Spidercamp

i have pizza and chocolate chips. i don't have to leave the house for days.

Today a little, little girl cried for hours because her stomach hurt. Literally two hours of pain-crying out of this child. A quiet sobbing that just went on and on. I rubbed her back, covered her with my coat when she wanted to lie on the floor, rocked her in my lap when she wanted that. We called her mom over and over, no answer. Finally the poor kid started feeling a bit better and got off my lap to go play legos. That's when the mom showed up and was pissed she'd had to leave work early, because "look at her! she's obviously fine!" After that (and before, and during) was my stunningly retarded boss, and then unrelenting traffic. Upset, upset. So it's my fourth day of being tied in knots. There's not enough room in my abdomen for all the things going on in there.

Still, there was sleet. I don't like what it does to traffic but I will never be tired of the noise it makes.

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In my waking life I'm such a dorkus. I have a hard time putting on jackets. I routinely do loads of laundry that are all clothes and no soap, or all soap and no clothes. My period surprises me every single month. I can't remember how old I am. Asleep, though, I'm a genius. I can shrink, fly, go invisible, and move shit around with my mind. I get electrocuted all the time but it doesn't bother me.

Last night I outdid myself. I looked in the mirror and was missing a bunch of teeth. That's stupid. So I concentrated and took another look and they were all back to normal. So I took this opportunity to try on a bunch of different hairstyles and colors. I woke up and was surprised by myself in the mirror, surprised the changes hadn't stuck. I wanted red, with bangs.

pae

I still had cramps and wanted to lie around groaning all day but that's what I did yesterday and now it was time to go back to work. So I did and was surrounded by unbelievable assholes. Not everybody, just everybody under ten, which is largely who I people my day with.

I gave a warning to a bunch of asshole kids, and they paid me no attention, so I spoke more sharply, and they still wouldn't give me so much as an "uh-huh." I've never been the sort to require a "yes ma'am" (cringe), but damn, at least pretend to be listening. Because if I feel a lecture has been entirely for naught, I am liable to do it again and again until I get it right.

So I halted the soccer game and made everybody sit on the ground and listen to me go off. Every time somebody was a jackass I started the whole thing over, giving credit where it was due: Looks like Jake would like to hear this speech from the beginning. Everybody make sure to thank Jake afterwards! I was kind of a gigantic bitch but you'll just have to trust that I do this only when they're truly asking for it. There's no such thing as discipline in their pampered worlds and it worries me to think what will happen to some of them once they hit real life. If they ever do.

I sat on the grass with Gabby, who was having an awful day, and we sulked. It was no more than five minutes later when I looked over at the soccer game with its nine goalies - in a soccer game of fifty kids a lot of rules get bent - and saw that the goalies had all started doing the electric slide for no reason and I was charmed all over again, just utterly charmed.

Between Gabby and the electric slide I was feeling a lot better but what cured me was the cherry pie. The Czech baked what she calls "pie... wit CHERRY!" Eyes open as wide as they'll go, big grin. Even her "pie" is not the same word as mine - it's a happy round fruity word in her mouth, allowed more than one syllable, like the first two-thirds of "paella." I can't tell if that's due to her accent or joy.

It wasn't strictly pie - more like a cobbler, cherries over a thick spongy crust baked in a tremendous stainless-steel lunchlady pan. It was probably bisquik and canned pie filling but I didn't care, it was awesome and I ate like a fool.

It made me remember, and I couldn't believe I hadn't told her this already, about the Czech pastry my father used to make. I said, "Do you know colaches?" and she beamed and grabbed me by both shoulders and said COLACH! YES, COLACH! YOU FATHER, HE CZECH?? and then we had to talk about colaches for twenty minutes but I was still eating pie so it was ok.

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Yesterday the thing that got my mind off cramps was spending the better part of an hour looking at pictures of bunnies. Here's my favorite.

shoup, part 1: for my other doctor friend, who has always reminded me of this one

I mostly grew up in a small town graced with a kind doctor who made house calls. He didn't do it every day; generally he saw patients in his office, but if someone needed medicine and was too sick to come in, he didn't see the point of making them wait when he could just swing by their place on his way home.

