I've decided I really like the tiny, tiny town, and it's for precisely the reasons that I originally thought I would hate it.
Take the trains, for example. Long, rattling, rusty traffic obstructions have turned out to be rolling art galleries with their own compelling musical accompaniment. I've seen all different kinds of tags and graffiti from all over the country rolling by-- not just the angular, near-illegible stack lettering, but also vivid stencils, cartoon monsters, Tim Burton-esque meadow scenes dotted with crooked headstones, and massive, cryptic logos. Lying in bed at night I try to isolate the individual notes that form the chord of the train's warning horn. It starts out as a minor chord with at least five notes, two of them wedged too close together and forming an edge of dissonance. But then as the train passes, the Doplar effect flattens the chord into something almost major, and nowhere near as pretty.
The town itself seems to be suffering from that same flattening effect. Apparently revenue from the railroad and the oil companies peaked sometime in the late sixties and then took a steady, graceful swan dive. Most home improvement and construction projects followed the same trajectory, so in many ways driving into town feels like sinking slowly backwards into quicksand. Few places take credit cards and fewer take checks, scrub grass sprouts up from the cracks in parking lots, and even the good restaurants never seem to fill up on weekend nights.
I can't explain why, but this isn't as depressing as it sounds. It's a graceful decay. There are still stained glass sunsets and thunderstorms. Cactus plants and bouganvillias and giant shuddering honeysuckle bushes fill in the empty lots and shake petals and sweet scents loose. There's a creaky little old man who lives alone across the street from me, and he comes out to get his paper every morning. He walks with two canes and has to rest at the beginning, middle, and end of his ten foot journey. The whole thing takes him about ten minutes. Sometimes he sits by his front window and dozes off, and when I try to come up with a way to describe this town, I think of him, napping with the paper folded in his lap as the world goes by outside.
I also thought the podunk-edness of this place would get to me, but I have to admit to getting a bit of thrill when I see something as bizarre as a the fuzzy-haired man riding his rickety scooter down a darkened street last night, using a flashlight as a headlight and balancing a half-naked baby on one knee. Or the town drunk, a woman whose name everyone seems to know even though she refers to everyone, male or female, as "Babe," and spends her weekend nights doing saucy karaoke renditions of sixties folk songs in the pub by the tracks.
From one side, this could all look pretty bad-- a town in advanced economic decline whose residents are declining with it. But from another side, it could be a place in a rich, natural state of flux with the edges of nature closing in, a minor chord with a touch of dissonance.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Grows roses, relieves constipation, kills evil
That title reflects the three major achievements of epsom salts. I'm adding it to my list of lesser-known miracles of Jesus, right next to synthetic motor oil.
Here's how the toe scenario went down: I booked a same day appointment at the tiny, tiny town's military clinic, which turned out to be about the size of your average preschool (my own personal prejudice: buildings where you can potentially be cut or burned by strangers should be at least the size of a good grocery store, giving you ample running room in case you change your mind about the procedure), and limped in to see my new Primary Care Provider.
At all the military hospitals I've been to so far, you must first brave a gauntlet of young, virile enlisted men, rosy-cheeked innocents who are the very picture of health, and with whom you must EXPLICITLY discuss the details of your ailment. In my case, the young men were idle and bored, and, detecting my sky-rocketing anxiety, insisted that I prop my foot on the desk so that they could tease me about being out of anesthesia and how my toenail definitely needed to be "yanked." Maybe it was the color draining from my face, or the appraising way I gauged the distance to my car through the exit door, but they switched gears after a minute or two and assured me there were ample supplies of drugs in the building.
As it happened, God turned his broad sunny face on me and smiled-- my new doctor, all humorless West Texas twang and fierce competence (i.e. the polar opposite of my previous doctor), granted the toenail a reprieve on the grounds that partially removing it would only cause further wonky regrowth (the same wonky regrowth that got me into this situation in the first place), and I'd be in the same predicament six months from now. Instead, I was prescribed massive doses of an antibiotic and what the husband calls Vitamin M, as in Motrin, the military's magic cure-all, and finally, advised to soak my toe in epsom salts twice daily.
I've read several hilarious accounts of the tendency of families to ascribe mythic powers of restorative healing to particular products, far beyond the scope of what's promised on the label. My dad worships at the altar of Desitin, a diaper rash cream. My husband's grandmother recommends alka seltzer for ailments clearly unrelated to the stomach or digestive tract in any way. Chris Rock has a great bit about generic Robitussin, and the grandfather in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" swoons for Windex.
