Friday, January 30, 2004
There's no such thing as too much information
The uterus piñata: a large balloon in a plastic bag with paper towel tubes duct taped to it. Ovaries are bunched up newspaper. The plastic bag is crucial, as you can't very well duct tape things to a balloon. Then, paper mache over it with newspaper, water, and flour. Don't forget to embed a string, rope, or duct tape handle into the paper mache. Let it dry at least 1 day. Last time everyone made fun of me for putting like 3 layers on it and we could barely break it open. This time there is only 1 layer. We'll see how it goes!
Nolly has her doubts about the whole proceeding. Don't let her fool you; she has also had plenty of wine and some ideas about a "splat the sperm on the egg" game.
Rook is a bit perturbed by the frilly crepe paper. You must get the kind that is crinkly and comes in a roll. Without unrolling it, cut it into fringe (about 1/2 of the way through, and the closer-space the fringe, the better.)
Minnie and Nolly are very serious, hard workers!
We thought of a red jello placenta sealed in several layers of ziploc bag, but realized there were things more disgusting than jello placentas --- and less likely to burst open on the floor. What if it burst open and ruined all the good candy in there? But will anyone want to eat the candy after seeing the other stuffing of the pinata?
Oh, I can think of someone who would eat the candy!
We discovered it's best to use nail polish rather than paint. It dries faster and is way more glisteny. Also, it looks more realistic if you use red, then put some big purple blobs and some brown is also good. Okay, "good" is maybe not the right word.
Around and around and around with the rolls of crepe paper and the tape. Maybe I got a little crazy, and bossy, wanting it to look just perfect, with my insisting on taping it about 6 times every round? Sorry, I got out of control, it was the inspiration of the moment. Besides, it is especially poignant and meaningful if the object to be bashed with baseball bats and ruined in 5 minutes is constructed with loving care.
Note the way Minnie made the long fringy bits at the end of the fallopian tubes overlap the ovaries! Lovely!
All four of us are now piñata-making professionals!
posted by badgerbag 1/30/2004 10:53:00 PM comment
underseaI have just come from an underwater paradise having helped to create a kelp forests in Jo's dining room aka the "computer and art room".
I also wish to add that as soon as she left the house for a few moments, one of her darling offspring began asking ominous questions about "those two things you mix together an then they sort of, like, explode, and that makes helium? Can we put it in the balloons? It would be like a scientific experiment." Being who I am, I know that she is thinking of mixing baking soda and vinegar and is feeling hopeful about separating water into O2 and H2... I leave the room to check on other screaming kids (Moomin and Sophie) and send them to their corners... back into kitchen where vinegar has been found and there is something happening with a jar and a balloon... This not a good time to create more chaos and we must return to taping kelp streamers to the ceiling. I go back to the other guys. Sophie has somewhere obtained a sharp, tetanusy object that is sort of like a miniature Sophie sized ripsaw. You could murder someone with it. I remove the object...
Then all was quiet and there was no more nonsense for the next half hour. Go, me!
I was impressed with Eliz.'s analytical and persuasive powers. I had drawn a diagram of my plan for kelp-stringing on a paper, and she drew a completely legible counter-drawing of HER plan and coherently explained the plan to me.
I have a mad yearning to go to radio shack and buy some crap and do the hydrolysis experiment with upside down test tubes. maybe my dad will send me my old voltmeter thingie... if they still have it?
posted by badgerbag 1/30/2004 06:30:00 PM comment
The Perils of PristeenA great archive of cunt sprays and douches. I can't decide which one is my favorite! They're all so persuasive. Maybe the Lysol one.
On further browsing about this is a museum of menstruation and it's really great!
posted by badgerbag 1/30/2004 08:42:00 AM comment
Thursday, January 29, 2004
and another thingI know it's pointless to carp on this book, but I couldn't help thinking during the stupid "men have ritual sex with women so that the men get a direct line to god" speech in Davinci Code, well, what do the women do? and why do the women care - if they are so in fucking touch with god, why do they bother to play telephone line (telephone hole?) for the men? Very stupid. "Intercourse was the revered union of the two halves of the human spirit - male and female - through which the male could find spiritual wholeness and communion with God." Oh please, what crap!
It is beginning to drive me crazy - the thought that anyone would think that they just learned something profound from this book... a bit like the horribleness of the book "J0nathan L1vingston Seagull" which is one of my most hated books ever.
posted by badgerbag 1/29/2004 11:44:00 PM comment
a firm handWe signed a bazillion mysterious house papers today. I think we should get the keys and all next Tues, Wed. or thursday but it's up in the air which day.
I have procured 2 fabulous sounding strippers for the baby shower and they said they are excited about participating in something so strange. I am minorly worried that the boys of our crowd will not behave properly. I will lecture them. After the way the girls showered cash (properly so) upon the greazy dude for the bachelorette party a year ago, I think it will go well. Our fabulous baby shower strippers offered to be completely nude but I opted for "keep the thongs on" mode.
Dr. Maxstinger the allergist yelled at me for even thinking for a second about ripping up the carpet in the new house. "Don't even think about going near the house while the day laborers that you will hire and drop off there do all the work and haul it away." He actually shook his finger at me. Then he lectured me some more about dust masks and gave me the fistful of assorted steroids that I requested. apparently my blood oxy was not all it should be. i like the powdery inhalers much better than the aerosol ones.
Allerg1sts and dent1sts! They get so pissed off at us for not flossing and for owning cats.
Druidsquirrel's sister seems to have the same thing I had with the Xtreme headache and stiff neck and strep together etc.... ow!! I hope she will be okay.
posted by badgerbag 1/29/2004 11:06:00 PM comment
gringismosfue a mi clase de español... pues soy gringa estupida o mis orejas comprendan todo pero mi boca está demasiado ...lenta? Se me olvidó las palabras... se me olvidó las conjugaciones etc. Que raro es que puedo leer y traducir de español a ingles, pero no puedo hablar normalmente en español. Que verguenza tengo.... Voy a blogear en el espanglish de vez en cuando para mejorarme. Pues en la clase anoche fui timida para unos momentos y entonces fue contestando las preguntas del profe facilmente. entonces sentí mucho mejor.
Ayyyyyy,.... y los putamadre mujeres muy yuppi (?) acerca de mi que nunca, nunca se callaron.... siempre estaban hablando blah blah blah unas a otras cuando hablaba el profesor. Me haces loca!
No voy a consultar mis diccionarios para ese blogging, debo escribo cualquier cosa que está en mi cabeza... solamente palabras y gramatica (muy mal!) que recuerdo, como si en conversación. coño! que inglespañol!
posted by badgerbag 1/29/2004 09:49:00 PM comment
I am a geekWell, duh. Mildly amusing though heterosexist...
You are 59% geek You are a geek. Good for you! Considering the endless complexity of the universe, as well as whatever discipline you happen to be most interested in, you'll never be bored as long as you have a good book store, a net connection, and thousands of dollars worth of expensive equipment. Assuming you're a technical geek, you'll be able to afford it, too. If you're not a technical geek, you're geek enough to mate with a technical geek and thereby get the needed dough. Dating tip: Don't date a geek of the same persuasion as you. You'll constantly try to out-geek the other. Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com
posted by badgerbag 1/29/2004 09:48:00 PM comment
russian roulette for kidsOkay... Dear Japan... please... no more!
kaba-kick
posted by badgerbag 1/29/2004 05:27:00 PM comment
notoriousAs we were looking for strippers for this baby shower... especially lingering on Miss Muffy... Moomin came up. "What are you looking at Auntie Minnie? What are you looking at Mommy?"
"Um... pictures of sexy ladies, dear."
"Oh." *wanders off*
Oh dear.... heh heh heh...
posted by badgerbag 1/29/2004 10:22:00 AM comment
new social thingI am fascinated with Orkut, the "new improved friendster". If nothing else it has led me to an interesting new blog: Just Kristin. I can't link to my blog from Orkut as I use my real name.
If only they'll take my suggestion and add the "slam book" capability... so that I could check a box to allow or even request for people to make negative comments about me! Maybe no one would have the nerve, and anonymous comments would lead to pointless mean spamming. but, like, what if all my friends were secretly, all of them, thinking, "for god's sake, woman, brush your teeth more often! And sit up straight! Quit picking your nose! Get something done! Quit spinning yer wheels you narcissistic dorkwad!" Maybe then I'd quit picking my nose. It would be a useful thing!
Or I could just hang out with my mom more often and invite her to nag me. Hrmm. I guess the outcome would be the same. I would ignore it.
posted by badgerbag 1/29/2004 12:23:00 AM comment
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
the secretDav1nci code is enjoyable if you are a connoisseur of trashiness. I am on chapter 30 or something like that. There is indeed a templar-like society and there are the Bad Catholic Conservative Sexists and the Good Liberal Catholics including the (fictional, post-current) pope. Again, the geniuslike super-advanced cryptographer demonstrates her genius by solving a retardo-level anagram. I ask you. Again, the genius-like "history of thought" prof proves himself by knowing something rather mundane, like what a pentacle is.
If the deep, dark, world-shattering secret that the secret society is trying to protect turns out to be something on the order of "Jesus was a girl", I will scream with laughter.
Doesn't anyone read science fiction?
Why doesn't anyone read The Crying of Lot 49 anymore? It was a funny, sarcastic, gemlike book with all the required elements of a conspiracy.
Just because I'm making fun of this book doesn't mean I'm not eating it up. Because Jo was right, I don't want to put it down!
Oh, the style. It has all the literary sophistication of a Nancy Drew novel.
posted by badgerbag 1/28/2004 11:35:00 PM comment
running aroundAn exhausting day of running about campus trying to get everything together. Office of one dept. Filling out of forms. Office of 2nd dept. Where is the La Raza dept? No, there is no La Raza dept any more. Office of 3rd dept. I bolted a sandwich. Office of 4th dept (trying to track down some other form and they kept sending me on to other places). Prof's office for signature. He wasn't there. Back to Office 4 to check his office hours. An hour and a half to kill. to the library! Rummaging in the stacks. Note-taking. Line-standing. Book-checking out, but wait! I lost my student ID. Nice librarian bucks the rules to hold the books behind the counter for me. Back up to prof's office to wait.... la la la. He never comes. To the ID-making place. Waiting in line. Back to the library. My registration hasn't registered. Nice student worker lets me use computer to log in and prove I'm registered. It is a virtuous act to refuse to enforce the rules of a bureacracy. My mom says and thinks it is not fair that I always manage to bend the rules - How? why do I think I am entitled? Because I am an elemental force that exists to tear down institutions and build new ones - the bureacratic cogs can sense it, and give way, guiltily, before my certainty. I have my books. Hurrah!
I then drove rather randomly around SF trying to get the best way to the strip club near City Lights and failing to find it. got there. miracle parking spot right in front. But no, they will not work parties! I like their T-shirt, "Under Nude Ownership". Home, James.
Piñata making was prolonged and silly. I can't reveal the crowning touch until after Sunday. It is amazingly revolting! S.N. and Minnie and Rook did a lot of work on it.
I am most certainly not better from meningitis because near the end of each day I fall completely apart and my head aches mercilessly and I want to cry. I long for peace and darkness, or peace and a quiet book. All other people are jarring to me for no reason.
posted by badgerbag 1/28/2004 11:13:00 PM comment
me, cryptographerI wear no cream colored irish cable knit sweater nor does my burgundy hair swing softly on my shoulders. and I am not a French cryptography police expert. However I know a fibonacci sequence when i see it and I see through one of the clues immediately. And I have an inkling of what it means. Psssh! Or maybe that's just what they LITERALLY want me to think.
Encylopedia Langdon shall fear me, for I am a mentally anarchic punk Sally who could kick his ass across the Louvre just by reciting the alphabet backwards. Take that, Bugsy!
posted by badgerbag 1/28/2004 12:42:00 AM comment
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
hilariousJo and Ep are making me read The Davinci Code. I've heard it slammed by so many people that I got curious. what's going on?
It's pretty cheezy... Literally, it would annoy the literal hell out of Minnie by misusing a certain word. And I mean that literally!
The main guy and the other characters and the omniscient narrator say "As you probably already know, Bob..." every other sentence. Gawd help us. And I mean that literally. As I'm sure you are already aware, Paris is a country in France, where, literally, people behave all French, and stuff, and they're all, like, literally gazing at famous French things a lot, but in case you don't know, I'll let on that they're famous French things.
hahaha. It's so bad!
I understand now why my friend Chris was particularly annoyed since he writes about the history of occult philosophy. Literally.
Unlike Chris and the book's other slammers, I'm enjoying it so far. I also enjoy eating nachos made with Velveeta.
posted by badgerbag 1/27/2004 11:38:00 PM comment
impeach BushI don't understand why the Democrats aren't howling for blood. Impeach the fucker! He obviously lied, lied, lied. I hope some of those fucking hypocrite republicans who led the whole Impeach Clinton for Consensual Sex thing will WAKE UP.
posted by badgerbag 1/27/2004 10:58:00 PM comment
spiritual counsel and reliefI have turned, tonight, not to Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, but to my other deities: those who play loud punk rock music, ska, and grrlness. Tell it Joan Jett! Tell it Roxanne Shante! Exalt my soul, Skasmopolitan! Waft me away o Raincoats. Bratmobile, make me whole.
It is not a night for the quiet blues or the false nostalgia of llanero cuatro y arpa.
A bit of Ministry would not go amiss.
"Don't Be Mean" is one of the best songs ever. Its lush complexity.
I am drinking cheap port and filling out change of address forms. Thank god Rook is home now.
My nice computer speakers are plugged into my laptop. I am in bed. I feel a surly teenagerish satisfaction in my blasting obnoxious music.
posted by badgerbag 1/27/2004 07:59:00 PM comment
bite in the assJesus fucking christ. My advisor just emailed me that I should be sure to bring the giant packet of papers she lent me last semester. The what? I dimly remember that while I was on vicodin throwing away papers last week I came across a big packet of stuff. I stared at it dimly for a while and since I had no idea what it was or where it came from, I exercised my will and forcefully like a hero, threw that fucker away into the giant bags of recycling.
I am now going to have to spend my evening going through wet, smelly bags of paper that have been rained on for a week under some pizza boxes. Maybe I will find it and maybe it won't be ruined or I'll be able to xerox a copy of it.
Remind me never to borrow anything ever again.
This is all rather a blow to my noble effort to stop being a filthy pack rat. See? See!? I knew there was a good reason to keep everything.
Next my bank from 5 years and 4 moves ago will call me to tell me that if I hadn't just thrown away all those bank statements I would now be able to prove my rights to an unexpected million dollars in interest.
posted by badgerbag 1/27/2004 07:45:00 PM comment
Just when you think you know your childMoomin in the truck as we listen to Chopin preludes: Mama, I wike this music.
Me: Me too. It makes me think of beautiful things.
Moomin: Yeah. Wike swans walking on the piano keys.
Me: *choking up at the thought that my son is a tiny little proto-poet* Yes, honey, it is rather like swans walking gracefully on the piano keys.
Moomin: (dreamily) Yeah. (pause) And I would FIGHT them with my sword, fight fight fight, and I would tell those swans GET OFF DA PIANO, pshoo, pshoo, PSHOO! *fires imaginary laser blaster in wild excitement*
Me: Um... heh.
I can see where this is going. In preschool he will be get up to "share" during circle time.
Teacher: Moomin, do you have something to tell the class for sharing time?
Imaginary Moomin: *bashfully* I wike kittens.
Teacher: Oh really? That's nice. What do you like about them?
Imaginary Moomin: *whispering* I wike dem.
Teacher: Speak up please, we can't hear you.
Imaginary Moomin in loud demon-growl voice: I WIKE TO DWINK DEYR BWOOD!
posted by badgerbag 1/27/2004 05:51:00 PM comment
more on squalorI remain sort of emotionally devastated and full of self-loathing.
I almost just gave up on school and decided not to re-register in my feeling of helplessly being overwhelmed and losing my grip on what should be done.
I feel that failing to get my shit together to run my own classes and schedule for the next few months is very likely. I've never managed it before. On the other hand I had never gotten good grades in college either and now I have a 3.85 (two As and two A minuses). Yes, I berate myself for the minuses.
I had to make myself drive up to C@ñada college and register for the conversation class. Drove around for a hwile looking for parking. started driving off thinking "Oh well, here is where i just flake out and fuck off, I won't do it after all". I drove around the circle thing but decided not to leave and came back and looked again for a spot. There was no spot. Then I was trapped by the one-way street and would have had to go roundabout again.
I just pulled over for a minute and felt hopeless. I had forgotten my jacket and it was pouring rain, all cold and foggy and windy up on the hill. I looked behind the seat thinking there might be an extra jacket or hat... then was just revolted by all the crap back there and the mold growing on the floor of the truck in the carpet where the leaky a/c drips its water. At that point I forced myself to drive off, but then on impulse crammed my truck into a partly illegal spot, went in and registered.
This is so unlike me. Usually I am fairly sanguine and feel like I know what I'm doing. I'm unlikely to become frustrated by some minor thing like parking or rain and flounce off in a petulant huff, quitting. It doesn't happen. But it almost just did.
I am making myself a tight schedule for the rest of the week.
This afternoon, change of address cards and thank you notes to parents. Tonight, the throwing away of at least one more bag of junk.
tomorrow, SFSU and registering and returning of library books. Thursday, working for McCoot, allergist appt, signing of title company papers for house. Friday, I have already forgotten. By Monday, I must have gone to Kinko's and prepared and printed a detailed syllabus for my 2 independent study classes and I will email it to both profs.
Tuesday we might very well have keys to new house!
Our landlord here is being a dick. I thought that by avoiding confrontation with him it woudl turn out okay, but apparently not. I am going to have to write a letter threatening to sue him and list all the things wrong with the house and formally break the contract. JUST what I wanted. But you know, nearly every landlord ever has screwed me over and it STOPS HERE.
I should be getting my shots right now and I'm fucking off. Maybe they will shoot me up on thursday when I have the yearly evaluation...? I hope they aren't jerks about it. I also need some steroid inhalers and leukotrines for the next month or 2 with all the moving dust.
I wish there were just 1 thing at a time to do.
while I was considering the "oh fuck it all " option it was a tempting thought that I could just get a permanent half-time secretary job at Stanfnord by shmoozing around the comp sci dept. if I gave up on school. It's a day for dreary despairing thoughts, somehow. why am I like this? what is going on? I just want to lie in bed and cry. Everything is irritating me and Moomin seems absolutely repulsive with his snotty crusty nose, general ice cream induced stickiness, snuffling, shrill repetitive questions, and constant leaning on me or else running about injuring himself. I started lecturing him in the car as I felt I was going to scream if he continued lisping like a baby. He is almost 4 and should be able to say the letter "L" by now.
Why? Why am I insane today? I am never like this! It's horrible. I don't feel like me.
posted by badgerbag 1/27/2004 04:38:00 PM comment
Monday, January 26, 2004
thrown away just nowWell, put out on the porch, really. I'll load them into the truck tomorrow. I don't care how many trips to the dump are about to happen.
- three old pairs of converse hi-tops with holes.
INCLUDING my red and black plaid ones. I don't know if I can recover from that one. I mean, they may have holes but they look so cool and I'll never, ever find another pair. I feel deep pangs of regret- Two broken black suitcases on wheels that I have been using though they have been broken for years.
- the aforementioned three broken ink-jet printers
- A bag of useless clothes for donation. Note to self, quit buying sexy trashy sleazy clothes for private wearing as housedresses. You have ENOUGH. There is no need for more. No black lacy shirts, no little plaid miniskirts, no more skin tight velvet tanktops, no weird pink see through bedjackets discarded long ago at garage sales by dead or dying old ladies who wore them in the 40s. No more hot pants for wearing under miniskirts for the 5 times a year I wear a miniskirt. Just stop it, Badger U. Hemulen. Until the existing lingerie has been torn off my body by brutal pirates, space alien slavers, and my own struggling victims, I shall not buy more.
- Many socks with holes. Boxers with holes.
- Shoebox full of pens, pencils and colored pencils for donation. No, I do not possess the strength of will to throw them away.
- jeans with giant holes in them.
- Three half-empty large plastic boxes of generic diaper wipes from over a year ago.
- Random bits of paper.
- I don't even know what-all. A lot.
Things that I can't bear to part with:
- Black ginger-rogersy danskin high heeled strappy tap shoes, with taps, that fit me perfectly. Acquired for 2 bucks at garage sale. Never worn except to admire myself in them, grinning foolishly and vainly at my feet while doing totally fake, unbelievably klutzy tap dancing in secret.
- a bunch of business cards of people I am not even sure who the heck they are anymore but maybe they were once important. (WTF?)
- The nicer pens and pencils.
- the size 14 and 16 jeans that I might once again be fat enough for.
- A very large amount of cool t-shirts that I don't really wear, but like.
Maybe I should set myself some goal of amount of trash bags filled and disposed of, and then I get to buy myself these or these. Converse, why do you know so well how to fill me with vague yearnings?
posted by badgerbag 1/26/2004 11:23:00 PM comment
I am a squaloholicWow cool, a 12 step program for people like me: Squalor Survivors. I used to just kick a new path through the knee-deep junk, a few years ago. And I didn't have any furniture except a bed and bookshelves. I now have furniture, but it very, very rapidly becomes extra surface area for squalor, which I now read is evil and dangerous.
And I thought it was kind of nice to be providing homes for all those roaches and rats! Damn!
I'm doing great if it's just papers and books with no dirty dishes mixed in. I hope Rook appreciates this... or he might secretly be a member of the Mates of Messies support group?
When other people's houses are squalid, I feel comfortable... perhaps I am a rat.
Seriously. The glass jars have got to go. I do have kind of a problem. I'm cleaning up a pile of papers and things and can't bring myself to throw away even a paper clip or a stray screw or button. It must go into a special box or bin of "things that belong somewhere else" that in theory I will sort through later. Later most often never comes and in my garage I have boxes and boxes from former moves and cleaning frenzies full of "things too important to be thrown away but I don't have time to put them away".
