News: some good, some bad

Hello, readers!

If you've given up on me, I wouldn't be surprised. Here are the last few month's highlights. I'll start with the good.

• Jess and I moved in together, to a wonderful place that's the top two floors of a house. After many false starts, it looks like we also have a roommate to occupy the third bedroom!
  
  
• I spent thankstaking with Jess's family in Harrisburg, PA and stayed up until 11:30 making tofu onion quiche, from-scratch pumpkin pie and stuffing for a veritable vegan army. It was a wonderful break, I curled up with a book in front of their fireplace. I can't remember when I had that many contiguous hours to be reading. Perhaps the last time I posted to this blog, eh?
  
  
• DC Trans Coalition won our campaign about handling procedures for trans people with the DC Police. Yay! It's a great document. Now we're working on enforcing it. First stop: a big ol' fashioned Know Your Rights training with the community;
  
  
• Jess and I took a Spanish class together;
  
  
• Our new place has seen a whole slew of fabulous visitors already, a pumpkin-carving party, a housewarming, a bevy of guests. Yay!
  
  
• Halloween, my favorite holiday, was particularly delightful this year: friends of mine through various USAS connections had put together a zombie-laden haunted scavenger hunt/bicycle race all across DC. It was truly amazing. I was a devil and Jess was a witch, complete with pointy hat affixed to her bicycle helmet. Can't beat that.
  
  

And the bad...

• This November 24th was marked not only by the birthdays of Elly and Juliana, but the untimely death of my cat Miles. Miles had been in the care of my parents since 1996, so my claim to him was shaky, but my love for him was not. There are really unfortunate parallels to my dad's death as well, and Miles also had a chronic kidney condition, but his only lasted a year or so. I will miss him terribly. He was 13, which was old, but in my family we've had cats live to be 21.
  

So much has happened over the last few months there's no way I can get it all down here. Needless to say, living with Jess is a joy. The moving process was...eventful, and for about a month I spent every spare moment assembling some piece of Ikea or Ikea-via-craigslist furniture or unpacking boxes.

Also, I'm coming out to California for a big chunk of the winter, and I'm really excited about it. It's going to be a rough time no matter what, and I'm already pretty down about the events of last winter. It blows my mind that it's already been almost a year.

With that, though, it was much more joy than sorrow when an dear friend of my parents, Jim Heid, discovered and sent me a clip from the last episode of Jeopardy that my dad was on. I was two when he was on the show, and I've never seen the show as an adult because this was long before we had a VCR. I don't even know if you could get them in 1979. Nonetheless, here's the link. My dad's the swaggering ham who had won the previous four days...he lost the fifth, but it was enough money to build the house I grew up in.

Been a while, huh?

Some things have happened in the last coupla months. Seven days after my last post, I turned 31 years old and had a party in DC to celebrate. Since then:

• I took a trip out to California for a memorial dinner with my dad's siblings over his birthday weekend and helped my mom fix up the new place she's living, plus saw a few friends and took one trip to the beach;
  
  
• I found a great therapist whom I saw for three months, who recently had a baby, but now she's back practicing again;
  
  
• I went to the US Social Forum where I saw hundreds of my nearest & dearest, which was amazing;
  
  
• I stepped up work around the DC Trans Coalition, where we're working to change the way police in DC (mis)handle transgender and gender-variant folks;
  
  
• My mom sold the house, which finally closed escrow a couple of weeks ago;
  
  
• Jess and I continue to deepen our relationship (some of you met her at the USSF, others during a brief overlap in California)--it makes me quite amazingly happy;
  
  
• I slumped a bit around what would've been my parents' 29th wedding anniversary and was also the anniversary of Elly's departure from DC;
  
  
• I took over the rent-paying role at the crazy many-person anarchist-leaning collective house I've been occupying for almost two years now;
  
  
• I got promoted at my day job while managing a whole bunch of web-program stuff over the summer. Plus I was representin' on a panel at YearlyKos, the blogger convention. I don't self-identify as a blogger, and I think my lack of posts can testify to that, but really, I clearly am. I mean, here I am, writing a blog and all.
  

