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“Birthing” The Death of Big Butch

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

This one is important to me. It came to me during a difficult patch of my life, the saga that leads to this manuscript ending up in my lap starts a few months after my father’s death.

The project description and the photos of Steve’s Café don’t address how this story spoke to me and captured some sensory moments of my Generation X childhood better than I can at this time.

I encourage you to check out this discussion of The Death of Big Butch. In the story, Jimmy Washburn has to face his responsibility as a father and his role in his small town life. The year is 1974, almost one year to the day before I was born. The town is a fictionalized version of a town a county away from my hometown.

Jimmy works primarily in auto body restoration. My dad, Jimmy, was a diesel mechanic for most of my my childhood. Jimmy likes to “have a couple” with the guys in the local quiet barroom. So did my dad, Jimmy.

Jimmy has a son, Little Jimmy. My older brother was Little Jimmy until he aged into “Junior.” Jimmy has a baby girl born during the course of the story, like I said, a year before me.

Jimmy has a good friend, Butch. My mom has a Butch in her life that my daughter treasures as a grandfather figure. Jimmy has a friend, Cheesy. My childhood dog was Cheezie.

I see a lot of my dad in Jimmy. I think some of Jimmy’s struggles my dad probably shared. And like Jimmy, my dad was raised and lived in a Blue Collar version of America that doesn’t exist anymore, at least not where we are geographically. Maybe it does in pockets somewhere.

And we don’t talk about this, but I’m going to say it. In America, of my parents generation, men didn’t show feelings. You didn’t do that. Together, in the bar, that’s where men went to hide or quell or ignore their feelings. You could be a sloppy drunk, but you couldn’t be a sensitive man.

People didn’t go to therapy then. Especially not in Blue Collar America. People didn’t get treatment for depression or anxiety. That meant you were weak. So they drank. Everybody drank to their issues, and many people still do.

But this story is about escaping that, about making change, about what inspires people to change.

The core staff of Parisian Phoenix— Publisher Angel Ackerman, Art Director Gayle Hendricks and photographer Joan Zachary— met today with author and …

“Birthing” The Death of Big Butch

Farewell, Yo-Yo parakeet

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

I drank too much coffee yesterday and didn’t get to bed until almost midnight, which was fine, and allowed me to appreciate those dark, quiet hours deep in the night. I miss those. When I first started working as a picker in the Stitch Fix Bizzy Hizzy, I worked 3:30 p.m. to midnight and I really loved the shift.

I think I’m naturally solar-powered so to wake up with the sun out and spend the brightest portion of the day doing my own thing meant a lot to me. At 2 p.m. I would drink a coffee and head to work. And since I don’t tend to be very productive after the sun goes down, using those hours at a job in a warehouse suited me just fine.

But last December, we lost our shift and had our choice of moving to traditional day hours or what they called four-10s. We worked from 6:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. four days a week and had three days off. I selected the Sunday to Wednesday cohort, as the teenager was still in high school and that fit our life.

Now, the four-10 cohorts are being aligned to a Wednesday to Saturday schedule and I opted to go Monday to Friday, 6:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. This has already caused upheaval and it doesn’t start until Monday. This has been a lot of babble, but I guess my point is, for a few hours last night, it felt like the way things used to be.

But I was woken at 5 a.m. today by a sound no bird-owner ever wants to hear. I have one remaining male green parakeet whom I call Yo-yo. He’s been acting unlike himself for a day or two, and he had no voice. He would just open his beak and make this scratchy chirps. And he was hiding.

I had suspicions the kittens had gotten him. No proof, but a hunch. He has recently learned to jailbreak his cage, and last week, I found him on a windowsill. He flew back to his cage when I opened the door (he had squeezed out through the water bowl entrance). And I didn’t think much of it.

He repeated this yesterday. And I opened the door. But with everything happening, I forgot to make sure he was in the cage and safe when I went to bed. And the Teenager even confirmed that he was still out when last we spoke around 11 p.m.

When I turned my light out for the night, he was sitting on top of his cage. I had been waiting for him to go in. You see, before my fostering journey, I would periodically let them all free fly. I had three at that time. It was magnificent to watch them swirl around my room.

So when I went to bed, and turned out the light, he went to sleep. Birds, like me, are solar powered. As soon as the darkness hits, they sleep.

And I have four kittens in my room. Not fully-socialized, born outside kittens.