At this moment after:
1 full truckload taken to the dump
1 giant trash bin full of trash and now overflowing and several weeks of excess paper recycling from all my sorting-out
1 giant garage sale
A half-truckload taken to the family shelter to donate
A half-truckload taken to goodwill
My house is still full of crap unsorted and un-thrown. 3 broken ink jet printers. A milk crate full of cables (this is how you can tell I'm doing way better than I used to: there IS a place for the cables and I do put them there)
There is still stuff in my truck, and stuff in my driveway. I feel about the disgusting end table (that's warped and has been out in the rain for 2 winters, and was ugly in the first place) just the same as I would feel for an unfortunately diseased or crippled stray kitten.
When I see a piece of furniture out on the curb, I feel sad for it. I want to put it in my truck and rescue it, and find it a home.
Inspired by the squalor survivors site I have just filled a large trash bag with stuff from the kitchen. It took me less than 5 minutes. This plastic egg, that will be so useful for Moomin's birthday egg hunt in 2 months, if only I could find the other plastic eggs I've been saving since last year, and could then on the appropriate date find them again? How could I toss it? This wicker thing? Ugh. Why do I have it? Where did I get it? I don't know. This box that checkbooks come in, so useful as a drawer organizer or countless other things? This moldy hummingbird feeder? This bottle of pedialyte formula that I bought 3 years ago when Moomin had a cold? These cookie tins? I will not mention the bits of kleenex and trash and stuff that I found. the trash bag now holds most of the contents of the shelves and milk crates under the kitchen counter. I build them for a specific purpose, so that Moomin could have his dishes down there and some food and could get at them by himself, and within a week I filled it up with crap.
Serious resolution time here. I am throwing away screws, paper clips, etc.
Then I find a really nice purply qu@hog shell... and a whole book of stamps... A stapler (probably the 10th stapler in the house, but where are they?). Some binder clips. Um. Well. I just now put those things into a box to be sorted out later. God forbid I should throw away a stapler.
I really want to change how I am about things like this.
Then I will have more room for books.
posted by badgerbag 1/26/2004 08:08:00 PM comment
oh the trauma!I forgot to say that while we were playing our Sunday night rpg, Moomin watched Snow White for the first time. I monitored the beginning bits and sat with him for the scary parts. He hid under his blanket for the "lost in the forest" scene.
But... I forgot the end of the movie was snow white DYING and everyone being sad at her funeral. Major Moomin Meltdown!!!
posted by badgerbag 1/26/2004 08:01:00 AM comment
Sunday, January 25, 2004
things not thrown awayI now wish I'd catalogued the junk for future amusement. There were things I couldn't bear to throw away. They were given a last-minute reprieve.
- A horrible large photo of some 70s looking pop star who I've been told is Neil Sedaka, but I wouldn't know, in a clunky wooden frame.
- A pop-up infant toy with farm animals that got left outside and is all dirty; the kind where you turn dial or flip a switch and an animal pops up. Attractively non-electronic.
- A whole box of books on learning chinese, russian, danish, japanese, and french (spoils from my pack-rat boss's home office)
- A "voice of the world" shortwave radio (also from cleaning out boss's office)
Thrown away, with regrets:
- a lot of Mac floppy disks carefully organized in a disk box
- my ugly comfy white flannel nightgown that's all ripped
- some of the wrapping paper
Sold:
- panda bear in convict uniform
- non-working miniature tape recorder
- possibly non-working dustbuster
- "What Einstein Told His Cook" aka The Book of Evil Incarnate
- "Once Upon a Potty" ("Everyone Poops" is way better if you want a potty training book)
Still in driveway:
- slightly warped large computer desk (Free!)
- large bookshelf with only 3 shelves
- lots of books on russia. some science fiction
- A small white rolling TV cart with useful slots for dvd and vcr (come! take it!)
- an ergonomic chair
Gazed at fondly and preserved or filed:
- giant suitcase full of art and craft supplies, lost in garage for 2 years and newly found
- bad poems written by my Grandma Hemulen
Actually I must preserve one of those poems for all time.A "Do It Yourself"Note: I just looked up Neil Sedaka but he seems to have left out the photos of himself with long fake-afroed hair, an unbuttoned shirt, and dark, hollow-looking raccoon eyes. Perhaps he prefers to forget the 70s. I can't tell for sure if it's him.
I looked in the mirror
and what did I see?
I couldn't believe that
it really was "me".
I'd spent all the morning
dying my hair,
Testing, and mixing,
and daubing with care.
At the results, I was
truly appalled.
Instead of red tresses:
Good Grief! I was bald!
posted by badgerbag 1/25/2004 11:29:00 PM comment
junk in my trunkI did too much today and my head is hurting a little. But it was a good day.
I got rid of a lot of stuff at the garage sale and made 180 bucks. At the end someone came to get all the leftover kids' books for donation. I hauled a load to the family shelter... mostly clothes... Moomin helped me. People were still driving up and taking the free stuff out of my driveway when I got home.
I enjoyed talking to people. Some were obvious garage sale addicts and would try to bond with me by complimenting the quality of my junk. I heard some interesting stories and was often mystified by their choices (an ugly painting in a wooden frame, a book on Hitler, a stuffed animal, and a 10 year old two volume set of Who's Who: mysterious!) the first to arrive were NOT the retired hoarders that I expected. Instead I had a professional book buyer who was trying to hide that that's what he was, and a parade of Homies. I am totally serious. The Homies came to my driveway in their monster custom trucks, low rider pants, chunky gold jewelry, prison tattoos, gomina-ed hair and/or knit caps, and their nonchalant pimp walks; in succession they bought all the actually valuable electronics and then a guilt present for their non-custodial children. At least that was my interpretation. My inglespañol was tested out and not found wanting. Then the Homie would sidle nervously up to the part of the driveway with the baby clothes and toys and look at it in bewilderment, picking up tatty stuffed animals and putting them down again like hot potatoes and finally settling on something at random. Absolutely radiating bewilderment and, touchingly, hope.
As I was packing the back of my truck, my customer #1 from 10am came back. "I called my sister and she said my nephew would go crazy for that dino-phone and I was an idiot for not buying it." I got it out of the back of the truck explaining that I was just going to donate it anyway so he could have it, but if he wanted to give me a dollar that's cool. He scuffed his feet and gave me a ten! Kind of nice.
Unfortunately Moomin saw this transaction and we drove off in my truck to the sound of "That man tooked my dinosaur! " Oh fuck! He seemed to accept it but was morose. I lamely said that the dinosaur was going to have adventures. Then I apologized.
We dropped off the truckload and I asked where he would like to go. "The Farm!" He used to request this destination a lot; not a real place but an archetype with a red barn and one of each kind of animal as seen in picture books. So I took him to the run-down Stanffford ranch. Miracle, the kid who owns the little white pony that we always pet there was THERE and spontaneously invited us into the pony corral to pet the beast and feed it. She was 6. I felt that she was definitely pitying us as we stared, starving, through the bars at her.
Last night Ms. D. asked me a funny question as we were talking: "Do you always analyze everything you do at this level?" This made me laugh. Unfortunately for me and everyone directly around me, yes... kind of... I mean I enjoy sitting in my chair at the suburban garage sale thinking about junk and its meanings...
And at other sales I go to I always think of the person who just died, if it's an estate sale. I like to try to figure out what kind of person they were from what kind of glass tchatchkas they collected.
My great-grandma left very few things and I was with my grandma as she basicallly went through her mom's underwear drawers. I took all the long black slips and wore them for sleazy lingerie for years. I still have some. Also some silk scarves and some of the lacy triangular widow shawl thingies she always wore on her hair: two black ones and a white one. Buried in all the widow granny clothes was this mysterious thing: a sort of gleaming multicolored spangled rhinestoned thing that I can only call a gypsy hat or headscarf or maybe a turban. My grandma was completely taken aback and said she had never seen it before. But it was clearly a sentimental thing, a memento my nana saved to the end of her life.
When she started to get alzheimers the first year she gave me some stuff, a china teacup and some sort of other china object and a china praying hands thingie. I like to keep the gypsy hat where I can see it. It's not like I was close to her or anything, but that is the point. I just like to try to imagine what it might have meant to her. Her tiny apartment before she succumbed to the Alzheimers and was in a nursing home was full of junk that made me like her; those china things, and a wall that was all postcards from all over the world. From who? I do not know.
posted by badgerbag 1/25/2004 09:22:00 PM comment
Saturday, January 24, 2004
weaselA crazed weasel has taken over my body and used it to clean houses all day. Instead of drudgery it feels like pleasant healthy invigorating exercise. It's less boring than staying in bed!
The living room still has the horrible smell. I now think it's the heating vent. Covered heating vent, opened window - time will tell.
We began construction of the uterus piñata... it looks magnificent.
posted by badgerbag 1/24/2004 09:01:00 PM comment
never againIt feels good to be physically active.
However.
I will never ever leave a bunch of crap out in the back yard to get rained on in the rainy season so that it gets all ruined. And so that anything concave fills up with leaves and garbage and water and ferments into slimy fetid swamp water.
posted by badgerbag 1/24/2004 01:46:00 PM comment
planets and 70s hippie booksMoomin: "Where do you live?"
Me: Um, here in this house.
Moomin: No, what PLANET.
Me: Oh! The planet Earth.
Moomin: Me too! But sometimes I live on the Wump World.
Me: Cool. *reading mortgage contract*
Moomin: The Wumps are my friends. They were scared and they runned away from the pot-bellied monsters. They were hiding. I was not scared. I am brave. I will fight them! Ho, ha, ho, ha! Fight fight fight! *waves plastic sword*
Me: Ah... you would protect the Wumps, huh?
Moomin: *more crazed fighting of imaginary polluting corporate aliens*
Me: *mildly perturbed* Um... that's nice. I think the Wumps don't know how to fight. That's why they had to hide in the cave. They're gentle and peaceful.
Moomin: Yeah! They're my friends! I will save them! And my friends are Sophie, and Merlin, and Iz, and Pierre, and Sonora. The Pollutions and the pot-bellied monsters are NOT my friends. They are like a different kind of dragon.
Me: Yeah. They're space ships. The Pollutians are like litterbugs who throw their trash on the ground.
My son... future hippie and eco-terrorist...
The funniest part of that book is the flag of the Pollutians, which on first glance is just some stripes but on second glance is smokestacks with dirty smoke billowing out to make the horizonal stripes...
posted by badgerbag 1/24/2004 11:09:00 AM comment
Friday, January 23, 2004
getting thereOn the bright side:
I feel much better today! A little grumpy. Snappish. A little headachy. But alive.
How the Universe Got Its Spots by Janna Levin is very good, well written, soothing, stimulating. It's right at my level of reasonably intelligent non-scientistness, that is to say, in places over my head but never obnoxious about it. I'm not scared of a few equations as long as there is English in between. It's lovely! I recommend it. Scientific American used to be nicely at this level (though rarely this poetic) in the mid-80s before they got all stupid and forgot that they aren't Discover magazine. Thanks Janna!
posted by badgerbag 1/23/2004 11:42:00 PM comment
culture of fearI don't want to write this but here goes.
At night when alone I am subject to irrational terrors. If Rook were in the kitchen I would be fine. But alone in the house, even on the 22nd story of my old high rise with security and a doorman, I felt the fear. I am sure you people know what I am talking about. I would be going about my regular business happy and safe and unsuspecting and then some irrational madman would leap out from hiding and get me. They would have been watching me like a stalker. I have trouble going to sleep until someone else is home and it's tough to do something like take a bath as then every little noise freaks me out, the cats running about or something, or the water's running and Rook comes home but I don't hear the door open and suddenly there is just a looming in the door or a footstep in the living room and I wig out.
It is much worse to come home when the house is dark and feel the nasty feeling that someone could be in my closet or hidden in my bed under the blankets. I have to be steeling myself and reminding myself to be rational every minute, or lose myself in a book as much as possible.
Another bad one is that in the night in my well lit room suddenly [ugh, i can barely stand to write these words] up against the window glass, A HIDEOUS FACE might appear. Then it would disappear so that I'd doubt my sanity. I believe this is straight out of a Sherlock Holmes story. I always skip that one when I read the collected Holmes, and the one called "The Speckled Band".
I have almost never lived alone because of this. At the same time, I need a lot of space and like privacy. Also, it's not like anyone I've ever lived with could have driven off an intruder; pansies, geeks, marshmallow butches, bookworm femmes, bourgeois and non-pistol-packing, non-punch-throwing to the core. So it's not really about physical safety.
It never happens during the daytime. It's only at night that my haven of home is vulnerable. I've thought about this before but just now it burst on me with mind-blowing clarity.
Like with tidal waves, I plan my escape route, which is now made more complicated by the question of whether to detour bravely for Moomin or to leave him to the mercies of the madman as I sprint to the front or back door clutching my cell phone.
posted by badgerbag 1/23/2004 11:18:00 PM comment
More mysteriesAbuse of Power - by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg. Nauseatingly bad. I couldn't take it, and just skipped to the end, which was stupider and worse than I had predicted. Nasty! Irritating! Maddening! Rapesploitation! Who lent me this book? throw it away immediately.
The Nature of the Beast - Frances Fyfield. Looks bad from the blurb. I'll give it a chance, but one more power-hungry beautiful rich bitch and sociopathic alcoholic man and I'll fling the book across the room unless it's a work of fabulous genius.
Various by Patricia Cornwell - No. I just can't handle the cornball "oh I'm so cutesy let's be all southern wad-chewing fuckfaces" flavor. What dreck. Good god. Back into the bag it goes. I feel soiled and never want to read anything from the 20th century ever again. Worse than awful fantasy novels recently encountered - way worse. Worse than mary sues. Worse than those godawful sciencefictiony fan books that everyone thinks are so funny, but aren't. From page 1 of "Isle of Dogs": "Unique was a petite eighteen-year-old with long, shimmering hair that was as black as ebony, and her skin was translucent like milk glass, her lips full and pink." Um. It's not like that's the worst of it, but... right on page one!
Oh lordie lordie lordie.
That reminds me. I have to go out on the porch and give a certain book a brief reprieve from garage sale execution just so I can quote something amazingly poisonous.
***
What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained. by Robert L. Wolke. With Recipes. For fuck's sake man. Just bitch slap me, throw me on the floor and fuck me. Remove my shoes, knock me up, and give me that lobotomy, so that I can bear to read a whole book where page one paragraph two is as follows:(You'll be seeing the word molecule frequently throughout this book. Don't panic. All you need to know is that a molecule is, in the words of a first-grader of my acquaintance, "one of those eentsy-weentsy things that stuff is made of." That definition, plus the corollary that different stuff is different because it's made of different kinds of molecules, will stand you in good stead.)How can any self respecting human being continue after that little gem of condescension? The whole book is like that. "Yo! moronic housewife, ye who are my target audience! I'm going to use big words, but don't be alarmed! You don't need to understand them! It's all about COOKING, which you understand instinctively! Just as long as you remember that I'm superior! And I have a Masters' Degree... in SCIENCE!" It goes all big wordy and then gets all falsely jovial and folksy, like the most horrible of fluff pieces from "Parenting" magazine.
Yo Einstein, cook this up your ass!
I love a useless bit of trivia as well as the next person. I _would_ like to know the latest research on juicing limes. But not at the expense of my IMMORTAL SOUL.
posted by badgerbag 1/23/2004 07:57:00 PM comment
My dog has no nose. How does he smell? Awful!What is the horrible smell in here?? What? It's in every room. Did a raccoon die under the house? It smells of decay, and cat shit... maybe the cats have poop stuck to their butts, and are always next to me?
*checking cats under their tails*
Nope. It's not me, I just had a shower!
***
Now there is a strong smell of pot smoke. Maybe it's the hole in the window.
posted by badgerbag 1/23/2004 07:00:00 PM comment
sudden housewifely brainwaveA peculiar insight that came to me as I was cleaning out a closet just now and fretting that I save wrapping paper to re-use. Can't help it. Pack rat. Useless substance yet somewhat required in life and so, recycle it.
The brainwave was: Keep the bits of wrapping paper with the xmas ornaments in their box. Then when xmas rolls around again and I need wrapping paper and bows and ribbons, it will be there when I take out the box...
I'll be signing up for my lobotomy any minute now, because i was impressed with myself for figuring this out. I don't think I can claim any longer to be an intellectual and a scholar. Next, I will be removing stains with vinegar instead of just throwing away the crappy shirt from goodwill.
posted by badgerbag 1/23/2004 01:50:00 PM comment
shipwreckedDay 9 on my island. I've begun marking notches with a stick.
Rook has written rather a brilliant essay and I am proud!
This hot pillow has been saving my life... it's the pillow shaped like a horse collar. can go over eyes, over whole top of head, around the back of my neck. And can go on both ears at once. Or if I am on my side I pile it like a heavy snake on top of the up-facing ear. 3 minutes in the microwave refreshes it. If only it did not stink of lavendar, it would be perfect.
Polished off several mystery novels:
Cry Dance by Kirk Mitchell. Okay. Bureau of Indian Affairs guy. Southwest flavor with native american-ness. middle aged guy and younger woman petite, tough but naive who gets rescued. Long black hair.
Partner in Crime by J.A.Jance. Southwestern flavor. Girly sheriff, petite and tough. Long red hair. Older guy who must be her cop partner. Do I sense a theme here?
Dead Midnight by Marcia Muller. What a random title! San Francisco flavor. Clearly the author had a great time writing this as every other scene is set in a fancy SF restaurant; she must have done plenty of "background research". Tough, non-petite detective Sharon knows everyone useful as if she had +10 contacts in some mystery novel role playing system: people who can tell her who to pick locks or disable alarms over the phone, people who know how to recover deleted material from a hard drive, people who can give her secret info about everything, comic relief gay people. Bonus points to Muller, as I don't remember the hair, eye color, or weight of her detective. Detective's boyfriend travels a lot, sends roses, very neatly disposed of.
Track of the Cat by Nevada Barr. Southwestern flavor. 40-ish park ranger detective with nice but visibly aging body (examined and described while she is in the bathtub). Hair in ponytail or braids, worn "down" and brushed during non-hiking moments. There is much tough as nails hiking and surviving in desert and muscley grunting as she falls off cliffs and rescues herself and breaks bones and stuff.
Lonely grief over dead husband, attractive boytoy lover, sudden strong crush on a super femmy southern girl (mad points to Barr for realistic treatment of their relationship, the detective's dealing with the attraction). The boytoy lover was rather hilarious as he was a virile, heartbreakingly handsome ecoterrorist and southwestern interior decorator who wants to have sex with her every second and who begs her to marry him, but you know perfectly well that she would never.
This book, though the shortest of the lot, was the best for the protagonist's character development and general intelligence. Independence and competence combined with loneliness and realizing she wants to care about other people again after long grief.
Also, it was great simply because there was no old wrinkly veteran daddy cop calling the shots as a foil for the young tough petite perky-breasted chip-on-shoulder spunky proving-herself fuckable feminist girl cop and then they have sex. Thank god as there is just enough of that crap in the movies and everywhere else.
I no longer remember which of these books are Jo's and which are Ep's. I should have marked them!
Most of them displayed something new in cheesy novels - a vague awareness of computers that wasn't done completely wrong. There is usually a (younger) bright hotshot or secretary or junior assistant detective who "looks it up on the Internet". Very good! Welcome, mystery writers, to the real world!
posted by badgerbag 1/23/2004 08:56:00 AM comment
Thursday, January 22, 2004
notesmichael j. vaughn novelist, poet
posted by badgerbag 1/22/2004 11:11:00 AM comment
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
Dear virii,Welcome! Why don't y'all just settle right in. The lining of my brain is very comfortable about this time of year. I hear the dura mater in particular is cosy and warm. My inner and middle ears, as well, are known far and wide as amusing playgrounds.
If you would care to invade my sinuses, they seem to be unoccupied and I'm sure would love to have you.
Come on in! Make yourselves at home!
Signed,
Badger Hemulen
posted by badgerbag 1/21/2004 10:20:00 PM comment
resting but awakeThis whole meningitis thing has gotten me using IM chat. I hate the phone, and it still hurts to hear too much noise, even talking on the phone. Even hearing myself talk.
I'm using AIM so... ping me at badgerbag8... a bit lonely and bored and discouraged at not being better yet. I'm in this state where I'm just waiting for people to update their blogs. (Hurryupandblogifornia?)
Back to my book now.
posted by badgerbag 1/21/2004 09:24:00 PM comment
mild activityPuttered around house today. Rested. Sorted papers. "Don't push it," warns Rook. I went outside. I moved a few flowerpots, picked flowers with Moomin, and did some laundry. I even cooked dinner. "Don't do too much Badger. Are you listening?" "Oh let me just take out this one last bag of recycling."
Then suddenly found myself standing in the living room feeling very odd, having forgotten what I had been about to do. I must have looked peculiar because: "Badger. Go to bed. Now! Go! Go lie down!" Rook told me sternly as if talking to a dog who'd just peed on the floor. I went.
Suddenly my head is all pounding again and my brain feels like a yolk rattling around in a very bruised egg.
Rook very competent... I could just not be here and he would manage everything... adaptable fellow. Not the best dog trainer, but hey.
posted by badgerbag 1/21/2004 08:46:00 PM comment
so strange!Moomin is the most strangely virtuous child.
Me: "I think it's your bedtime, Moomin!"
Moomin: "Yaaaaay!" *hops into bed*
???
It's true, he now defies us occasionally, but still.. on the whole...
Has he been reading Confucius? Seriously now. Sneaking into my philosophy section and boning up on filial piety.
posted by badgerbag 1/21/2004 08:41:00 PM comment
Oh manThe beauty of this imaginary girlfriend thing is that one could just accept all the auctions in some clever way and send them the same letters. Hmmm. And could use any imaginary picture.
I like the t-shirts!
Wow, I could so, so, easily do the imaginary girlfriend thing. Love letters? no problem! Skimpy thong dropped into the mail? Hell, you can get them 3 for 5 bucks in the Macy's sale bin. (And annie sprinkle used to do this - mailorder (used) underwear.) Imaginary breakup? Oh, that would be the fun part. It would be more interesting to do no thong, and the "strictly wholesome" girlfriend.