When I heard Dr. Shoup was retiring, I was dismayed. I've run into enough unpleasant doctors to appreciate the gentle ones. But by "retirement," it turns out he did not mean retiring from medicine, just his public practice. He meant a trip to Africa to work with HIV orphans.

I'll shut up now. Here's what the doctor has to say:

Arrived in Nairobi around 10PM last night (2PM EST). Fr. Dag and a driver picked me up - no trouble with customs except the guy just wanted to talk and I was too tired to explain why this was my first trip to Africa - he was very pleasant. They grought ne to Nyumbani about 11 PM and showed me my room in a building where volunteers stay. To refer to it as Spartan would be heaping too much praise on it. There is a bed , table, shower and toilet. I tried to go to bed immediately but some damn rooster thought 1 AM and every few minutes thereafter was dawn. Not much rest. This AM around 6 I gave up. Shower has two handles but no warm water. You take showers here in afternoon after the sun has warmed up the water tank.

Started walking around the place around 6:30. The 94 children live in five cinder block buildings-actually more like ston buildings - some of the "big boys" live in a quanset hut. Actually the grounds are very lovely with flowers, shrubs, trees Toward the rear of the property is a chicken house (with that rooster). a concrete hog pen, a rabbit house and a large veg garden. On this early morning tour I was greeted by the four dogs -also very friendly.

Finally , a lady approached me and introduced herself - Sr. Julie from Phila, She was principal at St Benedicts for 12 years and was the at St Agnes Hospital for past seven. She will be here as a volunteer for another six months. She took me to the kitchen for a cup of milky tea. The kitchen is a separate building and the house "moms" and "uncles" pick the food up and take it back to the cottages for the children.

Gradually, the place became very alive with children, volunteers, and staff.It was amazing to see the kids -all of whom look healthy. Age is 9 months to 23 years. The 9month old was abandoned by her HIV mother and ended up in a hospital for first four months. Child developed ricketts in hospital before getting here. At this age she could end up being HIV negative. I ended up holding her for some time. The 23 year old was so sick early in life that he was never able to start school until he was 13. He had until recently been a big held after they taught him to drive but after four accidents in last couple of months, he is no longer allowed to drive until his defensive skills improve He is a funny, happy kid.

Big problem here is HIV mother gives birth to child who may or maynot be HIV positive. She is afraid to breast feed for fear of giving child HIV but she cannot afford to buy milk so she will often abandon the baby.

In addition to the 94 children here, Nyumbani also has 860 children in the slums who are HIV+. Only some of these get meds from Doctors without Borders. But thanks to US pharmaceuticals and some European companies playing with George W, drugs are very limited. COMPASSIONATE George's administration imposes sanctions on any country they tries to make generic drugs. He would rather see millions more die This situation cries out to Heaven. Already, Ihave learned that George W. is despised here. These 860 are in two slum districts in Nairobi. Monday we open third slum clinic in which all the kids will have to be tested. As long as they can get generics from India and Brazil some of these kids will get treated. Note to Drs Katner and Stephens - treatment starts when CD4 gets to 500. I do not think they pay much attention to viral loads until after treatment is started- more on this latter.

Mid morning was spent being introduced to every one, kids, staff,volunteers etc. You should see the kids sweeping out their cottages and washing their furniture- I will get pictures next Sat of this. Happy, talking kids, running little scooters into each other and the dogs who seem to have experienced this many times before'. Volunteers are an amazing group ranging from a 17 yr old girl from Scotland with The British version of Jesuit Voulunteer Crop to a 26 years old social worker from Holland to a photographic journalist from Calif to a young chemical engineer from England to Sr Julie from Phila to so many others. Everything is well organized, even Dr. Mary, the peds, had to be back at Nyumbani by 3PM to read to a group of the kids.