Now normally, when the kittens try to climb the bird cages, my Goffin’s cockatoo, Nala, attacks their feet through the bars. But this time, they managed not to wake Nala.

At 5 a.m., I woke to the flapping of wings and a strangled screech. I flipped on the light to see the three oldest kittens of the “random litter” gathered around Yo. One of the boys grabbed Yo, snarling, and dashed under the bed. Now they are fighting over my bird. Feathers everywhere. Jean-Paul Sartre, the sweetheart foster rescued as a tiny kitten, sprints under the bed, under whoever has Yo and snatches Yo.

It is from Jean-Paul that I grab Yo, but it is too late.

I can only hope his death was quick. And that he forgives me for failing him.

Yo-Yo’s babies
Yo-Yo’s only colorful baby
Yo-yo, Mama Periwinkle, Boo-boo and babies
Mama Periwinkle and Papa Yo-yo
Boo-Boo Birdie and Papa Yo-Yo protecting his mate and nest

End of week update: the stats, the hip, the fitness, the coffee

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

Yesterday might summarize recent trends in my life. I know I posted a blog post before I left for my last 10-hour shift at the Stitch Fix Bizzy Hizzy. Monday I start a more traditional Monday through Friday shift. I’ll get home earlier, but I lose a day off. And I’m used to having Thursday and Friday off which is nice for running errands, making appointments with doctors and professionals, and for connecting with people regarding my business, Parisian Phoenix Publishing.

I still had my Friday nights and Saturdays, even if I had to head to bed earlier than most people want to on Saturday night. Many well-meaning friends and everyday people have made comments like “well that will be nice,” “no more long days” and “you’ll have your weekends back.”

But I’ll no longer have that feeling of “getting work over with” and I’m no longer part of a unique cohort. We worked alone in the building on Sundays, and that was peaceful, and for two hours every afternoon, we more or less finished the work the traditional day shift left behind.

So, I arrived at work yesterday morning, basking in the bliss of using my new Ninja DualBrew correctly. (I still have to buy coffee filters, but I love the ease of use, the temperature of the coffee, the different settings for the strength of coffee, AND how I can select just the right amount of coffee for me. The reservoir is cool for me, because it removes one more decision or step to screw up. I have been known to double fill the coffee pot when I forgot I already did it.)

On Sunday, I normally perform between 100 and 105 percent of daily metrics. I may have once hit 108. This Sunday, I hit 97. This annoyed me. It was the first sign that something was off. On Monday, I kept struggling. I didn’t really notice anything physically wrong but I did note that my toes on my right foot were really burning by the end of the day. Andrew, my wonderful coach at Apex Training, had asked if we could move Monday night’s session to Tuesday. I said sure.

I busted my butt for the rest of the day and hit at least 99 percent, but I may have hit 100. That’s when I noticed some residual issues in my body. Just that nagging sense that something was not right. I attributed it to working hard and not having my regular Friday appointment with Nicole Jensen at Back in Line Chiropractic and Wellness Center. She had a class on Friday, so she had moved clients.

Tuesday I could feel my right hip turned wrong. It was a weird feeling, like my leg was facing the wrong way. In reality, it might not work that way but that’s how it felt. And my right hip was very tender to the touch. I still didn’t have any pain, but movement was getting harder. So I tried to stretch my hips during the day, but by the end of the day, I had only hit 90 percent and it had been hard. I asked Andrew if we could move the Tuesday session to Wednesday, worried that this was more of a structural issue than a muscular one and working out could push me from discomfort and mobility issues to actual pain.

And a year ago, I was in pain every day and I don’t want to go back to that. Ever. I was flipping through my journal and last year at this time I was starting every journal entry with a number from the pain scale. That broke my heart to see.

I took a muscle relaxer, stretched some more and went to bed after a nice meal. Wednesday morning I didn’t move any better, but I was no longer stiff. But by the time I got to work, my gut said this hip was really struggling to do its job. And I was about to stand on it for ten hours.

At 6 a.m., I called Nicole’s office and left a message. At 9:15, they called me back and scheduled me for 5:15 p.m. I knew that if I waited until my regular Friday appointment and forced that hip to work out, it would lead to pain and harder-to-fix problems.