Summer has involved a lot of hiding out at Jess's air-conditioned apartment and a few weekend trips to pretty places, notably the Shenandoah Valley for camping and hiking Old Rag mountain and my pal Ginny's amazing farm just outside of Culpeper, VA. I also took the first-ever personal strategy retreat at Rehoboth Beach, DE where I sat on the beach and read lots of self-help and personal time management and political theory books and got just a little bit closer to having a five-to-ten-year plan.

More to follow...I swear.

month four...

Mom has moved, and got a new car, and has a social life as she's closer to the Healdsburg community now. What a huge sigh of relief. It's been hard, but she's managed to undertake an amazing strain and has landed on her feet. She's already hooked up with a Windsor grief group. It's quite amazing.

I was very, very, very busy for a while. My friend B absconded with me and Jess, my (relatively) new sweetie, his sweetie Mari, several other amazing pals to Shenendoah National Park for some good ol' fashioned car camping. It was really lovely. There was a hike, there were waterfalls. If I had a doctor to order it, it would've been what they'd ordered.

Last weekend I was in Philadelphia...Jess was attending a workshop Molly lead; a stop between time in New Orleans and a return to the Bay Area.

I'll be back in the Bay in June for the memorial gathering of my dad's siblings in San Francisco.

Not much else to report. Well, lots. But not enough time. More will follow, eventually.

(relatively) good news!

The results are in, as of this afternoon: whatever I'm doing dietarily is working. If anything, a little too well..my levels of homocysteine (the biproduct of my genetic defect, and an indicator of potential harmful effects) are *low*. Low! Below normal range. I'm at 3.5, the range is 5-12. Whoa. I was worried about it being too high. So apparently, all these years of being a pretty staunch vegan are paying off. Well, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing, and apparently it'll all be OK. And here I thought I was simply stubborn.

My mom is undertaking the moving process, and although it's hard, she's managing to make it happen with the support of dear friends.

I found a therapist to work with around my grief issues, and it's a funny thing - she both happens to know all about the genetic condition that I have, and has an extensive background in the labor movement. Who knew? Quelle conincidence. If there are things that look out for people, I have a few of them looking out for me.

In other news, I'm keepin' on keepin' on. I have a new sweetie/person-that-I'm-dating. I'm still managing to make some art. I've become involved with a local trans coalition that is beginning to work on holding local police/fire/EMS services accountable. These are all profoundly good things.

bizarre syncronicity

I've been struggling a bit. Some good things have happened, some ill health. Spring has finally hit DC. I havent' been writing but I have been making visual art. I makle plans which I don't execute...everyone who sent me a mixed CD or a present will receive a woodcut from me eventually. I sent one to my mom and it made her cry; I gave one to Molly and s/he did as well. It's harder for me to give a gift that causes people to burst into tears.

Being less functional in my world often still involves a level of overcommitment most find baffling. I made it out to the DC social forum, to the National Conference on Organized Resistance, I'm driving to Durham this weekend for the SURGE conference (but really as an excuse to see my pals there and meet Jilly's baby). I've done my chores, done my work, had a few therapy appointments, made it to Spanish class every Thursday. I cook brunch Saturdays, my laundry gets done.

One week I'd made two rounds of doctor appointments. The first was a Monday morning appointment with a geneticist; I wanted to see if I have the same mutations that killed my father and my father's father. The second, my routine every-six-month bloodwork. I hadn't expected it, but that was when I felt grief most intensely...sitting in a chair, rubber band strapped around my arm, waiting for the predictable prick I could only think of the thousands of IVs and blood draws I saw during the three weeks dad was in the hospital. I had remained vigilant: don't draw blood on the shunt arm, don't take blood pressure anywhere but this section of forearm. The nurses said they appreciated my presence as a verbal chart. I understood that the information in the chart was somehow never quite enough to convey what they needed to know, but that this wasn't their personal fault.

Two of my dear friends each mailed me, without the other knowing it, a copy of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. It's about the moment of and year after the sudden death of her husband and multiple hospitalizations of her daughter. It has been incredibly helpful if difficult to read. I will be sending the other copy to my mother shortly.

I've been vaguely sick for weeks...first with a queasiness that also afflicted my housemates and co-workers, which resolved after I took a day off to sleep. Then a fever and a cough. I am now at home, awake but soon to be asleep again. I'd rather this thing get out of my chest.

I finished the book today. No sooner had I set it down, reeling a bit from its end, thinking about my dad, then I get a call from an unknown 202 number.