Later this AM I went with Dr. Mary and Susie the journalist to YaYa a suburban section with a mall - ie modern building with all sorts of shops including Woolworth. We walked about a mile (for benefit of dear cardiologist Davidoff) before getting on a matatu - like a van only jammed with 14 people. After we survived that trip we still had several more blocks to walk before we shopped. Then went to another shopping area where their was a Java Cafe with outdoor sitting. You would have thought you were in any warm American city. Lunch was good - Reuben sandwich and ice tea for me. This is a big gathering place for Americans as well as Kenyans; loads of mixed couples with obviously interracial children, middle class Kenyans, young couples. All very friendly an polite. All the store workers in these shopping center are were friendly and want to know everything about you. After we started lunch, Sr. Julie, and the girl from Scotland and from Holland showed up I learned a lot from all that conversation. I promise you those two girls know more about HIV than most doctors in US.

We got back here shortly before 3 and I started this epistle. I paused for a second and suddenly this laptop froze- it would not type, their was no mouse arrow, it would not even shut doown after unplugging it. I went and got the chemical engineer and another computer literate to help me.It would have been too expensive to call Dr. Hedden, so chem engineer suggested removing the battery and waiting a few minutes. This solved the problem but I had to start the epistle all over. But then Fr Dag showed up and took me to the new Jesuit home for elderly and retired Jesuits. The building is beyond description sittin near the edge of an old quarry overlooking the Gnong Hills ie mountains. We had cocktails and dinner all the while watching probablythemost gorgeous sunsets I have ever seen. One Jesuit was from Malta. Ed Brady who taught at both St Joe's Prep and College before going to Sudan. He is very crippled from post polio syndrome. One Jesuit was staying there an Indian who has a big shot job with the UN educational division and goes all over Africa and Asia for the UN - really interesting. All the conversation reminded me of conversations at Georgetown.

The Superior is a physicist from Wisconcin who has built an observatory on the grounds. Don't forget we are 5400= ft above sea level and 3 degrees above the equator. This scope has a 17 1/2" mirror making it by far the largest obseratory in Kenya. At 8Pm he took us to this observatory where we looked at the moon and two of the craters named after Jesuits and at the crater close to where on of the moon landings took place. Next we viewed Saturn and I clearly saw the rings around Saturn, the seven Sisters (really 150 stars}. and the belt and sword of -what's his name. I am getting too tired to think and I am still suffering from jet lag and total lack of sleep. It is now 11:15 or 3:15PM EST.

One last thing -the shirts some of the kids were wearin to: Steelers - someone from Pitts was year last year and gave them out. This has Sr. Julie all upset -she is worse than my nephews- an unbelievable Eagles fan- and she is trying to get Eagles shirts. A couple of the kids shirts had "Southern Comfort" printed on them. More later -I will have to mail this from an ethernet cafe when I can

for three weeks they play nothing but blues, but the fourth week they play ragtime

Yesterday my eyes were terrible again. Red, itchy. Stress? Allergies? I don't know but I am sick of kids telling me about the time they had pinkeye, because gross. When the Czech noticed, she put her arm around my shoulders and drew me close, then whispered in my ear, Are you sure, you no smoke some joint? Then she giggled and giggled and had to sit down. I took an allergy pill last night, I love the word "loratidine," the once-a-day stuff that you have to take for at least a few days before it takes effect. This morning I woke up with clear, non-disgusting eyes, no sore throat, no general crumminess. How much of the way I feel is simply the belief that something is wrong with me, versus the belief that I'm getting better? I'm so frigging simple. I need a medicine cabinet full of sugar pills. Or m&ms. --- Because I read Bust and Venus and all that other dyke-it-yourself stuff, I see references to the Museum of Menstruation every so often, but I'd never checked it out until lately. Seemed gory and grim. But dude, it's amazing. Page after page of well-researched, incredibly detailed information about different cultural attitudes and approaches toward female development, scans of old ads for related products (horrifying suspenders from the 1870s), and passages from goofy "growing up and liking it" pamphlets through the ages. It's fascinating, funny and direct. --- I never thought about this, but at some point, a model was the first real woman whose photo appeared in a magazine ad for menstrual hygeine. At the time (1929), it was a huge social milestone, and a huge event in her career, though not completely well-received - Lee Miller ran off to France to hang with Man Ray soon after the ad appeared. --- >In the 19th century, cumbersome and sometimes huge dresses and complex underclothing made it practical for women to wear underpants with a permanent opening between the legs, so they wouldn't have to reach under and pull them down when urinating or defecating. >(This raises another question: did the can-can dancers in late 19th century Paris expose their vulvas when kicking their legs up, since open underpants were apparently the fashion? If so, no wonder it was scandalous! And I thought it was just because they were showing their undies.) >http://www.mum.org/drawnocr.htm --- The first commercially produced tampon was called Fax. That was in the 1930s, so I imagine there are still some grandmas out there who must think of that, every time someone mentions a fax machine. --- The second boy said, "Why should we buy tampons?" The third boy replied, "Because I saw on television that with tampons you can go swimming and horseback riding and..."