The brilliant thing would be to photoshop me and the guy into a picture together. Then his friends would believe it! I'd have to use a photo of me from some years ago when I had long hair, I guess.
On 2nd thought I could market it as "your imaginary geek girlfriend"...
posted by badgerbag 1/21/2004 02:31:00 PM comment
statusAt this point I just feel a bit raw and fragile, as if I had a hangover.
But my ears feel weird. A little painful, and just... weird. Mild vertigo comes and goes without warning - and the feeling like when you've been in the ocean too long and the wind is whooshing across your ears and then about 2 hours later, water runs out of an ear onto your beach towel.
WTF mate? I'm only on antibiotics that could clear a giant kenya-sized petri dish of elephants. This ear thing only just started last night. How? How? Why? and What?
Today: a little mild laundry doing and garage-bustling. Moomin-tending. I don't know about my tolerance for noise. Rook might have to take over at some point.
Tomorrow: driving?
posted by badgerbag 1/21/2004 02:25:00 PM comment
future meI really like the future me site.
I've written letters to my future self before, and in a way everything I write especially in private journals is a letter to my future self. I am somewhat obsessed with the thought that I don't want to forget who I was, because I might betray my past self or selves and her/their ideals.
posted by badgerbag 1/21/2004 12:54:00 PM comment
Seen at Fairyland in downtown Oakland
You have to have a small child with you in order to get into this place.
posted by badgerbag 1/21/2004 12:43:00 PM comment
baby got frontDamn. I thought it would be really easy to find a pregnant exotic dancer. But Noooooooo. No responses from craigslist, not even pervy fake ones!
I'll try the women seeking women category. Maybe that will bear fruit.
posted by badgerbag 1/21/2004 11:23:00 AM comment
what I can seeThis might be mildly amusing. The books that happen to be on the shelf next to my bed.
Take Care of Yourself - a cheesy health care book
Zen Flesh, Zen Bones
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Marcus Aurelius
Another Marcus Aurelius translation
Nicanor Parra, Poems and Antipoems
Ways of the Hand - a book about piano playing and improvisation. awesome!
Another translation of Marcus Aurelius
Canaima
Anima Poetae - Coleridge
Amo, Amas, Amat - a handbook of Latin phrases
Ben Jonson's aphorisms ("Timber")
The Anatomy of Melancholy - 3 vols.
Water Birds of California (Minnie's?)
Baudelaire
Antologia de la poesia peruana
Apuellius The golden ass
the Bhagavad gita
Wittig - The Lesbian Body
Wittig - Across the Acheron
Lyra's Oxford
Wittig- the Straight Mind
Wittig - Les Guerilleres
" in french
Collected Poems of Yeats
MLA handbook 6th ed.
Tao te ching
Cicero - On the Good Life
Leather Rogues
Lust in Leather (Oh, blush)
Seneca- Moral Essays vol. II
The Odyssey
Arms and the Women (unread)
A fish dinner in memison (half read)
Comp. Lit. in a multicultural age
Extended Sexual Orgasm (a book on how to have hour long orgasms)
Agni 58
Polit1cs, Persuasion, and Pr@gmatism
The Faerie Queene
With Fire and Sword (half read)
The Encyclopedia of Amazons
Von Humboldt - Personal Narrative
Aristotle, Horace, Longinus - Classical Lit Crit
Learn to Crochet
Loteria de mi tierra (boxed)
Stories of Vikramaditya
Parkman - vol. II
Obras Completas - J. de Ibar
90 degrees south
The Little Drummer Girl
Two Little Women
Microworlds
Tabaré
Pippa Mediaslargas
Salam Pax book
Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera
Fountain and tomb - Mahfouz
The bijak of Kabir
book of children's poetry
Yeats
George and Martha
The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World (good!)
Introducing Barthes
american favorite ballads
Crit. terms for Liter. Study
Ariel - Rodó
Levi-Strauss (overdue!!!)
Maudie
The Pretty Women of Paris
Venus in India
Two Flappers in Paris
the Whippingham Papers (oh dear)
Teleny (so good!)
2 shelves of my own binders and journals
posted by badgerbag 1/21/2004 10:26:00 AM comment
beaterzIt's just too good.
When Trekkies go insane.
It doesn't seem insane to me... maybe insanely attractive. Oh, to go cruising in the shuttlecraft! Or just to sit in it! I wonder if the inside is all fixed up?
Thanks to essays and effluvia for the link. And the fabulous link to beaterz.com
posted by badgerbag 1/21/2004 09:24:00 AM comment
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
enough!You know, sometimes I am overjoyed that information is right here at my fingertips.
I was just wondering, "What is a uvula for? I mean, other than being a funny word, and useful to grab onto if one is being swallowed by a giant animal in a horror movie?"
Well. I give you the results of this dangerous wondering. Imagine for a moment that we are in a happy garden, and I am Eve, and naked, and offering you the luscious fruit of knowledge.
It might not be a good idea to click here. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Don't look here either. Did I just say "swallowed"? That was unfortunate.
Or here. "flopping around on my tongue like a beached whale..."
Finally!
posted by badgerbag 1/20/2004 10:14:00 PM comment
warts and allIf you were the Mars Rover, where would the Sorting Hat put you? Why?
posted by badgerbag 1/20/2004 09:09:00 PM comment
readingThis afternoon I read 3 of the "Ladies' Detective Agency" books. Fluffy like cotton candy. I also sorted through a lot of papers and put them in the correct folders and binders. Perhaps the garage sale can be this Saturday.
Things are looking up!
I haven't finished the Mars Rover Mary Sue story yet. Maybe I'll do that tonight.
posted by badgerbag 1/20/2004 08:13:00 PM comment
noteschandrasutra's blog very intelligent and lovely posts
gotta get blogroll back up and running soon... and organize my sidebar.
posted by badgerbag 1/20/2004 01:22:00 PM comment
notes from fire and swordnotes from a while back - messy and disorganized but useful. to be fixed up later and for now just transcribed. Am still in the middle of the book.
***
fire and sword
pan yan (Skshetuski)
works for prince Yeremi - princess, two young princesses zbaraskie
(lubei castle)
volodyovski - loves Anna princess zbaraska nice of prince yeremi.
Hemelnitski (outlaw) ran off with the starosta’s wife Main bad guy of rebellion. in cahoots with Tugai Bey
Pan Longin - tall guy. Podbipienta (3 heads with one blow guy)
shield of Zervikaptur Lithuanian
Pan Zagloba - sort of the comic relief
Wallachian embassador Pan Rozvan Ursu
starosta Chaplinski - gets humiliated in bar
at Rozlogi:
Princess Helena
Princess widow of Prince constantine kurtsefich bulyga
elder vassily kurtsevich prince - confident of late pricne michael
sons - simeon, Yury, Andrei, Nikolai, and (oldest) eyes put out adopted Bogun (el Bad Guy).
***
posted by badgerbag 1/20/2004 12:48:00 PM comment
my wishTo be right now with my face half burrowed into the warm sunny coarse yellow sand of B0nn3t Sh0res in R.I. peeking out from under my arm (as Minnie added, with eyes half open half closed so that you get the cool effect of sand on eyelashes in the sunlight) smelling the delicious seaweediness and hearing far-off sounding seagulls and happy shrieky children through the waves.
When I am 90 or so, keep this in mind. Ideally I would die at will, quietly, like the chick in that movie "Antonia's Line" but I'd be lying in the warm sunny sand.
posted by badgerbag 1/20/2004 11:40:00 AM comment
Monday, January 19, 2004
ah, lip sharpie, i thought I knew yelip sharpie ink thing works GREAT to make other body parts look all rosy and maidenly rather than the sprawling matronly udders they have become.
i am on drugs again. can I manage to photo the right one (maidenly, with nip stain) and the left (cafe au lait) one separately? yet tastefully?
Never give this woman makeup in bed...
Possible full body henna-ing may follow.
posted by badgerbag 1/19/2004 10:49:00 PM comment
of interestI didn't know that wich in English place-names means "salt works". Cool!
Look for The Discourse on Salt and Iron, chinese symposium on statecraft.
posted by badgerbag 1/19/2004 06:37:00 PM comment
irritating!Dr. appt. completely pointless: New doctor spent waaay too long snarking on my purple hair. for fuck's sake. get over it. HIS hair was ugly and funny looking too but you don't see me being rude about it.
Doctor B.'s attitude: Why are you here? you are getting better.
Me: But why is this happening? Do I really have strep or am I just a carrier? What is going on? Why the headache? Connected to the strep or not?
Doctor: I dont know, I don't know, I don't know, etc. Come back when you are completely better and we'll see if you are still a strep carrier. Maybe you should see a neurologist.
Me: Um..... *do not cry in doctors office, do not, do not, do not*
Doctor: So, go home and go to bed. Maybe you just have a headache from having a sore throat.
Me: Um, this was and is so far beyond "a headache"...
Doctor: Maybe it's migraines that are triggered when you get sick. Maybe it's viral mening1tis. Maybe you don't have strep at all, and never did. Maybe it's cluster headaches. Have you been depressed?
Me: No, never! Not until I got a headache that made me vomit and not be able to open my eyes for 3 days.
Doctor: Come back when you feel better and we'll run some tests. *Giant Waves of You Are a Hypochondriac Hysteric Emanate From Doctor*
Me: *leaves, feeling pointless*
???
posted by badgerbag 1/19/2004 05:03:00 PM comment
a lot betterAm feeling significantly better... Dr. appt. ina little while... reduced codeine intake a little bit...
I can't wait to get off the codeine. I HATE IT and how it makes me feel... all glazed over and la-la and thick, with thoughts floating in and out of each other even more vaguely than usual, and unstoppable, so that sleep and waking seem closer to each other than they should be.
finished "paladin" and half way through "Salt: A World History". Interesting but it's a bit fluffy. It bugs me sometimes when things are dumbed down.
I was wondering about the whole "Tyrian purple is not purple, but more like red" issue. Is that true? It's not like I know, but I've read it enough places to wonder when Kurlansky in the Salt Book talks about purple dye without going into the question.
***
Page on Tyrian purple, but still no visual sample of what the color is. Apparently more reddish-purple when you're testing your dye on a fleece?!
And this from an eloquent guy who feels it's okay to take things from museums as long as they fall on the floor...
This page on tekhelet is interesting. It's much bluer than I would think the reddish tyrian purple would be.
posted by badgerbag 1/19/2004 01:14:00 PM comment
Sunday, January 18, 2004
the curse of the paladinAm reading Paladin of Souls Funny, I like it much better than I liked the first book's hobbling stuttering prose. Or is the codeine talking? Anyway I'm enjoying it! Super cheez! But also way better feminism. Ista is pretty cool so far, despite my not being able to forget that she is a peninsula and a weyr.
I passed out earlier tonight. It doesn't feel like I'm getting any better.
Have applied "Urb@n Decay" stuff, the sharpie marker for your lips, about once every 20 minutes, preening coyly for myself in front of hand mirror and digicam. Soon, I will also douche, spray, shave my pits with pink flowered razors, and wear one of those mattress-sized maxi pads while dancing around in a white gauze dress in a field of flowers with vaseline smeared all over the camera lens. Isn't that what happens when one starts down the slippery slope of makeup?
However I must say that I look divinely haggard wearing this lip sharpie stuff.
posted by badgerbag 1/18/2004 10:52:00 PM comment
nearly to deathYou think it's not possible to be irritated to death in under 1 minute? Get sick and let my mom call you. Me cago en la puta madre que me.. no, wait. I can't say that!
"Do you think you might have gotten a little HEADACHE from the STRESS of BUYING a HOUSE?" whinges my mom in a weird fakey baby-talk voice.
FUCK!
During the effort not to make a mean, snarky, bitchy, obscene reply to this amazingly offensive ignorant question I nearly exploded.
It's time for my 15 minutes of silence and darkness, but I am putting it off until I cool down from that horrible phone call. Did the woman not read my giant email explaining everything? Apparently not.
posted by badgerbag 1/18/2004 04:01:00 PM comment
never underestimate grannyOh, fucking hell I don't quite remember what all this means. I'm on "Round 2" and remembered to flip the damn thing over and finally grokked what the fuck "work the corner" means, yah! but then what? huh?
posted by badgerbag 1/18/2004 03:40:00 PM comment
enforced relaxationNew regimen is to lie still in bed with eyes closed doing NOTHING for 15 minutes out of every hour, hoping to fall asleep. This is very boring, but I do feel rested as I've been doing it since around noon.
suddenly am wondering if smoking pot is good for one's headache. Or would I just start experiencing the headache all the more intensely?
Am considering a bit of granny square crocheting as a reading alternative to pass some time.
posted by badgerbag 1/18/2004 03:15:00 PM comment
fmi(for my info...)
headaches
posted by badgerbag 1/18/2004 03:15:00 PM comment
mysteryWow... that's a lot of mystery novels. thank you my friends! thank you for the duck pate, the pan levain, the Pan Yan, the taking of my kid to the playground, the books, the crayons, the coloring book and the Urban Dec@y Naked Lip Stain. Applying it, I feel a pleased girlish I'm so pretty in my sickbed feeling, rather like Mrs. Chilton when Pollyanna does her hair.
Several phone calls out and a lot of waffling. Rook's dad helpfully offered the thought that headaches can be psychosomatic. Gracias mi suegro cariño, lo necesito ese psicoanalisis gratis como necesito a hole in the head. Y me cago en la boca de la madre de Freud!!! Rook's mom is much more sane and helpful.
Though it is torture to talk to her becuase she shouts.
Some other dr. from my group, I think Ar0n, gave me a callback and he was incredibly intelligent seeming. I will be switching to him. He said he would be worrying about the same things i am worryignj about, ie, what if there is even a 1% chance it is bacterial (since there has been no lumb@r puncture) being masked by the antibiotics I'm taking, but unless I start feeling actually worse, ER probably not necessary. I can see him tomorrow, they are not on holiday. he lectured me that I am expecting to get better too fast, that it takes a while, and I must actually rest and not keep getting up and stop jostling my brain around in there by walking about unecessarily. Also, to take advil to make inflammation go down. This, and Rook, persuaded me not to go to the ER.
I had expected to be better by today. Yesterday during any time I was not actually half dead, I was cleaning things in a crippled and limp sort of way. I got a big pile of papers and crap from the top of my bureau and the bookshelf near my bed, and sorted through it. result: one file folder full of interesting papers, one small box full of business cards to be transmitted to computer file of addresses, one large box of Things to Be Put Elsewhere, one grocery bag full of paper trash.
Also cleaned out my night table drawer and dusted everything within reach of my bed and folded the laundry and went through all my drawers pulling out clothes to get rid of.
I'm bored! In retrospect, none of that should have happened. I should have been lying here with my eyes closed quietly trying to sleep.
With fibromyalgia one of the main principles is to push yourself into activity even when you feel like shit. Otherwise, you never get better. Also, if you have any sort of chronic pain you better get used to functioning while in pain. HOWEVER. I tend to forget that with normal illness one RESTS even if feeling a litle better, KEEP RESTING. If I feel capable I want to get up and prove to the world that I'm not a slacker, a faker, a hypochondriac, a psychosomatic whiner. Deeply underlaid with the conviction that under it all I really AM a liar, a whiner, a faker etc.
Minnie has come over and she and Rook are now cleaning the house. This makes me feel amazingly better. It's not like i usually care. But when sick I suddenly do and i feel really out of control of everyting and like everything's going to hell. Any order that can be imposed, I wish it to be imposed.
Neurotics R Us!
posted by badgerbag 1/18/2004 12:50:00 PM comment
Saturday, January 17, 2004
reassuredstrangely reassured by Minnie being here, and Squid's mom the nurse talking with me for a bit. I think my panicked linking to that site on viral meningitis was pretty much a panic - it is not necessarily the most credible of sites, on second look. My giant Harrison's principles of internal medicine seemed happily optimistic about viral not having aftereffects. Though it can recur.
Also bounced ideas around with Minnie and (from bed) started writing the pottersue I threatened to write. Yes, the M@rsj R0ver is going to Hogwarts. Oh, it's damn funny. Look for it soon. I am about 1/4 done. The daughter of some JPL engineers has a wild magical power to meld with machines and she merges with the R0ver (oh, just GUESS what her name is... it's so perfect!) and wheels about on mars.No, she'd have to figure something out on her own. In the meantime, there were pictures to take, data to transmit. She flexed her solar panels a little, exulting in the knowledge that her dream had come true. She was the first person to stand on the surface of Mars. Even if she stood on wheels, not feet!
hahaha I am truly demented! she will kiss hermione! and she will struggle with the problems of getting around the staircase-filled Hogw@rts on her wheels! could there be a better mary sue for me? I think not.
signing out now to try to sleep.
my head throbbing like harry's lightning bolt scar when voldemort thinks of him. at least i have been royally entertained all evening by this fun story.
posted by badgerbag 1/17/2004 11:20:00 PM comment
reciting poemsWhen bored and in pain it is good to have a store of poetry to repeat. If I were ever captured as a spy and locked in a sensory deprivation chamber as a form of psychological torture, it will come in handy. It's also good to imagine one is a captured spy when lying in bed in the dark and trying not to worry about things.
I don't know very many poems by heart. Mostly I repeat bits of M@rcus Aurelius and this poem, The Two Trees, which I learned when I was about 17. I normally edit out the stupid lines about the fairies or cupids or whatever they are. The rest is good.
"Gaze no more in the bitter glass
The demons, with their subtle guile,
Lift up before us when they pass,
Or only gaze a little while;"
I can do many other Yeats poems - I liked him a lot, and then I went to this school (which used to be a month long) and had a surfeit of Yeats. Oh, more yeats than you could shake a hazel wand at. Jesus fucking christ. "And Now, Yeats's cousin's great-nephew, dressed inexplicably in a kilt, will play the harp, while the Mayor of Sligo over-emotes I went out to the hazel wood... ONE MORE TIME!" the hazel wood poem, the innisfree one, etc. were all beat into the ground.
I am fond of the one about Fergus and the Druid. "Take if you must this little bag of dreams/unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round" (that's the druid, then fergus says:) I see my life go dripping like a stream/from change to change - I have been many things,/A green drop on the surge, a gleam of light/upon a sword, a fir-tree on a hill, (mmmsomething else???) and all these things were wonderful and great, but now I have grown nothing, being all, and the whole world weighs down upon my heart, Ah! Druid! Druid! what great webs of sorrow / lay hidden in the small slate-colored thing!"
The other one I can do all of is The Ecstasy. I can't remember when I learned it. It is hard to get the verses in the right order. Often I get lost and have to start over completely, like with an imperfectly memorized piano piece. The Ecstasy is still one of my favorite poems. At some point I decided it was the only good love poem and I refused to write any more love poetry, which is mostly really threat poetry, possession poetry, or just objectifyingly nasty. (the vivisection ones always gross me out, where they catalogue all the body parts!)
Can also do the first 10 lines or so of Canterbury Tales in authentic-as-possible accent. it comes out sounding very germanic. "Whaaahn een Aaaapreel weeth hees shoor-es so-teh, Tha drucht aahf Maarch haath per-ced toh thah ro-teh". I took a class in the history of english and we learned how to pronounce it all.
posted by badgerbag 1/17/2004 08:57:00 PM comment
loving margaretPerhaps the next kid could be eleanor margaret. as long as it has the same initials as me.
What they don't realize is that I am untouchable, because I have been hurt so much in my life, nothing hurts me anymore. I have been so rejected that I have come to expect it. I have learned to love that which is meant to harm me, so that I can stand in the way of those who are less strong. I can take the bullets for those who aren't able to. I am a warrior, hard as fuck.If I had a boy it could be Cyrus Margareto or something? Or I could work the "Cho" into its korean name. Moomin has a korean middle name so they could match. As long as Min-cho doesn't mean something just silly. I will be sure to check.
posted by badgerbag 1/17/2004 07:54:00 PM comment
a bit unnervedWell this has left me quite unnerved.
Recovering from meningitis
The gist of it is, while viral meningitis you don't die like with the bacterial kind, the aftereffects are the same. How 'bout that "1 in 10 suffer hearing loss or deafness" thing. I'm glad my SENILE FUCKHEAD DOCTOR mentioned that part. I will for sure be following up on Monday first thing.
posted by badgerbag 1/17/2004 04:22:00 PM comment
bored... visit me!Damn I'm bored. anyone who wants to come visit me, please do...
bring trashy mystery novels or children's books to loan me!
I'm all alone, as Rook and Moomin have gone to Iz's party. Later they will be gone again all evening at a LOTR game. So it's a great opportunity eh? Of course, any adultery will have to be committed very, very, very carefully, or in our imaginations, so as not to jar my neck and "The Object Formerly Known as Badger's Brain".
Today light is no longer my enemy. I have the blinds up and the camellias are incredibly beautiful in full blossom and exploded all over the deck. When we moved in here, as always I thought about "and what will my view be as I convalesce from the inevitable boring sicknesses?" and set it up just for this occasion. Just before we move, here I am reaping the benefits of this foresight.
I used to not like camellias, feeling they were too showy and easily bruised. Ever since my moment of enlightenment at Filoli, I have loved them for their abundance and fearlessness. The whole bush, or tree, blooms at once and the flowers fall to the ground, abandoned and reckless. They are beautifully impermanent and fragile.
posted by badgerbag 1/17/2004 02:57:00 PM comment
during a warA long excerpt from a great blog: A Family in Baghdad. Mostly written by Faiza who I think is Raed's mom. I admire her. I like what she says but honestly don't think I would have the courage:
We have a flat in Amman/Jordan. Before the war, whilst we were on holiday, my husband suggested that the kids and I spend the duration of the war in the flat. I was flabbergasted and completely rejected the idea and returned to Baghdad hurriedly fearing the outbreak of the war whilst am still outside Iraq. It is a question of principle.