It's the geneticist. Is now a good time? Yes, it's great. The lab messed up the amino acid assay, as I warned you they probably would. OK, no problem. I'm happy to get the labs done again.

She helpfully delivers the lab information and offers to fax the prescription. It's not far from my work. I think the conversation is ending. I'm wrong.

"I have some more results to report. It does appear that you have the two of the common MTFR mutations. They can be treated with the B vitamin and folic acid vitamin therapy you've already been taking... [there was more, I won't put it all here]"

Sigh. I had hoped to dodge this particular bullet. Thirteen years of being vegan and taking vitamins has probably helped me get a leg up, but nonetheless. The amino acid assay will tell us what we need to know: how elevated are my levels of homocystine? Am I deficient in any particular amino acid? Am I doing everything I want to do in life, or preparing for it, given that if I follow in my forebears' footsteps I am soundly at mid-life?

Sometimes I appreciate the sense of humor this universe has, but today it's a little rough.

waking up

The weekend following the snow day, it snowed in earnest. I meant to take pictures, it was one of the most beautiful moments I've been in DC. I walked, trudged, slushed gleefully through the sidewalks. It was the soft kind of snow, the kind that's good for snowpeople and forts; kids were in the parks fulfilling this snow-laden mandate. It was three inches or so and very fast, thin branches everywhere weighted down in an unbelievable display of fortitude...after all they've been through this season. It was also a liveable temperature, 32 or so. I hadn't smiled like that in a while.

I'm working on a woodcut series about my dad's death. I'll post some of them here.

Now it's beginning to warm up, and we had a couple of days that could've passed for Spring. It's always amazing ot me how immediately joyful my body becomes with the presence of sun. It's a rough time to feel such a high, but I'm glad for it. I needed something.

My mom has bought a new place in Windsor and will be moving soon, which will be good. There's a memorial planned for the summer with my dad's siblings but I'm not sure when or what date. I still can't manage to pick up the phone as often as I'd like, I'm still being a little reclusive. Nonetheless, people are persistent with sending their love in many forms, about which I am always amazed and humbled.

The website that I've been working on launching (the redesign) finally went live this week. If you want to see it, you can go here. Work has been pretty busy, adn there's another feature launching within a week or so, no rest for the wicked.

snow day

It's coming up a month since I posted last -- I promised erratic, and gosh darnit, I deliver.

Things are still surreal. I've had a number of amazing dreams that my dad has been present in, but the most amazing one was as follows: My dad has come back to life, but really only briefly, and only to attend his own memorial gathering in [insert mythical dream-place here: for locals, it's like Villa Chanticleer except it's on the Ft. Bragg-Mendocino Road]. I'm shocked that he's back, but we all understand that it's temporary. He's about 45 years old and wearing a classic jeans-shirt-tweed jacket combo. My job is to drive him to the memorial, and we're talking a bit, I think I asked him how long he'd be around, adn then after feeling some anxiety, I ask, "Well, OK. What do we do with your ashes? Because we were thinking, maybe the Pacific, but also we thought you might want them in Chicago, but you didn't leave any instructions..." he smiles widely and laughs, looks at me with an affectionate seriousness and says, "Hmm, I'll have to think about that. I'll tell you later on." We drive up, and everybody is shocked by seeing him at his own memorial, which was the point, I had gathered. I woke up, and realized he hadn't told me what to do with his ashes! Perhaps that was part of the joke. A smart friend of mine said that if he didn't leave instructions, that probably anything we do with them will be the right thing to do. I think it worries me too much.

Today was a snow day, but there was hardly any snow on the ground. I stayed at work although many people left by 2pm and by 5pm, someone turned the hall lights out on me. I suspect tomorrow might be the same situation. I suspect that legislators, who are considering the non-binding resolution around troop withdrawal from Iraq, decided that snow fort manufacture was an easier activity.

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. That is a little rough -- I know it was well observed during his lifetime.

I've seen lots of movies, many meaningful, a few fluffy. I haven't been doing much outside of work that isn't social. Eventually that will drive me to distraction and I'll have to get overcommitted again, but I'm staving it off. It's amazing how productive I can be regardless -- we insulated the house, got a new cat, I've ironed my shirts on several occassions, I repotted my spider plants. Oh, OCD. You are a mixed blessing.

me and my dad

dad1,
originally uploaded by mtoth.

