversation piece. Oh, and there were a couple suspicious moles removed a few years back. Hm. Parts of my body are just flying off into space, aren’t they?

Tomorrow we examine (in words, in words!) my cyst. What nerve! What gall!

21 Apr 2015

El Hospitale.

by Mary | posted in: Day In The Life, Sicky | 1

Good Samaritan, by Gabriel Nicolet, 1914-1915

I spent the majority of the day in the hospital yesterday, dagnabbit.

Sometimes it seems that I get sick or have something go wrong and when I recover, it’s time to set my stopwatch and wait for the 00:00 to hit and then it’s back to the nurses and doctors. My 00:00 came the other night and yesterday, I could wait no longer to take my watch to the ER.

Starting last week taping TV, I felt this a strange, new pain. (It’s always exciting to experience a symptom for the first time! It’s like making a new friend.) There was intense pain and a strange gripping, clenching, internal dripping (??) feeling around my old ostomy site. I’ve got a fabulous scar to the right of my bellybutton and all around it, tenderness and a disturbing hardness had arrived. And did I detect streaks? Under the skin? Oh, dear. Oh, boy. It was worse when I bent over to pick up my house keys, which happens all the time for some reason.

My new friend Elle (a quilter, no surprise) told me when I got to DC that if I ever needed medical care, to call her immediately. “I know from ER trips,” she said, having taken various members of her family on a regular basis. “I’ll be your advocate. I know about that, too.”

I really, really hate calling in favors, but I did. Elle and baby Miles took me to Sibley and I’m happy to say I received excellent care. Surgeons poked at me, internal medicine doctors prodded me, CT scans were ordered, and pain medicine was blessedly dispensed. I barfed a lot, too. We were there for eight hours and Miles was an angel. He also was useful: when Elle would go out of my room to ask for something, the staff was like, “Oh!! Adorable baby!! Yes, how can we help you? Adorable baby!!”

Results were inconclusive. The surgeon thinks it’s sutures working themselves out, maybe adhesions shifting around. But I got bonus diagnoses: I have a small gallstone and a 2” ovarian cyst on my right side. Wow! And I just came in for what I thought was a piece of my intestine ready to quit on me. I told my surgeon about my lipoma, too. He said it was no big deal and laughed when I told him how I found it.

All you have to do is get out of bed in the morning. Things will happen to you. Experiences will arrive. What will happen today? Time to wake up.

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