Many people have ridiculed me for my attitudes, to the point that my sisters consider me a foolish romanticist, but I’ve stuck to my points of view and have not regretted it. I said to them “I wasn’t here during any of the past wars and I feel guilty”. My thoughts were that this would be the final war and I did not want to rue the chance of sharing the experience of a close war with my family, friends and neighbours, so I decided on staying in Baghdad and not leaving regardless. Otherwise what is the point in life if they died and I stayed alive? What will I do? It’ll be dull and boring.
A person who is present during and experiences a war has a higher/stronger morale than one who lives outside the country and has to hear of the war in the news, then that person is mortified psychologically wondering about the fate of their loved ones. I lived this experience during the first Gulf War as I was living in Amman and I felt impotent and used to cry daily worried about my family and loved ones back in Iraq. But to be present with everyone during the war is a Mercy in the sense that each of us consoles one another and we laugh about what is happening and hoping that we can live to tell our tale.
posted by badgerbag 1/17/2004 12:20:00 PM comment
combat readyOh, this is funny... photo sent to me from rj from a long ago paintball game. 1994 maybe.
posted by badgerbag 1/17/2004 11:10:00 AM comment
Sort ofWell, actually, I've had love affairs that started this way.
1984: "C'mon, you know you want to show me how to work the buttons for Flood Control Gate No. 3...*bites earlobe*"
1986: "Log me in again.... No, it's MY turn..."
1990: "Wait, what do I type after chmod?"
posted by badgerbag 1/17/2004 12:30:00 AM comment
Friday, January 16, 2004
cellobach cello suites are perfect for a headache. nearly all other sounds instantly trigger pain. it is something about the slow attack waveform (?) (vaguely remembering wave shapes from some ancient commodore 64 program in 1982 or 83)
I tried some harp music but no way - each note seemed to dig directly into my skull. the cello slides in with no punch to it.
i continue picturing myself as a WWI soldier in a muddy foxhole and how miserable that would be and how happy I am really to be here in my soft cushiony bed with my nice family. go, cello! tell me all about it.
I'm really bored with my own brain. the thing in there i used to call a brain and now think of as a painfully pulsating gelatinous mass.
visit me... knit by the side of my bed... okay well maybe the other side ... wait, on the other side you might find Rook's victoria's secret catalogs or something. How about you knit soothingly at the foot of the bed and toss chocolate at me and amuse me with anecdotes...
***
Ah, here is something on attack and decay.
posted by badgerbag 1/16/2004 11:46:00 PM comment
find proustThis would be a great time to finish the first third of remembrance of things past if I could FIND THE BOOK. It's somewhere in here, I was just reading it a few days ago. Could someone come put away all the books in my house so that I can find it?!
posted by badgerbag 1/16/2004 08:53:00 PM comment
updateThe doctor called back and went on about the okay CAT scan. "Probably viral meningitis, plus coincidentally strep throat" is our oh so not very reassuring diagnosis. It's better than "probable brain tumor" or "let's run some more neurological tests so we can see if you have MS" which is my real fear. "Keep taking your antibiotics for the strep and just in case it's bacterial." Um? If it could be bacterial, and if there's any doubt, shouldn't I have been in the hospital having that lumbar puncture earlier today?
Somehow, all I can feel about the MS thing is a rather vicodined "Oh well, worrying about it doesn't help." WTF, if I didn't worry about everything who would I be? I already went through a giant "fearing I have MS" phase and have imagined my life turning out that way. It would suck in its own unique ways and I would cope, or not, and then would die at whatever point 20 or 25 years from now, which could happen anyway. OH WELL. You know? In the meantime I'll get over my headache and enjoy life once the headache gone. I regret the parties I will be missing this weekend: Iz's 5th birthday, Rob's b-day with many poets, Pascua's baby shower, and the Proust Support Group (Tom Purdue).
I do resolve anew to exercise more, drink less soda, eat a few more vegetables. I was doing okay for about a week on the exercise biking every morning. Must go back to it as soon as I am better!
posted by badgerbag 1/16/2004 06:10:00 PM comment
geek checkYa know, I don't usuallly have the hots for Sedalina at all, at all, she's not my type, but after I read this:
So Gandalf has gotta be a Level 21 magic user or something, hey? But he can't even manage a single Magic Missile in ROTK! Instead he's thwacking platemailed orcs with a 1d4 staff. All. Movie. Long.I felt all hot and bothered. Hose me down! That's geek mating talk there!
But then she keeps saying "Aragon" and I lose my erection. Dammit! It's "Aragorn"!
posted by badgerbag 1/16/2004 05:57:00 PM comment
Rat Raceahhh.... i feel the mortgage settling down around my shoulders... but it's locked in at 5.125%
just so that everyone knows every gory detail of my life I will go ahead and say the house is (get ready to faint) $725K but that is between 2 families, so 313K each. For living in the bay area in a 3 bedroom house with a yard, 313K is quite amazing - we couldn't even buy a double wide next to the landfill for that much. Co-housing! Long may it live!
Our rent was 2250 but Minnie was paying us 500 for the "shack" in the back yard (20 x 20 studio) Once she moved out our landlord lowered the rent to 1950. Now, our new mortgage payments will be under 1600... sounds good... plus property taxes but then minus whatever tax break we get. Plus insurance and earthquake insurance.
I feel that I have just gone up to "High Society" in the game of Rat Race. No one I know has ever played this game... though lots have played Careers, my other favorite board game.
In Rat Race you start out in the Lower Class which goes all the way around the edge of the board. You get $200 when you pass Go. You must buy or somehow obtain 3 Lower Class Status Symbols which you buy from the other players' businesses... Playing the racetrack is a good way to make money.
Once you get a high school diploma and a certain amount of money, you go up to the Middle Class, which is a smaller ring nested inside the outer one. It takes less time to go around the loop and collect your paycheck which is now 1000 bucks. BUT you have the risk of landing on "Divorce" or "Taxes Due" which can really screw all your money out of you. "Divorce" always sends you back to Lower Class. Of course, you must sell off your Lower Class status symbols and buy three new Middle Class status symbols. With your 10,000 and your new university diploma and your status symbols you are ready to move up to High Society where you very quickly collect your 10K paychecks and play the stock market, which is nearly always the way to win the game (first to get 100K wins).
I used to love this game, but did not realize how damned funny it was until maybe 10 years ago... why my parents would giggle insanely and why it was their favorite game too. We played it up with high drama especially during those tense stock market moments.
posted by badgerbag 1/16/2004 04:52:00 PM comment
books latelyAs I have plenty of time to contemplate my bedside... where the books and used kleenexes are piled...
The Marlows and the Traitor by Antonia Forest -- the lighthouse one
The Cricket Term by Antonia Forest -- Nicola tries for a scholarship, Lawrie wants to play Caliban
The Attic Term by Antonia Forest -- Ginty freaks the hell out and turns into a bad teenager
Peter's Room by Antonia Forest -- they all play a sort of RPG based on learning about the Brontes and Gondal/Angria
All the above transcend the usual children's book. Possibly the best I've read. I continue thinking about them. Gets into the character's heads incredibly well. Incidentally lovely in language and situations too. I keep comparing myself to the characters and thinking about ways I am like them or unlike them or have behaved or thought in similar ways in the past. Heavy on the personal moral choices and the importance of small incidents.
I got a little confused about dates, as it's 1949 or something in the Traitor one and then it seems to jump forward a bit (?) to the 60s or 70s by the time of "Attic Term".
I noticed the word "huha" used a lot in Attic Term. It's usually spelled "hooha" in the U.S. and I think it comes from Yiddish. I remember it from the Yiddish Dictionary which I read long ago. Just FYI. The Yiddish Dictionary made great reading.
A Mortal Bane by Roberta Gellis -- sucks but not completely unbearable. Whores (one a fallen noblewoman, one blind, one mute, and one retarded, with a deaf servant to round it all out) in medieval England solve a mystery, sort of. Apparently to keep one's house and clothes perfect one only needs a part-time old woman, a little light dusting, and some mending on sundays. The thought of all their laundry! The scrubbing and water-fetching! Sheesh. They're always having sumptuous repasts. Even Pepys and his wife always had a hell of a time doing basic housekeeping. Overexplains and repeats and hammers every point of the "mystery" in case you're a freaking idiot. However this was the most readable of the lot.
Never After by Rebecca Lickiss -- sucks nearly unbearably but I read it anyway. Twee princes, princess, witch, wizards, enchanted castle, references to every fairy tale. Overexplains nearly everything. Worst names ever. Yes, naming the witch Urticacea was momentarily funny for those of us that just happen to know it's like, the latin name for stinging nettles, but it's just not that funny. Should make Gail Carson Levine spin madly in her grave, if she dies.
Green Rider by Kristen Britain -- I plunged through this (womfully, not manfully) but just had to stop. I couldn't take the awful, awful, clunky writing. Have feeling that J. liked it for its magic system, which could be studied and used as the basis of some novel RPG system.
Can't remember the other fantasy book with the stupid as fuck bastard princess and the enslaved ailora. I read it, but with more pain than could have been caused by a headache. At least I could read it all the way through.
Rivals by Jilly Cooper. I couldn't take it. Too sexist and dull, dull, dull. Also the britishisms made me itch. Making the american, what do you call her, the fantasy 80s ballbuster hard as nails businesswoman happy to suck cock to get an executive position, in her shoulderpadded power suit inexplicably also a slinky sexy dress, with her flinty sexy anger oh so objectified, very irritating. Um. My point was that the americans keep saying things like "I got sacked from my job. And my job was driving a lorry that delivers nappies." or whatever. things no american would ever, ever in a million years say.
The G1ant Horse of Oz - Ruth Plumly thompson. Great, great, great! Very wacky. Yes twee, yes silly, yes very stupid names, yes you know all along that some deus ex machina will rush in, but manages to transcend and in fact parody the whole Oz thing. I also read about 5 other of thompson's Oz books in the last week and they were all funny.
***
If you are a kid who happened upon this blog searching on 0z books, or you are easily traumatized, then don't read any further.
***
Lust in Leather Just to be brutally honest, here is my favorite bedside book, a bit tatttered and worn, but oh so loved. It has the best stories about hot ranch hands, policemen, prisoners, sailors, and just plain leather scene guys all getting it on brutally in a well-written and well-hung way. Oh yeah! The best one is about a hot guy wearing jeans and no shirt riding some sort of giant stallion around in the rain while smoking a cigarette and admiring the lovely scenery and then he sucks his own dick and realizes he is being watched by some other incredibly hot guy on an opposite-colored sexy stallion, who lassoes him and spanks him. In the rain. How could it be any better?
***
Hate to give bad reviews of books that other people kindly sent me! (thanks J. and Iris!) I was greatly, greatly entertained in my hour of need.
Honesty will either get me better books, or make them throw up their hands at my ingratitude and not send me anything...
posted by badgerbag 1/16/2004 10:56:00 AM comment
birdwatchingIn my dream this morning I was about 6 feet from a giant gnarled oak tree. Pileated woodpeckers were on it, hammering, right next to me. I had no binoculars but if I made fake binoculars with my hands, I could see better. In the grass under the trees a small flock of lazuli buntings was doing a strange mating dance. I called Minnie and told her all about it, "You are never going to believe this, but I'm standing just a few feet from three pileated woodpeckers!"
Moomin just brought me a stuffed animal to help me feel better..
Our real estate agent was in the dream too. She kept dragging me around a big city and showing me flats in skyscrapers and getting me to visit her friends to watch TV and have sandwiches.
nausea is way less than it was. I look forward to a little coffee.
i need more "medicine" as my back all up and down is aching as if somoene had been kicking me all night. Perhaps there is a pea under my 100th mattress.
posted by badgerbag 1/16/2004 08:30:00 AM comment
Thursday, January 15, 2004
painvery troublesome
ate some miso
took another half vicodin
laying here in dark for a long time
pain is very throbby and bad and head swimmy.
i even think a little of returning to emerg. room. but ugh! ugh! ugh! for sure i would be cold, and miserable, and incoherent, and they would do a lumbar puncture on me... no... i can't face it...
am remembering the delirium of not being able to come out of anesthesia that one time with the shoulder surgery. I had some kind of bad reaction and coming around took me hours and hours. vomiting and intensely miserable sometimes seeing minnie and s.k. for a minute then passing out halfway again. repeating endlessly. trying to talk and not being able to. saying something desperate about wishing someone would turn off the blaring radio rock beats with commercials. finally someone stuck a scopalamine patch behind my ear and it brought me round.
I imagine that dying, at its worst, or near its worst, would be that way. If I am dying, please put some soothing headphone music on me okay? Surely it would be better that way than hearing loud hospital staff discuss their Tah0e vacations.
i think my head actually feels worse when i am lying down flat.
at intervals tongiht i have felt that with a little effort of will i could just make myself be normal. i get up and ghost waiflike into the hallway and stare at rook and moomin. As far as someone of my shape can be waiflike I suppose. "Get in bed!" rook admonishes. I wisp around wishing for things then realize i keep forgetting what i am doing. gingerale? soup? a book? back to bed and the dark.
it is comforting to write all this.
posted by badgerbag 1/15/2004 11:25:00 PM comment
strepWelp... the ham-handed Bulgarian just called me to report lab tests. I have strep again (3rd time recently) They don't know about the other tests yet.
Just realized I never replaced all our toothbrushes after having it last time.
These people never, ever, think I am sick when I come to their offices... as I get things like strep and don't run a fever. Hardly ever. Plus I think my normal temp is like 97.3 (dimly recalled from those ovulation-tracking days).
I'm phasing in and out of functioning over here - 10 minutes on (reading trashy novels J. sent me, or obsessively browsing medline) and then I must turn out all lights and just lie here bored as hell.
posted by badgerbag 1/15/2004 09:08:00 PM comment
drugs (sing to O Tannenbaum)O Vicodin, O Vicodin!
Thy powers are so mighty!
O Vicodin, O Vicodin!
Thy powers are so mighty!
You are a cure for every ill,
Oh white and legal happy pill,
O Vicodin, O Vicodin!
Thy powers are so mighty.
The smoothness of your guiltless high,
sings me a restful lullaby...
Okay I'll stop that now.
Pain is now down from oh, around 8.5 to maybe 6.5 on the ever useful Mankoski Pain Scale.
I might have whimpered a little from the effort not to vomit in the hospital but actually I thought I was quite brave. And I was not keening! I did cry a whole bunch with relief when I got to lie down on that gurney and the room stopped spinning and the nurse gently laid warmed blankets on top of me.
Being wheeled about was making me want to hurl but at least I could think only about not vomiting instead of (with walking) not vomiting plus not falling over.
I have no idea what the inside of that hospital looks like as both times I've been there I kept my eyes firmly closed.
Light is still hurting my eyes. When I close them my head throbs with weird rings of light that keep coming at me much like a bad animation of going into hyperspace. Am very tired of these unwanted "visuals"
Immensely comforting to have someone there with me in the hospital so i was not at the mercy of indifferent staff.
the anti nausea pills work wonders.
I liked the random dr. I got but he might be on crack. He did all these semi cheesy neuro tests on me, squeeze fingers, push, pull, eyes, etc He seemed to think possibilities are migraine with random odd giant throat infection "which may have infected your nervous system" (huh? I think he meant "meningitis" but was avoiding big words) Or, "you can get migraines from having a virus" or "you have all the classic symptoms of an aneurysm" I can't believe he said that, was I hallucinating? Plus, I think aneurysm would be super sudden and I'd like, keel over and it would be really obvoius...I mentioned that, but he still insisted on the cat scan and made hm hmming noises about year-ago bout of vertigo. Am also on some sort of horse pill of an antibiotic for the throat thing. I wonder if I have strep again?
Also, does "having a stiff neck" mean that, like, it's unmovable, as if you had developed rigor mortis? Or just that it feels stiff and painful to move? And how sudden is "sudden onset"? I argued with the Dr. that I felt crappy for a whole day and then the headache developed over an afternoon. He kept saying "the sudden onset is particularly disturbing" Also asked me about 6 times if I had been feeling dizzy. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes, I have been and am extremely dizzy.
Also, why did no one take my blood pressure? dosen't that seem fucking stupid?
Curiously I feel no panic or aneurysms or MS, but a certainty that I will be haunted by yet another random chronic hysteria-type illness, ie migraines, that is merely incredibly annoying and will make me spend days in bed moaning with wet facecloths on my head
At least with the drugs I can open my eyes and read a bit. Computer screen on super-dim.
I was happy to hear that in E.'s "history book on the 1980s" there was mention of the movie "Back to the future 3". Oh, crucial! Tried to explain to her what meninges are. As I didn't really know myself, I don't think I was too successful.
posted by badgerbag 1/15/2004 04:57:00 PM comment
hallucinatingYesterday's headache got so bad that I was hallucinating. the light hurt my eyes. Any sounds at all would make my head throb with pain and a weird flashing light go off in my head. v. disturbing and painful. It was also like I was seeing (with eyes shut) those patterns you see sometimes when on acid - swirly changing ones. I saw an exhibit once at the Exp1or@torium that explained those patterns; they are an effect of something to do with your eye structure. Anyway, I was seeing them, and they were throbbing painfully in time with the sounds of people's voices and footsteps.
I kept thinking, "At what point do I call someone and beg them to come take Moomin away so that everything is quiet?" It only went over that line at around 6 so then I didnt' call because Rook would be home any minute. Moomin watched movies from 3-7 and then lost it and wanted me to watch him type words on the computer. I lay in bed (crying) and telling him the letters that spell "jump" and "zebra". I got up to call Rook at this point but no answer... I felt stupid and slow and thick... could not get the phone to hang up properly... Am an idiot...
It's a good idea to ask for help BEFORE one is reduced to crying with pain.
Then the kind Acrobat came in to sign some house papers and sort of rescued me (though loudly and without grokking that I was about to die) but mostly, embarrassed me for the odd reason that I could not bear the thought that my ex-bf would hear tell that I was sick and incoherent.
How strange....!
Doctor no help, as always, they just told me to go the emergency room. I didn't go. They always say that to cover their asses. I will be calling the doctor today, though.
Rook got home and I could take a blessed, blessed codeine pill, which made it all much better, just a normal headache, sore throat, sick feeling in which one could still function like a person.
This morning I feel sick yet normal. No flashing lights, no crazy inability to understand what people are saying to me... Barfing in a horrible stomach-virus way...
It soudns like migraines, the weird headache - can a virus like norwalk virus bring on a migraine? Or have I got viral meningitis and should be in the hospital right now? Since I didn't go there when at the low point, probably not, as I'm now walking around, typing and talking. I think I could drive myself to the grocery store, even.
***
I just got up to test that theory. No... am still dizzy and sick. Am calling for help for a ride to doctor, as soon as they call me back.
It seems awfully likely that this is my 2nd bout in a month of viral meningitis (frequent complication of viral gastroenteritis) and so some sort of doctoring is necessary so they know it's going on, even if they can't do much for me here.
posted by badgerbag 1/15/2004 10:18:00 AM comment
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
ugh!My throat hurts weirdly only on one side and I feel exhausted and depressed.
Ugh, ugh, ugh! I can't get sick right now. It is not allowed!
Should rest, but am off to the bank and to get catfood etc.
I debate about going to work or not. Rest? Work? Guilt if not working? Pre-emptive resting before getting _really_ sick? Or working extra now to make up for time lost when really sick?
Later I will read more of the cool long detailed soothing posts from The Loom.
posted by badgerbag 1/14/2004 10:35:00 AM comment
silver curtainMy dream was a party in Oz but with people from my old co-op. I couldn't remember their names. My parents were there. At some point the scene morphed into being a cave and the giant dragon Quiburon (something like that) was chasing us. I was dragging them with super strength away from the dragon's flaming breath - we plunged through a silver waterfall that turned out not to be wet but more like a force field. The rocks were rough and blocky and damp like the block faulted cave in Ench@nted Rock in TX. I was okay in the complete darkness because I had been in there before but my parents were older, were in a strange place, my mom was sort of sobbing horribly at being bruised and scraped and wet from the rocks. My dad was swearing in a sudden panicked way, as he does in traffic, losing his cool.
Woke up with a sore throat, thinking about my parents. How did they do it? Sometimes they seem heroic to me. Especially my mom as she forged onwards through her lonely days with little baby me, no car, nothing to do, walking around the little beach neighborhood with me in a stroller, a little neighborhood where she grew up a child in the summers hanging out on the porch with her sisters in their forbidden bikinis competing for boys and now, suddenly no longer in their world but catapulted into a grownup world, living on crumbs from her own mean parents in their beachhouse. I imagine faceless women in station wagons and Jackie Onassis dresses, frowning at her and raising their eyebrows, whispering, pointing out her and her stroller as a Bad Example, and no one speaking to her directly. Then the neighborhood emptying as everyone left, the leaves falling, the snow coming and the pond freezing over, the wind coming in harsh and strong from the ocean which would turn grey and wild. Her description of watching my dad pull a child's sled setting out across the pond to go to the B0nnet M@arket for groceries or to go to work. He worked selling encyclopedias, he worked in some giant nursery riding in the back of a truck to get out there (and to do I don't know what - some kind of hard physical labor). She would watch him set out across the grey pond into the swirly fog until he disappeared and she'd worry that he would fall through the ice all alone, her left with a baby in the tiny house, cleaning it for something to do, maybe watching a soap opera on the tiny fuzzy tv.
Even later in Detroit when they bought their first house and fixed it up. All the excitement over every little improvement, painted cabinet, rug bought. They seem so oddly alone when I look back at them. I was a little kid, loved, cared for, in a constant whirl of intense perception and emotion. They loved each other so much that it was possible to feel left out at times. I can't explain how they seemed alone, but it was like they were everything to each other and had never been able to depend on anyone else - never been able to trust anyone else. They have remained hermits with very few friends.
The way my mom would just freeze up sometimes, not knowing what to do, becoming someone small and helpless. When she gets like this it is like she physically shrinks; she cringes and seems to take up less space in the world. Her vulnerability. My dad taking charge and gently explaining what was to be done about whatever it was - how to register for school or write her paper or get directions to go somewhere or open a can of paint. The sort of person who becomes very still in her effort not to cry as you try to explain the difficult math problem. I can't think of any real examples of this common dynamic of theirs. In later years it turned more to her helplessness as an act, and him ignoring it, or being gruff and impatient.
