So I wanted to make myself write more, no matter really what it was, so I thought I would start attempting to blog about every film I saw. So that starts here:
Title: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Year: 1962
Genres: Thriller, Horror
Director: Robert Aldrich
Cast: Bette Davis as Baby Jane Hudson, Joan Crawford as Blanche Hudson, Victor Buono as Edwin Flagg, Maidie Norman as Elvira Stitt
For those who love horror but are a tad jaded by the current trends of lots of gore and torture porn, this movie will rekindle your love for horror and your admiration for directors who can really create suspense. Yes, I even talked to the screen, I was so invested in what was happening with these characters.
Alright, let's get the plot out of the way. There are a pair of sisters, blonde "Baby" Jane and brunette Blanche. Baby Jane has fame as a vaudeville performer in 1917, but is a mean little brat. Later, in the mid-1930s, as young women, Blanche gains sucess as a film actress, forcing the studio she works for to also hire her sister who is already a washed-up boozer who's day has passed. But then there's a horrible accident that leaves Blanche paralyzed from the waist down and in the care of her sister. There seems to have been a stasis for 20+ years, until Blanche decides they might be better apart.
Of course, what is a great movie without a great backstory, right? Basically, Davis and Crawford hated each other, so much so that there's a whole book about it. Crawford even campaigned against Davis winning the Best Actress Oscar for Baby Jane. But to me, I wonder if either of these actresses found anything striking about playing past their prime stars still deluding themselves, to one extent or another, that they are significant. It's also sad that they have to play down their looks and/or play up how badly they were aging (especially in Bette Davis' case) to play significant roles. Davis' Baby Jane character wants to attempt a comeback, having adult-sized versions of her childhood costumes made, and hiring a piano accompanyist, but the audience can see how grotesque and desperate this performance really is. I wonder if Davis felt like she was in on the joke, or if she was oblivious to the fact that part of how grotesque Baby Jane is to the audience is wrapped up in how ugly Davis is able to make herself. On the other hand, I get a certain pleasure from the knowledge that Joan Crawford, who would later become almost as famous as "Mommie Dearest" as she ever was as an actress, played the role of the tortured and terrified Blanche. There are several scenes that I know couldn't have been comfortable to film. Hehehe. Yes, I'm a mean person. So was she.
I definately recommend this movie for any lover of suspenseful movies. I'd warn contemporary audiences that the pacing of any film from earlier decades will not be what they are used to, but give it some time. If you find yourself bored, examine Baby Jane's face and think about what boozing and smoking and harsh chemicals are doing to your own body, how they will affect how you age. Also, there are some gaping plot holes, but please just suspend your disbelief. It was the 60s and you don't know what it was like back then, whippersnapper. But enjoy.
Thursday, June 03, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
The subconscious is a bitch
The house went on the market last weekend. The house that my grandparents built and raised their children in. The house I grew up in, full-time for the first 7 years of my life, then part-time, one weekend a month and holidays, for the rest of my youth. The house I could always call home, no matter what the situation. The house I've begrudgingly helped my family clear out and stage for sale. And, contrary to what we were expecting given the current housing market, there is already an offer on the table. And not flippers, who'll tear apart the house, or people who intend to rent out the house to people who'll leave the house in ruins. Nope, they're a young couple just about to be married.
My mom told me all of this Sunday. And I spent the rest of my time at TyRoy's that day crying. And a good deal of time since then too actually. I knew it'd be hard to do this, but I didn't know how hard. And the closer we got to actually being finished with the house, the harder it got for me. It was like losing my grandparents all over again. As melodramatic as it sounds, it was like I was letting them be killed, inch by inch, cleared out room by moved recliner. Intellectually, I know all the reasons we have to sell the house. It's owned by my mother and her two brothers. No one person has the money to buy the others out of the house. And no one (but me) wants to live there. They all have homes, or at least another town they call home, and don't want to leave them. And everyone could use the money from the sale of the house, especially my youngest uncle, the one who is living with cancer. Yes, intellectually, I know we have to sell it. But my heart just can't let it go.
I remember Sir telling me that life is not what happens TO you; life is just what happens. I keep trying to tell myself that, but I don't really think it is helping. As childist and, once again, melodramatic as this sounds, I feel like things keep getting taken away from me. Things I either really had no hand in building, such as my family and home, or things and people that entered my life when my circustances were different so I'm not sure I could replicate them now. It is easy to say that I can (and probably should) find/build a new home for myself and find new lovers when mine is transferred. But I cannot replace my grandparents or my uncle, who will be taken from me far too soon. And I am lost, confused, and absolutely rudderless when it comes to what to do when I actually can make a life of my own, when this death watch is over. (And yes, that is what it is. I value that he is here and I will love and care for him until he is gone, but I am only being honest, with others and myself, when I say that he will die, sooner than anyone could ever want. I refuse to apologize to people who think I'm cruel but have never watched with certain knowledge that a loved one is going to die. I also refuse to chase false hopes and miracle cures when there are no more left.)
All I want is someone who will listen to me and who I can believe them when they says they understand or that they are sorry. Someone who can show me enough emotion for me to believe that they sympathize with me. I have yet been able to find that, despite the fact that many I care for have diligently tried. Sadly, today I was once again reminded that those I could always count on to have both the emotional capacity and life experience to bring insight or a different point of view to a situation are cut off from me in this situation. Gram, always one to voice her opinion even when it was unsolicited, is no longer here to share and I'm sadly devoid of the supernatural powers I would need to hear her now. My uncle is...well, honestly, what could I say to him about all this? My mother is always there to listen and I know she is aware of what I am feeling to some degree, but I am afraid that she'd pull back all the caretaker responsibility she's entrusted in me, which would mean it would all fall on her. I don't want to be a martyr, but I don't want her to be one either. I believe the burden should be shared, as best we can manage, even if it tears us both apart.
Last night I had this dream. Now, most of my dreams are fantastical, rarely touching on real life situations, though things I have seen or thought about during the past day or days do pop up. Just my brain transfering memory around. But last night's dream mirrored what had been happening with the house during the preparation phase: Mom was trying to keep everyone on task, though that is easier said than done. My uncle was hindering progress, "Well we can't do A because of X. We can't empty the garage because it's too cold today. Etc." My step-dad was supposed to be fixing things but he was really just making a big mess. And my gram and I were mostly just crying. (Oddly, in dreams, my gram is usually still alive while my grandfather either appears as a ghost or I know he's dead despite the fact that he's physically solid. My mom suggested that it was because I was there when my grandfather died so his death is more real to me.) Back to inside the dream, where my mother and I ran an errand to go pick up some things from the local lumber yard, which was owned and run by Dr. Phil (who knows). I was thinking about how I should send out a tweet/facebook status update, but all I wanted to write was, "This is all your fault. I will never forgive you. I will hate you until the day you die," which in my mind was directed at my uncle. That's about the time I woke up. And when I was slapped in the face by that evil little reality. That despite how much I might love my family and want to help as much as I can in all this, I'm also bitter and frustrated and hateful. I detest that it is so, but it is. And I have no more idea what to do about it than I do anything else.
On a brighter note, my mom also had a dream. She dreamt that I had become a famous and wealthy writer of cheesy romance novels. Of course, I wrote under a pen name, something equally cheesy, like Sweetpea Smith, and none of my friends believed me when I told them that it was really me who was that famous and wealthy writer. (Mom must have seen Lethal Weapon 4 recently. Wasn't it 4 where the one cop's wife was actually a romance writer and that's how they could afford all their stuff?) But every year I sent a Christmas card to my grandparents' former house, telling them that if they ever wanted to sell the place, I'd pay handsomely. Finally, one year, they bit. Then, I started buying up all the houses around my grandparents' house, demolishing them all and building a big mansion on the hill. And you had to take Sweetpea Lane to get there (or whatever my pen name was.) Mom didn't say whether or not I left my grandparents' house standing or not. I bet I did, though. Well, a girl can dream, right? Guess I should get to writing those romance novels.
My mom told me all of this Sunday. And I spent the rest of my time at TyRoy's that day crying. And a good deal of time since then too actually. I knew it'd be hard to do this, but I didn't know how hard. And the closer we got to actually being finished with the house, the harder it got for me. It was like losing my grandparents all over again. As melodramatic as it sounds, it was like I was letting them be killed, inch by inch, cleared out room by moved recliner. Intellectually, I know all the reasons we have to sell the house. It's owned by my mother and her two brothers. No one person has the money to buy the others out of the house. And no one (but me) wants to live there. They all have homes, or at least another town they call home, and don't want to leave them. And everyone could use the money from the sale of the house, especially my youngest uncle, the one who is living with cancer. Yes, intellectually, I know we have to sell it. But my heart just can't let it go.
I remember Sir telling me that life is not what happens TO you; life is just what happens. I keep trying to tell myself that, but I don't really think it is helping. As childist and, once again, melodramatic as this sounds, I feel like things keep getting taken away from me. Things I either really had no hand in building, such as my family and home, or things and people that entered my life when my circustances were different so I'm not sure I could replicate them now. It is easy to say that I can (and probably should) find/build a new home for myself and find new lovers when mine is transferred. But I cannot replace my grandparents or my uncle, who will be taken from me far too soon. And I am lost, confused, and absolutely rudderless when it comes to what to do when I actually can make a life of my own, when this death watch is over. (And yes, that is what it is. I value that he is here and I will love and care for him until he is gone, but I am only being honest, with others and myself, when I say that he will die, sooner than anyone could ever want. I refuse to apologize to people who think I'm cruel but have never watched with certain knowledge that a loved one is going to die. I also refuse to chase false hopes and miracle cures when there are no more left.)
All I want is someone who will listen to me and who I can believe them when they says they understand or that they are sorry. Someone who can show me enough emotion for me to believe that they sympathize with me. I have yet been able to find that, despite the fact that many I care for have diligently tried. Sadly, today I was once again reminded that those I could always count on to have both the emotional capacity and life experience to bring insight or a different point of view to a situation are cut off from me in this situation. Gram, always one to voice her opinion even when it was unsolicited, is no longer here to share and I'm sadly devoid of the supernatural powers I would need to hear her now. My uncle is...well, honestly, what could I say to him about all this? My mother is always there to listen and I know she is aware of what I am feeling to some degree, but I am afraid that she'd pull back all the caretaker responsibility she's entrusted in me, which would mean it would all fall on her. I don't want to be a martyr, but I don't want her to be one either. I believe the burden should be shared, as best we can manage, even if it tears us both apart.
Last night I had this dream. Now, most of my dreams are fantastical, rarely touching on real life situations, though things I have seen or thought about during the past day or days do pop up. Just my brain transfering memory around. But last night's dream mirrored what had been happening with the house during the preparation phase: Mom was trying to keep everyone on task, though that is easier said than done. My uncle was hindering progress, "Well we can't do A because of X. We can't empty the garage because it's too cold today. Etc." My step-dad was supposed to be fixing things but he was really just making a big mess. And my gram and I were mostly just crying. (Oddly, in dreams, my gram is usually still alive while my grandfather either appears as a ghost or I know he's dead despite the fact that he's physically solid. My mom suggested that it was because I was there when my grandfather died so his death is more real to me.) Back to inside the dream, where my mother and I ran an errand to go pick up some things from the local lumber yard, which was owned and run by Dr. Phil (who knows). I was thinking about how I should send out a tweet/facebook status update, but all I wanted to write was, "This is all your fault. I will never forgive you. I will hate you until the day you die," which in my mind was directed at my uncle. That's about the time I woke up. And when I was slapped in the face by that evil little reality. That despite how much I might love my family and want to help as much as I can in all this, I'm also bitter and frustrated and hateful. I detest that it is so, but it is. And I have no more idea what to do about it than I do anything else.
On a brighter note, my mom also had a dream. She dreamt that I had become a famous and wealthy writer of cheesy romance novels. Of course, I wrote under a pen name, something equally cheesy, like Sweetpea Smith, and none of my friends believed me when I told them that it was really me who was that famous and wealthy writer. (Mom must have seen Lethal Weapon 4 recently. Wasn't it 4 where the one cop's wife was actually a romance writer and that's how they could afford all their stuff?) But every year I sent a Christmas card to my grandparents' former house, telling them that if they ever wanted to sell the place, I'd pay handsomely. Finally, one year, they bit. Then, I started buying up all the houses around my grandparents' house, demolishing them all and building a big mansion on the hill. And you had to take Sweetpea Lane to get there (or whatever my pen name was.) Mom didn't say whether or not I left my grandparents' house standing or not. I bet I did, though. Well, a girl can dream, right? Guess I should get to writing those romance novels.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
House That Built Me - Miranda Lambert
Yeah, I know this is a country one, but there's something on youtube about it also having been recorded by pop chick Kelly Clarkson, so suck it up. It's a beautiful song and one that I think many of us can relate to.
I first heard this song on the first trip I made to help get my Grandma's house ready for sale. Of course, it made me bawl my eyes out and it still does. From the time my gram died, I didn't want to give up the house. Still don't, but now I see why it's necessary and I'll tow the party line on this one. But it doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt to think about other people living in that house or to know that soon I'll never be able to go back to that "home" again. And, despite that fact that I've lived many places, none but my grandparents' house was ever really home to me. Hell, it was even where I retreated to after the home invasion and attempted burglary of the first place I lived "on my own." It was the one place I knew I"d feel safe at a time when I couldn't bear to close my eyes to sleep after dark.
So here's the song. I hope it makes you into a blubbering idiot just like it does me. :P
House that Built Me
(skip to about 1:20 on the video to get to song)
I know they say you cant go home again.
I just had to come back one last time.
Ma'am I know you don't know me from Adam.
But these handprints on the front steps are mine.
And up those stairs, in that little back bedroom
is where I did my homework and I learned to play guitar.
And I bet you didn't know under that live oak
my favorite dog is buried in the yard.
I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
this brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here its like i'm someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself
if I could just come in I swear i'll leave.
Won't take nothing but a memory
from the house that built me.
Mama cut out pictures of houses for years.
From "Better Homes and Garden" magazines.
Plans were drawn, concrete poured,
and nail by nail and board by board
Daddy gave life to mama's dream.
I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
this brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here its like i'm someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself.
If I could just come in I swear i'll leave.
Won't take nothing but a memory
from the house that built me.
You leave home, you move on and you do the best you can.
I got lost in this whole world and forgot who I am.
I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
this brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here its like i'm someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself.
If I could walk around I swear i'll leave.
Won't take nothing but a memory
from the house that built me.
I first heard this song on the first trip I made to help get my Grandma's house ready for sale. Of course, it made me bawl my eyes out and it still does. From the time my gram died, I didn't want to give up the house. Still don't, but now I see why it's necessary and I'll tow the party line on this one. But it doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt to think about other people living in that house or to know that soon I'll never be able to go back to that "home" again. And, despite that fact that I've lived many places, none but my grandparents' house was ever really home to me. Hell, it was even where I retreated to after the home invasion and attempted burglary of the first place I lived "on my own." It was the one place I knew I"d feel safe at a time when I couldn't bear to close my eyes to sleep after dark.
So here's the song. I hope it makes you into a blubbering idiot just like it does me. :P
House that Built Me
(skip to about 1:20 on the video to get to song)
I know they say you cant go home again.
I just had to come back one last time.
Ma'am I know you don't know me from Adam.
But these handprints on the front steps are mine.
And up those stairs, in that little back bedroom
is where I did my homework and I learned to play guitar.
And I bet you didn't know under that live oak
my favorite dog is buried in the yard.
I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
this brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here its like i'm someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself
if I could just come in I swear i'll leave.
Won't take nothing but a memory
from the house that built me.
Mama cut out pictures of houses for years.
From "Better Homes and Garden" magazines.
Plans were drawn, concrete poured,
and nail by nail and board by board
Daddy gave life to mama's dream.
I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
this brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here its like i'm someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself.
If I could just come in I swear i'll leave.
Won't take nothing but a memory
from the house that built me.
You leave home, you move on and you do the best you can.
I got lost in this whole world and forgot who I am.
I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
this brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here its like i'm someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself.
If I could walk around I swear i'll leave.
Won't take nothing but a memory
from the house that built me.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Sacrifing at the Altar of Mental Health
Possibly TMI (too much information) about personal sexual matters. Read with caution.
This probably won't be your typical post, with a real point to it. Mostly just venting because I don't know what else to do. I fear that if I don't DO something, I'll just curl up in a ball and shut down. I don't want to shut down. But I don't really know what to do to help. And there really isn't an immediate crisis that needs tending to, more an internal personal crisis. So just bear with me as I vent. If you have constructive criticism or helpful advice, feel free to give it to me. If not, no worries, thanks for at least bearing witness to my cry to heaven.
I had a fiction teacher who told us that melodrama ended in a perfect bind where someone had to die for it to be resolved, where all the choices left to the protagonist were horrible ones, usually being suicide or murder. I guess I'm being overly melodramatic by comparing that to my situation, but I do feel like I'm in a double bind.
The lithium has saved my life and put me on an even keel. I cannot imagine going of this medication because I honestly don't want to return to being so imbalanced, to having to constantly right against manic suicidality, or the lovely hospital stays. BUT it has changed my personality and habits in ways that I do not like and can't see myself living with long-term. This is especially true in the case of my sex drive, sexual interests, and sexual response. So in addition to my ability to think quickly and in depth, which I've talked about before, I'm also sacrificing my sex life on the altar of 'mental health.'