I took a few digital photos of pictures in the family albums to have when I returned. I thought it would be nice to put a few of them up.

surreal

is pretty much the only word I can use to describe my last few days, and I don't think it's going to get any less so.

I owe about 25 people phone calls, I went back to work yesterday, and there is a small neatly-stacked pile of my dad's clothes on my floor waiting to go to the cleaners. It's really bizarre. I have a hard time assimiliating the information that he's no longer on this planet. Or, at least, in any discernable form that I knew him to occupy.

My co-workers have been very kind, and today was an easy day. Tomorrow I get back into the swing of things. I have a three-hour presentation to prep for that's happening next Monday. I haven't really been breathing, but I remember ever so often.

I saw the first picture of my dad's dad while I was sorting through his things; I came across a small stack of his childhood pictures, his dad's obituary, and a burial record for Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Worth, Illinois with a map to his dad's plot. In his handwriting, he wrote the dates of what I presume to be other relatives: 1880-1946, 1882-1965, 1913-1963. The last set is his dad's -- fifty years old. He survived his own father by 8 years, 7 of them on dialysis. At some point I'll visit the plot, too, now that I know where it is.

Before I left I packed up and went on a big road trip with Mazzy - out to every place of significance to my relationship with my dad. Setting out from San Francisco, we drove up 101 to Willits, out Redwood Road to the house that Jeopardy money built, down through the windiest road imaginable to Fort Bragg, site of many a weekend jaunt with my dad and I as we waited for my mom to complete her radio show on KOZT. We stopped many places, but wound up in mendocino, overlooking the driftwood beach where we shared many hours pouring over potential pilferable pieces. That beach is a shadow of its former self and I feel partly to blame. Mazzy and I headed back via 128 through Booneville to San Francisco, where we met Cathy for dinner and I was handed off to Cathy for the trip to Oakland Airport. Exhausting, but a wonderful and heart-rending trip. I took many pictures and will post some when my camera has enough battery to upload them.

Charles Harrington Anthony Seiter, Ph.D. 1948-2007

My dad was my first best friend. I loved him dearly, and can barely comprehend the huge gaping hole that is now created in the world by his absence. He died peacefully last Sunday evening at about 9pm, listening to his favorite music, shortly after my mom told him it was OK with her if he went.

He was so many things and so loved by all who knew him. He was incredibly complicated. I'll never really know everything about him, but what I do know I have treasured, even as we struggled over the years.

Born in 1948 in Chicago to an Irish Catholic family of five, he lost his father at the age of 15 to kidney failure that was likely the same condition that would ultimately end his own life. I don't know enough about this time in his life, but he was an altar boy, read every book in the Willamette library, took up calligraphy, learned Latin and Hebrew, became a loyal Cubs fan, chewed Wrigley's gum and ate Oscar Meyer head cheese the family received as holiday presents from those families, learned how to bribe people, steal holy wine, run a lawn-mowing business, and other traditional entreprenurial activities. After his father's death in 1963, his mother moved the family to San Diego where he met my mother (they attended the same Chinese class at Clairemont High School) and he was a member of the second freshman class of UCSD, 1969. He then earned a double PhD in Chemistry and Applied Mathematics from CalTech. He taught chemistry for five years at USC -- one of his favorite classes to teach was Chemistry for Nurses. He maintained that anybody could learn chemistry and math if they were taught better. He was a record-breaking winner of Jeopardy, one of the first telecommuters, and an amazing cook. He approached everything with brightness, humor, and the ability to innovate. For years he was a contributing editor at Macworld Magazine; I recall taking trips from Willits to Ukiah to rent a toaster-box Mac where he would write some of the first Mac software reviews. He designed biochemical equipment and worked on electrophoresis problems during my early years...he would describe incredibly complex surface-printing problems or engineering feats like the manufacture of tape in a way my ten-year old brain could understand. There's so much more to say here, but I have time and it will come.

For the last ten gruelling years he struggled with the effects of first one stroke, then another, and total kidney failure which ultimately damaged his body beyond recovery. He said during his last two days that he was going on a trip, I only hope his trip took him to a much better place than his body would allow him on this earth.

This is about all I can stand to write about him publicly at this point. Expect further installments at totally arbitrary times.

Many many people's love has helped to hold me together through this time. I can't thank my people enough. You know who you are, and I owe you one.