As a kid I never for a moment felt that shrinking, that fear, that helplessness. I knew how to do everything, or didn't care that I didn't know and would barge on ahead. Strange people did not scare me, strange situtations were good, getting lost was fun, information needed could always be found, skills were effortlessly mastered, trivia read once and never forgotten, piano played in front of crowds with nary a qualm. How is it that she raised me to be this way? Or is it a matter of temperament? Her anger at me for being this way, for "being smarter than her". How it affected me to be a 6 year old or an 8 year old and hear her say all the time that I was smarter than her. My snottiness and intellectual disdain of her as I got older. I was convinced she was an idiot.
Her tendency to shrink makes her a hero in my eyes for all the moments when she functioned normally and lived life and took care of us. For every moment she was freaking out, neurotic, yelling, crying, crying on the phone with her sister, confused, afraid, deeply mistrusting her own obvious intelligence, lost in the car with her brows drawn down, being mean and weird and then forgetting her earlier meanness as if it had never been, for every moment of shrinking she must have had thousands of moments of staunchly not shrinking.
I think my dad saw this core of strength and admired it. Her practical sense and efficiency. He must have admired and enjoyed her competent playing house for him. Her skills as supporter of him, developing: driving around doing the errands, managing things, house-fixing, keeper of his few clothes, cooking. Him accepting this support. Him not leaving her behind, her 16 years of college classes and finally having a job. I imagine him nicely saying things that my own husband has said: "Your parents are crazy, they are jerks, don't even think about them, we have our own family now and we'll do it right."
How did they do it?
Our impassioned arguments about how to live life. (How to argue with a somewhat ignorant 11 year old freedom fighter, atheist and anarchist?) My dad's speeches that were always like the end of Candide - "cultivate your own garden". That is his lesson.
This is what happens when I go to sleep reading "The G1ant Horse of 0z." I dream about rescuing my parents, and sit about dreamily imagining them as protgonists of a novel.
posted by badgerbag 1/14/2004 08:05:00 AM comment
oh this one's goodBush Plans $1.5 Billion Drive for Promotion of
MarriagePatriarchy
My least favorite part of this fucked up article is where it cites without citing "studies" and in fact "liberal studies" or something that say that children "do better" in 2 parent man-woman married families. Oh that's convincing. I thought they "did better" in families that have more goddamned MONEY. My mistake! Oopsie! Let's fucking distract everyone from class differences and poverty and talk incredibly stupidly about inner city black people and their quaint inner city churches! No, of COURSE this won't put any pressure on anyone to get married and of COURSE it won't make it harder for battered women to leave their husbands! Sillies! How could you think that? And you queers, it's so nice that you have kids, we will give you permission to go apply for food stamps, since ourcounseling sessionsbrainwashing mind control techniques probly won't work on you anyways.
You know what, I just DON'T GET IT.
posted by badgerbag 1/14/2004 12:29:00 AM comment
tiger on the beatThe best part of nursing Minnie earlier today was our perusal of "T1ger Beat" magazine. It was incredibly great! Giant photo of Orlando B1oom looking all hot and sultry. Hilarious boy bands all tattooed! Some girl star named something like Skye Persimmondaughter explaining her craft project of cutting up a black t-shirt to make it a "rocker" t-shirt - apparently a bastard child of punk, new wave and heavy metal as it involved slitting it up the sides and safety pinning it together while also wearing about 8 million jelly bracelets. Oh the glee. Even while Minnie was groaning in pain from illness, it made her laugh.
Points to anyone who has seen the movie "Tiger on the Beat"... anyone? Chow Yun Fat drinking 12 raw eggs...
posted by badgerbag 1/14/2004 12:09:00 AM comment
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
that was fastI no longer shine with virtue, as I forgot my cell phone today and no one could reach me and there was ultra mega super fuss on the mortgage progress unsolvable without my papers. Only I know where they are. Except I don't know where they are.
Also, I seem to have lost the checkbook, or checkbooks. I worked around that one by using the joint account temp. checks.
Yeesh! I can't find anything! Rook mad at me! Head rolled off neck! Chaos and uncertainty everywhere.
posted by badgerbag 1/13/2004 05:21:00 PM comment
How I earned my nurse's capMinnie is sick and barfing. She seems to have some kind of gastroenteritis but I am betting it is norwalk virus (the sort of thing I had a few weeks ago). Lo, she was huddled on the bathroom floor shivering. It was very sad. "My feet are so cold... soooo cold.... I'm dying..." She was barely coherent.
I recall that after my night and day of barfing, I asked Rook for the phone, and he handed me my cell. I was so weak and confused that I was unable to unlock it and dial -- I burst into tears...
Considering that I just went through this illness or something like it, I knew what to do. I made her take a meclazine (motion sickness anti-emetic pill). I kept checking on her every 15 min. or so. An hour later she was able to get up and get into bed. About 2 hours later she had drunk some ginger tea and was conscious enough to be bored. Hurrah.
- brought quarters, did her laundry
- washed all dishes
- cleaned bathroom a little
- cleaned up in general
- brought clear broth, small noodles, saltines, juice, ginger ale, fresh ginger, jello, and chocolate for when she feels better enough for it.
I think she is in for a few days of horrendous illness.
I shine with virtue! Go, me!
posted by badgerbag 1/13/2004 04:33:00 PM comment
big talkI talk big sometimes but I'm now afraid to check my email. Oh dear!
posted by badgerbag 1/13/2004 03:48:00 PM comment
the blunt gadflywell, I wrote a giant memo to the board and just pressed Send. I began in a positive constructive way but then at the end came the sucker punch, where I used the words "snooty" and "fancy-pants" and "old, rich, white people". There was a disclaimer about respecting all their work, which I do, but that it is part of my role to step on other people's toes and kick them in the ass.
What will come of it? Will they hate me? Will they kick me off the board? I suspect the result will be some combination of private, clench-jawed, seething resentment and public "thank you, sir, may I have another" masochism.
posted by badgerbag 1/13/2004 10:07:00 AM comment
partyThere's something deeply right about a 5 year old choosing "TV Party" by Black Flag as one of her favorite songs. Our whole motley crew should have this as their theme song.
I'm blasting it this morning as I go through a stack of papers.
Who has a setup to rip vinyl albums to mp3? I don't have audio in on my little compu. I have a stack of albums that I'd never, never be able to find anywhere else.
posted by badgerbag 1/13/2004 09:05:00 AM comment
Monday, January 12, 2004
how to thinkI was thinking about how I think and I realized that I don't think unless I'm mentally writing. Speaking is sometimes thoughtful but mostly not. Also, I realized I think in a certain sentence structure - the one I'm writing in right now. There are a lot of ands, but more buts. I think this, and I also think this, but at the same time, I think this other thing that is so different. But I think this too. It works as a crazy quilt or a collage, but I need more complex grammar, with whens and whiles and wherefores and hences.
God but I missed my little computer! My paper notebook is not the same anymore.
posted by badgerbag 1/12/2004 11:23:00 PM comment
packet of goldIn other news I got the best packet of poems by G.H. today and it cheered me immensely just to know he is doing great writing and that it's possible at all. I'd love to put some of them here but it would mess up my illusion that I am at all anonymous. But:
resplendent under lamplightG.H. if you read this which you certainly may, I will post some of these on my legit non-anonymous site with your name on them...
my breasts high and bright
as though jonesing to deliver
with-held milk from charles bukowski
(who jonesed all his days for a single drop
& never caught a scent)
you two-bit hags who wear yr pussies like a sold-sign
wouldn't know a breath of fresh air
if it caught you from behind
& blew right up your asshole
I am fascinated by his poetry and the way he exists in the world he is in, with cities and suburbs and oceans and skies and words, and goes with a cliche and then yanks it into another dimension. (not correcting spelling)Sweet-smelling hands grasp my armsThe girls and grapes and bogarting could have just been a damned stupid thing but then it goes somewhere else that is very odd. The poetic cliche is always a setup.
Haul me off to a wicker throne
I am fed grapes and pomegranites
Lovely girls wash me and anoint me with Jack Daniels
I Bogart a Marlboro & nod to the music
It is Miles Davis & now I am God
They lace running shoes to my feet
My ragged underwear are torn away
An egg-timer is turned upside down
I begin running crookedly
through a burned house
into a sparse pine-forest..."
posted by badgerbag 1/12/2004 11:12:00 PM comment
possibly only a matter of timeMy anonymity is so busted. To anyone with half a brain cell, if it occurred to them that I might have a blog, they'd find this based on my interests and known reading material.
If my parents ever read this by some horrid chance then I apologize to them for being obnoxious. I swear, mom, I wrote MUCH much worse things in my journals when I was 15, as you may know if you thought to look at the undersides of my bureau drawers where I kept them duct taped. This is toned down. Really. It's the good sort of complaining and kvetching and criticizing that means we are emotionally intimate...
And I'm an ungrateful child and a privacy-disrespecting wench.
Think of David Sedaris's mom and forgive me a little here...
posted by badgerbag 1/12/2004 11:06:00 PM comment
opening big mouthwhy did I just volunteer to do all that crap? Yes, I said last year I would write a grant in January or February. Arrrgh. Now I have to do it.
I have not yet written my curriculum for these 2 independent study classes.
Nor have I studied up on my spanish.
Must review grant thingie and think of questions to raise before Jan. 20th. Grant due a month later. I tried to make it clear that I won't be in on the final bits of it because I will be pergo-ing my new house living room and packing and moving.
then I got roped into helping find someone for this position - no one wants to do it so we have to go out begging somebody to volunteer to do practically the most important job, organizing and planning all the events and being there to make them happen. er. I think they were thinking that they were cultivating me to do this, because I am Young With A Lot of Energy and Enthusiasm.
There is No Way In Hell that I'm their woman. I am useful for only 2 things: thinking of lots of ideas, and writing. The least I could do was promise to email some people finding out if they're interested in doing the job.
Still exasperated at general meeting attitudes. I still barely know what is going on with those people.
I am spoiled by good co-ops and good activists. Now that I look back at U.TX "University Lesbians" group, after years in work meetings and this sort of non profit organization, they were the best organizers I've ever seen. They (we) must have been phenomenal organizers - the sort of people ideal for a startup company. What was our goal? What jobs needed doing? Who would commit to do each job? Bang. We would decide, everyone would go off and do the jobs, and shit would happen - flyers, phone calls to a giant phone tree of hundreds of people, media alerted, articles written, speeches prepared, lemonade made, cookies baked and hey presto you would have a fucking 500-person political rally.
At the co-op, same thing. A meeting for everything and everything in its place and when you were a committee you didn't fuck around! At least, well, we fucked around and meetings took forever sometimes, but then the stuff would happen.
At most jobs I've worked at and now on this Board, it's like Meeting Opposite Day. No one knows what anyone else's goals are, no one has a grasp of how to split up the work, no one wants to do the work, and people seem to mostly enjoy figuring out how to LOOK like they're doing a lot of work to the other people in the meeting, or how to blame something that went wrong on someone else, or they are busy being offended by someone's lack of respect for them, and so nothing happens. There is no synergy.
True to my track record, I opened my mouth and pointed out the emperor had no clothes yet again. This time... "Um, wait a minute. This is the 2000 bucks for the Politically Correct Grant? So...... you want to throw a party with it, at someone's house, that will also be some sort of fundraiser? And how is that even remotely ulticultural-May, and how does it need 2000 bucks to throw a wine and cheese party?" I said it more politely than that and without the pig latin, but the incredulity was maybe much worse from my sudden realization and outraged tone of voice.
But that is the normal way things go. People who go to the opera and things like that are the target audience and target donors too. The problem here is that I think the target audience should be expanded from that base of rich cultured snoots. I am one of those snoots really, though I look punky - obviously that is why I am not at a poetry slam, neh? The normal snoot way to do things is to have a lot of cozy wine and cheese parties and take the poet out for a bazillion dollar dinner etc. because they are famous or moderately famous poets. I think I have to get used to that way of doing things but it's not easy. It's like persuading me that all the executives at the other companies have a lear jet and so we should too. Tchh!
I also said that having a p0etry c0ntest by putting an ad in P0ets and Wr1ters is sometimes a sleazy and disreputable way to make money. Is this news to anyone? I mean, duh.
Why do I keep repeating "and what I need here to get anything done is access to the information - who has the files?" and everyone ignores me? who the fuck has the files? why are they not in our office? I'm going to slowly put everything relevant online until all these people have access to the information. Then maybe they will have no excuses. In the meantime I have to go easier on them and their way of doing things. It has worked so far for what it's worth. I don't understand HOW it has worked.
posted by badgerbag 1/12/2004 10:30:00 PM comment
chill!"Chillow" is a great product name - almost as good as "Elb-Off."
posted by badgerbag 1/12/2004 10:29:00 PM comment
new compuNew computer is noticably faster. The keyboard is different in its springiness. The wireless is still good.
If I were to be in a very bad novel it would have gone something like this:"Ahhhhh!" she breathed gratefully, eyes shining as the electrons flowed over the gleaming Firewire cable into her sleek new machine. "Ahhhh! My DATA!"
posted by badgerbag 1/12/2004 11:56:00 AM comment
Sunday, January 11, 2004
inside of one potatoI have found out what that horrible smell was!
It was not the litterbox... it was not something dead in the air vents...
It was on the hall table under a bunch of papers and books and it was a Very Old Potato. Or is it? It's the shape of a potato. Is it a strange species of mold that grew to look like a potato?
Why, why, why is a potato on the hall table???
I remembered... as I scrubbed the wildly smelly festering residue off the table...
Back at the time of the Fall Equinox puzzle party RJ was going to go with me and he got stuck on some soccer field with a busload of kids and no bus and could not go. When I got home from the puzzle party there was a mysterious potato with three very new shiny sharp pencils stuck in it, upon one of the fenceposts in the front yard... I admired this potato for a week or so and left it in place... I sent RJ the poem that goes:Inside of one potatoAt some point I must have picked it up intending to dispose of it, and set it down absentmindedly...
There are rivers, there are mountains
Resulting in instant burial of the potato and a winter of a horrible smell.
It is safe to come over to my house now.
posted by badgerbag 1/11/2004 09:52:00 AM comment
Saturday, January 10, 2004
knock knock!B. and Val (spiritual heir of Alice Waters, who is not dead) were treated to a full run of the banana/orange joke after dinner. Hmmm what a dinner, a fabulous delicious healthy dinner. I am almost persuaded to bust out a cookbook and do some menu planning. It's not like I don't know how. Maybe on the next Special Occasion. Till then it's noodles and butter, bread and cheese, refried beans and chips, frozen dinners, and ch1cken cutlets galore. As an attempt to live partly in B. and V.-land of delicious food I will quickly buy some more duck pate and whatever that kind of bread was - the sort of whole grain bread that makes you feel like you are eating an entire wheatfield after having harvested and threshed it yourself as a sturdy peasant with skirts tucked up around waist, heartily quaffing wine from a brown and white glazed jug. The bread and pate will acheive this state of mind for me - very handy as i am not really that sturdy and am allergic to most any kind of hay.
Finally I have gotten someone else to read Kristin Lavransdatter! I recommend it to all you women of a Certain Age.
What a day for Moomin, dragged about and mostly ignored, no going to the park, maybe a 2 hour playing/reading time, and all under conditions of spacy exhaustion after being out way too late last night. He was fairly saintly -- but clearly (at least to me) a bit depressed. "Is this what happens now? I trot around after you walking-too-fast-people and then you talk to each other a lot and sign some papers, or discuss paint chips, while I observe, climb on chairs, kick around with my stuffed rats, and sing little songs under my breath? Then we get in the car and do it some more, somewhere else? Can we go home now?" Not enough hours doing things his way and dreamily repeating games and writing letters and being praised to the skies by me for doing so. (Nothing like a little narcissistic wounding?)
He had better brace himself, because moving to the new house is going to be really hard on his routine-loving soul. I am gonna have to put him in a few hours extra preschool/daycare as we near the move date, or at least during the week of painting/carpet/moving.
Yet it is pleasant to go places with Rook sometimes rather than always going out separately.
I am full of plans to make Moomin the coolest hidey-hole reading nook in the attic if it's at all possible. I could do some drywall or ugly wood panelling and put down a vinyl floor with a futon on top and a little bookshelf, and make some co-op loft style stairs. Oh yes I could. If some meticulous person wants to come in after me and fix it to be perfect, they may. I think the hard part will be lighting - do attics come with electrical outlets? (Funny how the tall people keep looking askance at me. I could have used such an attic hidey hole/playhouse till 15 or beyond and then I actually slept in a loft all through college...Moomin is short.)
I discovered that carpet is just not exciting, even nice carpet. I think of it as an itchy, dusty, unforgivingly stainable thing, and balk at paying thousands of dollars for NEW itchy, dusty, grudge-holding overly fancy mats. The pergo fake wood floors could be a much better thing with some heavily padded, non-itchy area rugs on top. After all, I have slippers now.
I think my 12" deep bookshelves (they are cruddy hardware store/target kind) could have the back taken off them and could be cross braced...So they can be accessible from both sides...
posted by badgerbag 1/10/2004 11:27:00 PM comment
scary!This morning we will go over some sort of paperwork and remove our contingencies, which means we commit to buying the house. Gulp.
The way the mortgage is going we are going to do the 7yr fixed which then changes to an ARM, meaning that we intend to sell the house before 7 years are up. Realistic but sad as I just want to settle somewhere.
Bear with me as I suddenly become a very, very boring person who reads nothing but home improvement books and has plaster dust under fingernails.
Right at the end of the Boom our friends S. and U. came to visit and I think we talked to them excitedly of nothing but houses and how it was strange and miraculous that maybe our stock would come in and we would buy a house. They didn't call us much after that - it was like we had just become unbearably vulgar, boring, horrible, boasting people in front of them in the blink of an eye. It was temporary madness that lasted about 2 or 3 days but unfortunately they saw it all.
I am full of wild plans for making Moomin's room into an enormous jungle gym or at least making a sort of loft bunk bed. I thought of making the bed look like a castle but then realized it is way better to make a plain structure that can be turned into a cave or a castle or a stage depending on decoration with blankets. He would clearly want to sleep underneath and play on top. Under the bed I would make more cool built-in shelves. As he is quite short, such a thing will be useful for a long time. IKEA can blow me with their 500 dollar desk beds. I want to build it in my own inept and clunky way.
I also thought of breaking into the attic and trying to finish some of it for storage and then for a tiny playroom. Rook points out that while we could trust Moomin to climb up a ladder and play nicely in an attic, once other kids are there, someone would get shoved down the hatch and break their neck. Hrmph. They have done okay so far with the heart stopping heights of Squid's play structure outside with its arm-breaking steering wheel thing and the rock climbing wall of sudden death, despite many mob wrestling matches and screaming freakouts 12 feet up.
Last night at Pilot's party I was feeling extremely out of sorts, detached, moody, grumpy, and sad from thinking of a friend's troubles and by extension my own. She seems to face things about a zillion times more bravely than I did. But when you know in your bones someone else is sad, it is hard to be in an atmosphere of hilarity - It was all striking me as being rather like the carnival procession outside of Violeta's window in La Traviata, except worse. (That doesn't make much sense because obviously someone is always sad and it doesn't matter if I know it or not. Also, when I'm sad I always hope that everyone else will go away and have fun.)
It did not help my anxiety that I knew how unhappy Moomin was, at the very loud music and drunken shrieking har-har-ing people (one of his very least favorite things. We should have left and I considered it but kept thinking surely the food would come soon. Friends all there without kids (yet) beaming and saying its nice to see that one can still have fun with kid along. My parents did not drag me all over creation to grown up parties. Maybe he will be more okay with it once he can read a book and ignore us with earplugs in. Minnie and I played under the table with him (where he was hiding from the stage and music) lions and lobsters. A fun moment of T. doing a lap dance for the very pregnant Pilot.
I thought of the absolute worst place to have her baby shower - at the San Carlos old lady british tea shop which has china tchatchkas everywhere and twittery fussy old ladies sitting up very straight as they pincer-grip their delicate teacups and scones on trays. This would be THE place to have one's uterus piñata and tattooed pregnant lesbian stripper. I am very amused!
As the tea shop is just a joke, can anyone think of a great place to have a raucous event with a piñata? Minnie wants "the Hooters where they're all butch dykes". Does this fabled palace of pleasure exist?
posted by badgerbag 1/10/2004 08:07:00 AM comment
Friday, January 09, 2004
truthwild, wild discussions with Rook about story, rpgs, simulationism, Truth, Kant, authority, deconstruction, transference, protagonists, my ex's disdain of physics modeling or simulationists as "mathematical masturbators", approximating Truth by extrapolation of a set of premises rather than finding Truth by scientific observations. *pant pant* have been on magic carpet ride of the mind for the last hour. If only we had more than one compu, I would be typing more of it. This as I was editing and commenting on his very interesting article draft for some finnish rpg theory book. We have been talking vaguely about our own rpg theory book. I need to revise my 10 minute talk with all the diagrams about collaborative storytelling. V. Cool that Chris and Rook also read and cited Padol, I must contact her and tell her that and get her to contribute to the book. My plan is to write a description of the book, then do a private call for submissions to people I know I want in the book, or we want in the book, and then to do a more public round 2 of call for submissions to see who else crawls out of the woodwork. Book to be xlibris published in august, with my boundless optimism that the summer will have magic time for the project to come together.
posted by badgerbag 1/09/2004 11:07:00 AM comment
I hate dignity!This morning I quickly constructed a rocket from a paper towel tube, two round sushi dishes covered in tinfoil, and a tiny car with tinfoil panels.
"I have no dignity anymore!" I announced ruefully to Rook just now, coming home after talking about Mars and then demonstrating, with Iz (Squid's serious-faced child), the countdown, liftoff, flying around, spinning, inflating our balloons, bouncing, sitting on "mars", unfolding our solar panels to get battery energy from the sun, and then crawling about on all fours to ("click, click") take pictures and beam them back to Earth.
