medication

One of my very generous and well -heeled friends has just delivered half of Whole Foods to my door-enough to keep my family of 5 fed for a least a week. Her lovely and I suspect gay assistant was perplexed at what to buy the kids so I think he chose to buy every variety of everything so they would not be upset??. I am yet again at agogue at such generousity of spirit and purse.How do I respond? Things like this have been happening all week..Philip said I should get ill more often..As my friend Miss Whistle says "This is what they do here"
I have felt alot better the last two days partly due to now only being on 4 types on medication rather than 8 . I no longer feel like a ghost inhabiting my own life and have actually put paintbrush to canvas. I now have more than half my blood in my body in stead of just half. This incident has made me think about how worrying about small stuff is not that necessary -the unpaid bills I was agonizing about are no longer as important ..the fact that I am able to sit at a computer and write and be walking about is Great. This is my wealth..also the quality of my relationships. I am gearing up for my second surgery tomorrow and having a day of nil-by mouth...this should be hard but not too hard as I have given up PG tips for a while..this was a bad addiction and I would dearly love to learn about controlled tea drinking.

carry 0n Hospital

I have at last a genuine excuse for blog abandonment and have only just got enough energy to do a post. Unfortunately the last week has been like a french farce of disasters or comedy of errors and if you are squeamish at all I suggest you stop reading now. Like all good Brits I have learnt that you do not go to see a doctor unless you are nearly dead and so last saturday when I unexpectedly started bleeding heavily from my internal I chose to ignore it and hope it would right itself or go away. Unfortunately it persisted and got worse throughout the night , again I thought 'I"ll deal with it tomorrow" Procrastination has never worked for me and this was no exception. At 6.30 am after a sleepless and bloody night I went to tick the children off for waking me but as I passed along the corridor I fainted , fell down the stairs and hit my head on the concrete wall at the bottom.I came to and wondered how I had come to be lying nearly in the kitchen with blood now on my forehead and feebly called for Philip and we drove to the small hospital 5 minutes away. I believe I was the only patient was promptly whisked to a booth and hooked up to several machines including an automatic blood pressure reader. GOD BLESS AMERICA...my head was stapled !! 5 staples and they are still there . The internal bleeding continued and despite everyones best efforts they could not stop it ..by the afternoon I had lost half my blood so I was given a blood transfusion. I was very impressed by the trauma care and felt like I was in an episode of ER also being hooked up to every device known to man. I could not move for wires coming out of my body.
Sadly I as allotted a rather bitter and obnoxious male nurse who chose to lecture me in the midst of my distress on my choice of doctor...he later implied I was pregnant and was cunningly trying to keep it a secret. and I that was having a miscarriage..I could hear him bickering with his colleagues as well. and thought to my self '.theres always one.'
By 7 pm I had been in the ER for 12 hours and my condition was not improving so It was decided I would have emergency surgery and I met my very nice and funny surgeon/Obstreotrician and by nine pm was being tied down in the operating theatre with soft music playing..yes here they tie you down believe it or not.
SO my bacon was saved and I feel lucky to still be here. I was in very bad shape the following day and was unable to appreciate my 5 star hospital surroundings..My own large room .. a nurse at beck and call cable tv...clean and bright but sadly too sick to enjoy it.
One of the blessings about being ill has been experiencing human nature at its best ..all my friends, my wonderful book club friends of Bill, neighbor have literally come to our rescue. Flowers, phonecalls , emails , delicious meals being dropped at my doorstep so I don't have to cook , shopping being done etc etc..the community spirit here is fantastic and I am truly touched and humbled and blessed to have such people around.
After 4 days in hospital I was allowed home and looked like a mixture of Russell Brand (hair) and Rhiannon (beat-up face) only to have to return again 24 hrs later as my arm where the iv drip had been strapped had blown up to 3 times its normal size and got infected and had a clot. By now I am on 1st name terms with the hospital staff and have become quite a regular fixture there. So this saga is to be continued and I am sure the lesson and blessing in it all will be revealed.