My psychiatrist asked me to think of these changes in my mood, behavior, thought process, etc, as bringing me closer to normal, as showing me how un-normal my thinking was previously, before the lithium, so I might appreciate this new way of thinking. Sigh. That was before all the sex stuff really kicked me in the teeth. Without going into too much detail about the circumstances, TyRoy and I decided to indulge in some even-less-mainstream sexual adventures. Part of it was that we just never really took advantage of having each other this time, of having a crazy freaky sex partner who would be up for sexual adventures with other people and TyRoy will be transfered by his job in the next 6 months. For me, there was another part- I just hadn't been as interested in sex since I had started taking the lithium. I wasn't looking for outside sex partners, like on Craigslist or other personal's sites. I haven't been having solo flights, despite a pretty new 'jackrabbit'-type vibe. While TyRoy had known for about a year that I hadn't been as horny, I don't think he really realized the fully extent of the change in me, mostly because I don't often turn him down and I thoroughly enjoy it when we do have sex. Honestly, I think I was trying to deny the whole situation. But the adventure we sought out this past weekend meant I had to face it. Or...well, face it only to run away like a giant coward, while my issues chased after me, refusing to be ignored.
I don't like this person that I feel I've become now. I don't like this woman. When I was much younger, I recognized that I might not be the unattainable heartbreaking lady who existed in so many pop songs, but I could at least be that lover who pulled you into bed with passion and fire and a VERY open-mind. I wanted to try almost everything sexual. I've known for a long time that I many kinky interests. After finding Savage Love, I realized that I always wanted to try to be GGG (good, giving, and game) and that I wanted to try to create a continiously loving and sexual relationship with any and every long term partner. But this me doesn't have the same interest in actually having sex. I do think about sex all the time. I like learning about it still. It doesn't turn me off. But actually having sex, even with my hot stud of a not-boyfriend, is more like eating dinner at 6pm when you aren't exactly hungry. You do it because it's that time. It tastes great. And you feel much better after you're done, so you do it. But I don't want sex to be like that. I still want to seek out new sexual experiences. I mean, what is an open-mind about all these sexual things if you can't use it to actually DO something?
I also fear for my next sexual relationship. I don't think the sexual relationship with TyRoy has necessarily suffered but that is because he prefers initiating sex, so it's not as if alot has changed. But not all people are like that. Also, fairly, most men and women want their partner to initiate sex at least part of the time. They don't want to feel like they are always pushing themselves on their partner. They want to feel like their partner also wants them enough to get the action started. Goddess help me if I get with a person who is used to their partner being their aggressor. They'll be waiting forever and we'll never have sex.
Fuck, I just feel like things, possibilities just keep getting taken away from me. I'm in all these no-win situations. I know in my heart I'll almost always make the right decision, do the less selfish thing, but a little part of me doesn't want to. I want to run away. Every time I think about that, think about sharing that sentence with someone else, especially whenever I'd think about texting it to MP, I'd realize how 'teenager' that sounded. But maybe part of me is stuck back there. And I lack all the hallmarks of adulthood - degrees, career, children, ownership. But I do have that restlessness still. There are many times that I just wish I could start over, as if a new place and new life would erase history and mental illness. Well, life is longer than we think. Maybe I'll get to try it out yet.
My mom seems to think the lithium is some kind of miracle in my life. Maybe it is. But I still don't have a job and I still disappear into sleep for 12-48 hours at a time every week or two. I asked TyRoy, point blank, if he prefered how I was before the lithium or how I am now with the lack of sexual adventure. After only a few seconds of thought, he answered that he prefered me now, lacking in sexual adventure, but no longer prone to show up at his house at 10 pm after I'd been threatening suicide all night. I do see his point. But there's always a "BUT..." for me.
Is it wrong that I wonder how it might have been decades, centuries ago, before psychiatric drugs? I guess I'm thinking of the romanticized lives of artists, though, while they may have lived 'romantic' lives, they often lived lives of poverty, just like everyone else of their day who suffered from a mental illness and was unable to work and/or self-medicated with alcohol.
I don't think I've gotten any further in my thinking but at least I did something and now I'm closer to tired. Thanks for listening.
This probably won't be your typical post, with a real point to it. Mostly just venting because I don't know what else to do. I fear that if I don't DO something, I'll just curl up in a ball and shut down. I don't want to shut down. But I don't really know what to do to help. And there really isn't an immediate crisis that needs tending to, more an internal personal crisis. So just bear with me as I vent. If you have constructive criticism or helpful advice, feel free to give it to me. If not, no worries, thanks for at least bearing witness to my cry to heaven.
I had a fiction teacher who told us that melodrama ended in a perfect bind where someone had to die for it to be resolved, where all the choices left to the protagonist were horrible ones, usually being suicide or murder. I guess I'm being overly melodramatic by comparing that to my situation, but I do feel like I'm in a double bind.
The lithium has saved my life and put me on an even keel. I cannot imagine going of this medication because I honestly don't want to return to being so imbalanced, to having to constantly right against manic suicidality, or the lovely hospital stays. BUT it has changed my personality and habits in ways that I do not like and can't see myself living with long-term. This is especially true in the case of my sex drive, sexual interests, and sexual response. So in addition to my ability to think quickly and in depth, which I've talked about before, I'm also sacrificing my sex life on the altar of 'mental health.'
My psychiatrist asked me to think of these changes in my mood, behavior, thought process, etc, as bringing me closer to normal, as showing me how un-normal my thinking was previously, before the lithium, so I might appreciate this new way of thinking. Sigh. That was before all the sex stuff really kicked me in the teeth. Without going into too much detail about the circumstances, TyRoy and I decided to indulge in some even-less-mainstream sexual adventures. Part of it was that we just never really took advantage of having each other this time, of having a crazy freaky sex partner who would be up for sexual adventures with other people and TyRoy will be transfered by his job in the next 6 months. For me, there was another part- I just hadn't been as interested in sex since I had started taking the lithium. I wasn't looking for outside sex partners, like on Craigslist or other personal's sites. I haven't been having solo flights, despite a pretty new 'jackrabbit'-type vibe. While TyRoy had known for about a year that I hadn't been as horny, I don't think he really realized the fully extent of the change in me, mostly because I don't often turn him down and I thoroughly enjoy it when we do have sex. Honestly, I think I was trying to deny the whole situation. But the adventure we sought out this past weekend meant I had to face it. Or...well, face it only to run away like a giant coward, while my issues chased after me, refusing to be ignored.
I don't like this person that I feel I've become now. I don't like this woman. When I was much younger, I recognized that I might not be the unattainable heartbreaking lady who existed in so many pop songs, but I could at least be that lover who pulled you into bed with passion and fire and a VERY open-mind. I wanted to try almost everything sexual. I've known for a long time that I many kinky interests. After finding Savage Love, I realized that I always wanted to try to be GGG (good, giving, and game) and that I wanted to try to create a continiously loving and sexual relationship with any and every long term partner. But this me doesn't have the same interest in actually having sex. I do think about sex all the time. I like learning about it still. It doesn't turn me off. But actually having sex, even with my hot stud of a not-boyfriend, is more like eating dinner at 6pm when you aren't exactly hungry. You do it because it's that time. It tastes great. And you feel much better after you're done, so you do it. But I don't want sex to be like that. I still want to seek out new sexual experiences. I mean, what is an open-mind about all these sexual things if you can't use it to actually DO something?
I also fear for my next sexual relationship. I don't think the sexual relationship with TyRoy has necessarily suffered but that is because he prefers initiating sex, so it's not as if alot has changed. But not all people are like that. Also, fairly, most men and women want their partner to initiate sex at least part of the time. They don't want to feel like they are always pushing themselves on their partner. They want to feel like their partner also wants them enough to get the action started. Goddess help me if I get with a person who is used to their partner being their aggressor. They'll be waiting forever and we'll never have sex.
Fuck, I just feel like things, possibilities just keep getting taken away from me. I'm in all these no-win situations. I know in my heart I'll almost always make the right decision, do the less selfish thing, but a little part of me doesn't want to. I want to run away. Every time I think about that, think about sharing that sentence with someone else, especially whenever I'd think about texting it to MP, I'd realize how 'teenager' that sounded. But maybe part of me is stuck back there. And I lack all the hallmarks of adulthood - degrees, career, children, ownership. But I do have that restlessness still. There are many times that I just wish I could start over, as if a new place and new life would erase history and mental illness. Well, life is longer than we think. Maybe I'll get to try it out yet.
My mom seems to think the lithium is some kind of miracle in my life. Maybe it is. But I still don't have a job and I still disappear into sleep for 12-48 hours at a time every week or two. I asked TyRoy, point blank, if he prefered how I was before the lithium or how I am now with the lack of sexual adventure. After only a few seconds of thought, he answered that he prefered me now, lacking in sexual adventure, but no longer prone to show up at his house at 10 pm after I'd been threatening suicide all night. I do see his point. But there's always a "BUT..." for me.
Is it wrong that I wonder how it might have been decades, centuries ago, before psychiatric drugs? I guess I'm thinking of the romanticized lives of artists, though, while they may have lived 'romantic' lives, they often lived lives of poverty, just like everyone else of their day who suffered from a mental illness and was unable to work and/or self-medicated with alcohol.
I don't think I've gotten any further in my thinking but at least I did something and now I'm closer to tired. Thanks for listening.
Friday, March 05, 2010
Public Smoking
There's something luxurious about having a girl light your cigarette. In fact, I got married once on account of that. ~Harold Robbins [true for me, only it was a man who lit my cigarette]
There's a lot of people who, a cigarette is about the only vacation they have. ~Trey Parker, mini-commentary on DVD South Park episode "Butt Out"
I used to smoke two packs a day and I just hate being a nonsmoker.... but I will never consider myself a nonsmoker because I always find smokers the most interesting people at the table. ~Michelle Pfeiffer
Ah, smoking! How I love it! As in the last quote, I don't particularly like identifying myself as a non-smoker or a former-smoker. It's like saying you are celibate just because you can't find anyone to have sex with you. And, like the author of the first quote, I fell in love with sexy french inhale as much as I did a man. Also, I'm not a fan of smoking bans for restaurants and especially not for bars. It just doesn't seem natural to not be able to smoke when you are drinking in public.
BUT
I'm quickly discovering that not being able to breath sucks ass. Now I've always had what I called a slight case of "exercise-induced" asthma, though that probably wasn't really asthma. It was just that I was overweight and out of shape, so, when I'd physically exert myself, I'd have trouble breathing and my lungs burned. Asthma sounded better than fat and out of shape though.
But I did begin having real problems over this past summer. I continued to cough and wheeze after a particularly difficult to cure case of strep throat, during which I also had issues keeping down my medications. Now, my throat, esophagus, and perhaps even my lungs have some level of damage from years of acid reflux and the vomitting that came along with painful gall stones and gall bladder issues several years ago. When I couldn't get the coughing and wheezing to stop and I had several severe incidents of shortness of breath, I finally went to a doctor. After seeing a general practitioner and then a team of pulmonologists, it was concluded that I had adult-onset asthma. They weren't really sure what caused it and finding out would be even more expensive and wouldn't assist in my treatment, so no further testing was done. The doctor conceded that my weight and acid reflux might be contributing factors, but they weren't the only thing causing my current condition. I now use Symbicort twice daily, though I'm about at the end of my samples and I can't afford the $200 a month that it costs. I also have Abuterol rescue inhalers that I inherited from my grandmother.
OK SO WHY AM I TELLING YA'LL THIS?
I am sharing all this because I wanted to help you, those who know me and hang out with me, why it is important to me to know beforehand if a place we are planning on going allows smoking. The times that I have brought this issue up, I felt like I was dismissed for being worried about it when everyone knows that no place allows smoking anymore, which obviously isn't true as several places our group has gone to in the past several months have allowed smoking. Some townships and areas of the metro still allow smoking in restaurants and bars, though it is often difficult to know where those city lines are drawn and who allows what. But it is important to me to be able to decide for myself if I want to be in that environment and to plan ahead by not being anyone's driver and making sure I have my abuterol. (Yes, I know I should ALWAY have a rescue inhaler, but I don't always like dragging around a purse full of everything I might possibly need.) And finding out only after I've arrived, especially when I either rode with someone or drove someone to the location, makes me feel obligated to stay in a situation in which I'm uncomfortable, which leads to me feeling annoyed, bitchy, and anti-social.
I would also like to point out that all people with a certain illness are not the same in how they experience and deal with that. Just because somebody else in our group might also have asthma and does not seem to be bothered by smoke doesn't mean that my own requests should be dismissed. While not a perfect metaphor, some recoving alcoholics can be in places where liquor is served while other recovering alcoholics could not handle the temptation or the environment. Either way, one would hope that their friends would not be dismissive of any requests they made so that they could take responsibility for their own health.
I don't want to make this into a "this person did or didn't do this" and I know that I didn't mention this to all of you. I wrote this because I obviously wasn't clear enough in what I was hoping for when I did mention it to the people I did so I thought I'd attempt to explain why and be clear to everyone. So I would ask anyone who plans an outing to find out if a place allows smoking and to let everyone know, especially me. If you are uncertain, especially if a place is in Shawnee, Merriam, or North Kansas City (the places that I think might all still allow smoking), call and ask. Thank you. Once again, I have no problem with smoking, smokers, or smoking in public places. I am also not asking for anyone else not to go or for events not to be planned at places where there is smoking. I just know that I'd appreciate a heads up so that I can make that decision for myself, and I"m sure there are others who would to.
There's a lot of people who, a cigarette is about the only vacation they have. ~Trey Parker, mini-commentary on DVD South Park episode "Butt Out"
I used to smoke two packs a day and I just hate being a nonsmoker.... but I will never consider myself a nonsmoker because I always find smokers the most interesting people at the table. ~Michelle Pfeiffer
Ah, smoking! How I love it! As in the last quote, I don't particularly like identifying myself as a non-smoker or a former-smoker. It's like saying you are celibate just because you can't find anyone to have sex with you. And, like the author of the first quote, I fell in love with sexy french inhale as much as I did a man. Also, I'm not a fan of smoking bans for restaurants and especially not for bars. It just doesn't seem natural to not be able to smoke when you are drinking in public.
BUT
I'm quickly discovering that not being able to breath sucks ass. Now I've always had what I called a slight case of "exercise-induced" asthma, though that probably wasn't really asthma. It was just that I was overweight and out of shape, so, when I'd physically exert myself, I'd have trouble breathing and my lungs burned. Asthma sounded better than fat and out of shape though.
But I did begin having real problems over this past summer. I continued to cough and wheeze after a particularly difficult to cure case of strep throat, during which I also had issues keeping down my medications. Now, my throat, esophagus, and perhaps even my lungs have some level of damage from years of acid reflux and the vomitting that came along with painful gall stones and gall bladder issues several years ago. When I couldn't get the coughing and wheezing to stop and I had several severe incidents of shortness of breath, I finally went to a doctor. After seeing a general practitioner and then a team of pulmonologists, it was concluded that I had adult-onset asthma. They weren't really sure what caused it and finding out would be even more expensive and wouldn't assist in my treatment, so no further testing was done. The doctor conceded that my weight and acid reflux might be contributing factors, but they weren't the only thing causing my current condition. I now use Symbicort twice daily, though I'm about at the end of my samples and I can't afford the $200 a month that it costs. I also have Abuterol rescue inhalers that I inherited from my grandmother.
OK SO WHY AM I TELLING YA'LL THIS?
I am sharing all this because I wanted to help you, those who know me and hang out with me, why it is important to me to know beforehand if a place we are planning on going allows smoking. The times that I have brought this issue up, I felt like I was dismissed for being worried about it when everyone knows that no place allows smoking anymore, which obviously isn't true as several places our group has gone to in the past several months have allowed smoking. Some townships and areas of the metro still allow smoking in restaurants and bars, though it is often difficult to know where those city lines are drawn and who allows what. But it is important to me to be able to decide for myself if I want to be in that environment and to plan ahead by not being anyone's driver and making sure I have my abuterol. (Yes, I know I should ALWAY have a rescue inhaler, but I don't always like dragging around a purse full of everything I might possibly need.) And finding out only after I've arrived, especially when I either rode with someone or drove someone to the location, makes me feel obligated to stay in a situation in which I'm uncomfortable, which leads to me feeling annoyed, bitchy, and anti-social.
I would also like to point out that all people with a certain illness are not the same in how they experience and deal with that. Just because somebody else in our group might also have asthma and does not seem to be bothered by smoke doesn't mean that my own requests should be dismissed. While not a perfect metaphor, some recoving alcoholics can be in places where liquor is served while other recovering alcoholics could not handle the temptation or the environment. Either way, one would hope that their friends would not be dismissive of any requests they made so that they could take responsibility for their own health.