I emailed my boss as I couldn’t find him and it turned out that he had called out sick. I arranged to leave at 4:30. By my calculations, I hit 87 percent. My right side just didn’t have the mobility it should. The drive to the chiropractor took about 20-25 minutes, and when I got out of the car, it felt like my right leg had fused and stretching it into a step felt ridiculously hard. But still no pain.

This is when cerebral palsy plays tricks on the brain. As I’m (what feels like) dragging my leg into the chiropractor, I started wondering, “maybe I just need to stretch,” “maybe there’s nothing really wrong and I’m just lazy and my muscles stiffened.” But then I remembered the burning toes. Something was pushing my posture forward and my body was fighting it. But I still had my doubts.

Now, no one has ever gaslighted me in the medical community, except maybe my first primary care physician who referred me to the wrong specialist in the days when I had an HMO. I now always have plans where I chose my physicians myself.

When Nicole entered the room, I explained what’s going on and she quickly confirms that yes, my hip was crooked. Like really crooked. She even made a hand gesture. And that my body had done other weird things to compensate. It all moved beautifully when she manhandled it. She pondered what caused this when we had just considered potentially spacing out my weekly appointments to every other week. Did I overdo it at work? Was it missing the adjustment Friday? Was it skipping my workout?

When I got up from the table, my feet did, as Nicole put it, sexy normal feet posture. My balance has improved dramatically in the last few months, and my strength has returned, and my stamina is definitely increasing.

I stepped out of the chiropractor and took some long, beautiful, easy strides.

It. Felt. Good.

No, it felt GREAT.

So, I don’t know how Nicole would feel about this, but I went to the gym. And let me tell you– Andrew delivered a brutal work out. We did split leg squats in sets of 20 reps each leg with weights. He said I was moving better than I ever had before and I said, yes, because Nicole had straightened my body and stretched out my lower extremities. Like, literally, just did. We did military presses with 25 lb dumbbells. We did core. We did upper body exercises like IYTs. And shoulder taps and mountain climbers and rope slams.

And then, before a shower or dinner, and it’s 7:30 p.m. now, I had to deal with the hellions in my room. I had to swap out and refill three litter boxes for the six cats in my room. I had to vaccuum. I didn’t clean the bird cages, but I did feed and water everyone. And I’m still wondering how the heck those four kittens have trashed my closet without opening the door.

I wanted to blog all this last night after I ate my omelet of cheddar, peppers, homemade farm-procured, roasted tomatoes. But I was exhausted.

I like my coffee pot

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

That’s all I got for ya.

It’s 5:15 a.m., on my final Wednesday of my 10-hour Sunday to Wednesday shifts at the Stitch Fix Bizzy Hizzy. I loved these shifts. I love having three days off. But as of Monday, I will be Monday to Friday, “normal” 8-hour shifts, 6:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. More change.

My chiropractor had a class last week so I missed my regular adjustment and now I can feel my hip moving inward. I never expected that this journey to improve my fitness and awareness of how my body works (if you aren’t a regular I have diplegic spastic cerebral palsy) would lead to this strange zeroing in… I am starting to pinpoint these subtle differences, but I am still learning how to fix them.

I bailed on my strength coach Andrew last night. He had asked to move my Monday session to Tuesday and by Tuesday (yesterday), I just didn’t have it in me. I didn’t sleep well. My stress was through the roof. I overdid it Monday (trying to prove myself to no one but me). And to top it all off, my diet had been all processed foods. When I felt that hip turning inward, I knew my body needed me to stop.

So here we are, the final Wednesday. The third day of my life with my new Ninja DualBrew coffee pot. Unboxing video here.

The Teenager got her second fix, and she loved it. She was aghast to learn that a sweatshirt could cost $78 at full retail price, but I think this experience will teach her the difference between the workmanship of different brands. She asked me not to record her trying things on, but I wish she had because the fit and look of this fix was exponentially better than the first. Unboxing video here.

I have to leave for work in a moment, but let me say I am on my second cup of Green Mountain Dark Magic coffee, courtesy of one of the Teenager’s clients, and I must say it’s the only coffee to keep pace with my Supercoffee.

The Ninja DualBrew has been great so far. I like the brewing options, the heat and strength of the coffee, but I am making small errors in operating it. But I haven’t experienced any of the problems listed in the reviews. My four a.m. brain likes the K-cup option, and my weekend self loves the option to brew a pot. I have not tried iced coffee yet.