"This incorrectly makes the assumption that you originally HAD some dignity," Rook said while turning pink and sputtering with laughter as I re-demonstrated the dance.
posted by badgerbag 1/09/2004 09:46:00 AM comment
Day of grief -With your pinks, dull or violent,
and your golds, vague or sparkling,
You'll fall asleep - Oh day that has wounded me!
In just a few seconds.
All the slow and empurpled sunset
will serve as a pillow for your rest.
Bright summer day, how tormented
My sleep will be in comparison!
Twelve hours sharp as arrows
sank into my torn and bleeding side.
Mute, invisible rier that will flow
until I drown in its currents.
Oh day! You nod above the waters
with the grace of a drooping lily.
You don't feel my grief, or give me a glance
as night falls on my howling lament.
The day just gets to go off and be a normal day going under the earth and will come back up refreshed. The day doesnt feel guilt or regret for the pain it brought to J. de I. (who wrote this in 1942)
-----
Enigma
From what black juice, what bitter nectar,
from water from which taciturn and sluggish well
has my soul been nourished, what acid, salty
wines fermented in copper vessels?
What sap, oh gods! do your roots absorb,
twisted and grey,
what fig-tree branches
whose buds fail to swell in the spring!
Thistle of apathy and despair, how shadow has been anointed
with your black oil, and how the light will never amaze
with her daggers; you dried up anguish
like petals that the fire has withered.
And the golden pollen became chalk dust.
And the sweet sap became salt-sweat.
the buds pressed dry, the new shoots absorbed,
And now never, never, will be fragrant again.
----
If one day it flowers again - Will it be
a lily again, or perhaps it iwll grow
strange petals, black, tormented and twisted,
that bears in its leaves a piercing thorn?
Oh, God! What will it become,
the flower that will bloom from my salt-bitter soul?
De qué jugo negro, de qué zumo amargo
de agua de qué pozo taciturno .....
posted by badgerbag 1/09/2004 01:48:00 AM comment
AlbertineWhat did I know of Albertine? One or two glimpses of a profile against the sea, less beautiful, assuredly, than those of Veronese's women whom I ought, had I been guided by purely aesthetic reasons, to have preferred to her. By what other reasons could I be guided, since, my anxiety having subsided, I could recapture only those mute profiles; I possessed nothing of her besides. Since my first sight of Albertine I had meditated upon her daily, a thousandfold, I had carried on with what I called by her name an interminable unspoken dialogue in which I made her question me, answer me, think and act, and in the infinite series of imaginary Albertines who followed one after the other in my fancy, hour after hour... That Albertine was scarcely more than a silhouette, all that was superimposed being of my own growth, so far when we are in love does the contribution that we ourself make outweigh the beloved object. And the same is true of love that is given its full effect. There are loves that manage not only to be formed but to subsist around a very little core - even among those whose prayer has been answered after the flesh.
-- Proust "Within a budding grove" 645
posted by badgerbag 1/09/2004 01:33:00 AM comment
the steel breastplate of the roman soldier
We are faithful companions to the unfaithful stars.-- Robert Bly
We are diggers, like badgers; we love to feel
The dirt flying out from behind our hind claws.
And no one can convince us that mud is not
Beautiful. It is our badger soul that thinks so.
I heard that last year, and tonight heard more. The poem about St. Peter at 70 made me lose my mind absolutely in tears. "Even shame does not last a whole lifetime." I can't find my book or I would quote more of it. "Knowing that despair and reason live in the same house he cried out 'I have loved God'" Hearing him read Yo no soy yo was more than I could have hoped for. I cried all over the place in my little corner on the floor. Why? I'm embarrassed to be such a pop star worshipper. Usually I don't respect fame. It was also inherently embarrassing to be there amidst the equally starry eyed super cheesy yoga-doing people. I looked around a bit, and the poets all were in quiet tears or looking grim as soldiers, and the meditators were all looking at the ceiling beatifically as if they were about to break into a mutant protestant hymn, or take a really hard shit. Some even doing mudras. Oh, how embarrassing! I felt like an ass going up to obtain the laying on of hands from my idol, but, since he really is one of my idols, how could I resist? But how very foolish of me.
I kinda wanted to say to him, "Yo, Bob, could you just repeat these words: 'wow, are you Badger Hemulen? I Loooove your poetry! Will you sign your book for me? I just wanted to tell you that your poetry means so much to me! And your translations are so bold and free! You are wise, and sad, and funny - you slap language around and make it your bitch! And your little magazines that you have published at great effort and expense all your life since age 15, they're not as good as mine were in the fifties and sixties, but what a good effort! It's nice to know that you will carry the torch after I kick the bucket!' " Just to have a fantasy fulfilled. Maybe he googles himself and will find this blog, and instead of suing me, he will send me a tape of himself saying those sweet, sweet words.
I heard him tell Rob that he keeps that book of G.H.'s (the one I typed and published and laboriously assembled in its oceanic colors of lokti tree paper) on his desk in his study. This made me very happy.
It was also great that so many people came. I know half of them were the spirituality hoo-has or the men's movement people, that's cool (except for the mudras and beatific looks) but there were a lot of poetry appreciators too and I just get excited to be in the same room as a bunch of people who actually like poetry and think it is important. What a relief. You know, in other countries they respect poets and make them diplomats and think they are valuable and rare. Here, being a poet is like claiming that you make your living collecting and classifying types of belly button lint. I also felt uncharacteristically like people were looking at my hair and thinking "what a poser you are" - all those rich looking well groomed older people. I did change to the black jeans, and I brushed my hair. O well. It was like they were all assuming that I am a hipster who goes to raves all the time and know something about pop culture.
V. interesting conversation over post-reading dinner, with a person who writes about "lifestyle trends" - I liked her! She was a blatherer and wild theorist. Hurrah! I will look for her book when it comes out.
Back in the blasphemy corner, during the nonexistence ghazal I had a funny flash of hearing Jean Stapleton who played Edith Bunker on All in the Family, in this strangely fascinating episode where she keeps telling a really long boring story with the line "cling peaches... in heavy syrup" and finally Archie furiously, violently forbids her to say it but she keeps forgetting and finally she goes "Mmmm mmm-mm, mm mmmm-y mmm-mmm".
So I was hearing Edith Bunker's voice saying, earnest and terrible, "Non- existence... in heavy syrup" and as I was crying quietly that Bly is old and I will have to deal with him dying when he dies, I started giggling hysterically about Edith and the peaches.
posted by badgerbag 1/09/2004 12:03:00 AM comment
Thursday, January 08, 2004
getting rid of stuffI am cleaning out closets, throwing away clothes.
There are some things so useless that I refuse to throw away. Someday, I will make that bedspread/quilt out of old blue jeans. I slept under someone else's once and it was an oddly comforting object - they had made it out of their (dead of AIDS) ex-lover's old jeans. The inside was unlined with the somewhat rough seams and frayed bits inward. I would also sew some of the front pieces of old t-shirts onto this quilt - last year I threw away several boxes of falling-apart too-small t-shirts, snipping out and saving the bits that said "bikini kill" or "hothead paisan" or whatever.
This would also be a good place to put my giant lifetime collection of patches suitable for sewing onto blue jean jackets. I have the "May the Force Be With You" one from when I was 7 and the movie first came out.
However, anything tattered that I have not worn in a while is going out.
The fancy dresses are staying - I will get garment bags and organize and label them.
I have so much crap that I forget I own it, and don't use it, and it's hiding in the back of the closet, and then I spend money uselessly buying a very similar thing, which means it's even harder to find the original thing. Much like the "one pen, or 10 pens scattered about the house" problem. With one, I must track it all the time. That means I'll instantly lose it. With 10, I could be anywhere and chances are good that there will be a pen. But if I keep doing that "5 or 10 of everything" then I can't ever find anything, because it's buried.
My mom has been lecturing me horribly at every possible moment about throwing things away. "A place for everything and everything in its place." Blah blah blah.
Meanwhile I also spent a fair amount of time yesterday and today catching up on Proust. I am near the end of book 2. It's SO GOOD. It is like the Faerie Queene and other such long books - a little hard to get into at first, but once you catch the wave you don't want to get off no matter how exhausted you are. The sentences and ideas roll onward inexorably and like life at its best I want to keep saying "Wait! Wait! Hold that and savor it!" but am drawn to just keep going in the overwhelming wash of thoughts. I also feel that this is the exact right moment of my life to be reading this. It would have been good earlier, but it is a grownup book. I feel certain it will be even better when I am 60.
posted by badgerbag 1/08/2004 12:32:00 PM comment
elephant in the roomDD says about her parents:
There are things I need and want to say to them. They are in no place to hear it. The end result is I don't want to spend time with them, feeling like everything is a pretense, a facade, covering up what really is the huge fucking elephant in the middle of the room.Well, that sounds familiar.
posted by badgerbag 1/08/2004 12:31:00 PM comment
Wednesday, January 07, 2004
cherryMoomin helped me make Rook's birthday cake. I think back to a year ago when I hoped Moomin would pay attention to my rare domestic moments - the occasional creation of box-mix corn muffins or cake - and find some source of present happiness and future nostalgia. A year ago he kind of didn't care or notice but now he totally digs it! I asked him what he wanted to get Rook for a present - he thought a minute and suggested a toothbrush. Perfect... obtainable... much scope for thoughtful considering of varieties and choosing. He even wrapped it and wrote "Daddy" on the paper. Oh, the pleasing humanness and non-boring-baby-ness!
The cake is what he asked for but I was unable to refrain from experimenting and so there is some homemade marmalade and some cream cheese and more frosting and fancy cherries and then on top is cherries and chocolate. I considered putting cointreau in it somewhere but then realized I was going over the top.
Rook is pretending not to know that I got him what I always get him. Since he already got the mechanical pencils for xmas, only duct tape remains.
posted by badgerbag 1/07/2004 06:38:00 PM comment
arrrrrgh!Dropped computer from nighttable in attempt to wrestle kid into school clothes. Arrrgh. The hinge is messed up big time and I am in the apple store sending it off to be fixed. Have courage little computer! Come back to me! Come home soon!
posted by badgerbag 1/07/2004 10:51:00 AM comment
Tuesday, January 06, 2004
laundry mattersI've been noticing this last year that laundry has increased to at least one load per day. It's odd. I've always lived in places where there was an inconvenient laundry room with multiple washers. The sensible thing to do is to own a bunch of clothes, wear them till there are none left, and then go wash them all at once in some yukky apartment complex room with several washers and dryers and it takes half a day. I have not made the transition to the other way of living - my new "house" way of living in which there is an individual washer right handy. In this case you just wash a load of clothes every day, which means you don't have to own very many clothes! Goodbye, 7 pairs of identical jeans and tank tops, I would no longer need you if laundry is done every single day. 3 would be fine.
This doesn't help much with the "uselessly fancy or ridiculous dresses kept for fun and being punk in wiith boots" category nor with the "dresses too good to throw away that might someday fit my 10 year old daughter or son" category. Why do I have a 20 x 10 inch box full of old pairs of black tights?
Boxes, your destiny is the metal shed. Perhaps a large steamer trunk for "dressup" of all kinds.
The boxes full of dainty lingerie from the 99cent pile at
Goodwill, meant to be ripped off in frenzy, can continue to live under the bed, as is only proper.
I am meant to be alseep now, i hope this still makes sense in morning
posted by badgerbag 1/06/2004 11:45:00 PM comment
she1vesI wish I understood this plan for built in bookshe1ves. But I don't.
This bookshe1f building video might give me a better idea.
More advice about shelves. No diagrams.
Oh my bookshe1ves! My glorious she1ves set into the wall!
Maybe I could try doing this in a closet first, as practice. If I figure out how to do it and make it look okay I could do it in one of the rooms.
I now have wild painting plans as well. I want to take off the grody plasticky white cabinet doors completely and paint the inside of each cabinet some rather dark color, maybe 3 different colors.
who knew that I could be excited about such a thing? But I am.
posted by badgerbag 1/06/2004 09:05:00 PM comment
descenti just figured out something as I make a totally silly lesson plan for preschool "mars lander" activity. The way so much material and effort is put into the booster rockets and all the parts that drop away - it keeps shedding things - totally adds this cool mythic dimension - not only crossing the river styx going to the underworld etc. but having to shed a lot of stuff like Inanna stripping off her symbols of authority. Yes, I am obsessed with Inanna, I know.
posted by badgerbag 1/06/2004 08:58:00 PM comment
inspectionThe house inspection went well. The foundation and roof look good. The foundations are already bolted!
I remain in shock that our parents are just going to pour all this money into us. How will it ever be repaid? My god. Yes, I would do it for my kids too, but still. I feel really lucky and really grateful to them.
I watched the Bush in 30 seconds videos. I like "What are we teaching our children" best, but they were all pretty good. The one that made me cry was the "Child's Pay" video. They forgot to put in the alcoholic junkie homeless kids with no job.
posted by badgerbag 1/06/2004 12:35:00 PM comment
Monday, January 05, 2004
paper makingI love a pointless craft project.
But what the fuck do I do now with these 3 mangy sheets of raggedy-ass lumpy cardboard that smell like wet undershirts? Frame them? Feed them to the cats? Use them as attractive breastplates and sing a variant of the "I am a Latke" song except it would be "I am some cat barf"?
Maybe I could spend ANOTHER morning creating some paper-mache object with them. THEN what?
posted by badgerbag 1/05/2004 11:48:00 PM comment
housesinterest rates since 80s
HUD q & a
more doh! HUD info for virgins
too bad most of these calculator tools are fucking broken
the one working buy vs. rent calculator from Ginnie Mae
useful advice not spam from the feds, or: When I Trust the Government, It Is on Things Like This
Thank you again, feds, for this incredibly useful list of information that is way less dumbed down than the HUD stuff
posted by badgerbag 1/05/2004 11:15:00 PM comment
monsterfrom Margaret Cho's blog:
...there are times you know you don't want to, and you go through the motions because you feel obligated. The body remembers this as a small crime against it, and it builds up over time, until you have a long record of misdemeanors against yourself that confines you to your own death row from which you can never escape.About her seeing the movie "monster" about Aileen Wuornos. I made some propaganda about Wuornos back in the day. I was just looking at it this weekend in my zine papers. I should scan some of that stuff and make a separate blog of it. And, I will send the Infeffable Cho my old manifestos. Clearly she gets it.I understand what it feels like to do that, to just close your eyes and do it, not kill people, but to have sex without feeling like you are, because in a way, it is killing yourself, just a little bit at a time, until the end of it, you are done, and you have killed that part of you forever. I resurrected that part, and live on my own terms now, in all areas of my life, and I am lucky for that. How I did it, I am at a loss to explain.I can't even start to go into how true this is.
posted by badgerbag 1/05/2004 07:27:00 PM comment
Quests and challengesOur game last night was particularly interesting. For about the first half we did general discussion of what should happen in the strange Vikings-adopting-a-totem-spirit ritual and then the inhabitants of the homestead argued over who should go. We studied the family trees and suddenly all the cousins and uncles and fathers got personalities as we extrapolated what it meant that Einar the older brother never seemed to be with us on adventures but stayed home and what his wife would be like considering that her father is an important man from Red Bank who always wins his court cases at the Althing. A bunch of the women decided to come for good reasons, also nice that the wives and daughters keep taking on more life and more importance than usual in a patriarchal world rpg. I think it would have bored Minnie to tears. However, we all enjoyed it esp. me and the Squirrel.
Hurrah for our tolerant gaming partners who can stop in the middle for 40 minutes and websurf while child is bathed and bedtimed! We talked game and I looked up various things about Sleipnir and Loki. We also studied this book which was lying handy and had some hints as to why the wild mustang spirit might want to become our clan totem. ("I want to be loved and cared for. Please put a rope on me.")
2nd act: we smoke a lot of tobacco in the sauna and dare each other to jump in the freezing river, then, exhausted and freezing back in the hot tubs, we discorporate and go into the spirit world. We arrive naked but with the axes we'd used to chop holes in the ice. (Neat symbolism of chopping through a layer of stuff to get to water which is the subconscious.) The mustang set us to do "whatever would be the most difficult for us" which turns out to be a sort of relay race carrying these rune sticks. My guy has to get them from the tree of knowledge. Oh god this is hard to explain but in short: Rook perfectly pegged us all with "quests" that were actually difficult for us in character and out, so, agonizingly hard choices for both our characters in-game, and tweaking us on some aspect of our real life personality. I don't know how he does this.... The wolf actually tempted me to chuck it all and join the wolf clan instead by insulting the intelligence of herd animals... When I realized that I could not accept the Tree's offer to put down roots, drink from the well and grow taller by learning, and that on every branch and twig were all the different kinds of knowledge possible to know - this because I could not reach the damn rune sticks in the hollow of the tree... I had to actually chop at the tree either to make the hollow bigger or (what I did) choose a branch and chop it off and use it as a tool to extend my reach. Now, believe me that I nearly had my character chop his own hand off and leave it as an offering to the Tree in apology! But I kept it to just cutting myself and letting it drip on the cut branch. The character is a viking poet who is ambivalent about war and peace and great events. This got to me in RL on many levels because in some ways every minute that I am living real life, making and eating dinner and playing with my lovely child etc, though it is enjoyable, is a moment away from the ingestion of trivial knowledge and stories and history, and my whole motivation for wishing to be immortal is that I would like to continue reading (well, and writing) forever. Also, privately but Rook knows this, I used to pretty much worship the tree in our front yard when I was a kid. It was so horrible when I realized I couldn't drink from the pools at the tree's roots! Arrrrrgh!
He got druidsquirrel and her big tough aspiring hero guy by setting up a situation that was both about making decisions and about being unable to rescue people. We were told to stay on the path or the quest was ruined, and the path would always be clear, and also time was critical. Well for her character the path forked and she chose going up the hill path and then saw the rest of us (all close family members) being attacked (naked with almost no weapons) by a wolf pack. Bjarni ran like hell to rescue us or die with us bravely. Me and whump had been passed notes by Rook that the upcoming wolf battle woudl be a total illusion and so we played along, rolling dice, noting hit points lost, attacking wolves by punching them, and getting our butts kicked - whining about the unfairness and speculating about whether we'd die in "game real life" or just wake up having failed the quest. Druidsquirrel was completely fooled. Of course the path dead-ended and she had to decide whether to leave the path and try to save us, or leave us to our fates and go around the long way. At the risk of being obnoxious about character analysis I think that our Druid was really stumped and that she had not expected to be stumped.
In each case it was sometimes obvious to the rest of us what "should be done" but that the person in the hot seat was blind to it through their personal quirks.
Whump's character has serious issues with trust and that is all I will say about that right now since I have to go to work. But it was interesting. His character is sort of an authoritarian, inflexible jerk with an awful temper (the opposite of him, as he is sweet tempered and malleable to a fault on some level, but clearly also some sort of self-expression of repressed anger and a core of stubbornness) So he plays this character and it seems like on some level wants to kill him off or have it be clear that he is "wrong." Would he trust the wolf to carry the rune sticks? he wanted to die but I steered things the Fenris/Tyr way so his hand was bitten off instead. Well, this all gets sort of personal and maybe I should stop right there.
It would have been possible to play this sort of game without having played for a long time and knowing each other pretty well.
Rook is an amazing planner and improviser of stories!
posted by badgerbag 1/05/2004 10:02:00 AM comment
Sunday, January 04, 2004
NASA fundingWhy does NASA not have little toys of the mars rover? They could fund the whole space program just on selling toy models. I mean, DUH.
posted by badgerbag 1/04/2004 02:26:00 PM comment
old billsTwo paper grocery bags of old bills thrown away so far. However many cubic feet of paper that is.
The medical records make me sad.
Miscarriages are expensive. Over 6000 for the first one. I had heard the heartbeat whoom-whoom-whoomimg and felt like a happy goddess on top of the world. On April Fools (1999) I called Rook at work and told him they'd moved up my ultrasound appointment and it was actually two heartbeats and we were having twins. All my co-workers were gathered around giggling. Rook freaked out! I told him after about a minute of his stammering excitement. Maybe over the top?
It was a great April Fools joke except that a week later I had the real ultrasound and it was dead in there and in fact must have died some days back because it had all disintegrated in there in some disgusting fashion. I begged the technician to show me. "Could it be a mistake... please let it be a mistake..." She didn't want to let me, but relented and even printed out the picture for me to brood and weep over. I dragged myself weeping around the hospital. I don't remember much here but I do remember begging my doctor, "Get it out of me!" feeling suddenly diseased and horrible and unable to forget that I had death inside me, rotting.
They stuck me in a chair and gave me fentanyl which apparently means you can walk around and talk like a zombie, but you are at the same time sort of unconscious, and you forget everything that happens. Rook says he saw this happen and found it unbearably creepy. Of course, I have forgotten. They gave me other anesthesia but the fentanyl made it pretty merciful on me, all around. I hope that I didn't experience pain and suffering and then just forget it. I hope I was really unconscious! It matters to me, but I will never know. At least I did not have the bad reaction to anesthesia that I had with the shoulder surgery.
Afterwards I was in horrible pain. We drove away and I looked out the window on maybe 55th street or something and saw a bunch of pigeons flying up and one of them was perfectly white. I sentimentally attached all my grief to it. When we got home I believe I took painkillers and drank some rum. A day or so later I was still in a lot of pain, doing that PID shuffle, and they checked me into the hospital. I forget what was going on. A fibroid tumor dying and shrivelling up I think. The other theory was "adhesions" which is a polite catch-all for "mystery uterus pain."