I don't want to make this into a "this person did or didn't do this" and I know that I didn't mention this to all of you. I wrote this because I obviously wasn't clear enough in what I was hoping for when I did mention it to the people I did so I thought I'd attempt to explain why and be clear to everyone. So I would ask anyone who plans an outing to find out if a place allows smoking and to let everyone know, especially me. If you are uncertain, especially if a place is in Shawnee, Merriam, or North Kansas City (the places that I think might all still allow smoking), call and ask. Thank you. Once again, I have no problem with smoking, smokers, or smoking in public places. I am also not asking for anyone else not to go or for events not to be planned at places where there is smoking. I just know that I'd appreciate a heads up so that I can make that decision for myself, and I"m sure there are others who would to.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Temporarily Abled
I'd like to start out by saying that I do feel kinda silly writing this. I worry that I always sound like I'm complaining or whining, that my life and what I am able to do does not look the same from the outside, which means I shouldn't vent this stuff, that I don't have permission from... society? to express this. But lately I've been reading more and more about people living with disability, especially hidden disabilities, from the people themselves, most notably on Feministe and Three Rivers Fog. Not only has it raised my consciousness in dealing with and looking at those who do and do not fit our stereotypes of atypical ability and atypical neurological states, but it has also allowed me to contemplate the ways that I might not currently be as abled as I might be expected to be. I hope that makes sense. I'd don't know all the right terms, but I think it makes sense.
For a while now, I've recognized that I spend large chunks of my life planning for when my life will really begin. While I've been thinking lately about one small segment of my life in particular, that of working a paying job, I seem to be bumping into some of the same issues. First, I had to get my meds straightened out. Then, it was just hard to find a job. Next, Gram passed and I stayed in Slightly Larger Midwest City to help my uncle who was undergoing a treatment there. Now, as my uncle gets chemo in his hometown, I'm commuting the four-hour roundtrip to help him when he gets chemo and playing homemaker when I'm home. Though I might have heard it before and just tuned out, I was told last week that my uncle will likely be on chemo either for the rest of his life or until his body can't handle it anymore, so I'm not thinking that this commute will end anytime soon.
But when I honestly reflect on my last ten years of employment history, ok so all of my employment history, I haven't really been able to commit to anything for a long period of time. The best I've been able to eek out were two one-year stints at part-time jobs. There are various reasons behind this, though a great many of the times I quit jobs had to do with symptoms of my issues with depression and/or bipolar disorder. The biggest of those symptoms was disordered sleep. That hasn't gotten any better and is the biggest issue that I see in any job-seeking future.
For awhile, I thought the root of the problem was getting to sleep. And it is a part of the problem. But when I take an honest look at it, I have times when I sleep 24, or even 48, hours, straight through. At the very least, when I don't force myself to get up, I sleep about twelve hours. Now, for as much as I know a great many people who'd love to be able to sleep that long, ever, it really isn't normal and it definately isn't condusive to working an outside the home paying job. I have, to a certain extent, been able to get when I go to sleep under control, when I want to, when I take the time and thought to really plan taking certain meds at certain times and then making a point of relaxing after that. Oh, yeah, unless my legs start acting up and then I'm screwed. But getting up on time is.... well, I'm barely able to do it. With the exception of my uncle's chemo days and then I'm on it.
Which leads people to tell me to just FORCE myself to get up on time, to pull myself up by my bootstraps and be like a normal person. I mean, if I can do it for my uncle's chemo day, why can't I do it for other days? For a regular job? Or an irregular job? Well, mostly because that takes alot out of me. Friday I slept all day, until about 9pm. I was only up until about 3am until I went back to sleep and didn't get up again until I was dragged out of bed at 8:40pm. I also slept for over 12 hours on Sunday. I was up all day Monday, only to sleep 25 hours on Tuesday. So being up to make sure my uncle is on time and has company meant that I slept through the next five days. I don't mean for that to sound like I'm complaining. I'm not and it's totally worth it to be there for my uncle. BUT that's the reality of my situation.
So I'm starting to wonder if, after all this is done, all I have to look forward to is a string of mind-numbing part-time jobs, which barely pay for my meds anyway, that I keep for a maximum of a year. This really isn't alot to look forward to. When the doctor at the pulmonologist suggested I go on disability, honestly, I was kinda appalled. I guess my main thought was that I wasn't really that bad, I wasn't dis-abled enough by my condition that I was unable to work. There's also another part of me that suspects that, if I got disability, it would take it away from another person who had less resources than I. But now I'm worried that, even when the economy gets better and all this is done, I won't be able to find and maintain a paying job, even a part-time one.
Not sure what I'm looking for here guys. Guess partly just to vent and share my own experience. Maybe to find some advice or experience that I haven't heard before, though I'm not sure that exists. Fuck. Whatever.
For a while now, I've recognized that I spend large chunks of my life planning for when my life will really begin. While I've been thinking lately about one small segment of my life in particular, that of working a paying job, I seem to be bumping into some of the same issues. First, I had to get my meds straightened out. Then, it was just hard to find a job. Next, Gram passed and I stayed in Slightly Larger Midwest City to help my uncle who was undergoing a treatment there. Now, as my uncle gets chemo in his hometown, I'm commuting the four-hour roundtrip to help him when he gets chemo and playing homemaker when I'm home. Though I might have heard it before and just tuned out, I was told last week that my uncle will likely be on chemo either for the rest of his life or until his body can't handle it anymore, so I'm not thinking that this commute will end anytime soon.
But when I honestly reflect on my last ten years of employment history, ok so all of my employment history, I haven't really been able to commit to anything for a long period of time. The best I've been able to eek out were two one-year stints at part-time jobs. There are various reasons behind this, though a great many of the times I quit jobs had to do with symptoms of my issues with depression and/or bipolar disorder. The biggest of those symptoms was disordered sleep. That hasn't gotten any better and is the biggest issue that I see in any job-seeking future.
For awhile, I thought the root of the problem was getting to sleep. And it is a part of the problem. But when I take an honest look at it, I have times when I sleep 24, or even 48, hours, straight through. At the very least, when I don't force myself to get up, I sleep about twelve hours. Now, for as much as I know a great many people who'd love to be able to sleep that long, ever, it really isn't normal and it definately isn't condusive to working an outside the home paying job. I have, to a certain extent, been able to get when I go to sleep under control, when I want to, when I take the time and thought to really plan taking certain meds at certain times and then making a point of relaxing after that. Oh, yeah, unless my legs start acting up and then I'm screwed. But getting up on time is.... well, I'm barely able to do it. With the exception of my uncle's chemo days and then I'm on it.
Which leads people to tell me to just FORCE myself to get up on time, to pull myself up by my bootstraps and be like a normal person. I mean, if I can do it for my uncle's chemo day, why can't I do it for other days? For a regular job? Or an irregular job? Well, mostly because that takes alot out of me. Friday I slept all day, until about 9pm. I was only up until about 3am until I went back to sleep and didn't get up again until I was dragged out of bed at 8:40pm. I also slept for over 12 hours on Sunday. I was up all day Monday, only to sleep 25 hours on Tuesday. So being up to make sure my uncle is on time and has company meant that I slept through the next five days. I don't mean for that to sound like I'm complaining. I'm not and it's totally worth it to be there for my uncle. BUT that's the reality of my situation.
So I'm starting to wonder if, after all this is done, all I have to look forward to is a string of mind-numbing part-time jobs, which barely pay for my meds anyway, that I keep for a maximum of a year. This really isn't alot to look forward to. When the doctor at the pulmonologist suggested I go on disability, honestly, I was kinda appalled. I guess my main thought was that I wasn't really that bad, I wasn't dis-abled enough by my condition that I was unable to work. There's also another part of me that suspects that, if I got disability, it would take it away from another person who had less resources than I. But now I'm worried that, even when the economy gets better and all this is done, I won't be able to find and maintain a paying job, even a part-time one.
Not sure what I'm looking for here guys. Guess partly just to vent and share my own experience. Maybe to find some advice or experience that I haven't heard before, though I'm not sure that exists. Fuck. Whatever.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
CPOS vs HNMG
"I could never be in an open relationship," is something I hear quite often from my friends and acquaintances. Strangely, most of these people have cheated, have been cheated on, are currently cheating, or are actively contemplating cheating on their significant other. Hell, I was one of those people myself. I was a Cheating Piece of Shit in every single monogamous relationship I attempted. That was part of what lead me to try being an Honest Non-monogamous Gal.
"I would be too jealous. I couldn't stand the thought of my significant other being with someone else." Jealousy is actually another big reason why I chose to be non-monogamous. In a strange way, I trace most of my cheating back to my own jealousy. Here's the script: Significant Other is currently having a life- hanging out with people of both sexes, doing things that I'm not particularly interested it, working, going to school. During this time when SO is not with me, my big imagination is writing stories about a BJ from a waitress at the restaurant SO's friends hang at or a passionate but as yet unconsummated love affair with the nerd chick in SO's robotics class. These imaginings lead to me starting fights, making accusations, being cold, and generally pushing my partner away. Now I begin to feel a distance, not realizing that I created it, but it still leads me to feel unloved, uncared for, etc, which means that I'm unworthy. Then, when someone, anyone, starts to show me attention, affection, well, I jump at the chance to feel good again. What's worse is that the guilt about the cheating makes me feel even worse about being around my SO, the one person I actually do want to work it all out with, so I'm left with the only person who still makes me feel good, the person I cheated with.
So why not flip the script? If I'm always dreaming imaginary liasons for my SO, why not let hir have real ones, safely, honestly, and openly? If I'm always worried that my SO wants someone else more than me, won't I feel more secure when zi comes home to me? If I don't push my SO away with the things I only imagine, because I now know exactly what is happening, won't that be one less thing to come between us? And a fresh injection of new attention on my side, without the guilt, could be enough to keep things fresh and new. Also, I think that it helps to break the cycle in which I cling on for dear life to my SO, even when the relationship should have ended long ago, even when we are not good for each other, even when we are emotionally abusing each other, just because I feel like I will have nothing left without that person. Don't get me wrong: That break-up is still gonna hurt like hell. But it makes it easier to know that you have at least one person who's bed you can find comfort in, even if that person isn't ever going to be the next love of your life. Especially because you've hopefully also chosen a person who can be a friend and can understand the grief you're feeling. Maybe you also helped them through theirs.
When I try to explain any part of this to most people, anyone not in the choir, I get the feeling that I'm talking past them. I think some people think I'm a slutty party girl with daddy issues who is sleeping around until she finds her Prince/Princess Charming. I think other people think I'm jaded, had one too many bad relationships, but that it will all change when I meet the right person. The rest just think I'm a weirdo. None of them think that it will ever work. That someone will get hurt, that someone is bound to get jealous, that no one will ever be happy in this situation. That is true. But do you know what else is true? That people in monogamous relationships get hurt, get jealous, and very few, if any, are happy. I can't say that this take on relationships has worked spectacularly, but my previous take didn't either. But I can say that it leaves me feeling more in control of my own life and more honest, both with other people and myself. As with anything, it's for now. And, for now, it works.
After my rather long silence on my blogs, I was driven to write this after reading this blog post on the marriages of other people. (I might write another post later dealing more directly with the post but not tonight. I'm almost tired.) But it reminded me that the systems we are given and that we are supposed to accept without question are often very flawed and work for very few people. Everyone has to build their own lives and their own relationships. There is no one way. And I guess that's what I should start telling my friends.
"I would be too jealous. I couldn't stand the thought of my significant other being with someone else." Jealousy is actually another big reason why I chose to be non-monogamous. In a strange way, I trace most of my cheating back to my own jealousy. Here's the script: Significant Other is currently having a life- hanging out with people of both sexes, doing things that I'm not particularly interested it, working, going to school. During this time when SO is not with me, my big imagination is writing stories about a BJ from a waitress at the restaurant SO's friends hang at or a passionate but as yet unconsummated love affair with the nerd chick in SO's robotics class. These imaginings lead to me starting fights, making accusations, being cold, and generally pushing my partner away. Now I begin to feel a distance, not realizing that I created it, but it still leads me to feel unloved, uncared for, etc, which means that I'm unworthy. Then, when someone, anyone, starts to show me attention, affection, well, I jump at the chance to feel good again. What's worse is that the guilt about the cheating makes me feel even worse about being around my SO, the one person I actually do want to work it all out with, so I'm left with the only person who still makes me feel good, the person I cheated with.
So why not flip the script? If I'm always dreaming imaginary liasons for my SO, why not let hir have real ones, safely, honestly, and openly? If I'm always worried that my SO wants someone else more than me, won't I feel more secure when zi comes home to me? If I don't push my SO away with the things I only imagine, because I now know exactly what is happening, won't that be one less thing to come between us? And a fresh injection of new attention on my side, without the guilt, could be enough to keep things fresh and new. Also, I think that it helps to break the cycle in which I cling on for dear life to my SO, even when the relationship should have ended long ago, even when we are not good for each other, even when we are emotionally abusing each other, just because I feel like I will have nothing left without that person. Don't get me wrong: That break-up is still gonna hurt like hell. But it makes it easier to know that you have at least one person who's bed you can find comfort in, even if that person isn't ever going to be the next love of your life. Especially because you've hopefully also chosen a person who can be a friend and can understand the grief you're feeling. Maybe you also helped them through theirs.
When I try to explain any part of this to most people, anyone not in the choir, I get the feeling that I'm talking past them. I think some people think I'm a slutty party girl with daddy issues who is sleeping around until she finds her Prince/Princess Charming. I think other people think I'm jaded, had one too many bad relationships, but that it will all change when I meet the right person. The rest just think I'm a weirdo. None of them think that it will ever work. That someone will get hurt, that someone is bound to get jealous, that no one will ever be happy in this situation. That is true. But do you know what else is true? That people in monogamous relationships get hurt, get jealous, and very few, if any, are happy. I can't say that this take on relationships has worked spectacularly, but my previous take didn't either. But I can say that it leaves me feeling more in control of my own life and more honest, both with other people and myself. As with anything, it's for now. And, for now, it works.
After my rather long silence on my blogs, I was driven to write this after reading this blog post on the marriages of other people. (I might write another post later dealing more directly with the post but not tonight. I'm almost tired.) But it reminded me that the systems we are given and that we are supposed to accept without question are often very flawed and work for very few people. Everyone has to build their own lives and their own relationships. There is no one way. And I guess that's what I should start telling my friends.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
It's Not Christmas 'til Somebody Cries
Ah, the Holiday Season! As everyone knows, it's supposed to be a time for giving, sharing, rejoicing, loving, and being with your family, but once translated through our own imperfections, it becomes a hectic time during which we're dragged down by obligation, consumerism, attempts at perfection, and whatever kind of dysfunction is created by the gathering of our family or friends.
"It's not Christmas 'til somebody cries." I heard my mom say this a couple weeks ago in response to some Christmas-themed television show. Today, she informed me that she thought it came from parents whose children cried from crankiness because of a lack of sleep while attempting to wait for Santa or whose toys got lost or whatever. But at the time she said it, all I could think of was my pre-teen and teenage years, when my step-dad (a grinch by upbringing) and I would always get into a fight, which ended in me crying and running out of the room. The fights always revolved around his desire for me to be more "sociable" with our family. Now, I'm an only child who's always been a bit introverted. I was being as sociable as I felt comfortable being. I was never rude and I attempted conversation with everyone, but I never had anyone my own age in our family, nor anyone I really had a great deal in common with, so, eventually, I'd end up sitting in a corner, reading a book or watching TV, though I always jumped right up to help do anything the adults needed, like setting the table. Looking back, I think that, as my step-dad and mom were usually cooking at holidays or doing some kind of work, my step-dad thought I should be doing the entertaining of our relatives, so they weren't as bored as I clearly was. But I didn't get that at the time and he didn't say it that way so.... we fought. And I cried. Which then made him look bad in front of our relatives, which made him more mad and grumpy, which then might lead to aftershock fights. For so long, I really hated holidays with my family because I thought there was no way around those fights. I don't think I came around to trying harder or just living through the fights until, after another fight with my uncle, during which he got so upset with me that he walked out, I realized how much Christmas, and all the other family holidays, meant to him. But it really has come to mean alot to me.
Last Christmas was full of a great deal of crying. It was the first Christmas without my Grandfather. Now he really loved Christmas. I don't think he was much for the smaltzy, sentimental side of Christmas, but he loved funny Christmas movie (Christmas Vacation especially) and tv specials. He liked Christmas music, always turning the cable tv to the seasonal music channel. He liked watching people open gifts, though Grandma always did all their Christmas shopping as soon as she could pry a Wish List out of us, and she started asking in September. But, from what Gram told me, which I'm not sure how reliable of a narrator she was, every year Grandpa would get gussied up and go shopping on the last possible shopping day. He liked to do it during the day of Christmas Eve, but that wasn't always possible, as we had several Christmas in Very Big Midwestern City, when I lived there with my mom and step-dad, as that was also where the rest of my step-dad's family lived and we were all friends. Grandpa liked watching the people though. Usually, he only bought one present, always for my grandma. Sometimes it would be something he knew she or they needed but that Grandma kept saying they couldn't afford yet, though it was quite often jewelry. Never costume jewlery either, but real diamonds and rubies. When he had had his fill of humanity, he'd come home, wrap the present, scrawl out the gift tag in his shaky hand, and set it carefully under the tree. (Well, except the tv. That he covered with a blanket in the guest room until Christmas morning, then he took her in the room to show her the present.) But, whether it's true or not, I still love this story about my grandpa. So it was hard last year to celebrate without him, without his cheer and his sparkle. Without the ham we had to have because Grandpa wouldn't eat any kind of fowl. Without his skiing Santa animated toy. Both sides of the family were at my step-dad's parents' house. I was in pain from falling on the ice the day before. I was angry that my step-dad's parents had invited a friend from their church to what was a very emotional Christmas for those of us on my mother's side. I went out to the garage to smoke and ended up crying, though I tried to be careful not to mess up my makeup. My grandma came out to have a cigarette as well and she said that I couldn't cry because then she'd cry and if she started crying, she might not stop. She also pointed out that Grandpa wouldn't have wanted us to be sad on Christmas, but to celebrate the family, the funny and weird, and even the consumerism of contemporary gift giving. She also reminded me that it wouldn't do a damn bit of good to try to tell my other grandparents anything because they wouldn't understand, they'd do what they wanted to anyway, and I'd be the only one upset. Of course, on this she was right and I didn't say anything, though I didn't really enjoy the time anymore than I already was.
