Sad, Disgusting and Sort of Funny

Whale Explodes in Taiwanese City

It just sucks on so many levels.

What Makes This Monkey Grouchy

Spent the whole weekend at work. Whenever this happens, the impact on the home life is ugly. Invariably, I'm more tired than if it had been a regular workday. And when I'm tired, I am grouchy. And when I'm grouchy, I'm irrational.

The Pirate and I tend to have the same fight whenever we get too tired. It always starts out that the Pirate infringes somehow on my space. And I react badly and it becomes a giant, tear-filled fight that lasts for a long time, regardless of the fact that both of us recognize that we're tired.

I need some sort of gauge that shows how tired I am and how engaged in a given process I am. It seems like the more tired I am, the more I retreat into myself. The Pirate is just the opposite. He needs a gauge to show how in need of contact he is. The more tired he is, the more he needs physical contact and reassurance. This is a volatile combination, and one we're still trying hard to work out.

Part of my dilemma is my ingrained belief that his need for contact, for reassurance is more "normal" than my need for solitude and isolation. Part of it is that I always tend to feel that mere physical presence isn't enough. I feel that if someone wants to touch me, I have to be interacting with them in some way.

I guess I need to take a lesson from my children. They are not shy about coming to me and saying "Mommy, I need snuggles." And they crawl into my lap and don't require that I put down my book or stop watching my movie. They just want to be touching mommy, and that's okay - we have that worked out.

We'll figure it all out someday. We have time.

Reg Smythe Would Be Proud

When I was a kid, less than 10, I had a lot of collections of comics. Not comic books, but books of newspaper strips like B.C. and Andy Capp.

One of my favorite Andy Capp strips was Andy in his de rigeur hat standing by the sidelines of a football (British) game, being written up by the referee. The ref is obviously taking dictation and is reading back Andy's statement: "I-thought-he-was-going-to-hit-me-so-I-hit-him-back-first." I thought this was funny enough to base my treatment of my sisters on it for years.

Well, I think that Richard Haass, Director of Policy Planning for the State Department, had the same book, because in early 2002 he is quoted as saying "Sovereignty entails obligations. One is not to massacre your own people. Another is not to support terrorism in any way. If a government fails to meet these obligations, then it forfeits some of the normal advantages of sovereignty, including the right to be left alone inside your own territory. Other governments...have the right to intervene. In the case of terrorism, this can lead to a right of preventative, or peremptory, self defense. You essentially can act in anticipation if you have grounds to think it's a question of when, and not if, you're going to be attacked."

So...in the mid-1970's, it was lowbrow British humor. Now it's official foreign policy.

Just so we're clear.

*Whew*

You know, if you stand on the shore long enough, even if you curse the heavens and throw stones into the sea, sooner or later the wave will come.

Yesterday in the middle of working out, it came. All the bunchiness and anger and knitted eyebrows and frustration were washed away and I was left with an enormous gratitude that no matter what happens, I am alive and have my humanity. Everything else can be rebuilt from there.

And I'm havin' Tater Turds for dinner tonight. That makes me happy too!

Not Having a Good Day

I am a damaged monkey. I've got bald patches, burn marks and a lot of nervous tics. I tend to screech a lot, masturbate compulsively, rock back and forth and fling poo when threatened. At best, I'm jumpy and my eyes tend to bug out. At worst, I'm a swirling vortex of teeth, hair, yowl and angst. I have an unfortunate tendency to scratch myself bloody.

Crappy, Crappy Weekend

My older kid turned 12 on Saturday. The day started out just fine - we went to a winery open house and bought a case of the very most delicious wine I've ever had, and then I picked up Peaches' best friend to take them both to the mall shopping for her birthday.

And I guess it was venturing into the mall that did it. The next time I think that going to the mall is a good idea, I think I'm just going to jab red-hot knitting needles into my eyes. I love hiking. I can hike outdoors for days at a time. I never get tired, I love the exercise and it's just all-around fun. But four hours at the mall felt like purgatory. I have never been so happy to spend money in my entire life, as once we had spent all the birthday money we could leave.

But from the second we left the mall, Peaches was fully into her pre-teen angst thang. She bitched about the new clothes she had bought (All the kids are going to say that I'm trying to dress popular!), she bitched because I made her stop eating candy at the mall, she bitched because I pointed out that she got sick at dinner because she had eaten so much candy at the mall, she bitched because at 10:30 I made her to go bed...you get the idea.

At this point, my idea of heaven would be an hour at home where I don't have to counsel, direct, mommy or yell at anyone.

Your Face Needs Re-Roofing

The flu didn't seem to be going away, and in the meantime an awful, painful rash was marching steadily across my face. All I could do was sleep and take liver-damaging amount of analgesics. So I finally dragged my sorry behind to the doctor and found out that I have shingles.
For whatever reason, this feels very stigmatizing. Like shingles is some sort of STD that I got doing something naughty, rather than an opportunistic virus that made its presence known in the face of some pretty intense stress.

My little kid calls them "Mommy chicken pops," and the Pirate insists that they're barely noticeable, despite the fact that it looks like someone took a cheese grater to my face.

I guess it's the name. Shingles. It sounds so much like an old people's thing. Like gout or rheumatism or bursitis. I'm not quite ready to be old. I haven't accomplished all my goals yet. In the words of Blackadder, "First I want to be young and wild. Then I want to be middle-aged and rich. Then I want to be old and annoy people by pretending to be deaf."