When Life gives you Lemons buy a new Coffee Pot

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

As many of you know— I had to buy a new computer over the weekend and it impacted my stress levels and my financial health.

So to console myself, I participated in Target.com’s pre-Black Friday sales and ordered myself a new coffee pot: a Ninja DualBrew.

Here is the unboxing.

I have been making my coffee in my espresso machine for most of the last three years, because I don’t have a full size coffee pot. I’m the only coffee drinker in the house now and I rarely drink more than one cup. I like it really strong and really hot so the Krups espresso machine I bought 23 years ago is just fine.

The teenager programmed the new coffee machine to have my coffee ready before 5 a.m. We used the “rich” setting as remember— I like it strong. We also chose 26 ounces.

Well, Supercoffee brewed on rich had me vibrating after a cup and a half. I brought the rest to work. It’s noon and I’m still drinking it.

I need to rethink that tomorrow.

Murphy, you’re not going to win: How a Great Day Broke my Heart, part 2 — Parisian Phoenix Publishing

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

This is the second half of the MacBook Air Saga.

Part 1 of this blog post appeared on Angel Ackerman’s web site, angelackerman.com, and was reposted on ParisianPhoenix.com Yesterday, Rosie, the rose gold 13″ MacBook Air with the intel processor that Parisian Phoenix publisher Angel Ackerman bought refurbished from Apple about eighteen months ago when she decided to invest in the small press concept, took […]

Murphy, you’re not going to win: How a Great Day Broke my Heart, part 2 — Parisian Phoenix Publishing

Murphy, you’re not going to win: How a great day broke my heart, part 1

Angel Ackerman 2 Comments

Yesterday, I “broke” my dear blind friend Nan out of her independent living facility, her first outing since her bout with Covid-19. I drove up to the door in that convenient wide lane that have under the overhang and lowered the window on her side of the car.

“Hey, Nan,” I shouted. “Your getaway car has arrived.”

She laughed, and since she recently had her first Corona experience, it sure was nice to hear her laugh again.

I had the Spotify ready to go, as Nan loves a good random computer generated playlist, and we pulled off. Her goals were simple.

  1. CVS for vitamin C and Excedrin
  2. Batteries for her clock, 2-4 AAAs
  3. Stop at her old apartment as there was a package for her that was not forwarded
  4. Get some cash at the bank.

Well I told her right off that we had a 40-pack of AAAs somewhere in my house. So that was easy. I then told her I had thought I might take her back to my house for chai, but thought maybe getting out of a building into the sun would be more fun. That we could listen to Spotify in the car with the sunroof open sipping chai.

“That does sound nice,” she said.

“The same theory as taking the dog for a car ride,” I explained.

She laughed when I compared her to the dog, and I pointed out that really we both liked things that the dog would enjoy.

Nan and I headed into CVS, where I found her 200 generic acetaminophen, aspirin and caffeine tablets and 100 chewable vitamin C/rose hips tablets. The original price was $31.00 before tax, but I had carefully set up my CVS app to use some coupons that reduced her total to $20.58.

We drove to my house, got the batteries, and headed to her old apartment building.

“I just thought of something,” she said to me. “How are we going to get in?”

“I suppose you’ll have to tap the lobby door with your cane until someone sees you,” I said.

But there were no parking spots on street, and I pulled into the parking lot.

“Why don’t we just drive down to the back door and see if we see any of your neighbors,” I said.

“Good idea,” Nan agreed.

I saw the maintenance man at the back door. I pulled into the middle of the parking lot and hopped out of the car, escorting Nan as I hollered, “Excuse me, but can you let this vagabond into the building?”

She got her package.

We then got my favorite teller at the bank and almost went to a Dunkin several miles away, forgetting there was one on the other side of the bank.

We remembered in time.

We sat in the car, windows and sun roof open, enjoying the sun, listening to cars and birds and all the mundane sounds Nan had missed when trapped in her room with Covid.

And then, she went home and I talked to my friend Maryann Ignatz. I did all the press stuff I had planned for my business. I thought I deserved a small rest. I went up to my room and cuddled with some fosters, including sweet Jean-Paul Sartre.

The teenager texted that her boss was stopping by later. If you’re a regular here you might recall our “cat foster godmother.”

I decided to go downstairs and clean.

I grabbed my computer, Rosie, the 13″ MacBook Air, last of the Intel processor generation, and my iPhone. Foster cat Khloe has been a member of gen pop lately, free roaming the house because she scared the dog so badly. She can be a little dramatic.