Which brings me to this Christmas. No one in my mother's family seemed to really feel like celebrating, with both Grandma and Grandpa gone and my uncle in the middle of chemo. Also, no one has a great deal of money or wants any gifts. As my maternal uncle can't really travel, we decided to skip the trip to my step-dad's parents' house. But, well, I can't help trying to push for a bit of the holiday spirit. I offered to put up and decorate our Christmas tree, if my step-dad would be so kind as to bring it out of our storage shed, and Mom asked me to put up garland and bows on the patio fence. Doing that spread the holiday spirit, which we've all managed to pump up in each other since then. Even the shitty "blizzard warning" weather couldn't dampen my spirit. I was all smiles on my drive home from last night, hanging out with TyRoy and getting showered with gifts.
Until I didn't get friended on a stupid social networking site. I set up a new account last week when my original one was disabled. During the original setup, it took "possible friends" from my email account, a different email account than the one used to setup the first page. The possibles included Sir. I was in such a hurry that I just allowed everyone. It wasn't until a few days later that I started to wonder. Well, seeing him on there made me think about him, at which point I listened to some music he gave me. When listening to Counting Crow's "A Long December," I got stuck on "And if you think that I could be forgiven / I wish you would." Now, I know that we "lost touch" because, after I revealed on my blog, which his girlfriend read, that he was seeing someone else as well, he texted me that I had "burned the bridge with him." But isn't Christmas and New Year about catching up with people, about forgiveness, about figuring out why you lost touch in the first place and fixing it? So I periodically checked all my friends, to see if it still showed "request pending" or not.
Well, I got my answer today. He had disappeared from my "All Friends" page, which includes the pending requests. As he wasn't a friend and he wasn't still pending, he had denied my request. Maybe I would have had better luck if I'd thought about those song lyrics and included them in my request. I try to keep reminding myself that he's from one of those Italian families where someone becomes dead to you when they wrong you too many times or too severely. Even if he wanted to, he probably wouldn't go against that. I try to remind myself that he doesn't know that I'm not completely that same person, that I'm on better drugs, that I've gotten used to being alone and keeping a great deal more inside, that I've found a level of compassion I didn't know I nad. I try to remind myself that I'm not sure I really want to be friends with him, in a reality kinda way, as I don't know who he is anymore and I was starting to realize that there were things I really didn't like about him when we were still friends. But all I feel is that I got the ultimate "coal in my stocking" Christmas present, that I wasn't good enough, then and I'm not good enough, now to be friends with. Happy Christmas to you too, Sir.
It's not Christmas 'til somebody cries. I just wish it wasn't always me.
"It's not Christmas 'til somebody cries." I heard my mom say this a couple weeks ago in response to some Christmas-themed television show. Today, she informed me that she thought it came from parents whose children cried from crankiness because of a lack of sleep while attempting to wait for Santa or whose toys got lost or whatever. But at the time she said it, all I could think of was my pre-teen and teenage years, when my step-dad (a grinch by upbringing) and I would always get into a fight, which ended in me crying and running out of the room. The fights always revolved around his desire for me to be more "sociable" with our family. Now, I'm an only child who's always been a bit introverted. I was being as sociable as I felt comfortable being. I was never rude and I attempted conversation with everyone, but I never had anyone my own age in our family, nor anyone I really had a great deal in common with, so, eventually, I'd end up sitting in a corner, reading a book or watching TV, though I always jumped right up to help do anything the adults needed, like setting the table. Looking back, I think that, as my step-dad and mom were usually cooking at holidays or doing some kind of work, my step-dad thought I should be doing the entertaining of our relatives, so they weren't as bored as I clearly was. But I didn't get that at the time and he didn't say it that way so.... we fought. And I cried. Which then made him look bad in front of our relatives, which made him more mad and grumpy, which then might lead to aftershock fights. For so long, I really hated holidays with my family because I thought there was no way around those fights. I don't think I came around to trying harder or just living through the fights until, after another fight with my uncle, during which he got so upset with me that he walked out, I realized how much Christmas, and all the other family holidays, meant to him. But it really has come to mean alot to me.
Last Christmas was full of a great deal of crying. It was the first Christmas without my Grandfather. Now he really loved Christmas. I don't think he was much for the smaltzy, sentimental side of Christmas, but he loved funny Christmas movie (Christmas Vacation especially) and tv specials. He liked Christmas music, always turning the cable tv to the seasonal music channel. He liked watching people open gifts, though Grandma always did all their Christmas shopping as soon as she could pry a Wish List out of us, and she started asking in September. But, from what Gram told me, which I'm not sure how reliable of a narrator she was, every year Grandpa would get gussied up and go shopping on the last possible shopping day. He liked to do it during the day of Christmas Eve, but that wasn't always possible, as we had several Christmas in Very Big Midwestern City, when I lived there with my mom and step-dad, as that was also where the rest of my step-dad's family lived and we were all friends. Grandpa liked watching the people though. Usually, he only bought one present, always for my grandma. Sometimes it would be something he knew she or they needed but that Grandma kept saying they couldn't afford yet, though it was quite often jewelry. Never costume jewlery either, but real diamonds and rubies. When he had had his fill of humanity, he'd come home, wrap the present, scrawl out the gift tag in his shaky hand, and set it carefully under the tree. (Well, except the tv. That he covered with a blanket in the guest room until Christmas morning, then he took her in the room to show her the present.) But, whether it's true or not, I still love this story about my grandpa. So it was hard last year to celebrate without him, without his cheer and his sparkle. Without the ham we had to have because Grandpa wouldn't eat any kind of fowl. Without his skiing Santa animated toy. Both sides of the family were at my step-dad's parents' house. I was in pain from falling on the ice the day before. I was angry that my step-dad's parents had invited a friend from their church to what was a very emotional Christmas for those of us on my mother's side. I went out to the garage to smoke and ended up crying, though I tried to be careful not to mess up my makeup. My grandma came out to have a cigarette as well and she said that I couldn't cry because then she'd cry and if she started crying, she might not stop. She also pointed out that Grandpa wouldn't have wanted us to be sad on Christmas, but to celebrate the family, the funny and weird, and even the consumerism of contemporary gift giving. She also reminded me that it wouldn't do a damn bit of good to try to tell my other grandparents anything because they wouldn't understand, they'd do what they wanted to anyway, and I'd be the only one upset. Of course, on this she was right and I didn't say anything, though I didn't really enjoy the time anymore than I already was.
Which brings me to this Christmas. No one in my mother's family seemed to really feel like celebrating, with both Grandma and Grandpa gone and my uncle in the middle of chemo. Also, no one has a great deal of money or wants any gifts. As my maternal uncle can't really travel, we decided to skip the trip to my step-dad's parents' house. But, well, I can't help trying to push for a bit of the holiday spirit. I offered to put up and decorate our Christmas tree, if my step-dad would be so kind as to bring it out of our storage shed, and Mom asked me to put up garland and bows on the patio fence. Doing that spread the holiday spirit, which we've all managed to pump up in each other since then. Even the shitty "blizzard warning" weather couldn't dampen my spirit. I was all smiles on my drive home from last night, hanging out with TyRoy and getting showered with gifts.
Until I didn't get friended on a stupid social networking site. I set up a new account last week when my original one was disabled. During the original setup, it took "possible friends" from my email account, a different email account than the one used to setup the first page. The possibles included Sir. I was in such a hurry that I just allowed everyone. It wasn't until a few days later that I started to wonder. Well, seeing him on there made me think about him, at which point I listened to some music he gave me. When listening to Counting Crow's "A Long December," I got stuck on "And if you think that I could be forgiven / I wish you would." Now, I know that we "lost touch" because, after I revealed on my blog, which his girlfriend read, that he was seeing someone else as well, he texted me that I had "burned the bridge with him." But isn't Christmas and New Year about catching up with people, about forgiveness, about figuring out why you lost touch in the first place and fixing it? So I periodically checked all my friends, to see if it still showed "request pending" or not.
Well, I got my answer today. He had disappeared from my "All Friends" page, which includes the pending requests. As he wasn't a friend and he wasn't still pending, he had denied my request. Maybe I would have had better luck if I'd thought about those song lyrics and included them in my request. I try to keep reminding myself that he's from one of those Italian families where someone becomes dead to you when they wrong you too many times or too severely. Even if he wanted to, he probably wouldn't go against that. I try to remind myself that he doesn't know that I'm not completely that same person, that I'm on better drugs, that I've gotten used to being alone and keeping a great deal more inside, that I've found a level of compassion I didn't know I nad. I try to remind myself that I'm not sure I really want to be friends with him, in a reality kinda way, as I don't know who he is anymore and I was starting to realize that there were things I really didn't like about him when we were still friends. But all I feel is that I got the ultimate "coal in my stocking" Christmas present, that I wasn't good enough, then and I'm not good enough, now to be friends with. Happy Christmas to you too, Sir.
It's not Christmas 'til somebody cries. I just wish it wasn't always me.
Friday, November 20, 2009
What Would You Do?
What would you do if you observed a crowd of people in which several people were fighting?
Those fighting are all high school-aged boys. While you cannot tell exactly who is fighting who, there does not appear to be one boy who is being singled out for attack.
I'll let you think for a minute.......
To me, it seems like there are three options: stop the fight yourself, call the cops, or do nothing.
Ever since I was in this situation, I have been wondering how the people that I know (think they) would react in this situation and why. Especailly why if you pick the third option.
The third option is what I chose.
So here is what happened: For those of you who don't know, I live just down the street from a high school. Many of the students walk right by my house on their way to and from school, which offers me no shortage of laughs when they wander into my yard and promptly step in my dogs' crap. (hehehehe) And aside from a little bit of traffic conjestion and teenagers' smoking on the corner, we've never had any problems. Last week, just as school was letting out, I heard a commotion outside, which, as I was standing near the basement windows, I was just at the right level to see. Outside, there was a decent-sized crowd, mostly boys, but a few girls. The noise of the crowd was unmistakenly that of a fight. I didn't really see any contact being made in the fight, mostly just swinging fists. The fight, followed by the crowd, moved into the street and then across the street as well, backing up cars full of teenagers and parents.
I thought about it, and I ended up doing nothing. Not that there was a great deal of time to do anything anyway, as high school fights are usually over before they start. Now, I thought about calling the cops. Hell, there is a station down the street, directly across the street from the school. But I kinda felt like "boys will be boys." A certain amount of fighting is to be expected, right? I'm not saying that I think a boy has to fight or that a girl can't/shouldn't. But I just don't think it's that big of a deal.
Now a normal person would probably have stopped thinking about it after that. Or after they knew that no one was hurt. But I'm not a normal person. The first thing I thought about was the recent death of a high school boy in Chicago, which a bystander could record on his/her cell phone but didn't do anything to help. At the time, in the national news at least, there was a great deal of talk about bystanders not helping or intervening, as well as speculation that the cops wouldn't get anywhere because of a culture of "stop snitching." Of course, just a cursory look at a few more recent articles shows show that the boy appears to be an innocent bystander who walked into a fight between rival neighborhood gangs, then becoming the target of one group's rage. Many bystanders and people at the nearby community center came to help the boy once the others stopped, but, honestly, seeing the video and reading that they were swinging railway ties... well, I don't think I'd be jumping in that fight either. Hell, there was no way I was jumping in the rather minor skirmish outside my own house. But still, shortly after the fight, I was wondering, "What if one of those kids had died and I did nothing to stop it?"
About a decade ago, as a scared and depressed recent college dropout, I went to a lookout area in my boyfriend's hometown, to think and kill some time while waiting for him to come back to his folks house. My reverie was interupted by a girl's screams and a boy's yelling. A young man was dragging a young woman down the path, telling her that she was never going to get away from him, that he was going to kill himself and take her with him, etc. I knew there was no way I could really do anything directly against him. So I did the next best thing. I called the cops. These were the days before everyone had a cell phone, so I ran to the nearest house, got no answer, ran to the next, got no answer, then finally found someone home in the middle of the day in the middle of the week. I saw the cops when I went back to get my car. She didn't look physically hurt. I felt satisfied that I'd done the right thing.
Another thing I've thought of quite a bit since witnessing the fight is what psychology calls "the bystander effect." Basically, the more people there are, the less likely an individual is to help, intervene, or call for help. In part, this is because people think that someone else will call for help. Also, people take their cues on how to react from those around them, so if everyone around them seems calm and isn't acting, they also stay calm and don't act. Maybe this is why I reacted when I was the only one around but did not act when I knew there were a dozen plus other witnesses. At the time, I could have very well dismissed this as just an overly-emotional teenage lover's spat. We all like to think that we are good people who would "do the right thing" in any given situation. But would we really? And how do we know what the right thing is?
So..... please tell me..... what would you do?
Those fighting are all high school-aged boys. While you cannot tell exactly who is fighting who, there does not appear to be one boy who is being singled out for attack.
I'll let you think for a minute.......
To me, it seems like there are three options: stop the fight yourself, call the cops, or do nothing.
Ever since I was in this situation, I have been wondering how the people that I know (think they) would react in this situation and why. Especailly why if you pick the third option.
The third option is what I chose.
So here is what happened: For those of you who don't know, I live just down the street from a high school. Many of the students walk right by my house on their way to and from school, which offers me no shortage of laughs when they wander into my yard and promptly step in my dogs' crap. (hehehehe) And aside from a little bit of traffic conjestion and teenagers' smoking on the corner, we've never had any problems. Last week, just as school was letting out, I heard a commotion outside, which, as I was standing near the basement windows, I was just at the right level to see. Outside, there was a decent-sized crowd, mostly boys, but a few girls. The noise of the crowd was unmistakenly that of a fight. I didn't really see any contact being made in the fight, mostly just swinging fists. The fight, followed by the crowd, moved into the street and then across the street as well, backing up cars full of teenagers and parents.
I thought about it, and I ended up doing nothing. Not that there was a great deal of time to do anything anyway, as high school fights are usually over before they start. Now, I thought about calling the cops. Hell, there is a station down the street, directly across the street from the school. But I kinda felt like "boys will be boys." A certain amount of fighting is to be expected, right? I'm not saying that I think a boy has to fight or that a girl can't/shouldn't. But I just don't think it's that big of a deal.
Now a normal person would probably have stopped thinking about it after that. Or after they knew that no one was hurt. But I'm not a normal person. The first thing I thought about was the recent death of a high school boy in Chicago, which a bystander could record on his/her cell phone but didn't do anything to help. At the time, in the national news at least, there was a great deal of talk about bystanders not helping or intervening, as well as speculation that the cops wouldn't get anywhere because of a culture of "stop snitching." Of course, just a cursory look at a few more recent articles shows show that the boy appears to be an innocent bystander who walked into a fight between rival neighborhood gangs, then becoming the target of one group's rage. Many bystanders and people at the nearby community center came to help the boy once the others stopped, but, honestly, seeing the video and reading that they were swinging railway ties... well, I don't think I'd be jumping in that fight either. Hell, there was no way I was jumping in the rather minor skirmish outside my own house. But still, shortly after the fight, I was wondering, "What if one of those kids had died and I did nothing to stop it?"
About a decade ago, as a scared and depressed recent college dropout, I went to a lookout area in my boyfriend's hometown, to think and kill some time while waiting for him to come back to his folks house. My reverie was interupted by a girl's screams and a boy's yelling. A young man was dragging a young woman down the path, telling her that she was never going to get away from him, that he was going to kill himself and take her with him, etc. I knew there was no way I could really do anything directly against him. So I did the next best thing. I called the cops. These were the days before everyone had a cell phone, so I ran to the nearest house, got no answer, ran to the next, got no answer, then finally found someone home in the middle of the day in the middle of the week. I saw the cops when I went back to get my car. She didn't look physically hurt. I felt satisfied that I'd done the right thing.
Another thing I've thought of quite a bit since witnessing the fight is what psychology calls "the bystander effect." Basically, the more people there are, the less likely an individual is to help, intervene, or call for help. In part, this is because people think that someone else will call for help. Also, people take their cues on how to react from those around them, so if everyone around them seems calm and isn't acting, they also stay calm and don't act. Maybe this is why I reacted when I was the only one around but did not act when I knew there were a dozen plus other witnesses. At the time, I could have very well dismissed this as just an overly-emotional teenage lover's spat. We all like to think that we are good people who would "do the right thing" in any given situation. But would we really? And how do we know what the right thing is?
So..... please tell me..... what would you do?