buttons:

I'm in search of buttons for rabbit eyes. It kind of galls me to have to go to the horrifying Wal-Mart just to buy buttons when I know there are jars full of them moldering in closets all over the world.

In general, what I need are solid-colored, flat (no post), plastic buttons, one inch wide or smaller.

Send me your buttons and you'll handsomely rewarded with, uh, some silly little stuff probably including paper robots and rubber lizards. And a thank-you.

jessica pierce
po box 8632
atlanta ga 31106

(Thank you.)

Katherine, the youngest

The first thing that happened this morning was that someone was very, very mean to me. I made some pictures and it helped for a while. Then I had to go to work. Half a mile from the building, I spotted a co-worker, someone I don't know very well but was beginning to really like, booking it down the road in the freezing cold. So I pulled over and she got in, and not only did she not say Thanks for the ride, she did not even say Hello, because she was busy yapping into her cellphone about some stupid shit. Then we got to work and she got out of the car and walked into the building and quit. So now I don't get my day off anymore (Thursdays were just starting to be my wonderful art day) because I have to cover her shift, and she never did say thank you for the ride. I don't know how much notice she gave but if I see her tomorrow, I will be driving right past her chilly ass.

I could tell it was the kind of day where I would get more and more resentful of bad kids. How dare you try to pull this crap in front of me, and how dare you make me be the bad guy. Sometimes I love getting loud to shock a room into silence and sometimes I can't stand to do it. That's not the kind of day I wanted to have so I just abdicated. I let my coworkers do all the dirty work and I sat around and hung out with kids I liked.

Katherine wanted to talk to me instead of doing her math. Really she wanted me to talk while she put her head down on the table. She was tired and I didn't feel like being the grownup and making her do her damn fractions. So we talked.

We were joined by a couple of older girls, dangerously preteen, the ones Katherine tries so hard to keep up with in terms of slang, attitude, and fashion. The fashion stuff is heartbreaking and hilarious, because it's a more deliberate, overt form of competition than you might see at other schools. Here, there's a very strict dress code (uniforms) enforced to the utmost by teachers rabid to get kids in trouble. I know one who uses a dime to check the diameter of every hoop earring she sees. Under such strict rules there's very little variation in the kids' appearance during the school day, but once they come over to our building they're home free because we do not give a damn. I know girls who carry all their schoolbooks in a stack because their backpacks are stuffed full of contraband: bright socks, furry scarves, jewelry, and the coveted but taboo hilfiger jacket. So when I see any girl's outfit varying from the norm, I know it was planned out, worried over, and smuggled in despite the risks. They want so badly to be cool.

So we were all talking and somebody asked about the new box on the wall in the lobby, what is that? I said it was our new defibrillator, and they wanted to know what that was, and it came up that I took a CPR class last weekend. They wanted to know all about it, so I told them, to much giggling over the details, and finally the question came up, as I knew it would: Would you do CPR on me if I had a heart attack?