This is when the horrid nurse came in, looked at my chart, and said, loudly and meanly, "Now that you've GOTTEN RID of your BABY, have you thought about what kind of BIRTH CONTROL you'll use?" I just stared at her. I think I memorized her face with the laser like hatred that came out of me as I realized she thought I was a teenage crack whore and that the words "missed abortion" on my chart meant that I'd, like, done my own abortion and messed myself up somehow. "Missed abortion" means that the fetus or embryo or whatever died in there and didn't come out as it should when it dies. Cleverly and thickly I squeaked, "Go AWAY" and rolled over, too stoned and sad to do what I should have done which was cause a giant fuss and get the bitch in huge trouble with my amazing suburban entitled-white-girl-fu. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with this scene replaying just as it happened and then I try to imagine the different ways I would prefer to have handled it.
The 2nd miscarriage was more like 9,000 because it was surgery for ectopic pregnancy.
"I don't WANT another baby. I wanted THIS baby."
I love the baby I ended up with. But every april and september I think a little of the lost ones. Out of sentiment I will save the medical records.
posted by badgerbag 1/04/2004 01:22:00 PM comment
todayI didn't say before but my knee is a little fucked up today.
Note to self, when boasting for several pages about infinite wisdom acquired, remember to take allergy pill BEFORE virtuously exercise bicycling in newly rummaged garage that has dust flying everywhere.
Plan for the day is to pot the leftover daffodil bulbs that have sprouted in the bag, and to sit in a chair in the garage, antihistamined and albuterolled to the gills, (gills?) and sort out all those boxes of papers and the enormous file cabinet. How many trash bags can I fill? Or should I measure papers thrown away vs. papers saved in cubic feet?
I have cramps.
Expect more whining and some nostalgia for zines perdu (perdus?) as the day progresses.
posted by badgerbag 1/04/2004 11:16:00 AM comment
dragons on marsI've got Moomin playing "Mars". He watched the animation with me and then we made his rats ride a dragon (complete with countdown, flaming breath backwards liftoff, spinning, parachute, and bouncing). I let him take it from there. They explored the rocks of mars, took a core sample, and then discovered pirate treasure and a sea lion. Hrmmm!
posted by badgerbag 1/04/2004 11:01:00 AM comment
it's the small thingsIt's quite satisfying to transmit important parts of my cultural heritage to my child.
A couple of days ago he successfully told the "orange you glad I didn't say banana" knock-knock joke to Minnie as I beamed with pride.
Heritage transmitted!
posted by badgerbag 1/04/2004 09:26:00 AM comment
Saturday, January 03, 2004
mars ho!Oh, oh, oh!!!!!!
first images!
classic pose worthy of that "Mapping Mars" book and its great discussion of landscape paintings. Strangely I also think of a somewhat fictional moment of Severian looking at the painting of the man with the golden-faced helm that the old man is cleaning and when I realized it was a painting of the apollo moon landing.
My mom held me up to the tv to watch the moon landing when I was just barely born, nyah nyah. She knew even then that I would be a geek from hell. Thanks mom.
posted by badgerbag 1/03/2004 11:48:00 PM comment
fingers crossedgrinning like fools whump and I are watching NASA or JPL I guess on his laptop screen on my couch. I am bouncing a little and his fingers are crossed. Engineers begin to whoop! The lander hits the atmosphere! The parachute deployed! We have bouncing! The landing craft is bouncing on the surface of Mars! yay! We lost signal... it has to bounce for 10 minutes... then the web page froze up and I guess NASA was overloaded...
Back up! Yay! The lander landed and is still in contact, a giant 1 ton vehicle just bounded like 60 times on the surface of mars and is sending data! I am jazzed.
***
And This animation of the landing makes me SOOOOOOO happy. In playing Civilization I always felt all teary-eyed when my ship launched for Alpha Centauri...
posted by badgerbag 1/03/2004 08:57:00 PM comment
Not at all meaning to be mysteriousWhen someone catches me limping or I mention the wheelchair of times past, people ask what happened and I have no easy answer. I usually say something vague about a car accident, which is about 75% a lie, just to change the subject because it is a long, boring, messy story and it doesn't reflect on me very well. "Car accident" makes people nod and feel that they understand: there was a catastrophe and my body broke and it took a long time but I am more or less better. I might as well say "soccer injury", it would have the same result.
So, hang onto your hats, here is the story.
I did get hit by a car. I was riding my bicycle and took off from a stop sign. A car rammed into me from behind - they hadn't stopped! not even a pause! and I went flying in the air. I did a somersault and came down on my head, shoulder, wrist, and hip. I passed out and woke up to see two people bending over me - a lawyer and a nun. All my needs taken care of! I think someone took me to the emergency room. I was about 2 blocks from my co-op, and I have no idea what happened to my bike but maybe someone else from the co-op happened on the scene and took the bike home.
I had no helmet on and did not even own one. In 1989 or whenever this was, I don't think I knew anyone who wore a bike helmet.
I ended up with some medical bills for xrays, a concussion, a sprained wrist, a very large bruise on my hip and some difficulty using my arm for around a week. The guy who hit me paid the medical bills. Then I lost his phone number and completely forgot his name. Oops.... My mom drove up and took care of me for a few days, maybe a week, as I was so addled from the concussion that I was shuffling around like a thorazined mental patient. I remember being really dizzy for about a week. I had to sleep on the floor as I couldn't make it up the ladder to my loft where the bed was. I really don't remember much of that time. The guy underneath me, Jamie, kept playing his electric guitar far into the night and my head would throb horribly. He wouldn't stop even for a concussion, or my mom! JerkOLA!
A few months later I woke up and was unable to move my arm or neck. I got out of bed and went downstairs for breakfast (down 3 flights of stairs...) realized that the pain was getting so bad I could not stand to breathe anymore, tried to get back up the stairs. I passed out from pain on the stairs, and threw up, maybe not in that order... Someone took me to the student hospital, one of the most agonizing experiences of my life being bumped in the car. Again, my memory is fuzzy probably from the painkillers they pumped into me. End result: My shoulder was fucked up and so was my neck. A lot of physical therapy. A bunch of codeine and muscle relaxants.
After a few weeks of this, I could move normally again though my shoulder still felt like hell. The doctor got me to come in his office -the office with books and a desk, not the examination room. He asked me a lot of questions about my interests, how I spent my time, insomnia, waking up in the night, and then said the weirdest thing. "If you don't become a very, very physically active person, you are going to be in big trouble." What do you mean? "You lead a very sedentary lifestyle and you don't sleep enough. You are just the sort of person that will have a lot of problems if you don't make big changes. Your shoulder will never get better if you don't listen to me. Quit school. Go become a ditch digger. Run a marathon." I dismissed this as complete insanity.
Now somewhere around now I stop getting my allergy shots, just out of laziness and leading a disorganized life. A year or so passes. I keep getting worse and worse shoulder and low back problems: same thing, I sneeze, or bend over to tie my shoe, and suddenly I'm sort of frozen in one position and can't move and am gray and sweating with pain. The doctor gets more and more frowny. X-rays never say anything significant. My sinuses start to freak. I get sinus infections that don't go away for months. Then I get bronchitis and I get it again and again. I get asthma all of a sudden. At this point I wake up and go back to my allergist, who yells at me. Back on shots. 8 million different asthma inhalers - they keep trying all different ones. Theophylline and weekly blood tests. I can tell you that theophylline is the devil's business. I was on so much theophylline and albuterol that I was trembling like a leaf in the wind. Meanwhile, I could not breathe. I spent more and more nights hacking up huge ropy wads of mucus while my girlfriend pounded on my back.
Keep in mind I am 20, 21 years old... forgive me, universe!
I believe this was also around when I was disowned by parents for the 2nd time (this time for being gay basically) and was trying to support myself in grad school. I worked 20 hours a week in the library and had benefits. I was in 2 classes. I started having trouble getting to class. My ex boyfriend forced me to move and I moved into a tiny shack where dogs had lived in the middle of a field of ragweed, maintained by the worst lesbian activist landlord in the world. I got a bad pap smear and had some really unnecessary surgery - a whole other story but I nearly bled to death over a week in my squalid, allergenic shack, calling the gynecologist's office every few hours ("are you bleeding more than a teaspoon an hour? because that is normal" Jesus fucking christ lady, could you put me through to the doctor? Because it's been 5 days and ever single towel and article of clothing in my house is crusted with blood...) I had to quit my job in the library, because I couldn't make it to work most days. I started stripping - in 1 horrible, smoky night of albuterol abuse in the sleazy club next to I-35, I could make as much as my whole week in the library. The other strippers didn't press me to do drugs with them because they figured I was already high from the way my hands shook. The low back problem got worse, but I could do the thing where I kill myself one day, and then limp for a week. I'm sure I didn't sleep more than a few hours a night, most nights. Oh, I think I left out the bouts of mystery illness, which were diagnosed as Not Chlamydia and Not Gonorrhea, but I could not walk from pain, and during pelvic exams, screamed and passed out when they wiggled my cervix, so, got diagnosed with viral Pelvic Inflammatory Disease of some unknown kind, though I had no fever.
Thus goes the slippery slope to hell.
I moved with my girlfriend from Texas to Oakland. This is the period when I got the mystery Pelvic thing again an d also some sort of low back problem that I still don't know what it is, but it recurs and I just call it sciatica. When it happens, I have difficulty moving my right leg forward, so I limp with the right leg. (The left leg limp is from the left knee.) I also still couldn't breathe, but had a nebulizer which was beginning to help.
Are you bored yet? I was. If at all possible, I thought about anything else other than this crap.
If you go to the doctor with this kind of history, as some of you may know, and especially if you are poor:
a) they figure you are a drug user and lying
b) they write you off immediately in many other ways
c) you are presenting with too many symptoms at once, and doctors can only deal with one set at a time. I learned it was best to go one time, and complain about asthma, another time to a different doctor, and talk about my back, and a gynecologist for the pelvic thing. Nothing got resolved, but it helped me look less like a hypochondriac lunatic which meant they treated me more nicely.
d) Any of these things, the doctor will just tell you "avoid stress" or at worst, tell you that you are suffering from hysteria. Yes, I was told that I had hysteria. Can you believe it?
e) did mention it helps not to be poor?
f) Also, don't cry when you talk to the doctor, even if you are desperate, have been waiting for the appointment in terrible pain and dysfunction for 3 weeks.
It is only in the past few years that I managed to talk to a doctor in a doctor's office without randomly bursting into tears just from the trauma of the whole horrible history of bad doctors.
I know there are crazy, bad patients, but there are also crazy, bad, lying, ignorant, cruel doctors, because I have met them.
I got better especially with the asthma but my shoulder got worse. I got temp jobs and then regular secretary jobs. It's not like I stopped doing anything with the shoulder (such as playing excessive video games, mousing, or whipping D. with a heavy flogger) or began exercising. Well. *wrenches mind away from dungeon and memory of ex-girlfriend in leather sling and chains* Anyway, right before my COBRA ran out I got rotator cuff surgery on my shoulder which might have been a big mistake. But I could no longer raise my arm above my head. Who knows... All sorts of badness then happened... My shoulder got better but my back and leg got worse and then the other leg started just collapsing under me. I would take a step and the leg would just buckle. No idea there. I lost my job. That was when they started talking MS....
I just deteriorated... exhaustion, complete exhaustion so bad that sometimes I could barely turn over in bed. I could do it but everything was a struggle. Some days I was walking around, some days I was in the wheelchair. After collapsing on the campus of DeAnza I ended up in Valley M3dical Center being kicked around from department to department having conversations like this: "I can't walk, what am I supposed to do? My legs don't work." "They look normal on the MRI and the xray. Without a diagnosis, we can't give you a wheelchair. You can't get a diagnosis until you see neurology and they don't have appointments and won't talk with you until 9 months from now." "But I CAN'T WALK." (why couldn't I just rent a wheelchair? I didn't know you could rent one for like 25 bucks a week, and no one told me. They made it sound like you had to have a special prescription.) At some point a social worker or nurse suggested in a roundabout, kafka sort of way, that it would be illegal and bad if I just wheeled myself out of the hospital in the one I was in. Bing! The lightbulb went off and I stole the chair, as instructed.
Later at D3Anza a guy who was paralyzed from L3 down or something, gave me his old basketball chair. I cried, it was so much better. If you ever know an old person who starts to use a chair, please, please, get them a light framed GOOD chair, it makes a huge difference. They have things you can attach to the wheel rims that are like big padded knobs if you have arthritic hands. Also, get them leather motorcycle fingerless gloves.
The new, good chair and my parents buying me a pickup truck meant I was now mobile and independent, even if I could not walk much. I could drive, and haul my ass out of the seat and, holding onto the truck's side, sit on the tailgate and remove the wheelchair. Now you know why the bed of my truck is all scratched up. My arms got buff. It is actually a very good thing my shoulder was getting better by that point. Maybe the surgery was necessary, maybe the 6 weeks of not using the arm and being strapped into the continuous passive motion cyber-girl torture machine fixed it?
On the advice of D's friend Alexis I went to her rheumat0logist, who did not think I was crazy and listened to my whole story. I think I typed up the details for him. From poking me in tender points and hearing of insomnia and the whole history of rotten health he told me I had fibr0myalgia (FM). He went down the hall and xeroxed a giant binder full of articles for me on what it was and what to do. It used to be called "psychogenic rheumatism" which basically meant you feel like shit and no one knows why and maybe it's all in your head. In the 80s at some point the Amer. Assoc. of Rheumat0logists decided it wasn't all in your head, but instead it had something to do with - as far as I understand it - If you don't sleep for at least 4 hours uninterrupted, you don't get to a certain stage of sleep in which your muscles repair themselves when minorly damaged. So minor damage turns into major damage over time. Apparently, if you sleep deprive a person, and they've done this in military experiments, anyone will develop the symptoms of FM). But it is reversible and if they can fix your sleep and you exercise enough, you will get better.
So, in retrospect, I realized the student health center doctor from my original shoulder problem had been right. He knew that I was on the road to FM, thus his advice about giving up books and turning to ditch-digging.
I did a rotten job of rehabbing myself and it took a long time. I suck at exercising. I credit the sleeping pills with fixing me. I would swim a little in the YMCA warm pool and do leg lifts and be walking for a little, and then I would do some dumb ass thing that would mean I was crippled again.
It is very boring to stay in bed and in fact for FM it is the wrong thing to do. The welfare hysteria-diagnosing doctors told me to stay in bed flat on my back for weeks. But about it being boring. Even if going out might cripple me more, and might be exhausting, and I am in pain as I hobble around in the cafe and post office or am wheeled about the museum, it is SO much better than being trapped at home.
The hospital warm pool was like heaven. I did a lot of walking in there. It is hard to walk again after not walking right for a long time. Even a week or two, I think, means you have to remember to make your gait right. Balance is just off -- off in a weird way unlike being dizzy. Little muscles have to be moved with conscious effort - you have to THINK about it and do it on purpose, like breathing while doing yoga.
Meanwhile I was super annoying to everyone around me. (Minnie can attest to this. I should mention that somewhere in this history she moved to CA partly to take care of me. However I felt that I was also taking care of her on some level, despite our unwise involvement with F@k1r and C@rl@, because in TX she was strangely fucked up and calling me all the time in a semi-suicidal manner. (Can you believe I'm talking L33t to avoid googlebusting?!) Anyway she was helpful.)
Also in this time of wheelchairing was my involvment with the kids next door who I wrote about last March or so.
***
more in a sec, mars lander is landing!
***
okay that was just too exciting. I love the sound of nerds on walkie talkies. Oh mission control, let me be your geeky lapdancer.... *sigh*
whump is all red with delirium. "I'm just giddy!" he says like a prom queen thanking her committee. NASA signs off.
I think fondly of the wonderful lovely pathfinder panorama, and expect great things.
whump is ranting on in great excitement about "The Martian Internet".
***
Back to our regularly scheduled broadcast.
I got some work tutoring, I kept taking classes, I kept making zines, but meanwhile me and SK, our relationship had really just gone away. D. and I were more or less serious but from a distance as she lived 2 hours north and was semi crippled herself from asthma. She did not want to have babies with me either, she had already done that once in life and couldn't face it again! SK and I finally fought... he started dating some windsurfing girl... he moved out... well... I felt that I was on my way to getting better. It devastated me that he would not wait for me... but then we fought over the future too. I guess I should not go into it but he wanted to wait many years before any sort of baby-making and I did not want to wait. I wished he would marry me and commit to helping me get better and would support me while I did it. He could not deal with the thought of me as a burden (as I had been for the last year of our living together). I didn't want to wait till 35 to have babies because of my mystery pelvic inflammatory disease and the possiblity of ectopic pregnancy or infertility. And indeed several years ago I did have a horrible ectopic pregnancy, which if you don't know what that means, it is that the embryo implants accidentally in your lumpy, scarred fallopian tube and basically explodes and kills you from peritonitis unless someone removes it.
I ran off, or wheeled off, and almost immediately married my old friend m. who was happy to gallantly open doors for me. Next to my cane and wheelchair, he with his leg-dragging limp, I think he felt like superman to the rescue. As I got better, he got worse, and I felt like he preferred it when I was sick so he could be the healthy one in comparison... I got better and better... it helped to have INSURANCE ... holy fuck how that helped. I worked every chance I got... I am not really a flake despite what everyone thinks. Do you know how many awful temp jobs I have worked... and how many humiliating jobs I have had... the sheer number of jobs I've GOTTEN is amazing. I am an expert on getting jobs. When I started missing too many days from sick time it often turned sour but I never got fired. Last year's flaky unemployment getting and 8 hours a day of babysitting was the first time I have been jobless and healthy.
Chronology is hard but let's see. In early 1997 I gave away my wheelchair after not using it for many months, over 6 months. It was a very scary thing to do. I walked with a cane still. Sometimes I needed it, sometimes I didn't but I always had it. The metaphor "like a crutch" is an accurate one. It is scary not to have crutches or cane when you are not sure if you need them or not. A hard transition to make. I'd carry a folding one in my backpack. I left my ex husband. Rook moved in with me almost immediately. We got married a year later. When I had to stop taking sleeping pills while trying to get pregnant or while I was pregnant, Rook would sing me songs and gently pet my hair and massage my head to help me go to sleep. He was very soothing. I got better and better jobs. He taught me stuff and always was there to help me stay out of the secretarial ghetto.
Every winter I would end up needing the cane or being on crutches for a while. 2000: after being more or less healthy for a long while and successful preganancy, I went hiking on hills with a sore knee and ended up on crutches nearly all winter, to my great despair and Rook's great inconvenience. Moomin liked to play with "mama crutch" (horrifying words to hear from my child's lips, as I had often imagined hearing them, and hoped to hell I would never hear him say "mama's wheelchair" until he is 65 or so and I am 95.)
Last winter, no crutches (except that one week from twisting my ankle, an actual legitimate injury and I got better just like a normal person). This winter, no crutches!
My knee ached all today and I had to put my leg up and stop walking around for trivial things when I got home, and my sciatica acts up now and then, but it is NOTHING to the past. I am fine now. I am not disabled, I never feel the asthma unless someone smokes or I get bronchitis and then it only lasts for a month or so. I get my allergy shots like a good little girl. I don't exercise worth a damn, but I should. I do sleep.
I hope that explains how I got crippled, how I got better, and why I mutter "car accident" and look away pensively.
posted by badgerbag 1/03/2004 06:27:00 PM comment
but wait, there's moreI'm kept this blog for almost a year. I have kept written journals since around age 14: 20 years = around 5 large boxes.
Reading the letters from sk and vaguely eyeballing the letters from Skarat (a different sk) made me realize that I wrote and demanded letters from people so as to be able to be a textual being in relationships. I am a textual being privately with books and journals.
Blogging allows that textuality to develop in multiple relationships and friendships. Being an author with published books allows it as well, but there is less 2-way communication. (Though here, I think of the 2 file cabinets full of letters from my riot grrl zine readers, and my even larger collection of THEIR zines, and I wonder about authors of Real Books. Maybe they develop the same networks, though I imagine fame as inhibiting.)
Spanglemonkey and Squid and I sometimes start to talk to each other in real life and then stop: “Oh, um, I forgot, what am I saying, you already KNOW that since you read my blog.” We have this strong base of understanding, but don’t know where to take conversation from there. It seems like in theory it should make it possible to have some sort of fantastic deep conversation as all the small talk, catching up, and confessional is already done, but that is not how it works really. It is puzzling.
What does it mean? At times it is like we are not integrating text and life, as we just don’t know how - we are unused to it - we are used to being separate people while writing and living and relating - the writerly me, and the talking me, and the me that goes to sneaky frog parties, and the me that anyone that goes out with me knows (the rambling, manic, weepy late night me) are usually separate. Now they are not quite so separate, which I think is a good thing. I feel more like a real person.
posted by badgerbag 1/03/2004 05:41:00 PM comment
written earlier today offlineThinking more of S.K. because of my dream last night. The way our relationship deteriorated. My bad health and worse way of dealing with it.
Bad:
“Hmm, my knees and hip hurt a little. But it’s just a little and it’s such a nice day out. I bet I could walk pretty far with just my cane. Let’s go hiking and then there’s that party in the dungeon with D. and J. I want to go to but you can’t go because it’s a girl thing, and I’ll dress up in my highest high heels and miniskirt and fishnets even though it’s 40 degrees out and i’ll come home at 4am barely able to walk”
(End result: I am a helpless wreck for the next 5 days. I can barely get out of bed. I pee in a jar by the bed most of the time and run out of food in the house, eating all the toast and frozen pizzas and then there’s nothing else. I hurt so bad that I can’t sleep. I am incapable of having any fun or having sex or talking about anything other than bursting into tears about how I’m hurting and how dumb I am, god, life is unfair, my body has betrayed me, what is wrong with me, etc.)
Good (how I am now):
“Hmm, my knees hurt a little so I will be careful not to cross my legs or sit on the floor or squat, and I will immediately take some sort of NSAID and tylenol. I had better pay more attention to riding my exercise bike. And it would be a bad idea for the next few days to do anything that requires lots of walking. What needs to be done most? What can I skip doing, so that I can get in bed and rest my knees?”
(End Result: I continue functioning normally and don’t fall apart. I can take care of myself. I can work. I can go to the grocery store. I might get grouchy in the late afternoon from pain as the day goes on, but I am mostly still able to be nice to people around me that I love.)