The teenager has a baby gate with a cat door at the top of the stairs. Khloe was walking out the cat door and I went to unlatch the gate and must have tilted my hand just enough that Rosie the Laptop slipped from my fingers and somersaulted all the way down the uncarpeted, hard wood stairs.

When I opened her again, her screen image was splintered.

I have three book projects underway for Parisian Phoenix, and the Easton Book Festival coming up. I’m still wondering how best to pay off the recent ceiling repair…

Now is not the time.

But life is like that. I have to remind myself that we have more appreciation for the things that don’t come easy, that real success is slow.

And then I broke down into hysterics, alone, just me and the dog. And I scrubbed the floor on my hands and knees.

This saga will be continued on Parisian Phoenix’s blog.

Do I have the strength to be the lone voice of a group?

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

Last fall, at work, before we even suspected they were eliminating our shift at the warehouse, our company launched what they called communities to represent and discuss certain voices across our network.

Black Lives Matter, Latinx and women were three of the communities— as was a community for people with disabilities.

I joined the community for employees with disabilities, but at the launch Zoom meeting I noticed everyone either worked in the office or worked from home. And no one represented the warehouses, but me.

The community had meetings during my work shifts, and the emails seemed focused on neurological and psychological diagnoses. And while those conditions are important and probably impact more of our population in the company than physical disabilities.

I had a brief conversation about this with my boss today as I had mentioned this flaw in the communities when one of my colleagues asked the CEO why warehouse associates across the network couldn’t have more on-the-clock time to contribute to the communities.

This same fellow employee— a member of the Black Lives Matter group— launched a series of Lunch and Learns to promote more involvement in these communities.

She came to my work station to ask me to come.

My boss said he would be there to represent Latinx. When I told him I registered, he replied, “sweet.”

But, what I realized in discussing this with him, was that people with disabilities probably don’t apply for jobs in warehouses. Because we’ve been conditioned to believe we can’t or shouldn’t do it.

That’s why we don’t have more representation in the warehouse. So while I want to know what plans the company has to accommodate people of different abilities, the reality is we need to determine what people with disabilities can do in the warehouse without impacting overall productivity.

But the next question is: am I really the best person to represent this issue? Do I have a choice?

When success means you think someone is trying to kill you

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

During one of my recent doctor visits, I think it was at the end of August, my physician asked how my strength/fitness personal training sessions were going.

I told him my coach Andrew at Apex Training put me through some demanding stuff so I was in agony pretty often.

My doctor laughed and said that if Andrew was doing his job well I should hate him.

Well, today was the closest I ever came to thinking he might kill me.

Now, if you are new here, please note I have diplegic cerebral palsy (which basically means that my brain and my lower body muscles don’t communicate well, which has led to some structural issues in my hips, legs, etc.

I work out three-times-a-week: Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Andrew has his full-time job, which is primarily an overnight shift, and I work at a warehouse Sunday through Wednesday, 10-hour-shifts.

Mondays are always interesting. I am 50% through my workweek and Andrew is usually sleep-deprived.

By some miracle, I work 6:30 am to 5 pm and head straight to the gym, and Andrew comes to the gym, often having not slept for almost 24 hours. But he shows up and so do I.

Tonight was a full body workout that felt twice as intense as my normal routine, but it felt amazing to push myself and even more amazing to succeed.

And because Andrew knows what I’m feeling — not only as a person working to better myself physically but also as someone still grieving the loss of her father— he forgave me for eating half a cake for my dad’s birthday.

But I also asked him if some people had stopped working out three times a week. He say yes, that several of his clients were sporadic. One changed work schedules and hadn’t committed to a new time. And two of us were regulars.

I get life being in the way. I know it’s hard. I know it’s expensive.

But I encourage you to stick to it.

I started at Apex in August 2021. Somehow despite a tight budget, I find the money.

And for all those people who can’t stick with it— I promise:

  • You will see mental and physical changes in yourself.
  • You will feel better.
  • Your body composition will change.
  • Your fortitude will grow.

And you should also see changes in your balance, stability and coordination. The things you can do, whether stamina on a long walk or moving furniture, will improve. Your confidence should increase.

And some days it will feel grueling. Some days you will be exhausted or achy and not want to do it. On those days, tell your trainer how you feel, but show up for the workout and do your best.