Friday, October 30, 2009
Differential Diagnosis II : Lungs of a 90 Year Old
Apparently what I'm going through is all the pre-House-episode stuff that the patient goes through before they get to be treated by House's illustrious team.
The steriods worked great, when I was taking them three and four times a day. See, you get a blister-pack, with how many pills you are supposed to take and when. You start out with about 8 pills a day and gradually back off, taking one pill the last day. Of course, the steriods also caused me to feel alittle manic, with bouncing off the walls energy, but I kept reminding myself of how I got the energy and that I'd pay later, in sleep and perhaps depression, which helped. But on the night before the last day, I started coughing again. And despite supposably being better than Prilosec, the Nexium wasn't making a noticable difference. I was back to where I'd been before. My biggest comfort was that at least I knew I wasn't contagious and my coughing couldn't make my uncle, or any other member of my family, sick. I was resigned to the fact that the cough was here to stay.
I did, however, have a slight shift in thinking, if not a full blown change of heart. A friend of mine, who I know is very aware of how his own body looks, but doesn't limit the kinds of food he eats, brought up that he just cut back his portion sizes when he started to feel like he was putting on a few pounds. It meant that he could still enjoy any kind of food he wanted to, just not as much, though he'd always save the rest for a later meal or share it with someone else. This would also be very helpful for me, since I've overeaten to the point of being ill several times over this past summer and fall. So I decided then that I'd really try to eat less, control my portions, and not drink so much soda, which is really just empty calories, no matter how much I love it.
I expected a disheartening but uneventful follow-up appointment. But the Physicians Assistant brought up the chest x-ray and a breathing test, just to be sure. I agreed, though I was pretty sure that it was going to come back all clean and she'd tell me to lose weight and change my diet. But that was not the case. The chest x-ray was fine, unless the doctor finds something that was hiding under my nipple piercings. It was the breathing test that came back with more troubling results. The PA told me that I had the lungs of a 90 year old. Now, I've done a bit of internet research and "lung age" seems to be less a diagnostic explanation and more something that sounds scary and is used to scary smokers into quitting smoking, because you put it in terms someone can understand. Now, that doesn't mean that it's wrong or untrue. I think she wanted to convey in real-world terms how bad my breathing and lungs seem from their tests, so that I'll be more likely to go the distance in going to see a pulmonologist, who she is hoping will be able to tell me what is wrong with me, despite the fact that I don't have insurance and would have to come up with the money on my own. I think if I wasn't on the lithium, I would have cried right there in the exam room.
I am already in the process of setting up an appointment with a pulmonologist at a local university hospital that my uncle's boyfriend has been able to set up payment plans with, in the hopes that it will be easy for me to do the same thing. The hospital's pulmonology division is currently waiting to get my records from the primary care doctor, then they'll call me to make an appointment time. That was the PA's main treatment plan, though she also gave me a sample of Symbicort, which is for COPD and asthma, and she says should help. She promises to try to get more samples for me. As for the previous push to lose weight, etc, that seems to not be as important now, at least until I get a more firm diagnosis. She must have overlooked that I'm on lithium when I was there for my first appointment, because, when she did mention weight loss this time, she told me that, because I was on lithium, it would be more difficult that usual, so I shouldn't feel too bad if I can't really lose weight, though losing weight and being more active will always help and I should still change what I eat, at least to help manage the acid reflux.
The hardest part right now is the waiting and not knowing. I don't know what is wrong or why or what caused it or what to do about it. I don't know what it will cost to treat it. One thing that is kinda driving me crazy right now is that everything I see online attributes almost all of these things to smoking, but I just can't imagine that the small amount of smoking I've done in my life has done this much damage, especially when compared to regular smokers my age and older, who don't have similar problems yet. Yes, I'm aware that ANY amount of smoking will do some damage to your lungs. But not this much from that little. Then again, Christopher Reeves' wife died from lung cancer and she never smoked a day in her life. (Not to say that I think I have cancer. I absolutely do not think I have cancer.) But this is where your mind goes while you are waiting for an answer. Especially when you know that few doctors are as brilliant as House, not that you have the money to pay him.
The steriods worked great, when I was taking them three and four times a day. See, you get a blister-pack, with how many pills you are supposed to take and when. You start out with about 8 pills a day and gradually back off, taking one pill the last day. Of course, the steriods also caused me to feel alittle manic, with bouncing off the walls energy, but I kept reminding myself of how I got the energy and that I'd pay later, in sleep and perhaps depression, which helped. But on the night before the last day, I started coughing again. And despite supposably being better than Prilosec, the Nexium wasn't making a noticable difference. I was back to where I'd been before. My biggest comfort was that at least I knew I wasn't contagious and my coughing couldn't make my uncle, or any other member of my family, sick. I was resigned to the fact that the cough was here to stay.
I did, however, have a slight shift in thinking, if not a full blown change of heart. A friend of mine, who I know is very aware of how his own body looks, but doesn't limit the kinds of food he eats, brought up that he just cut back his portion sizes when he started to feel like he was putting on a few pounds. It meant that he could still enjoy any kind of food he wanted to, just not as much, though he'd always save the rest for a later meal or share it with someone else. This would also be very helpful for me, since I've overeaten to the point of being ill several times over this past summer and fall. So I decided then that I'd really try to eat less, control my portions, and not drink so much soda, which is really just empty calories, no matter how much I love it.
I expected a disheartening but uneventful follow-up appointment. But the Physicians Assistant brought up the chest x-ray and a breathing test, just to be sure. I agreed, though I was pretty sure that it was going to come back all clean and she'd tell me to lose weight and change my diet. But that was not the case. The chest x-ray was fine, unless the doctor finds something that was hiding under my nipple piercings. It was the breathing test that came back with more troubling results. The PA told me that I had the lungs of a 90 year old. Now, I've done a bit of internet research and "lung age" seems to be less a diagnostic explanation and more something that sounds scary and is used to scary smokers into quitting smoking, because you put it in terms someone can understand. Now, that doesn't mean that it's wrong or untrue. I think she wanted to convey in real-world terms how bad my breathing and lungs seem from their tests, so that I'll be more likely to go the distance in going to see a pulmonologist, who she is hoping will be able to tell me what is wrong with me, despite the fact that I don't have insurance and would have to come up with the money on my own. I think if I wasn't on the lithium, I would have cried right there in the exam room.
I am already in the process of setting up an appointment with a pulmonologist at a local university hospital that my uncle's boyfriend has been able to set up payment plans with, in the hopes that it will be easy for me to do the same thing. The hospital's pulmonology division is currently waiting to get my records from the primary care doctor, then they'll call me to make an appointment time. That was the PA's main treatment plan, though she also gave me a sample of Symbicort, which is for COPD and asthma, and she says should help. She promises to try to get more samples for me. As for the previous push to lose weight, etc, that seems to not be as important now, at least until I get a more firm diagnosis. She must have overlooked that I'm on lithium when I was there for my first appointment, because, when she did mention weight loss this time, she told me that, because I was on lithium, it would be more difficult that usual, so I shouldn't feel too bad if I can't really lose weight, though losing weight and being more active will always help and I should still change what I eat, at least to help manage the acid reflux.
The hardest part right now is the waiting and not knowing. I don't know what is wrong or why or what caused it or what to do about it. I don't know what it will cost to treat it. One thing that is kinda driving me crazy right now is that everything I see online attributes almost all of these things to smoking, but I just can't imagine that the small amount of smoking I've done in my life has done this much damage, especially when compared to regular smokers my age and older, who don't have similar problems yet. Yes, I'm aware that ANY amount of smoking will do some damage to your lungs. But not this much from that little. Then again, Christopher Reeves' wife died from lung cancer and she never smoked a day in her life. (Not to say that I think I have cancer. I absolutely do not think I have cancer.) But this is where your mind goes while you are waiting for an answer. Especially when you know that few doctors are as brilliant as House, not that you have the money to pay him.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Differential Diagnosis
In July, I developed strep. Yep, in the middle of summer, during a period where I saw very few people, I somehow developed strep. It wouldn't have been as big of a deal, but my stomach didn't like the antibiotics. Even once the strep was gone, I still had a weezy cough that cough medicine and mucinex didn't really help. The cough reminded me alot of the cough that I had before I went on medication for acid reflux, so I thought that my esophagus might have just gotten extra-more-irritated during the stomach vs. antibiotics battle and began to take a larger dose of over-the-counter generic prilosec than I had previously. (I was also thinking that my recent weight gain probably wasn't helping either.) That didn't seem to help though. I was still coughing, with weezing on and off. I didn't really want to do anything about it, mostly because I felt like it was mostly psychosomatic, a symptom of the larger depression while staying alone at my grandma's house. I didn't want to spend a bunch of money that we don't really have only to be told it was in my head. But my mom was worried that it was contagious and that I might make my immuno-compromised uncle sick, so I went back to the walk-in clinic where I'd been treated for strep. The nurse practitioner there told me that it was bronchitis and to go to a doctor for a chest x-ray if I wasn't better at the end of the antibiotics that she was going to prescribe. On the one hand, I felt... vindicated? because she was telling me that it wasn't all in my head. It wasn't even because I was overweight. It was just being sick. On the other hand, I might be contagious and/or it might be something, or turn into something, serious.
But I was optimistic. I took the antibiotics. On the first day, I felt great. No weezing. No cough. Second day, I still felt fine. After 24 hours, I was no longer contagious, so I could leave the isolation of my grandma's house and go home. But, alas, it was just the placebo effect. By the night of my third day on the antibiotics, I was back to the weezing and coughing. Of course, I felt decent during the daytime, so I didn't take advantage of any doctor's office hours, for a few days. Eventually, though, it was getting ridiculous. Last night, just taking a small bag of trash outside from the basement had me reaching for an inhaler. Plus, once again, if I'm going to help my uncle during his chemo, I have to be well myself, or at least not contagious, so today I went to the doctor. A real doctor, not a walk-in clinic. Well, kinda. All I could get on short notice was a physician's assistant at my former primary care doctor's office, but still.
And..... the diagnosis is...... I'm fat. Ok, well, thankfully the PA didn't say that. But because I haven't had a fever with the cough, it's not an infection, thus neither bronchitis nor contagious. She was fairly sure that it was just severe irritation of the esophagus. She gave me a prescription of a steriod, to help with my breathing, though it will make me a crazy hyper tweeker for the next several days. She also gave me samples of nexium, namebrand and all. Her theory is that I'll only need a protein pump inhibitor, like nexium, for a bit, until my esophagus heals, then I should be able to 'manage' my acid reflux by "eating a proper diet, maintaining a healthy weight, and avoiding things that irritate it, like caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, spicy foods, acidic foods, etc [or everything good]." I have a follow up in three weeks, so we'll see what happens then, but.... Well, I'll write a later post about what I am thinking about all the dieting and not being fat issues. I just hope this really is what is wrong with me and I start feeling better. I guess I'll worry about the rest as it comes along. But this feels like the lamest episode of House ever.
But I was optimistic. I took the antibiotics. On the first day, I felt great. No weezing. No cough. Second day, I still felt fine. After 24 hours, I was no longer contagious, so I could leave the isolation of my grandma's house and go home. But, alas, it was just the placebo effect. By the night of my third day on the antibiotics, I was back to the weezing and coughing. Of course, I felt decent during the daytime, so I didn't take advantage of any doctor's office hours, for a few days. Eventually, though, it was getting ridiculous. Last night, just taking a small bag of trash outside from the basement had me reaching for an inhaler. Plus, once again, if I'm going to help my uncle during his chemo, I have to be well myself, or at least not contagious, so today I went to the doctor. A real doctor, not a walk-in clinic. Well, kinda. All I could get on short notice was a physician's assistant at my former primary care doctor's office, but still.
And..... the diagnosis is...... I'm fat. Ok, well, thankfully the PA didn't say that. But because I haven't had a fever with the cough, it's not an infection, thus neither bronchitis nor contagious. She was fairly sure that it was just severe irritation of the esophagus. She gave me a prescription of a steriod, to help with my breathing, though it will make me a crazy hyper tweeker for the next several days. She also gave me samples of nexium, namebrand and all. Her theory is that I'll only need a protein pump inhibitor, like nexium, for a bit, until my esophagus heals, then I should be able to 'manage' my acid reflux by "eating a proper diet, maintaining a healthy weight, and avoiding things that irritate it, like caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, spicy foods, acidic foods, etc [or everything good]." I have a follow up in three weeks, so we'll see what happens then, but.... Well, I'll write a later post about what I am thinking about all the dieting and not being fat issues. I just hope this really is what is wrong with me and I start feeling better. I guess I'll worry about the rest as it comes along. But this feels like the lamest episode of House ever.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Crickets
I'm not sure which I hate more:
The creepy camel/cave/stone cricket that climbs up walls in my basement home in Slightly Smaller Midwestern City and jump diagonally off the wall when you try to kill them, as seen here
OR
The plain-jane crickets here at my Gram's house which I hardly ever see but which are noise as hell and I can never find to kill when I can't sleep because they are chirping so loudly
I remember one summer night here at my Gram's house when I was 10 or 11, suffering from insomnia back in the days when I was still to young to just stay up, which was only exacerbated by the fact that there was a cricket somewhere in the room that just would not stop chirping. I even had a small air cleaner on, as I usually did to drown out any other noises in the house, but that little cricket was a great deal louder than any air cleaner would ever be. So I searched for him in the little back bedroom, moving everything in every corner, but to no avail. I couldn't find him. Ever since, I have hated those buggers.
But, on the other hand, they aren't as creepy as those damn cave crickets.
Yeah, I'm never happy.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Three Days in Bed - Holly Williams
I think that this is such a beautiful song. And it definately describes how I feel about my life right now. Then again, maybe for everyone, the perfect remedy for even just the everday life is a little danger.
Three Days in Bed - Holly Williams
The clock never stops and I hate this damn phone
Somedays I wanna run from the place I call home
I guess I'm just needing some danger
Give me 3 days in bed with a stranger
We drank all our wine on the champs elysees
We got carried away on the banks of the seine
Woke up on old boulevard St. Germain
Give me 3 days in bed with a stranger
You take the hard stuff it..s menthols for me
I don't smoke but I do on occasions like these
Now that I've got me a French man to please
I'll have one robertino and you can have me
I barely can wait to go back there again
With your body so warm and your face in my hands
You know how I love to meet all your demands
Give me 3 days in bed with a stranger
You take the hard stuff it's menthols for me
I don..t smoke but I do on occasions like these
Now that I've got me a French man please
I..ll have one robertino and you can have me
The clock never stops and I hate this damn phone
Somedays I wanna run from the place I call home
I guess I'm just needing some danger
Give me 3 days in bed with a stranger
(Can't embed but here's the link to the video on youtube.)
Three Days in Bed - Holly Williams
The clock never stops and I hate this damn phone
Somedays I wanna run from the place I call home
I guess I'm just needing some danger
Give me 3 days in bed with a stranger
We drank all our wine on the champs elysees
We got carried away on the banks of the seine
Woke up on old boulevard St. Germain
Give me 3 days in bed with a stranger
You take the hard stuff it..s menthols for me
I don't smoke but I do on occasions like these
Now that I've got me a French man to please
I'll have one robertino and you can have me
I barely can wait to go back there again
With your body so warm and your face in my hands
You know how I love to meet all your demands
Give me 3 days in bed with a stranger
You take the hard stuff it's menthols for me
I don..t smoke but I do on occasions like these
Now that I've got me a French man please
I..ll have one robertino and you can have me
The clock never stops and I hate this damn phone
Somedays I wanna run from the place I call home
I guess I'm just needing some danger
Give me 3 days in bed with a stranger
(Can't embed but here's the link to the video on youtube.)
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
What I've Been Doing
Hi all. I know I've been missing for awhile. Mostly I've just felt like I don't have much to say. I've mostly been staying at my Gram's house, taking care of this house and my Gram's very old but still kooky dog. My uncle stays here when he needs to, like when he has doctors appointments or for his semi-monthly experimental chemo treatments. During that time, we both take care of the house. But my uncle wants to live his life, see his friends, and he has his own home six hours away from Gram's that he has to take care of as well. So I end up being alone for many days in a row, over a week at this point, with little to officially do.
Having very little to officially do combined with not having anyone around to see if I do it or not has proven to be a recipe for... well, not a recipe for disaster, more a recipe for slackertude. Actually, that might not be the best description either. Shit. Ok, so officially, this past week+ while my uncle has been gone, I only had to care for the house and dog. I've done that. The house is clean. The flowers outside are watered and healthy. The dog is fed, watered, and petted. My mom asked me to go through, sort, and donate my grandma's clothes and to also clean up, arrange, etc, Gram's computer desk area. But as going through the stuff of someone you've lost can often be difficult and traumatic, Mom said to only do it as I felt up to it. I haven't touched the desk at all. It just seems so daunting. Last Monday, I did finish sorting through and bagging up Gram's clothes to donate. But I still haven't taken them to the donation drop off. Over a week later. FAIL.