I'm not through with "wild" yet.

Nostalgia Tastes Like Mud

When I was five, I had a Guatemalan nanny named Martita. We called her husband "Daddy Oscar" and she had two grown kids, Leonora and Oscar, Jr.

There was another family who shared my nanny - the Carpenters. Shelly was my age, and she was my first school friend. She and I had many adventures together, including the ritual of Eating Mud. We would dare each other to eat pinches of the sticky mud under the bushes in front of our carport.

After high school I lost touch with a lot of my friends, but a fortuitous run-in with one of them who is still well-connected to the old gang got me back in touch with the group, and with this year's Xmas card, my old friend Shelly gave me her phone number and asked me to call her up.
It never fails to boggle my mind that this is someone I've known almost continuously for 33 years. We were saying last night that the fascination that motivates us to seek out those people we knew years ago is mostly the desire to see how much of that child we remember is still there. And both Shelly and I agree that we're both completely different and exactly the same. She's lost her mania for horses, she listens to music other than Dan Fogelberg and John Denver (it turns out that was all her parents approved of at the time), and she and I ended up with much the same politics and lifestyle (a love of gardening and canning, sewing and knitting, hiking and camping). I can't see how I'm the same or different than I was 33 years ago, but she says I'm still the same kid she knew from Martita's.

It was amazing catching up. I think I need to plan a trip up to Seattle to see my old friend.

The Eye of Argon

I was feeling optimistic, and invited a few friends 'round on Friday night. They showed up with yummy food (acorn squash stuffed with rice, pecans, dried cranberries, various other bits of vegan lusciousness). We also made some nummy spinach empanadas, and for dessert some amazing dried apricot empanadas. And some fabulous wine was procured. I didn't have any, but from the contended mooing of the group, it was lovely.

I talked to the boys in the living room about the history of the Merchant Marine and the story behind Cimino's "Heaven's Gate." The Pirate ended up in the kitchen with the girls, telling them a little about the wedding and hearing various bits of gossip. I think I got the better end of that stick.

After dinner the group retired to the living room where we commenced to read "The Eye of Argon." Now I had heard of this piece of scifi history, but didn't think that it was capable ot living up to the reputation. Only after several expugnitive attempts at orally decoding this tale of a many-fauceted scarlet emerald sought by the barbarian slut Grignr did I realize the tales were all true. This is the funniest thing I have ever read.
It made me feel better about my own prose in ways that I never anticipated. And it drove home for me that old truism that every writing teacher ever will tell you on day one. Write what you know.

But the fun was paid for by the fact that I came to realize that I wasn't feeling as much better as I had thought. I spent much of the next day sleeping and did nothing of consequence. It was worth it.

What Do You Do When You're Sick?

I've had this cold/flu thing since Monday. I am so wrung out that I didn't get out of bed at all yesterday. I think I slept about 20 hours yesterday, off and on. If I weren't so comparatively naked, you'd think I was a cat.
So, today I woke up feeling...well...less wretched. On a scale of gross to amazing, I'd say I feel scumlike, which is slightly better than hideous, but worse than bloatfish. But these are all shades of a sort of sickly yellowish khaki.

Because I was able to stand up today without vomiting, I of course thought "You're fine. Don't be such a baby." And I got laundry together. My logic was something like Sure I feel scumlike, but I can stand up, and doing laundry isn't exactly labor intensive. After all, this is the age of modern conveniences. (That's what I love most about flashbacks. They make one sound so much more intelligent than one is in reality.) But after fifteen minutes of being the tribal laundry hunter/gatherer, I collapsed once more upon the couch that has been home sweet home for three days.

I asked the Pirate whether I should go to work tomorrow, and he said the most useful thing he's ever said with regards to my being under the weather. He said "No. Don't go in." He pointed out that when I am ill, I have the tendency toward a sort of delusion which leads me to believe that five minutes of consecutive consciousness without vomiting is the same as being "well." Which, apparently, it isn't. This is why I love him. Because he's not only smarter than me, but willing to take his life into his own hands by admitting it.

I don't know how the rest of the world copes with being ill. I hate it. This is why I don't own a handgun. Because it would be so tempting to shoot


You thought I was going to say "ME," didn't you? Heh. No, I know that I'll get better. I'm not as daft as all that. Really, you know whom I'd like to shoot? The sick, viscious bastard at Vick's who decided that making Nyquil taste like saccharinetequilavomit was a GOOD IDEA. And then, I'm going to find his sick, twisted cow-orker who decided to mutate it into CHERRY saccharinetequilavomit.

They deserve to die much moreso than I do.

Stress is Bad

I have an archipelago of spots across my left cheek. Stephanie said that it looks like someone dug their fingers into my flesh and left red, angry fingerprints. Right after the wedding, a spot appeared on my face. I thought I had scratched myself. The skin was just inexplicably...gone. Then another spot appeared above it. One below it. Another. Another.
The Pirate is truly alarmed. He's been slathering hydrocortisone on it and it's getting better, although the spots are still raw and open. They're not swollen anymore, and I can touch the left side of my face without wincing in pain, which only makes it worse.

The Pirate is in a very similar boat, but we're both on the "tried to pull off a wedding on Xmas and had it go tragically wrong" river which is toxic in the extreme. It's a good thing that both girls are out of town for the week, as it has taken the entire week for the Pirate and I to regain ourselves. By the time they get back tomorrow evening, we should we better.

It will all be better so very soon.