I said, Well kids don't usually have heart attacks. It's like one in a million. So don't worry about it.

Yeah, but would you? If I did? Would you do it to me?

Well you'd die for sure if I didn't do anything. So, yeah.

Oh my god. You mean you'd, like, uh rip my shirt off and start pounding on my, uh chest? (snicker) What if there were BOYS in here?

I would. If there was a chance I could save you, I would have to try.

Promise you would make all the boys leave the room first.

Katherine, the youngest of this group, said the things she was expected to say, laughed and acted all grossed out when she was supposed to. The conversation dwindled and the girls jumped up to go find fun elsewhere. Katherine hung behind and just looked at me for a minute, very serious. A child who does not often hug anyone, I was caught off guard when she grabbed me quick around the neck and whispered, Thanks. Then, Hey guys, wait up!

belligerent anthraxed mailbag

I tell people all the time that I am grateful every single day to be done with school. The only people who believe me are little kids. I was at Tech the other day and there was a poster sale in the student center. I did not go to the poster sale because I did not need any posters of Jimi Hendrix with a psychedelic afro, or neon fractals, or slouching James Dean with a quote about living life to the fullest. Christ.

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Every day I drive past a hardware store with a big yellow sign that says "OVER 50,000 ITEMS - MANY HARD TO FIND." Is that stupid or funny?

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the cake tank has good stuff

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Gabby told me about a bully who'd called a younger child stupid and then she wanted to be punished for saying "stupid." Said it was a bad word and she would feel bad for saying it, unless she got punished. I could not convince her otherwise. Weirdo. I worry about how much she worries.

---

The other day I was standing around, bitching about work with a couple of co-workers. The only two I can talk to. We were near the kids but far enough away for privacy, we thought, but I guess somebody got loud because this seven-year-old looked up from the wonky giraffe she was drawing and said "Hey guys? Just to let you know, I can totally hear what you're talking about." We said um, ok, ha, we'll try to keep it down. She said, "Oh, that's all right. I just didn't want to get implicated."

I promise I won't do this.

One of the sweetest kids of all time is excited because it's a special day. Instead of playing with her friends she works with construction paper and crayons all afternoon. She makes a card, a crown, a magic wand, a megaphone, all covered in scrawled flowers. Purple and red.

Her dad shows up and doesn't say hello to her, only gestures to hurry up. He's on the phone talking business. He's a real important guy. She stands there looking little, because she is. She says Happy birthday Daddy. He doesn't hear it.

Because I'm dumb, I like to pretend these people are actors on a commercial and I do the voiceover in my head. So, you're a jackass. You've missed your kid's childhood. It happened without you and you can't get it back, ever. When the enormity of what you've wasted comes crashing down on your narrow little heart, enjoy Cats In The Cradle brand tissues.

worth waking up early this time.

First aid and CPR class, the last chunk of state-mandated classroom time I had to log in order to keep my fantastic and glamorous job. No complaints. The worst I can say is that the class ran an hour and a half over because of crazy stupid first-aid anecdote time. My coworkers are worse than little kids. (-I know someone who broke a bone once! -Me too ! !)And I've about had it with lame acronyms. But the instructor, a longtime nurse, was practical, down-to-earth, and not unnecessarily hung up on sterilization, unlike the freaks at the seminar on infectious disease who insisted every diaper change necessitates three glove changes and five hand-washings. ("How do you hold the baby on the table if you're obsessing over gloves?" I asked, and they looked at me like I was crazy. Well how do you?) This lady said that fussing over gloves and mouth shields and rubbing alcohol when somebody's heart is stopped is a great way to end up with a perfectly sterile dead guy. I liked her a lot.

Death grips on those baby heads, ladies! Everyone else's baby looked like it had been molded out of clay by a middle school student. Out of proportion and blocky. Mine was very detailed, with fingernails and ridged lips and little wisps of hair molded onto its skull. It was wearing a diaper with ballerina teddy bears. This was hard to pound on. At first. Best part: the Czech getting flustered and yelling DE BABY NO BREEDING!