On the other hand, the fact I haven't dropped off the donations is not just me being a slacker, but also due to my erratic sleeping schedule, or lack of schedule. I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm the nocturnal house(not)wife. That works for many things, most things these days. I can clean and cook (yes folks, I've been cooking a bit lately) anytime. I'm up by dinnertime, which means I can cook that for my uncle and I, when he's here. I also water the plants late in the evening. I can even do the shopping, as we have several 24-hour grocery stores and Walmarts in our area. I was even able to drag myself out of bed early enough to go to a Happy Hour sponsored by a local lesbian group held actually in the Slightly Larger Midwestern City. (Gram's house is in the suburbs of said city.) What I haven't been able to do it get up and go to the art museum, a matinee art house flick in the city, go swimming at the neighbor's house, or get my Gram's clothes to the donation center. Sigh. Ah, well, at least I still have stuff to do if I've ever up during the day.
Obviously, this rather uninteresting life doesn't necessarily lend itself to a ton of posts about my life. And I'm blaming drugs for my (fiction) writer's block.
But I'm not completely cut off. I have the internet here (which means liberal blogs) and cable tv with DVR. Ah, DVR, how I love you. We had just gotten a DVR at my parents' house before I left but only on the tv upstairs, the one my parents watch until they go to sleep, the only one with digital cable (=BBC America, G4, Logo, On Demand channels) and HBO. Downstairs, I have expanded basic cable on a jerry-rigged connection we don't officially have with two VCRs hooked up in tandem so I can tape two shows and watch a third all at the same time. Gram's system is pretty nice. Despite not having HBO (which means I have to catch up on True Blood whenever I visit my parents' house), Gram's system allows me to DVR a ton of shows and watch them anytime on whichever tv I want. In addition to DVRing regular shows, I've been recording quite a few movies, mostly from the Sundance Channel. So I thought I'd share ideas I had about movies I had seen. But beware *****SPOILERS AHEAD*******
Wallander: One Step Behind (Season 1, Episode 3) (PBS Mystery)
I really wanted to like this. I wanted a more contemporary British mystery series to get addicted to, especially one that I could watch when I was without BBC America. But it turns out this isn't a British series. It is based on a Danish mystery series, set and filmed in Denmark, though they plopped a very tired and old-looking Kenneth Branagh along with a bunch of dark-haired very British people into. It was confusing.
My biggest complaint was their use of what I can only term as the "transgender killer" gimmick. Sadly, that same week, one of my favorite shows, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, did the same type of thing with the same insensitivity. I think that mainstream television is getting away from reflexively showing gay, lesbian, and bisexual people as necessarily having something mentally wrong with which causes them to be a criminal. Unfortunately, they have a long way to go in how they portray transgender people, who they all turn into Norman Bates from Psycho. Not only is it not true, it's insulting. Though it's been awhile since I've seen it so I might be wrong, I think a good example of a procedural crime drama with a plot that dealt with the transgender community, including having a killer who is transgender is CSI: Ch-ch-changes (Season 5, Episode 8), which shows a variety of lifestyles that transgender people live and issues that they deal with in a compassionate manner and without making it seem like the murderer killed because she is a scary, pathologically evil deviant.
I'm a Cyborg But That's Ok (Sundance Channel)
Yeah, the title got me too. In fact, I DVRd it on the crazy title alone. Happily enough, it turned out it's directed by Chan-wook Park, this crazy Korean director. The films of his that I'd seen previously were part of his vengeance trilogy (I recommend Oldboy), which are dark, gritty, violent, and bloody. That's why I was surprised at the relative lightness of this movie. The premise is that a young woman, distressed by her Alzheimer's-stricken grandmother's institutionalization, comes to believe she is a cyborg on a mission to kill the "white coats" who locked up her grandmother. Of course, her beliefs land her in a mental institution filled with other colorful characters. It sorta reminds me of the lightness and quirkiness of Amelie, though in a mental institution, directed by a guy who focuses on fear, violence, and pain. It doesn't have a Hollywood ending, but that's ok.
My favorite part involves how they patient who has a crush on the cyborg convinces her to eat, as ensuring that patients eat is a big deal in mental institutions (believe me). She tries to lick batteries and such to recharge, but that isn't working, both in that she doesn't have alot of energy and that the "white coats" are trying to force her to eat. Our cyborg is afraid that she'll rust if she puts human food in her body. So the man crushing on her convinces her that he has created a device, which he then implants in her, that will transfer human food into energy that will recharge her cyborg body. It is a very tense but happy set of scenes.
Sadly, this movie is not available on DVD in the US yet.
Obscene: A Portrait of Barney Rossett and Grove Press (Sundance Channel)
This hilarious documentary focused on how Barney Rossett, a Chicago-bred, socialist schoolboy, ran the controversial publishing outfit Grove Press that published, and went to court to continue to publish, the first American editions of Lady Chatterly's Lover and Tropic of Cancer. Grove Press was also the American publisher of Samuel Beckett, as well as the publisher of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Rossett's office was bombed the day that Grove Press' literary magazine published the first chapter of Che Guevara. Rossett brought I Am Curious Yellow to the US, showcasing the new style, politics, and frank sexuality emerging in Swedish film in the late 1960s. He spent his life bringing works of art, mostly literary, that he found interesting, stimulating, radical, and worthwhile to the American public.
Oh the other hand, Grove Press was only profitable for a handful of years. Rossett was eventually pushed out of the company. He is pretty much a broke, elderly man, living in an apartment several flights of stairs up from the street.
Maybe the end is kinda sad. Guess that's why they add the footage of him playing with his dog. But it's still really interesting to learn the story, and to have it told to you in part by this old man who I can barely imagine being called a smut peddler and deviant back in the day.
Vanishing Point (1997 version) (Fox Movie Channel)
I'd been slightly interested in seeing the original 1971 flick since I watched the Deathproof half of Grindhouse. I recorded this to watch while I drifted off to sleep, as I figured that the remake wouldn't be nearly as good as the original, not even realizing at the time that the 1997 version was a made-for-tv movie.
For the most part, it was kinda lame. Some decent car chases, but way too much trying to combine Catholicism with Native American traditions to guide the guy back home in a way that avoids the cops. But some of the underlying politics really piqued my interests. The main character, speeding cross-country to be with his wife who's in labor, being chased by police just for speeding, becomes a folk hero in large part to a radio DJ, named The Voice and played with unintentional hilarity by Jason Priestly, who tells all his listeners about the plight of this one good man trying to evade the big bad government. Now I think that The Voice's radio callers are supposed to sound like cranks and nutjobs, that this driver is supposed to be the one conspiracy that The Voice gets right. But to me, these guys sound like any caller to a (usually right-wing) radio talk show. Well, if the host actually let them talk long enough to say more than "I dis/agree with you." Of course, it also reminds me of the recent govt report warning of a rise in right-wing extremism and the furor that it was met with. This film was made during the Clinton era, after the Oklahoma City bombing, and it portrays the FBI as trigger happy to label anyone as part of a violent militia. It seems interesting that a mainstream television network would make a movie with that kind of a sentiment- that the government is coming after you, even if you are a (mostly) law-abiding citizen. Then again, I guess it was Fox that made the movie. It seems like an interesting snapshot from that era.
That Obscure Object of Desire (Sundance)
Speaking of time capsules...
There are some things in this movie that I'm hoping can only be explained by the time period.
Let's go back a step. This is a 1977 French movie by Spanish expat director Luis Bunuel, who's films have always had a surrealist bent and pointed out flaws and hypocrisies in religion, the upper classes, and contemporary life and mores. This movie follows a wealthy old Frenchman's tale to his train car mates about his romantic pursuit of the young bruised woman they had all just seen him dump a pail of water on before the train left the station. He explains to them that he'd pursued this young woman, gave her and her poverty-stricken mother money to live on, but that he'd grown increasingly frustrated when she would not have sex with him. At one point in his story, he even attempts to rape her and is only stopped by her chastity belt briefs. In the end, the morning after a particularly bad argument in which she says she doesn't love him and proceeds to get naked with a much younger man in front of him, the Frenchman beats the woman and makes plans to leave town, which is where our story started.
The biggest thing that struck me was the the Frenchman's train mates think this is all perfectly ok. These are all upper-class people - a psychologist, a judge, and a well-to-do mother with her child. While they think that it is curious that the Frenchman would dump the water on the woman, they didn't necessarily think it wrong. The Frenchman tells the story to show why he'd have been justified in killing her and they agree with him by the end of his story. Yeah, nothing wrong with that.
Upon further thought, though, maybe Bunuel was using this to point out that the morals of these upstanding upper-class members of society are a bit out of whack. None of them seem to think it wrong that this man is trying to seduce a much younger woman who he refuses to marry. Bunuel also seems to point to the flexible morals of the religious with the actions of the mother of the young woman. The mother is a devout Catholic, who attends Mass frequently, and doesn't want her daughter to work because she has heard of the temptations that young woman face out there. But she happily departs the house, to go to church, as soon as the Frenchman arrives, leaving him alone with her daughter. Of course, she takes the money the Frenchman gives her first. The mother also seems very happy to allow her daughter to go live with the Frenchman, without any promises of marriage, but an envelop of money in her hand. It seems like the mother turns a very blind eye because of the man's class and money.
But the coolest thing about this movie was that Bunuel used two different actresses to play the main female role. Both women are thin, dark-haired, and in their early 20s, but they look different enough that you notice - different hair texture, facial structures, temperaments. The actresses do a whole scene, don't change in the middle of a scene. There's no real rhyme or reason as to which scenes a particular actress is in. At first, I wasn't even sure it was happening. I read online somewhere that some viewers don't ever notice. When asked in an interview why he did this, Bunuel said that one of the actresses walked out mid-movie and he didn't want to reshoot her scenes. On the other hand, Bunuel was known to lie about his method and the ideas behind his directing. The info about the movie on the cable box said that the woman had split personalities, but I don't think that's the reason for the two actresses because that's never presented in the movie and the woman doesn't actually present two different and distinct personalities, much less personalities that correspond to the different actresses. I wonder if it wasn't in part to show how changing and volatile people of that age are (the woman says she's 18), as well as pointing out the artifice of film, that the actresses you see are never really the characters they portray. But this method of having more than one actor play the same character in a movie is still quite out there more than 30 years later when we hear about I'm Not There and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (Sundance)
This movie left me kinda empty. It was on all the critic's must-see lists a year or two back and it's on an important topic but... I don't know. I guess I already know the lesson this film is supposed to teach.
In 1980s Romania, a college student helps her roommate get a very illegal, very dangerous abortion in a hotel room. Yeah, that's all I have to say about it.
This is England (Sundance)
I never thought I'd write this, but I think I want to learn more about British skinheads.
Set in 1983, this movie is about a 12 year old boy who just lost his dad in the Falklands War and falls in with an older group of kids (16-19) who just happen to be skinheads, though one of them is black. (Yeah, yeah, I'm sure we can all see where this is going already.) I recognize the brick red tall Dr Martens and the tight rolled-up jeans, mostly from tv docs I've seen with American skinheads, but I've also seen them on (archival-hehe) footage of ska kids and sometimes punk kids in the 80s and early 90s. While I can't remember the name of this damn song, I remember Sir telling me once that this ska song we.... Shit, I finally found it. Ok, so the song is "A Message to You Rudy" by the ska band The Specials, which he'd previously thought was just a message to someone they knew named Rudy. But it really had to do with "rude boys", originally a slang term for juvenile delinquents in Jamaica that traveled to the UK and started to mean someone who was involved in the ska subculture. Sir said that the it was the band's message to the racist skinhead ska faction to stop with all that, though, looking at the actual lyrics now, it doesn't say that anywhere in the actual lyrics. Oh well. Also, looking at wiki a bit, it looks like skinheads really started as a branch off of British mod culture, when young people, even working class young people, started to have a bit more disposable income and spent it on their own style. Originally it had nothing to do with politics and wiki speculates that the men cut their hair that short because it would be dangerous to wear long hair in industrial jobs and in fights and also because middle-class kids were currently growing their hair long. That's all very interesting. I'll really have to read up more on that.
Anyway, I also found this to be an interesting movie in how you see the small ways in which this kid starts to fall into this group and how an older more politically motivated skinhead exploits this kid's loss to get his loyalty. It's kinda scary how little it can take when a person is young and/or vulnerable. (I hope I don't meet a cult leader anytime soon or I'm done for.) Overall, great period piece.
Well, that's all I have for you right now, kiddies. I'll try not to stay gone so long again.
Having very little to officially do combined with not having anyone around to see if I do it or not has proven to be a recipe for... well, not a recipe for disaster, more a recipe for slackertude. Actually, that might not be the best description either. Shit. Ok, so officially, this past week+ while my uncle has been gone, I only had to care for the house and dog. I've done that. The house is clean. The flowers outside are watered and healthy. The dog is fed, watered, and petted. My mom asked me to go through, sort, and donate my grandma's clothes and to also clean up, arrange, etc, Gram's computer desk area. But as going through the stuff of someone you've lost can often be difficult and traumatic, Mom said to only do it as I felt up to it. I haven't touched the desk at all. It just seems so daunting. Last Monday, I did finish sorting through and bagging up Gram's clothes to donate. But I still haven't taken them to the donation drop off. Over a week later. FAIL.
On the other hand, the fact I haven't dropped off the donations is not just me being a slacker, but also due to my erratic sleeping schedule, or lack of schedule. I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm the nocturnal house(not)wife. That works for many things, most things these days. I can clean and cook (yes folks, I've been cooking a bit lately) anytime. I'm up by dinnertime, which means I can cook that for my uncle and I, when he's here. I also water the plants late in the evening. I can even do the shopping, as we have several 24-hour grocery stores and Walmarts in our area. I was even able to drag myself out of bed early enough to go to a Happy Hour sponsored by a local lesbian group held actually in the Slightly Larger Midwestern City. (Gram's house is in the suburbs of said city.) What I haven't been able to do it get up and go to the art museum, a matinee art house flick in the city, go swimming at the neighbor's house, or get my Gram's clothes to the donation center. Sigh. Ah, well, at least I still have stuff to do if I've ever up during the day.
Obviously, this rather uninteresting life doesn't necessarily lend itself to a ton of posts about my life. And I'm blaming drugs for my (fiction) writer's block.
But I'm not completely cut off. I have the internet here (which means liberal blogs) and cable tv with DVR. Ah, DVR, how I love you. We had just gotten a DVR at my parents' house before I left but only on the tv upstairs, the one my parents watch until they go to sleep, the only one with digital cable (=BBC America, G4, Logo, On Demand channels) and HBO. Downstairs, I have expanded basic cable on a jerry-rigged connection we don't officially have with two VCRs hooked up in tandem so I can tape two shows and watch a third all at the same time. Gram's system is pretty nice. Despite not having HBO (which means I have to catch up on True Blood whenever I visit my parents' house), Gram's system allows me to DVR a ton of shows and watch them anytime on whichever tv I want. In addition to DVRing regular shows, I've been recording quite a few movies, mostly from the Sundance Channel. So I thought I'd share ideas I had about movies I had seen. But beware *****SPOILERS AHEAD*******
Wallander: One Step Behind (Season 1, Episode 3) (PBS Mystery)
I really wanted to like this. I wanted a more contemporary British mystery series to get addicted to, especially one that I could watch when I was without BBC America. But it turns out this isn't a British series. It is based on a Danish mystery series, set and filmed in Denmark, though they plopped a very tired and old-looking Kenneth Branagh along with a bunch of dark-haired very British people into. It was confusing.
My biggest complaint was their use of what I can only term as the "transgender killer" gimmick. Sadly, that same week, one of my favorite shows, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, did the same type of thing with the same insensitivity. I think that mainstream television is getting away from reflexively showing gay, lesbian, and bisexual people as necessarily having something mentally wrong with which causes them to be a criminal. Unfortunately, they have a long way to go in how they portray transgender people, who they all turn into Norman Bates from Psycho. Not only is it not true, it's insulting. Though it's been awhile since I've seen it so I might be wrong, I think a good example of a procedural crime drama with a plot that dealt with the transgender community, including having a killer who is transgender is CSI: Ch-ch-changes (Season 5, Episode 8), which shows a variety of lifestyles that transgender people live and issues that they deal with in a compassionate manner and without making it seem like the murderer killed because she is a scary, pathologically evil deviant.
I'm a Cyborg But That's Ok (Sundance Channel)
Yeah, the title got me too. In fact, I DVRd it on the crazy title alone. Happily enough, it turned out it's directed by Chan-wook Park, this crazy Korean director. The films of his that I'd seen previously were part of his vengeance trilogy (I recommend Oldboy), which are dark, gritty, violent, and bloody. That's why I was surprised at the relative lightness of this movie. The premise is that a young woman, distressed by her Alzheimer's-stricken grandmother's institutionalization, comes to believe she is a cyborg on a mission to kill the "white coats" who locked up her grandmother. Of course, her beliefs land her in a mental institution filled with other colorful characters. It sorta reminds me of the lightness and quirkiness of Amelie, though in a mental institution, directed by a guy who focuses on fear, violence, and pain. It doesn't have a Hollywood ending, but that's ok.
My favorite part involves how they patient who has a crush on the cyborg convinces her to eat, as ensuring that patients eat is a big deal in mental institutions (believe me). She tries to lick batteries and such to recharge, but that isn't working, both in that she doesn't have alot of energy and that the "white coats" are trying to force her to eat. Our cyborg is afraid that she'll rust if she puts human food in her body. So the man crushing on her convinces her that he has created a device, which he then implants in her, that will transfer human food into energy that will recharge her cyborg body. It is a very tense but happy set of scenes.