So I read those letters from sk and meditate on how badly I screwed things up between us. It was not the polyamory, it was my selfishness and cluelessness. Near the end of the relationship he got mad and said, “You go out when you feel good, and then overdo things, and then come back to me and fall apart and I have to take care of you.” As obvious as this sounds now, it surprised the hell out of me and knocked me on my ass. It had never occurred to me that that’s what I was doing. Keep in mind I was all of 23 years old. It was clearly mutual cluelessness, as, if he had realized this and pointed it out earlier, I would have shaped up, but it happened to be one of his quirks that he just could not deal with illness or pain on any level so he withdrew more and more and I went further and further afield in my quest for god knows what - slut utopia. I was not an ethical slut, as I was not taking care of myself or my primary relationship.
After this epiphany, it took me YEARS to learn how to behave. It took me years of behaving, and taking sleeping pills, for my body to heal to the point it’s at now, where I can be a litttle foolish or injure myself a little and it’s a trivial thing not a life-shattering thing.
So a little sadly I have the old mix tapes from s.k. running through my mind like the “Beyond Love” song by The The or “Lay Lady Lay” or that dead milkmen song about looking for a girl. He would make these tapes and then write up a description of why he put each song on the tape, playful, funny, self-expressive or romantic.
Obviously I am not sad that things happened as they did, as I am now happy as a clam, and everyone else involved is too. However there are things to be learned here.
I resolve to try to be more consistently appreciative of the love I have and not ruin it through my carelessness and selfishness. It does not help to be a basically decent person at heart, as I know I am. That can only go so far.
It was karma payback time for me with my post-sk relationship - my ex husband. He had worse health problems, I mean really, really problems, and did not take care of himself (or pay one iota of attention to me) past, oh, month 4 of our relationship. As I was leaving him he insisted that a) he wasn’t sick b) he didn’t have time to go to the doctor or exercise since he was working hard to get his nobel prize and prove he could support his family i.e. me c) since he married me, that should prove he loves me forever and that should be enough. It wasn’t. As he continued not going to the doctor and not doing anything even remotely healthy and his bones started to crumble and break from overmedication and his kidneys started to fail, I left him like a rat leaving a sinking ship. I was a rat.
A funny thing I learned while writing an essay a few months ago is that I’m nearly always doing a sort of Maoist self-criticism (but without the barbed wire around the neck, house arrest, or beatings).
posted by badgerbag 1/03/2004 05:38:00 PM comment
Friday, January 02, 2004
gift of the valarOh yes! And it's ALL TRUE.
What LotR Mary Sue cliche are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
posted by badgerbag 1/02/2004 07:22:00 PM comment
bloody knucklesDoes anyone remember the rules to a card game called "Bloody Knuckles"?
I remember the consequences - you lost with either 1, 2, or 3 points against you, and with red or black. If red, you got "scrapes" and if black, "knocks" - which meant the winner got to scrape or rap your knuckles with the entire deck of cards. It was a point of pride to make them do it hard and to use a really new deck so that the card edges were sharp.
I can't remember how to play the game. I learned it from some other kid when we lived in Detroit in around 1978. The rules must have been easy because it was always easy to teach it to another kid, and the games went very quickly. Queens were 0... um... fuck. I just can't remember. You didn't hold very many cards in your hand. I think 3. Possibly you would draw and discard and try to get the lowest possible score. I think as soon as you got down to 0, or felt that you had the lowest possible score, you'd call the game.
I've googled around but not found much other than this guy's interesting nostalgia and inability to remember the rules.
I can remember my friend Elaine Hoberglotz's piratical grin matching my wild mood as I scraped her as hard as possible. Later, I taught it to kids in Houston. Minnie would watch us play as if we were doing something cool, edgy, and teenagery, like smoking or sneaking out to wrap a house. She taught it to her friends too I think.
posted by badgerbag 1/02/2004 07:00:00 PM comment
garageThe garage is cleaned out. Now there is the attic above it. Oh dear oh dear.
Even getting rid of stuff, we will most definitely need an extra metal shed in the yard to hold all these boxes. I will have to fit the comic books and old journals inside and in fact they never should have been out here in the dust and damp.
Perhaps it would be best to trash this baby swing and inflatable pool toy seat for infants and some of the crap I have been saving and just get a new one in future if it is needed. Drills without bits or power cords, an electric handsaw that seemed good in theory but that I have never managed to use for anything useful. My nebulizer. Hrmm, I think I used it last year so maybe will keep it.
Do you have any IDEA how bad this just was for my allergies!? I think my nose is going to fall right off.
posted by badgerbag 1/02/2004 06:22:00 PM comment
the fateful notebookOh, hahaha, notebook found! It is black not green. So much for my memory. The green binder is my high school girlfriend's letters.
I am very amused.
Rook, you should probably be glad that all you ever sent me were a few postcards and freaked-out emails attempting to explain your emotions or how you missed me. You lucked out. However, you also got stuck with the books, the neurotic, and the baby. 8-) So actually it is me that lucked out, getting reality not just words.
My own letters to other people are stomach-churningly embarrassing, when I read them later. Oh me oh my!
But these letters are actually very good and rather touching. I am glad I saved them. Like I said, I think this person has more or less forgotten the person he used to be - so I have no way to talk to him. Though it is impossible to keep identity or relationships the same, it is possible to remember and respect past identities and relationships. I kind of want to say "honor" them but it sounds corny. But I do honor that relationship so might as well say it.
It is a bit like my friend G. who I almost never see or talk with, alas, but when I think of him it is with fondness remembering the oaths of friendship we swore and hoping that on some level they still stand, although I do nothing about it.
posted by badgerbag 1/02/2004 05:12:00 PM comment
giant pathetic rant from 1994I'm starting to be seduced by those old boxes. I found my box of childhood stuff - my hexagonal wire rimmed granny glasses from when I was 7, and a tiny deck of cards with snails on it that I won in a spelling bee, I think, and another that says Black Horse Ale, and my grandfather's cufflinks, and my great-grandma's useless china trinket that says 1815, and a basket full of metal cars (not even matchbox quality) and plastic dinosaurs. My mom's red suede wallet. My D & D dice with the 20 sider dotted with red nail polish to indicate the higher numbers. The wire rimmed glasses are in their original case, decorated with tacky sprawling 70s blue daisies.
Here is a rant from a notebook from about 1994. Things were not good for the badger.
***
so most of the time I'm pretty cheerful or neutral and I function OK and stuff but it just keeps hurting. I just start to hate everything and everybody and myself for feeling hateful and for not being able to ignore that it's hurting. I hate everybody looking at me I feel like they judge me or else pity me well how do they think they know how hard it is for me to do something just because they can walk a block and not notice it doesn't mean anything for me because I can walk it maybe but I NOTICE it how it hurts plus I don't really know how far I can go before it starts to hurt more than I can deal with or before my legs feel like lumps that refuse to go where I tell them to. Well damn it when I walk a block or go upstairs I want to feel proud of myself and I want people to fucking notice that I just set out to do something hard and I did achieve it and all that. and not to be pitied for fucks sake it makes me so sick! That [??] in the cafe today, I had just walked in from the car, it was hard, I felt self-conscious being slow going across the street in front of cars - the feeling you get like they are fuming cause you're slow and they have to wait but then they have to quickly slam a thin layer of acceptance on their anger because they see your cane and then they feel guilty
I can feel this like a CLOUD coming from people and it makes me hate them. Then I felt like I was lagging way behind K. and L. and what if they thought secretly that I was acting like I hurt more than I was, so I tried to catch up. I do that sort of thing a lot and I hate that people might think I am faking being crippled for some weird reason. Then not able to find a seat in the cafe very alone feeling eyes on me then they see the cane and look away but then stare at me some more until I look at them again. I just wanted to sit for a minute and look over the diffferent tables and I saw this seat with a purse on it I was thinking I could ask the woman to share the table with us if she was alone but she came up all bitching and my cane knocked her purse over and stuff spilled out I just said sorry I wanted to sit for a minute then she sat there and me and L were still looking and then she must have just saw the cane because she got up and all apologizing all over herself that she didnt' see that I... well.... oh of COURSE I should sit down and her DISGUSTING hands all on me like dragging down my arm like how am I supposed to BALANCE _and_ remove her offensive hands off me? I tried to push her away but got off balance then was just trying to say no big deal nevermind but she kept on! Why do people think they can TOUCH me as soon as they see me with the chair or w/the cane they grab you like rude people grabbing a cat or patting a kid on the head. It is bad enough when you are a kid and people invade your dignity but n ow I am fairly used to being treated like a human being and it's a shock to be pawed at. Now another thing people that say What's WRONG with you? (answer Nothing!) Or kids saying loud Hey Mommy why's that lady in that? Why? And the mom freaks out Shhhhh! QUIET! COME HERE RIGHT NOW and dont bother the nice lady! I like the kids, I hate the shhhing parents! I am not obscene and I am not invisible either!
***
Actually I was obscene with my mohawk and multiple middle-of-the-nose rings and motorcycle gloves. Lord knows it was likely I was also wearing a men's tank top several sizes too large, and no bra. Perhaps the parents were yanking little Emily away from my wheelchair for the nose rings and the hangy outy perky boobies, not the chair.
I have a small sketch for a cartoon about how granola lesbians always wanted to hang out with me for PC points.
I remember understanding that it was all very difficult and that I wanted acknowledgement without pity, and that it's almost impossible for anyone to really communicate that and they have to be given a chance. And in fact I think I mostly gave people that chance but that didn't mean I wasn't simultaneously bitter and angry.
Other crippled people, and old arthritic people trying not to act crippled, would somehow manage it. They would give you The Look, which, if you have been a new parent carrying an infant in a grocery store and other people with new infants pass by you, you probably know The Look - partly of mutual suffering and respect for the other person's suffering. It is also the same look as two reasonably feminist women would covertly give each other in a roomful of blathering sexists.
Hahaha a few pages later I have my beavis and butthead cartoon parody: Beaver and Arsehole, two punk dyke junkies who sleep late, sit arround all day watching tv and drinking beer. It didn't have a plot, but was a funny idea. Then some pages of me practicing writing in elvish script. Letters written and unsent out of carelessness. A funny drawing of me having sex with a giant sea turtle. A sketch of G.S. that actually looks kind of cool. My ex husband's family tree and history that I wrote from interviewing his dad (but not the story of how all his friends got shot by the nazis and thrown down a well near, uh, whatever the modern analogue of Sparta is).
I remember being at this Bikini Kill concert and having a great time amongst the shirtless grrlies, but then just being so exhausted and in pain I wanted to die. It was like when you are sick and lie on the bathroom floor after throwing up and feel very grateful for the bathroom floor. I was so tired and hurty I looked at the parking lot asphalt under the stars and wanted to just slide out of my wheelchair and lay there on the ground. And this cute guy in a wheelchair came up and started talking to me and he told me how he was hit by a car or something while biking across the golden gate bridge. He had long blond hair and glasses. He had the same kind of chair as I did, a Quickie with cambered wheels, but his was fancier and newer. I burst into tears in this wild exhausted self pity and just despairing. I didn't know what was happening to me at the time and worried a lot that I had MS. It was taking a long time to get a neurologist appointment (9 months! 9 months to get just the first appointment!) I felt really stupid for crying in front of this guy who was so nice. He didn't say anything but he did a stationary wheelie and then held it, with one arm. I cried for a long time and the whole time I was sobbing stupidly about not knowing what was wrong with me, he held that wheelie with the same arm, barely moving, balancing perfectly and just looking at me nicely. I loved him madly for doing this, though it shamed me, but I never knew his name. I think Minnie collected me and we left.
Back to the garage to move boxes around.
Was that only 10 years ago? Does that mean I am now middle aged (that I can say "ONLY 10 years" and mean it?)
posted by badgerbag 1/02/2004 04:21:00 PM comment
crap zoneThe front half of our garage is now officially a "crap zone". To be given away, garage saled, donated, or thrown away. Books, furniture, clothes, giant picture frames, all fair game. If you want to look through my old junk, and take it away, come over!
Rook, my beloved, do you still want that box of Physics Today magazines from the mid-90s? Do you love them and hoard them as I love my riot grrl comic book collection? Perhaps Moomin will cut them up for science project papers or collages in another 5 years.
Minnie you must clean out the "shed" out back at least removing your stuff if not actually cleaning it (we would probably just hire someone to clean everything at the very end of the process if we end up moving).
The bitch of this is going to be the unbelievably grody window blinds and curtains that not only were disgusting in the first place but then were pretty much ripped down and bundled into the garage over the washer and dryer. Which means: spiderwebs, dust, and 2 inch thick layer of pulverized dryer lint.
The amount of boxes labelled "old zine papers" is astounding. I am putting off the weeding through of those papers until the garage is cleared out. Then I would like to fit all old zine papers into, say, 2 large file cabinet drawers. I'm not sure if that's possible. It might be if I can weed down the file folders of zine-stuff-in-progress. I think there are about 6 inches of drafts and partially cut up xeroxes of the Punk Paper Dolls - that could be reduced to just the original pasteups and the xeroxable originals. There are several large boxes of letters from riot grrls of yore. Every once in a while I see some book on 90s feminism and I wish someone would contact me because I have plenty of interesting stuff here. I would like to organize it into a nice archive.
I went a little nuts looking for this one huge green binder. I think it was green. In it I had all the love letters from s.k. and I am very curious to see them just for old times sake. We have nothing in common any more (did we ever?!) and for some reason I am only around him when slightly tipsy and acting like an ass, so that I sound particularly boring and unintelligent like some sort of low, coarse tavern wench, or else I am discussing some disgusting aspect of placentas or potty training. And he has nothing much to say to me either except a certain radiating awkward friendliness combined with awareness of being a superiorly intelligent species and possibly a sigh of relief that he escaped the fate of supporting my book habit and burping my babies, and instead has a fun, hang-gliding, baby-hating, healthy sort of wife who has welding skillz, the spock-like mind of a 16 year old hacker boy, and a job. I think he knew me at my absolute worst lowest point of my whole life. Yet I recall having fabulous conversations with him. Anyway, as I pawed through the boxes and boxes of dusty old maps, notebooks, stickers, xeroxes, plane safety brochures, and comic books I longed to find those strange letters and think about times past. I also have a feeling that he has largely forgotten the person he used to be, and is perfectly happy in that state of unreflectiveness. How alien!
I should never have to buy office supplies ever again in my life, from all the things I have found in the garage today.
Spent an hour over at Spanglemonkey's, making paper with her husband and oldest kid. We cut up t-shirts into tiny snippets - boiled it all - blendered it -snipped it some more - blendered it again - and, um, papered, or deckled, or whatever you call the odd process of swirling the pulpy cat-vomity stuff in a tub on top of a screen. I made 2 reasonably flat sheets of white cotton paper with added paper towels, rainbow yarn and glitter. Manny made plain white paper and it looked much much nicer. Another batch of glop was the purply grey color of mixed playdough: it had rosemary, camellias, tshirt snips, paper towels, wrapping paper, and kleenex in it. AND yarn and glitter. I will be very curious to see the resulting yuk-colored cardboard. Best part of this: the mess is at THEIR house. Muahaha.
posted by badgerbag 1/02/2004 02:22:00 PM comment
Thursday, January 01, 2004
ICOur in-character blogs for the Silicon Valley Slayers are getting funnier and funnier. I wonder if anyone will read it and piece together the story, from all the different characters' perspectives?
Dot is a Slayer, gorgeous and rather bitter, around 22 years old. Chip is her annoyingly California-y little brother, a programmer and DJ, offering the goods in his Altoids tin to all and sundry. Max is their lesbian vegetarian wiccan genius witch computer guru and softball-playing jock. Tiff is a cute, rich mall rat who has been in and out of rehab; new to Slaying and being mentored by Dot. They're all part of a startup company called Vampster, funded by Roberta the well-heeled and well-connected CEO - the respectable one! The company's main client, Drake, got in trouble with the FBI - he is sort of an International Man of Mystery and Tiff seems to have fallen in love with him. Ifurita is a GM character that fought the players but is emerging as someone to be rescued from Evil.
The games are amusing and frivolous but the blogs being such great writing have made the whole thing so much cooler. Any post with OOC in front of it is meant to be known to the players, but not to the other characters; though it is possible the characters might have hacked into other characters' LJ accounts. It is particularly amusing to see Dot and Max lying to each other, their players being very skillful, smart, and slippery! And it's funny to see the characters blogging their Quizilla results.
Non-gamers, ignore it all if you wish. Hearing some geek go on for hours about the intricacies of a role playing game can be very boring, I know quite well. That doesn't stop me from going on and on about my own RPG if I sense a willing victim.
posted by badgerbag 1/01/2004 11:50:00 PM comment
planPlan for semester:
Mon. work in Stfd library 9:30-1:30. playgroup 4-6
Tues. write, print in Kinkos 9:30-1:30.
Wed. SFSU 10-5. Work in library, meet w/ profs.
Thurs. Work for McCoot 9:30-2:30 (M.’s late day) Span.class 6:30-9:30
Fri. flexible. write, print, shelve books at home etc.
Sat. OR Sun. Work for McCoot 4 hours at Stfd office (free parking)
early mornings: start laundry
afternoons: Moomin. Finish laundry, work on preparing garage sale and throwing stuff away
posted by badgerbag 1/01/2004 02:11:00 PM comment
set in my waysI'm very bloggy and thoughtful today. I could happily go on for hours.
I was thinking a bit yesterday about how old people get set in their ways. I feel it happening though I am not old. I'm on my way.
Little routines become pleasantly ritualized. I like to have coffee in my favorite mug with the Juan Gris painting. Just looking at this mug soothes me. If I go to the kitchen in the morning and it's washed and available it is an instant small jolt of happiness. You'd think this would teach me to wash it and put it away every day, but no. Clearly I'm not old and wise enough, as I leave it to chance, and Rook. Lo! It is as if good fairies have washed my coffee cup. What a silly thing to bring happiness!
I also enjoy eating a certain way. I like to prepare my food and put it on a round tray with high sides. It might be canned chicken soup, very hot, with the bits of chicken picked out and left for the cats, a lot of freshly ground pepper and a large handful of tortilla chips to crumble in it. It might be toasted bread and blue cheese. It might be a turkey and cheese sandwich with a lot of hot mustard and red peppers and some olives on the side. I take this food on a tray, and Minnie, I know you know the way to do this: I settle in bed with a lot of pillows up against the wall, I pile up blankets just so in my lap so that they perfectly support the tray and then behind the tray the blankets are puffed up higher than the tray to support my book. I read my book and eat my food in bed, filled with contentment. No one disturbs me.
I have more or less trained everyone to respect these holy rituals, so that Moomin realizes that it is pointless to beg me to play with him if I say "I can't, I'm having my coffee!"
My mom is this way too. Her nerves are soothed each morning by a crossword puzzle, a sharp pencil, about 6 cups of coffee and about an hour of peace. Some of it can be put down to the mood improvement from drinking the coffee, but it also had something to do with fulfilling the ritual. I recall her careful preparation of lunches to be eaten on the floor in front of a soap opera. She is kind of obsessive compulsive so I think her need to have things always the same is way, way deeper than I can understand.
I feel rather like a lab rat pressing its pellet lever. See coffee cup, get happiness.
My mom used to yell at me sometimes for reading while eating, despite the fact that many nights were declared "read night" so that we all ate dinner at the table with books propped up. She contended that if I got used to reading while eating, I would then want to eat something whenever I was reading, and since I was always reading, I would get fat. I remember laughing at her, book in one hand, other hand shoving an entire ritz cracker with cream cheese into my 11 year old mouth, spraying crumbs everywhere as I thickly said, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard! God, mom!"
posted by badgerbag 1/01/2004 10:15:00 AM comment
wildIt's pouring rain and wind is whipping the trees around. A rare event for my bit of California.
Of course it's not really pouring like it would in Houston - where you can drown in one raindrop if you look up with your mouth open.
Still, I love hearing the trees whooshing restlessly. And the peculiar green light under their leaves as seen through a rainy windowpane.
I was thinking last night about Rook and how nice he is. When we first were going out I was freakingly neurotic all the time with frequent crying in the middle of the night and wild mood swings. I was also in physical pain a lot more of the time. He would pet my head and sing me songs to get me to stop thinking and go to sleep. I was happy in the way that I am capable of - in a jaded, damaged whore reborn as poet sort of way. Over the years he does not seem so lighthearted as he was, and there is less singing of cheesy show tunes in the shower in his mornings. He is in the baby trap, working a job that makes a bunch of money but is sort of beneath him intellectually. I am more emotionally stable now. My knees and back don't hurt all the time. It is true that my lows are higher and my highs are lower - I'm a bit detached and withdrawn. I'm bitchier and more neurotic. I am more confident about my abilities as a poet and writer and I'm in touch with circles of writers and translators - a direct result of his encouragement. He also seems more confident as a writer, and more skilled. When he used to get depressed or withdrawn he would hop on his newsgroups and butt heads with people. Now he is very skilled at rhetoric and has developed lots of cool ideas about RPGs. We have a great kid and a nice life. I can only hope that the net result is that I am good for him but sometimes I have my doubts. I resolve to be nicer and think more about helping him with his goals and dreams.
posted by badgerbag 1/01/2004 09:54:00 AM comment
whoop!Had fun last night - I went out by myself wearing the ridiculous sparkly thrift store dress I got from Minnie. My ass hangs out of it. The sharkskin coat went with it quite well. Played several games of Fluxx, discussed books, picked apart LOTR movies. Said obscurely witty things that occasionally someone else understood. We had small fireworks and I began spouting pseudo nautical jargon at the smell of the powder and did some loon calls to bring in the new year and drive out the demons.
I felt heartily glad that I was at a nerd party and not at some sort of bar or club with "cool" people. Huzzah for geeks!
whump as we left the party touchingly said he would drive up 101 ahead of me "to run interference" with any drunk drivers. This was noble of him... as if he would crash into them for me?! Heh.
posted by badgerbag 1/01/2004 09:25:00 AM comment