As it turns out, those portable defibrillators that are showing up in a lot of public places are really easy to use. I didn't realize it's impossible to hurt someone with them - it will not give a shock unless necessary. If you can't get a pulse on somebody and you slap the pads on their chest, this supersmart little machine reads what the heart is doing or not doing, acts accordingly, and also tells you what to do by way of pictograms and voice prompts. It says STAND BACK and PREPARING TO SHOCK and CHECK VITAL SIGNS. You can be a moron and still help someone with it. And everything it does is recorded on a little disc inside, which the medics can plug into a computer at the hospital to see exactly what happened to the patient. It's pretty freaking awesome.

Ours comes with a razor, in case of hairy man chests that won't allow the pads to stick. Though, our nurse said, if you have two sets of pads, it's faster just to use one as emergency depilatory - rip off all the hair you can with one set, then use the other pads to shock. "If he's dead, he won't mind, and if he lives, he won't mind."

So I'm not enrolling in nursing school or anything (I knew this long before the snakebite photos were passed around during lunch) but I do like knowing this stuff. It's tempting fate but I will go ahead and say I would like to use this knowledge. I mean I don't and I do. If someone is in danger anyway. I don't think I'd freak out too much to do it properly. That's odd to know. It's pretty cool.

2 out of 3, cool

My boss! Oh my holy shit. A while ago she treated me to an "informative" lecture on patron saints, starting from the assumption that I had never heard of the concept, because "I know you're not Catholic." As it happens, I'm not. But I certainly never mentioned that to her, AND I was raised Catholic, so I know the basics, AND I read, so sometimes I know stuff.

So I had to listen to fifteen AWESOME minutes of "...and that's why we pray to Saint Anthony for intercession! Now 'intercession' means..." I only put up with it because I wanted to know how long she would go without asking me if I already knew any of this. She did not ask.

This week my eyes have been horribly bloodshot, probably from the stress of going back to this job after a wonderfully long holiday. Same thing happened years ago when the bookstore was killing me. My boss, who has no tact, asks why my eyes look so awful and makes a very hilarious joke about the possibility of my still being hung over from New Year's. I say, damn, can you imagine what kind of bender I'd have to have gone on, to have eyes this red on Jan. 4th?, and besides, I don't really drink.

She says, Oh I know you don't. This didn't bug me until later, when I realized she does not know this about me, because I've never mentioned it, because it is none of her business. I don't know why it bothers me even more than the patron saint thing. But it does. She makes up her mind about people and will not be persuaded otherwise. This is, of course, the same woman who once threw away a long, complicated, important note I wrote her, detailing a bunch of activites I wanted to do with the kids, and also containing a list of supplies I needed her to buy. She read the first sentence and threw it away, because, she said, I figured I probably knew what it said. Wow. Wow.

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There's this kid, a middle-schooler. She's tall and goofy and smart and wonderful. I've sort of been courting her favor for a while. She only comes to the program about once a month, not enough time for much conversation, so it's hard to tell if she likes me. But I know I like her.

Today there was a big whispered conference so I knew one of the girls was having a problem. They were supposed to be doing algebra homework but really who gives a damn? Not me. So I did the perfect nonchalant saunter at the perfect distance from their table and it worked, I heard somebody say Hey, maybe you should ask Jess, she has good advice sometimes. Hmm, what, need help with your math?

Casey told me the details of her (of course) boy-related problem. It wasn't a hard one, but then I'm not hazy-headed with the weird angst of being thirteen. I basically solved her problem in three sentences, and made her laugh, and when I walked away I heard her say That's a really good idea, I think it might actually work! I really, really hope it does, because I was already smug about this all afternoon.

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Ava, four years old and halfway up the new climbing wall on the playground, paused when her head was level with mine. "How's work going?" she asked, very serious. I said that it was going all right, and how's playing? "Oh, it's good, we made up a new game and I'm having a pretty fun time." She gave me a little nod and got back to climbing; the kid had stuff to do.