Sadly, this movie is not available on DVD in the US yet.
Obscene: A Portrait of Barney Rossett and Grove Press (Sundance Channel)
This hilarious documentary focused on how Barney Rossett, a Chicago-bred, socialist schoolboy, ran the controversial publishing outfit Grove Press that published, and went to court to continue to publish, the first American editions of Lady Chatterly's Lover and Tropic of Cancer. Grove Press was also the American publisher of Samuel Beckett, as well as the publisher of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Rossett's office was bombed the day that Grove Press' literary magazine published the first chapter of Che Guevara. Rossett brought I Am Curious Yellow to the US, showcasing the new style, politics, and frank sexuality emerging in Swedish film in the late 1960s. He spent his life bringing works of art, mostly literary, that he found interesting, stimulating, radical, and worthwhile to the American public.
Oh the other hand, Grove Press was only profitable for a handful of years. Rossett was eventually pushed out of the company. He is pretty much a broke, elderly man, living in an apartment several flights of stairs up from the street.
Maybe the end is kinda sad. Guess that's why they add the footage of him playing with his dog. But it's still really interesting to learn the story, and to have it told to you in part by this old man who I can barely imagine being called a smut peddler and deviant back in the day.
Vanishing Point (1997 version) (Fox Movie Channel)
I'd been slightly interested in seeing the original 1971 flick since I watched the Deathproof half of Grindhouse. I recorded this to watch while I drifted off to sleep, as I figured that the remake wouldn't be nearly as good as the original, not even realizing at the time that the 1997 version was a made-for-tv movie.
For the most part, it was kinda lame. Some decent car chases, but way too much trying to combine Catholicism with Native American traditions to guide the guy back home in a way that avoids the cops. But some of the underlying politics really piqued my interests. The main character, speeding cross-country to be with his wife who's in labor, being chased by police just for speeding, becomes a folk hero in large part to a radio DJ, named The Voice and played with unintentional hilarity by Jason Priestly, who tells all his listeners about the plight of this one good man trying to evade the big bad government. Now I think that The Voice's radio callers are supposed to sound like cranks and nutjobs, that this driver is supposed to be the one conspiracy that The Voice gets right. But to me, these guys sound like any caller to a (usually right-wing) radio talk show. Well, if the host actually let them talk long enough to say more than "I dis/agree with you." Of course, it also reminds me of the recent govt report warning of a rise in right-wing extremism and the furor that it was met with. This film was made during the Clinton era, after the Oklahoma City bombing, and it portrays the FBI as trigger happy to label anyone as part of a violent militia. It seems interesting that a mainstream television network would make a movie with that kind of a sentiment- that the government is coming after you, even if you are a (mostly) law-abiding citizen. Then again, I guess it was Fox that made the movie. It seems like an interesting snapshot from that era.
That Obscure Object of Desire (Sundance)
Speaking of time capsules...
There are some things in this movie that I'm hoping can only be explained by the time period.
Let's go back a step. This is a 1977 French movie by Spanish expat director Luis Bunuel, who's films have always had a surrealist bent and pointed out flaws and hypocrisies in religion, the upper classes, and contemporary life and mores. This movie follows a wealthy old Frenchman's tale to his train car mates about his romantic pursuit of the young bruised woman they had all just seen him dump a pail of water on before the train left the station. He explains to them that he'd pursued this young woman, gave her and her poverty-stricken mother money to live on, but that he'd grown increasingly frustrated when she would not have sex with him. At one point in his story, he even attempts to rape her and is only stopped by her chastity belt briefs. In the end, the morning after a particularly bad argument in which she says she doesn't love him and proceeds to get naked with a much younger man in front of him, the Frenchman beats the woman and makes plans to leave town, which is where our story started.
The biggest thing that struck me was the the Frenchman's train mates think this is all perfectly ok. These are all upper-class people - a psychologist, a judge, and a well-to-do mother with her child. While they think that it is curious that the Frenchman would dump the water on the woman, they didn't necessarily think it wrong. The Frenchman tells the story to show why he'd have been justified in killing her and they agree with him by the end of his story. Yeah, nothing wrong with that.
Upon further thought, though, maybe Bunuel was using this to point out that the morals of these upstanding upper-class members of society are a bit out of whack. None of them seem to think it wrong that this man is trying to seduce a much younger woman who he refuses to marry. Bunuel also seems to point to the flexible morals of the religious with the actions of the mother of the young woman. The mother is a devout Catholic, who attends Mass frequently, and doesn't want her daughter to work because she has heard of the temptations that young woman face out there. But she happily departs the house, to go to church, as soon as the Frenchman arrives, leaving him alone with her daughter. Of course, she takes the money the Frenchman gives her first. The mother also seems very happy to allow her daughter to go live with the Frenchman, without any promises of marriage, but an envelop of money in her hand. It seems like the mother turns a very blind eye because of the man's class and money.
But the coolest thing about this movie was that Bunuel used two different actresses to play the main female role. Both women are thin, dark-haired, and in their early 20s, but they look different enough that you notice - different hair texture, facial structures, temperaments. The actresses do a whole scene, don't change in the middle of a scene. There's no real rhyme or reason as to which scenes a particular actress is in. At first, I wasn't even sure it was happening. I read online somewhere that some viewers don't ever notice. When asked in an interview why he did this, Bunuel said that one of the actresses walked out mid-movie and he didn't want to reshoot her scenes. On the other hand, Bunuel was known to lie about his method and the ideas behind his directing. The info about the movie on the cable box said that the woman had split personalities, but I don't think that's the reason for the two actresses because that's never presented in the movie and the woman doesn't actually present two different and distinct personalities, much less personalities that correspond to the different actresses. I wonder if it wasn't in part to show how changing and volatile people of that age are (the woman says she's 18), as well as pointing out the artifice of film, that the actresses you see are never really the characters they portray. But this method of having more than one actor play the same character in a movie is still quite out there more than 30 years later when we hear about I'm Not There and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (Sundance)
This movie left me kinda empty. It was on all the critic's must-see lists a year or two back and it's on an important topic but... I don't know. I guess I already know the lesson this film is supposed to teach.
In 1980s Romania, a college student helps her roommate get a very illegal, very dangerous abortion in a hotel room. Yeah, that's all I have to say about it.
This is England (Sundance)
I never thought I'd write this, but I think I want to learn more about British skinheads.
Set in 1983, this movie is about a 12 year old boy who just lost his dad in the Falklands War and falls in with an older group of kids (16-19) who just happen to be skinheads, though one of them is black. (Yeah, yeah, I'm sure we can all see where this is going already.) I recognize the brick red tall Dr Martens and the tight rolled-up jeans, mostly from tv docs I've seen with American skinheads, but I've also seen them on (archival-hehe) footage of ska kids and sometimes punk kids in the 80s and early 90s. While I can't remember the name of this damn song, I remember Sir telling me once that this ska song we.... Shit, I finally found it. Ok, so the song is "A Message to You Rudy" by the ska band The Specials, which he'd previously thought was just a message to someone they knew named Rudy. But it really had to do with "rude boys", originally a slang term for juvenile delinquents in Jamaica that traveled to the UK and started to mean someone who was involved in the ska subculture. Sir said that the it was the band's message to the racist skinhead ska faction to stop with all that, though, looking at the actual lyrics now, it doesn't say that anywhere in the actual lyrics. Oh well. Also, looking at wiki a bit, it looks like skinheads really started as a branch off of British mod culture, when young people, even working class young people, started to have a bit more disposable income and spent it on their own style. Originally it had nothing to do with politics and wiki speculates that the men cut their hair that short because it would be dangerous to wear long hair in industrial jobs and in fights and also because middle-class kids were currently growing their hair long. That's all very interesting. I'll really have to read up more on that.
Anyway, I also found this to be an interesting movie in how you see the small ways in which this kid starts to fall into this group and how an older more politically motivated skinhead exploits this kid's loss to get his loyalty. It's kinda scary how little it can take when a person is young and/or vulnerable. (I hope I don't meet a cult leader anytime soon or I'm done for.) Overall, great period piece.
Well, that's all I have for you right now, kiddies. I'll try not to stay gone so long again.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Re: Weight Cycling
I sent on the post The Weight Cycle to my mom and I thought I'd share her response:
Very well said my beautiful daughter! So riddle me this one....why each and every time I go to my primary care doc am I told to "lose some weight". Followed by a resounding "at-ta boy" each time I drop 10 or so pounds below the weight of my last visit, even though it appears to be the same 10 pounds over and over again. However, he never advises against the harm to my health this constant "yo yo"-ing might cause. At what % above your ideal weight would it be better to just remain at that weight as opposed to going up and down above and below it? Why does no one discuss that? What would happen to Oprah's image if she said "I'm staying put - live with it"? Well, I'd support her running for president, wouldn't you?
Mom
My rather uneducated response to my mom:
I think that doctors try to steer their patients towards healthier lifestyles and there has been a great deal of research that shows at the very least a corelation between being overweight and many harmful medical conditions. Also, we really like one-size-fits-all solutions in our society, so we have that great height/weight chart that only allows a small window of weight which is acceptable, regardless of body type, age, or anything else. Now there is a movement, especially in the fat-acceptance community, to stop equating weight with health, instead focusing on being active, eating healthy, and not really caring about weight. I think they do have some medical and academic support but not a great deal of it.
As for the yo-yo-ing aspect of things, a quick internet search pulled up a couple articles about the dangers of yo-yo dieting,
http://ezinearticles.com/?Yo-Yo-Dieting---Dangerous-Weight-Loss?&id=153031
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=21745which they restrict to meaning using a quick fad diet to lose the weight and then one puts it back on quickly when you go off the diet. This isn't exactly what I was talking about, but the more general regaining of weight after a diet, though I think the studies that the articles cite seem to address what I was talking about too. It seems like the "weight cycling slows your metabolism" is widely regarded as a myth, but there are corelations between weight cycling and a supressed immune system, higher risks of heart disease, heart attack, stroke, high blood pressure, and gallbladder disease. This article http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19621031 says that we should go on dieting because there is a higher corelation of more health conditions among overweight people than there are among (I'm assuming, not currently overweight) weight cyclers.
*Eyeroll* I'm not sure how much I believe that it is better for my overall person - physical, mental, spiritual - for me to continue to weight cycle and feel shitty about my body. So I think I might try a combination of the fat acceptance route along with the "gotta die from something" route. Especially right now, as I'm seeing someone who actually prefers bigger women, women bigger than me.
Very well said my beautiful daughter! So riddle me this one....why each and every time I go to my primary care doc am I told to "lose some weight". Followed by a resounding "at-ta boy" each time I drop 10 or so pounds below the weight of my last visit, even though it appears to be the same 10 pounds over and over again. However, he never advises against the harm to my health this constant "yo yo"-ing might cause. At what % above your ideal weight would it be better to just remain at that weight as opposed to going up and down above and below it? Why does no one discuss that? What would happen to Oprah's image if she said "I'm staying put - live with it"? Well, I'd support her running for president, wouldn't you?
Mom
My rather uneducated response to my mom:
I think that doctors try to steer their patients towards healthier lifestyles and there has been a great deal of research that shows at the very least a corelation between being overweight and many harmful medical conditions. Also, we really like one-size-fits-all solutions in our society, so we have that great height/weight chart that only allows a small window of weight which is acceptable, regardless of body type, age, or anything else. Now there is a movement, especially in the fat-acceptance community, to stop equating weight with health, instead focusing on being active, eating healthy, and not really caring about weight. I think they do have some medical and academic support but not a great deal of it.
As for the yo-yo-ing aspect of things, a quick internet search pulled up a couple articles about the dangers of yo-yo dieting,
http://ezinearticles.com/?Yo-Yo-Dieting---Dangerous-Weight-Loss?&id=153031
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=21745which they restrict to meaning using a quick fad diet to lose the weight and then one puts it back on quickly when you go off the diet. This isn't exactly what I was talking about, but the more general regaining of weight after a diet, though I think the studies that the articles cite seem to address what I was talking about too. It seems like the "weight cycling slows your metabolism" is widely regarded as a myth, but there are corelations between weight cycling and a supressed immune system, higher risks of heart disease, heart attack, stroke, high blood pressure, and gallbladder disease. This article http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19621031 says that we should go on dieting because there is a higher corelation of more health conditions among overweight people than there are among (I'm assuming, not currently overweight) weight cyclers.
*Eyeroll* I'm not sure how much I believe that it is better for my overall person - physical, mental, spiritual - for me to continue to weight cycle and feel shitty about my body. So I think I might try a combination of the fat acceptance route along with the "gotta die from something" route. Especially right now, as I'm seeing someone who actually prefers bigger women, women bigger than me.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
The Weight Cycle
Newsweek recently did a cover story on Oprah, some of the questionable medical advice that some of her guests present, and why this doesn't seem to hurt her ratings or make her look like just another trashy daytime tv talk show host. While I found it interesting to hear what doctors say about Suzanne Somers' bio-identical hormone replacement therapy, this is what really struck me:
(I would link to the rest of the article, but it's not online.)
Obviously, these writers are lucky enough to never have been overweight (or at least never want to lose that weight) and doesn't have anyone close to them who has gone through this. If they did, they might not brush it off so easily. Almost everyone in my family deals with weight issues. The cycle that he speaks of is one that those of us who are overweight know all too well. Most overweight people don't like being overweight, even if we learn to accept our body as it is. We know that the world would see us as more attractive and healthier if we were thinner, which may or may not be true. What the media, and this article, seem to portray as a failure of will-power or a lack of follow-through is much more complicated than that. Those things may or may not play a role, but what also plays a role are your own metabolism and genes, how active you were as a kid in ways that can translate into adulthood, living and working in environments where one can't walk but has to drive, the physicality (or lack thereof) of your job, that processed/fatty/starchy foods are readily and cheaply available, etc, etc, etc.
I'm not saying that people can't and shouldn't eat healthier foods and get more exercise. But most overweight people that I've known in my life will cycle back and forth and back and forth, just like Oprah. We start something all gung-ho, we work hard, we reach our goals for weight loss and a more fit body. But then time and the everyday wears our resolve down. Also with food, it's especially difficult, as people have to eat. It's not like doing drugs, where you can avoid people who do drugs and places where drugs are sold. We have to go to the grocery store. We have to eat meals. When driving to and from work, it's impossible to not drive past a fast food restaurant. All that makes it that much harder to limit or avoid those things that might have caused you issues in the past. And one has to have priorities in their life. Right now I could work very hard to re-lose the weight that I've gained back. But I have too much other shit going on, so I just don't have the energy or time for that.
I guess it just irritated me because I know how so many (most female) people in my life has struggled with their weight, not just always being overweight, but yo-yo-ing up and down. And I don't think they just gain the weight back because they can't follow advice or are failures or even because their weight loss program was a fad diet. I think they gain it back in large part just because of life and our life in this time and place. Plus, even if you think overweight people are all Wal-mart consuming, mindless, uneducated suckers, as we're 50% of the population, I think you might at least give up some respect for us.
"Oprah, of course is notoriously bad at sticking with the advice Oz [non-quack
doc] and Greene [personal trainer] dispense, especially when it comes
to her weight. She laments her inability to keep off the pounds. In January she
embarked on yet another attempt to trim down, which means all of Oprah's views
are now-actually or vicariously-on a diet too. She will lose the weight, and
there will be much remarking upon it. But then, in a year, or two, or three,
experience teaches us that the fat will likely come back. And she will lament.
And then she will do it all over again, with a whole new set of experts armed
with the latest breakthrough theories on how to live our next best life and
all-new, must-have books and gadgets and ointments to ease the way."
(I would link to the rest of the article, but it's not online.)
Obviously, these writers are lucky enough to never have been overweight (or at least never want to lose that weight) and doesn't have anyone close to them who has gone through this. If they did, they might not brush it off so easily. Almost everyone in my family deals with weight issues. The cycle that he speaks of is one that those of us who are overweight know all too well. Most overweight people don't like being overweight, even if we learn to accept our body as it is. We know that the world would see us as more attractive and healthier if we were thinner, which may or may not be true. What the media, and this article, seem to portray as a failure of will-power or a lack of follow-through is much more complicated than that. Those things may or may not play a role, but what also plays a role are your own metabolism and genes, how active you were as a kid in ways that can translate into adulthood, living and working in environments where one can't walk but has to drive, the physicality (or lack thereof) of your job, that processed/fatty/starchy foods are readily and cheaply available, etc, etc, etc.
I'm not saying that people can't and shouldn't eat healthier foods and get more exercise. But most overweight people that I've known in my life will cycle back and forth and back and forth, just like Oprah. We start something all gung-ho, we work hard, we reach our goals for weight loss and a more fit body. But then time and the everyday wears our resolve down. Also with food, it's especially difficult, as people have to eat. It's not like doing drugs, where you can avoid people who do drugs and places where drugs are sold. We have to go to the grocery store. We have to eat meals. When driving to and from work, it's impossible to not drive past a fast food restaurant. All that makes it that much harder to limit or avoid those things that might have caused you issues in the past. And one has to have priorities in their life. Right now I could work very hard to re-lose the weight that I've gained back. But I have too much other shit going on, so I just don't have the energy or time for that.
