The "F" Game

My friend, Genny, is intelligent, compassionate, and genuinely hilarious. She runs a homeless shelter in the Philadelphia area. I guess that maybe keeps a lid on the mayhem might be a better single-phrase description of what it is exactly that she does. I could not do what Genny does. In essence, we do much of the same thing; we genuinely care about the wellbeing of those whom society would like to pretend do not exist.

When the guy was headed out of town a few weeks back, Philly was one of his destinations. Genny invited him to feel free to stop by the celebration of her mother’s eightieth birthday and observe the dysfunction. I related this to him and answered the resultant query of, “What is dysfunction?” At some point during our conversation that evening, Genny had mentioned a game that her parents had come up with a couple of years ago, the “F” game. Her mother has been in severe pain due to a growing cyst on her spine. Surgery is the only remedy. Until all the consults could be completed and the procedure scheduled, her mother dealt with the severity of the pain by taking narcotics in the evening and playing the “F” game during the day to help cope with the misery.

Apparently the “F” game was invented a couple of years ago after her parents went to see a movie. Apparently, just about every other word in the dialogue of the movie was “fuck.” On the way home afterwards, Genny’s dad had turned to her mother and asked how she had liked the fucking movie. The “F” game was born. Genny cited a couple of instances of the “F” game. Omg! I was rolling!! Being that neither Genny nor I is quite right in the head, we thought it would be hilarious to play a round of the “F” game with Al the next time we all had a three-way chat online. Now, Al isn’t quite right in the head either, so we knew that he would be appalled but able to appreciate the gag once we had let him in on it.

Well, we ended up playing a round of the “F” game the other night. Genny and I laughed so hard we were in stitches. I commented to her in IM that it was a good thing that neither of us lived with other humans because they would surely think us to be mad. She said that Ringo, her cockatoo, was laughing as hysterically as she was. Being that her sliding door was open, she hoped that the neighbors didn’t hear them. We chatted briefly last night. Her neighbors had indeed heard the laughter and had been laughing themselves because Genny and Ringo were laughing so uncontrollably. I commented that it was a pity that we hadn’t archived the chat as it was a classic twisted moment. As it turned out, the chat was archived. Fucking-a yippee!!

After we had let Al in on the “F” game and its origin, he began to type every word with the letter “m” as its first letter. I had to respond that I had a patient who just talked like that. That, of course, inspired Al to get sillier with his statements. Genny asked if I could actually understand my patient who talked like this. Yes, I can, on those rare occasions when he will actually speak slowly. I told Al that all he needed to do to make the impersonation perfect was to stand his hair on end and put his glass eye in backwards. (Al doesn’t have a glass eye, but my patient does.)

So, that’s the synopsis of the “F” game. I suggest you try it out when you get the suitable opportunity. It’s a blast.

Today is the guy’s birthday. I sent him a quick e-card this morning. As it came from my yahell email addy, I had to send him an email from my usual addy telling him not to delete the card. As of his email yesterday afternoon, he was 98% moved. I offered several times to help, but no amount of reasoning, logic, or common sense was breaking through that cultural bias. He was not about to be the only African man on the face of the planet with a woman carrying furniture to the third floor. LOL I made my final offer with an email Monday and then let it drop. It wasn’t worth an argument. Guess that’s about it for now. More drek and drivel later.

Monday Morning

Was planning on heading in to work this morning after I dropped Jonathan at the sitters. However, I have Trinity home sick today. Guess it's a good thing I brought home some stuff that I can work on here today.

Going contingent did mean losing my regular load of patient-related paperwork and assignments. It did not mean signing off on my administrative paperwork and duties. Funny how it works that way.

Saw a couple of more promising job leads in the paper yesterday. The VA job is still running #1, but I'm going to check out a couple of other places as well.

We are planning on having pizza at work next Sunday for that guy's birthday. It should be fun. I'll have to get a card for all of the guys who live in the apartment to sign for him. They all like him, and he likes them so it will be something special to him.

We were all giving Mark (one of the residents) a bad time yesterday at dinner. He wants to move out and go live with his sister in Alaska. Not a very realistic goal on his part, but I understand why he feels that way. Of course, in our singularly inappropriate way, we had to make him feel loved! LOL

Yesterday was Tom's birthday, so all of the guys were in a good mood. Birthday translates into something for dinner that doesn't suck! LOL Of course, the guys all had to join in on giving Mark a good-natured bad time as well. Lots of laughter at dinner. We even managed to get a couple of smiles and comments out of Dan, probably one of the most foul-natured residents on grounds.

I should probably get on this paperwork. This stack of papers isn't going to magically sort and revise itself.

The Conundrum Continuum

I should confess to being way behind on viewing my email subscriptions and reading my email. It isn’t so much that I am disinterested as much as it is that nothing seems to catch my interest. Sewing, making jewelry, shopping, working, cleaning my house, reading a book, watching a movie, doing a crossword puzzle, working in the yard, being on the computer…. Nada. Zip. Zilch. In fact, I don’t really go out of the house unless I have very specific reason. Work. Groceries. Drop the kiddos at school. That’s about the extent of my outside ventures of late. Well, toss in to go and visit that guy on occasion. But, then he and I don’t go anywhere. We just stay at his house. We did go for ice cream once when the air conditioning was broken, and it was miserably hot in his apartment. So, even going to his house is pretty safe for not having to venture outside.

How do I arrive at a solution to the problem of making myself want to do something? I will decide to do something, and I may make an attempt at doing it. More often than not, it doesn’t get past the stage of being a thought process. Sometimes, I do start to do something, but I stop shortly into the process because completing it doesn’t really seem to matter to me.

The medication helps in that some things do go beyond being merely thought about and do get under-way. However, the medication does not seem to be the “magic bullet” to cure what is ailing me.

Am I afraid to try because I may fail, or am I afraid to try because I may succeed?

Do I want to delve that deeply into my psyche when it is after midnight, and I have to be up by 7am?