Art of the Two Germanys

This is an incredible exhibition and ends on the 19th April ..I intend to go again before it ends..its at LACMA on Wilshire blvd

Easter

My poor children are theologically confused..I am a protestant , All three children were baptised Catholic like their father. In England we attended the beautiful Farm street Church regularlly and I became very good friends with the priests who were hoping to convert me. On one occasion in church Grace aged 7 turned to me and said.."mum .you shouldn't be here ! you're a prod!" Now I wonder where she got that idea from. We moved to Los Angeles when GAbe was 5, Grace was 10 and Esther 1..Gabriel started to attend the local Jewish community school.. a wonderful local preschool recommended by our neighbour..and before too long he was singing songs in Hebrew and coming home complaining that I had not 'lit the candles or bought the Hala"One day around passover he came home and said to me "Mum you wouldn't believe what Pharoh did to our people!"
He was sent the following year to join his elder sister at Catholic school and was rather confused and alarmed by the prospect of Jesus Christ with his stigmatas and demanded to be "made Jewish again".
Grace then went to an independant school with no religious affiliations but with predominantly Jewish pupils. Every saturday for about a year she was invited to a Bar Mitzvah or a Bat mitzvah (for girls )-all turning 13..After witnessing these lavish events and the huge bank balances these kids were left with post Mitzvah cash injection Grace was keen to have her own "Faux Mitzvah" ..an oppulent money giving party for non-Jews..No was the answer.
So now we are full circle ..Esther is at the JCC = Jewish pre-school..and complaining that I have not bought Hala and what about "Shabbat" and telling me that Pharoh was a "very Very BAd Man" and sings songs about frogs being everywhere.She also believes herself to be the reincarnation of Queen Esther who saved the Jewish people at one stage in the old testament.
Today on impulse I took them to a new church in Hancock Park which turned out to be a Billy Graham -esque happy clappy Catholic church..this time I was confused..It was full to the brim -over a thousand people and the songs were very modern and evangelical christian..the Priest was shouting out his joyous Easter messages and the crowd was respondonding..he told us all to write a gratitude list but not before we'de written a "poopy list" saying why you think life stinks ..I kid you not...Now I cannot imagine the Jesuits at Farm Street making the Poopy List part of their Easter Sermon.

sell sell sell

So the credit crunch has sent me into great productivity and awoken me from my passive "waiting to be discovered torpor. It is very comfortable to hide behind the stress of having 3 children and use it as excuse to become less than useless at putting yourself "out there".As I said in my last post , there is no shame here in LA at aggressive self-promotion and marketing offensives.People seem very goal orientated..I was warned my my French friend M that if one is invited for dinner here in LA it may well be to form a connection in order to step up the rung of the work ladder that ones host might get to meet your good friend Mr Bigshot.She said it is rare that one is invited because you may be entertaining or the life and soul of the party..I am still forming my own judgements about this theory.
So last week I was approached by some publiscists ( thanks to my friend Liza..please read her blog it is linked from this one) they wanted to find out if I was worthy of free publicity...presentable , reliable trendy etc... i told them straight off "if you are looking for cash do not waste your time with me.." it did not put them off me an they asked for a meeting..
I managed to get rid of the kids for a few hours so they could visit me at home and they spent considerable time going through my press clips , catalogues etc...the only other artist they represent is a rock star-painter who commands $70 000 per painting.These people naively beliieved that the astounding sales of his paintings had little to do with his rock star status!
I told them of my trip about a month ago to Honor Fraser Gallery in Culver city. I had gone to her opening in the hope of having a quiet word and getting some advice from her only to see a queue going around the block waiting to get into her gallery. I thought to myself maybe there was a night club in there? No a hip gaffiti artist called Kaws who had a huge Hispanic following.
The publiscists explained that only letting a few people in at a time would have created an enigma and added intrigue..we noticed that in the midst of the credit crunch Kaws had managed to sell his flourescent skulls for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Well done Honor. I did speak to her a few days later and she was sweet and helpful .
So the long and short of it is the publiscists are going to "pitch" me to their boss to see if I am money-friendly enough to invest in ...we shall see