I guess it just irritated me because I know how so many (most female) people in my life has struggled with their weight, not just always being overweight, but yo-yo-ing up and down. And I don't think they just gain the weight back because they can't follow advice or are failures or even because their weight loss program was a fad diet. I think they gain it back in large part just because of life and our life in this time and place. Plus, even if you think overweight people are all Wal-mart consuming, mindless, uneducated suckers, as we're 50% of the population, I think you might at least give up some respect for us.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Being a House(not)wife
In a society where "What do you do?" (which means what job do you perform to earn money) is usually within the first five questions asked when people first meet, I'm having a bit of trouble getting used to being long-term unemployed. I suppose I never realiezed how much 'what we do' can equal 'who we are' to people who don't know us well. Hell, even to people who do know us. Maybe I'm being overly sensative, imagining that people see me in a much more negative light than they really do, because I'm have self-esteem issues with not working right now.
Though to say I'm 'not working' would be a lie. I am not currently a wage-earning worker. When I asked TyRoy what I should say when people ask what I do, his quick response was to tell them that I am a housewife. As that isn't exactly true, in that I am not anybody's wife nor am looking to become someone's wife anytime soon, I do all the typical things a housewife would do - shopping, housecleaning, laundry (just not much cooking because my folks don't like to eat what I can cook) - for my parents. Now I've tried telling people this (that I'm a housewife) but it tends to go over like a lead balloon.
Until two weeks ago, I was looking for wage-earning employment, permanent or temporary, full-time or part-time, while still doing the housewife-ly things until then. Since December, I've had interviews but no job offers. Before that, I'd had some job offers and temp jobs that might have led to offers but I frakked them up. I think my own poor management of my mental health had a good deal to do with it. Since then, I have gotten to a different (hopefully better) place with my medications, though I will always still be me, underneath it all. I honestly don't know that I wouldn't have frakked up any job offer I got between December and now. But with the job market the way it is, I was competing against more people than usual, more people who have better work histories and more skills than me, so I don't begrudge them getting those positions.
Until I found a job, must to continue to play housewife to my parents, more to ease their burden and to give me something to do than anything else, and also try to visit and help out my grandma more. But my plan was always to get a job, work steadily, pay down my debt, fix my car or get a new-to-me car, and move out. I was also hoping to get my Bachelors slowly but surely once things were on track.
I guess nothing has really changed that plan except to put it off, with no real idea of when I'll pick it up. When we realized that my uncle might/would probably need help, even if only with the driving, to get back and forth to his new treatments, my mom told me to just stop looking for a job right now. It's cheaper for our family if my parents contintue to subsidize my bills while I help my uncle than it would be for us to temporarily lose my mother's income, even if I was working and paying my own bills. It makes sense and I'm happy to do it. And, after helping my grandmother when my grandpa had his first stroke, I think I'll be ok doing it, as long as I take time and space for myself, stay abreast of my own needs.
But I still feel this huge hole in my 'plan' and I feel 'less than' because I'm not earning money, don't have a job others would recognize, am a housewife without a husband or my own house.
*Sigh*
On second thought though, I can't imagine how my previously always employed, super-hard-working, very independent uncle must feel right now. I guess I'll count my blessings.
Though to say I'm 'not working' would be a lie. I am not currently a wage-earning worker. When I asked TyRoy what I should say when people ask what I do, his quick response was to tell them that I am a housewife. As that isn't exactly true, in that I am not anybody's wife nor am looking to become someone's wife anytime soon, I do all the typical things a housewife would do - shopping, housecleaning, laundry (just not much cooking because my folks don't like to eat what I can cook) - for my parents. Now I've tried telling people this (that I'm a housewife) but it tends to go over like a lead balloon.
Until two weeks ago, I was looking for wage-earning employment, permanent or temporary, full-time or part-time, while still doing the housewife-ly things until then. Since December, I've had interviews but no job offers. Before that, I'd had some job offers and temp jobs that might have led to offers but I frakked them up. I think my own poor management of my mental health had a good deal to do with it. Since then, I have gotten to a different (hopefully better) place with my medications, though I will always still be me, underneath it all. I honestly don't know that I wouldn't have frakked up any job offer I got between December and now. But with the job market the way it is, I was competing against more people than usual, more people who have better work histories and more skills than me, so I don't begrudge them getting those positions.
Until I found a job, must to continue to play housewife to my parents, more to ease their burden and to give me something to do than anything else, and also try to visit and help out my grandma more. But my plan was always to get a job, work steadily, pay down my debt, fix my car or get a new-to-me car, and move out. I was also hoping to get my Bachelors slowly but surely once things were on track.
I guess nothing has really changed that plan except to put it off, with no real idea of when I'll pick it up. When we realized that my uncle might/would probably need help, even if only with the driving, to get back and forth to his new treatments, my mom told me to just stop looking for a job right now. It's cheaper for our family if my parents contintue to subsidize my bills while I help my uncle than it would be for us to temporarily lose my mother's income, even if I was working and paying my own bills. It makes sense and I'm happy to do it. And, after helping my grandmother when my grandpa had his first stroke, I think I'll be ok doing it, as long as I take time and space for myself, stay abreast of my own needs.
But I still feel this huge hole in my 'plan' and I feel 'less than' because I'm not earning money, don't have a job others would recognize, am a housewife without a husband or my own house.
*Sigh*
On second thought though, I can't imagine how my previously always employed, super-hard-working, very independent uncle must feel right now. I guess I'll count my blessings.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Eulogy for Grandma
Not really sure if this is how you do these things, but it's what I'm doing. Thought I'd share.
Eulogy
First, I would like to thank you all for coming to say a final goodbye to my grandmother. I know it would have meant a great deal to her to know so many people cared for her.
I would like to share with you how I saw the woman I knew.
As many of you probably already know, I spent a lot of my childhood in my grandparents home. Grandma started a home daycare so that I would have other children to play with. As if the house wasn’t already crowded enough, eight or so pre-kindergarten age children would fill our house in the early morning hours. Somehow, she managed to keep it all together, keeping us all in line, and our parents all happy. She ruled our house with an iron voice, though she wasn’t above a swat on the butt when needed.
But that sense of command wasn’t displayed only in our home. To me, she seemed fearless in dealing with sales people and clerks in stores and waiters in restaurants. When I balked at making a clerk at Sam’s find the pool chemicals instead of finding them ourselves, she said, “It’s called ‘job security.’ If they didn’t have to help me, they wouldn’t have a job.”
Watching my grandma taught me to never to buy into stereotypes. If you think wives from the 1950s were mousy, quiet, and didn’t have a say in their household, well, you’ve never met my grandma. And if you think petite older women are harmless, well, you’ve never met my grandma. I never felt like, as a woman, I didn’t have the right to be loud, opinionated, or bossy. In fact, that’s might be a lesson I learned a little too well…
But she also had a class and dignity all her own. We have never been what one would call rich, but I think that Grandma was extremely proud of the fact that she could give more to her kids than her family had growing up, that she and Grandpa had risen from working poor families to middle class in her lifetime. She would be the first to remind you that that didn’t make her better than, though it certainly didn’t make anyone else better than her. Her fierce pride in her life and her family taught me not to be embarrassed about where I come from or where my family comes from.
For the most part, my grandma lived an average life, though a happy and full one. She was a typical daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, friend, and person for her time and place in history. Few people, in the grand scheme of things, ever knew her name. But, as I find out more and more each day, she made a huge difference in the lives of those she touched. I think that was because, as someone more famous than either of us once wrote, “The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.” I think Grandma displayed that kind of freedom. Grandma would listen and give her blunt brand of advice, without ever making you feel judged. She would give you the help she thought best at the time, even if it wasn’t what you thought you needed, and she was usually right that it was what was best. She paid much more attention than most people ever gave her credit for and she was always available to listen and talk for hours.
Two days ago, I called the mother of one of the children Grandma babysat for to tell the family of my grandma’s passing. The woman was so silent that I thought my cell phone had disconnected us. Then, crying, she said that she didn’t know how she would have made it through without my grandma. While I had already known that the woman had put her daughter in the daycare shortly after she divorced and returned to the job force, I didn’t know the deep and abiding respect, appreciation, and admiration this woman had developed for my grandmother, who she saw as a tough-talking, cigarette-smoking, fairy godmother, who both mended the sewing-challenged woman’s clothes before she went to work, and helped her control and learn to deal with her defiant daughter. Now, I’m sure that my grandmother didn’t see this as some heroic feat. She was just doing the right thing, lending a hand, passing on her own wisdom. But it made such a huge difference in this woman’s life. And to me it just drives home that we can all, as the saying goes, be the difference we would like to see in the world. We don’t have to be perfect, in fact it helps not to be. We don’t have to be famous or successful, as the ways we make a difference are small, personal, and simple. But we can and do make profound differences in the lives of the people we meet. Knowing this, I just plan on striving to ensure that the difference I make is a positive one. So that is how I plan on honoring my grandmother’s memory: By using the things I learned watching her, that a tough, opinionated, bossy woman who stays proud of where she comes from and pays attention along the way can make a great difference in the lives of others, to be a constructive force in the world.
Eulogy
First, I would like to thank you all for coming to say a final goodbye to my grandmother. I know it would have meant a great deal to her to know so many people cared for her.
I would like to share with you how I saw the woman I knew.
As many of you probably already know, I spent a lot of my childhood in my grandparents home. Grandma started a home daycare so that I would have other children to play with. As if the house wasn’t already crowded enough, eight or so pre-kindergarten age children would fill our house in the early morning hours. Somehow, she managed to keep it all together, keeping us all in line, and our parents all happy. She ruled our house with an iron voice, though she wasn’t above a swat on the butt when needed.
But that sense of command wasn’t displayed only in our home. To me, she seemed fearless in dealing with sales people and clerks in stores and waiters in restaurants. When I balked at making a clerk at Sam’s find the pool chemicals instead of finding them ourselves, she said, “It’s called ‘job security.’ If they didn’t have to help me, they wouldn’t have a job.”
Watching my grandma taught me to never to buy into stereotypes. If you think wives from the 1950s were mousy, quiet, and didn’t have a say in their household, well, you’ve never met my grandma. And if you think petite older women are harmless, well, you’ve never met my grandma. I never felt like, as a woman, I didn’t have the right to be loud, opinionated, or bossy. In fact, that’s might be a lesson I learned a little too well…
But she also had a class and dignity all her own. We have never been what one would call rich, but I think that Grandma was extremely proud of the fact that she could give more to her kids than her family had growing up, that she and Grandpa had risen from working poor families to middle class in her lifetime. She would be the first to remind you that that didn’t make her better than, though it certainly didn’t make anyone else better than her. Her fierce pride in her life and her family taught me not to be embarrassed about where I come from or where my family comes from.
For the most part, my grandma lived an average life, though a happy and full one. She was a typical daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, friend, and person for her time and place in history. Few people, in the grand scheme of things, ever knew her name. But, as I find out more and more each day, she made a huge difference in the lives of those she touched. I think that was because, as someone more famous than either of us once wrote, “The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.” I think Grandma displayed that kind of freedom. Grandma would listen and give her blunt brand of advice, without ever making you feel judged. She would give you the help she thought best at the time, even if it wasn’t what you thought you needed, and she was usually right that it was what was best. She paid much more attention than most people ever gave her credit for and she was always available to listen and talk for hours.
Two days ago, I called the mother of one of the children Grandma babysat for to tell the family of my grandma’s passing. The woman was so silent that I thought my cell phone had disconnected us. Then, crying, she said that she didn’t know how she would have made it through without my grandma. While I had already known that the woman had put her daughter in the daycare shortly after she divorced and returned to the job force, I didn’t know the deep and abiding respect, appreciation, and admiration this woman had developed for my grandmother, who she saw as a tough-talking, cigarette-smoking, fairy godmother, who both mended the sewing-challenged woman’s clothes before she went to work, and helped her control and learn to deal with her defiant daughter. Now, I’m sure that my grandmother didn’t see this as some heroic feat. She was just doing the right thing, lending a hand, passing on her own wisdom. But it made such a huge difference in this woman’s life. And to me it just drives home that we can all, as the saying goes, be the difference we would like to see in the world. We don’t have to be perfect, in fact it helps not to be. We don’t have to be famous or successful, as the ways we make a difference are small, personal, and simple. But we can and do make profound differences in the lives of the people we meet. Knowing this, I just plan on striving to ensure that the difference I make is a positive one. So that is how I plan on honoring my grandmother’s memory: By using the things I learned watching her, that a tough, opinionated, bossy woman who stays proud of where she comes from and pays attention along the way can make a great difference in the lives of others, to be a constructive force in the world.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Update From SLMC
So this is the update from the Slightly Larger Midwestern City. My folks came out to my grandmother's house Thursday night. Since it was my birthday and I didn't much want to be with my parents at that point, I spent the night with TyRoy, who did a nice job of providing me with a place of refuge for the night. Friday, my uncle, my uncle's boyfriend, and I carpooled it out here, the driving being split between my uncle's boyfriend and I, who'd both gotten about three hours of sleep the night before, as my uncle is in constant pain, which is much worse when he doesn't take his pain medication on a very strict schedule. We were just in time to spend three hours making the funeral arrangements alongside my parents. Then, it was back to grandma's house to make calls to inform people that the visitation will be Saturday evening and the funeral Sunday afternoon. (We decided there was no point in putting it off and the weekend would mean no one would have to take off work to come.) These calls included calling my other uncle to inform him that his mother had died, which I volunteered for, though no one really wanted to do it after how he behaved when Grandpa died. (Though when I talked to him, he took it all ok, even acknowledging that he had "shown his ass" previously. We'll see how this all shakes out when it comes to Grandma's "estate", such as it is.) We still need to get pictures together and my uncle needs to buy a suit, as none of his really fit anymore, but the immediate things seem to be settling into place.
I worry about my mom, as she seems to be just so very tired, and... defeated, even, which is something I just don't ever remember having seen on her. I tend to think that it is because she has the full weight of all this on her shoulders and, in some ways, her shoulders alone. She is now the leader of our family, the matriarch, a role I'm not sure anyone is ever ready for. She is also the executor of my grandmother's estate, which is mostly just this house that my grandparents built when they first married and the responsibility for taking care of my middle uncle's funeral when he inevitably drinks himself to death or overdoses. Deciding what to do with this house is.... well, I'll just say that I'm glad I'm not the one making the decision, the one with the final say. Though I honestly believe that my mom will be able to handle this fine, once we come out on the other side of the funeral, when things settle down, when there are less people around scrutinizing things.
As for me, I'm planning on speaking at my grandmother's funeral, using my words to try to do some justice to her life. Not that my grandma was a great literary critic, or even an unbiased reader, but she loved reading what she could sneak a peak at over my shoulders or on the computer screen when I would accidentally leave a piece of writing laying around so I could go to the restroom or get a drink. (We are WAY too much alike in our snoopiness.) In the end, she lived the average amount of time, made a house and a home with the man she loved fiercely until the day she died in that very same home, where they had raised three of their own children, one grandchild, and had been loving caretakers for many more children. She was not a saint or even the easiest person to get along with in the best of times, but she touched a great many people in positive ways, as is evident by the people that my family called today to update them on the situation. I think many of us could only hope that we go out that way.
I worry about my mom, as she seems to be just so very tired, and... defeated, even, which is something I just don't ever remember having seen on her. I tend to think that it is because she has the full weight of all this on her shoulders and, in some ways, her shoulders alone. She is now the leader of our family, the matriarch, a role I'm not sure anyone is ever ready for. She is also the executor of my grandmother's estate, which is mostly just this house that my grandparents built when they first married and the responsibility for taking care of my middle uncle's funeral when he inevitably drinks himself to death or overdoses. Deciding what to do with this house is.... well, I'll just say that I'm glad I'm not the one making the decision, the one with the final say. Though I honestly believe that my mom will be able to handle this fine, once we come out on the other side of the funeral, when things settle down, when there are less people around scrutinizing things.
As for me, I'm planning on speaking at my grandmother's funeral, using my words to try to do some justice to her life. Not that my grandma was a great literary critic, or even an unbiased reader, but she loved reading what she could sneak a peak at over my shoulders or on the computer screen when I would accidentally leave a piece of writing laying around so I could go to the restroom or get a drink. (We are WAY too much alike in our snoopiness.) In the end, she lived the average amount of time, made a house and a home with the man she loved fiercely until the day she died in that very same home, where they had raised three of their own children, one grandchild, and had been loving caretakers for many more children. She was not a saint or even the easiest person to get along with in the best of times, but she touched a great many people in positive ways, as is evident by the people that my family called today to update them on the situation. I think many of us could only hope that we go out that way.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Rest In Peace Grandma
I don't have time to write more, but funeral planning doesn't wait.
My grandmother died sometime last night. She passed quietly in her sleep in her own bed in the home that she and my grandfathe built over 50 years ago.
I'll thank you all in advance for all your well-wishing. I'll probably write more about my grandmother and about how my family is handling this as things progress. Right now I have to go and make sure I take care of things here before I leave to help take care of things there.
My grandmother died sometime last night. She passed quietly in her sleep in her own bed in the home that she and my grandfathe built over 50 years ago.
I'll thank you all in advance for all your well-wishing. I'll probably write more about my grandmother and about how my family is handling this as things progress. Right now I have to go and make sure I take care of things here before I leave to help take care of things there.
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