D-Day: Comcast Newsmakers - Rob Lokoff to the rescue - Poem: Ah. Mania!

I always need to be chauffeured to my Comcast Newsmakers Interviews. Usually Ada and Rich take me but since this taping was on a Friday, Rich couldn't take off.

I call Rob my morale-booster. He's better than any therapist. I never gave him a house-warming gift for his new condo in Conshohocken, so hopefully the jar of Polaner's All Fruit Blueberry Jelly will make the grade.

It's not the gifts we give, it's the kind of friend we are.

I'd gotten an email from PA State Rep. Stewart Greenleaf (R) showing a taping he did on Comcast Newsmakers - he's such a dull speaker I couldn't pay attention to his message - but I thot to myself Good idea to have another taping - and this time I've gotta mention the life-threatening effects of Lithium.

Two of the technicians at the Comcast studio on South Columbus Blvd. Say hello to Dan and Justin.

These two women made me feel very comfortable.

Danielle Jeter, a graduate of the historically black Spelman College in  Atlanta, interned at Comcast and got a FT job there. I called Danielle to ask her about the temperature in the studio. From previous years I remembered it was freezing cold.

She told me the studio was cold so I wore a fancy sweater.

I like to prepare well in advance for these tapings, so I bot my outfit that morning at the Sweater Mill in friendly Hatboro. Ivy helped me.

At 9 that morning, I had my hair and nails done at Polished, also in The Hat.

To the right of Danielle, is Michelle, a recent engineering grad of North Carolina A & T. She's doing her internship at Comcast now.

I didn't mention I was born in the "Tar Heel State" at Camp Lejeune, NC. I still have the menu they fed mom at the hospital. No wonder we both love key lime pie. 

Here I am with interviewer Jill Horner. Rob was sitting offstage and watching me live and on a monitor. I was watching myself from:

inside myself
and on three monitors, very briefly

I carefully checked the info that would be printed on the screen while I was speaking: Ruth Z Deming, MGPGP plus our website which they printed in all CAPS.

Afterward Rob and I celebrated. Instead of eating at the Beverly Hills Hotel, we went to the Hatboro equivalent: McDonald's.

Rob was skittish at first but I assured him they'd have something delicious. Here he is with his mango-pineapple smoothie.

 I thoroughly enjoyed my iced decaf. Unbeknownst to me, the attendant added a forbidden vanilla creme concoction which this person w diabetes, greedily slurped up.

See, if it's in my own power and I do these dastardly deeds, that's bad. But when it's accidentally done for me, that's okay.

Oh? My body can't tell the difference? Shucks.

I got diabetes from my kidney antirejection meds. I've gotta shlep my drug paraphernalia everywhere I go including to a wedding I'm going to later today.

Loads of family members are in town. Am hoping they'll come over to see the additions I put on the house.

My sister Amy from Oregon said to me, "Ruth, where'd you get the money?"

I think she was expecting me to say, "I borrowed it from Mommy."

I sold some of my Berkshire Hathaway stock.

AH, MANIA!

You are faithful, I’ll give you that, coming ‘round just in time for

Valentine’s Day.

You snuggle close and ask me to be yours. I smile knowingly and say,

Show me your virtues....if you have any.

You, in the guise of a gypsy with pots and pans strung across your back,

take down a few tarnished wares and hold them out to me.

I snort. Haven’t we been through all this before?

Then, as I touch your rouged cheek, I ask, Why won’t you give me up?

What am I to you?

Your gypsy eyes, ringed with soot, brush my face.

Okay, I say, it was good. I admit it.

I saw the stars with you.

We ran with the moon at our backs and

leaped across the sleeping earth.

You showed me the future in a

dead dog’s eye, then led me away

lest I drown in my own dream.

You spun sweet songs from the morning breeze

and trickled them through my hair.

You peeled back the world so I could dip inside.

Took the fire from the sun and winked it in my heart.

Okay, I say. You’re a friggin’ marvel, a regular storehouse of miracles.

But can’t we say goodbye?

It’s February and you’ve come back.

You always do.

I hear you breathing at my front door, soft as a kitten.

I’d know that sound anywhere.

Let me in, let me in, you whimper.

Can’t you be more original?

Once

I followed you

blissfully    blindly

never dreaming of deceit,

dazed by your taste for light and color

awed by your contempt of boundaries

so like my own

which you swept away

with a lion’s paw

while I cheered you on from the sidelines,

until I found myself

tethered insensate to a hospital bed.

And forgot I had a name.

Amid the tumult

amid the sea of screams,

the broken minds a-bob the

slicing waves like so many

wind-up clocks jangling out of time,

who should come ‘round but you.

Fancy!

There, amid the black,

the granite slab of eternity sawing through my chest,

you kissed my eyes and bid me see.

Ah, Mania,

My debt to you is incalculable,

simply beyond measure.

But no pots and pans today, dear Gypsy,

Put them away.

Today I travel alone

Fishing for words, as I do,

Fishing, sans you.