The United States military believes in Motrin, and I now take an oath of fealty to epsom salts. My toe is shockingly close to normal. Bedsheets can wisp over the top of it without producing searing pain, the grotesque bouquet of colors it was sporting has all but faded completely, and the cartoonish swelling and throbbing have greatly lessened. Plus, according to the helpful pharmascist at the grocery store, epsom salts help grow healthy rose bushes. (She thought that's why I was asking for them, and looked slightly embarrassed and disappointed when I said, "No, I just have a nasty toe to soak.") Further perusal of the product label revealed that the wonders of epsom salts go even further-- they're also a powerful laxative!
So the next time I find myself internally backed up and limping around on an infected toe AND needing to spruce up my garden, I'll rest assured that epsom salts have me covered.
Here's how the toe scenario went down: I booked a same day appointment at the tiny, tiny town's military clinic, which turned out to be about the size of your average preschool (my own personal prejudice: buildings where you can potentially be cut or burned by strangers should be at least the size of a good grocery store, giving you ample running room in case you change your mind about the procedure), and limped in to see my new Primary Care Provider.
At all the military hospitals I've been to so far, you must first brave a gauntlet of young, virile enlisted men, rosy-cheeked innocents who are the very picture of health, and with whom you must EXPLICITLY discuss the details of your ailment. In my case, the young men were idle and bored, and, detecting my sky-rocketing anxiety, insisted that I prop my foot on the desk so that they could tease me about being out of anesthesia and how my toenail definitely needed to be "yanked." Maybe it was the color draining from my face, or the appraising way I gauged the distance to my car through the exit door, but they switched gears after a minute or two and assured me there were ample supplies of drugs in the building.
As it happened, God turned his broad sunny face on me and smiled-- my new doctor, all humorless West Texas twang and fierce competence (i.e. the polar opposite of my previous doctor), granted the toenail a reprieve on the grounds that partially removing it would only cause further wonky regrowth (the same wonky regrowth that got me into this situation in the first place), and I'd be in the same predicament six months from now. Instead, I was prescribed massive doses of an antibiotic and what the husband calls Vitamin M, as in Motrin, the military's magic cure-all, and finally, advised to soak my toe in epsom salts twice daily.
I've read several hilarious accounts of the tendency of families to ascribe mythic powers of restorative healing to particular products, far beyond the scope of what's promised on the label. My dad worships at the altar of Desitin, a diaper rash cream. My husband's grandmother recommends alka seltzer for ailments clearly unrelated to the stomach or digestive tract in any way. Chris Rock has a great bit about generic Robitussin, and the grandfather in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" swoons for Windex.
The United States military believes in Motrin, and I now take an oath of fealty to epsom salts. My toe is shockingly close to normal. Bedsheets can wisp over the top of it without producing searing pain, the grotesque bouquet of colors it was sporting has all but faded completely, and the cartoonish swelling and throbbing have greatly lessened. Plus, according to the helpful pharmascist at the grocery store, epsom salts help grow healthy rose bushes. (She thought that's why I was asking for them, and looked slightly embarrassed and disappointed when I said, "No, I just have a nasty toe to soak.") Further perusal of the product label revealed that the wonders of epsom salts go even further-- they're also a powerful laxative!
So the next time I find myself internally backed up and limping around on an infected toe AND needing to spruce up my garden, I'll rest assured that epsom salts have me covered.
Monday, April 17, 2006
Nightmare Toe, or Why a Working Knowledge of Medical Terminology Can Be a Bad Thing
Something is Wrong with my big toe, Bad Wrong. I'm wasting no time with literary adornments or questions of relevancy because it hurts that bad. Internet, my toe is badly infected from a saga of injuries and various good-idea-at-the-time home remedies, and it has taken this-- nightmarish swelling, festive discoloration, and all-encompassing, whimper-inducing pain-- to erode my resistance to calling the doctor.
I am terrified of the doctor. It was not always this way. There was a time when I toyed with the idea of going to medical school, if not to become a practicing physician then to create sweeping, full-color, multilayered illustrations of the saddle joint or the free fall of neurotransmitters as they brave the synaptic gap. I love biology, I love anatomy, I love zoology. I love the epic stories of immune system battles and the mundane heroics of the excretory system. Algebra put an end to all that. X = a big fat fucking wall. So instead I write and I draw and I find gainful employment by other means.
Part of the reason I understood biology so well was that I could turn it into a story with characters and goals and birth and death and drama, and it all made sense. I was still interested in what goes on in the body and how problems are fixed, so I asked questions and read textbooks and pestered my doctors. BUT-- and this is one of those horrible over-arching themes I struggle with in almost every area of my life-- Imagination Must Have Limits.
For instance, Imagination is no longer helpful when it:
1) Renders one incapable of any degree of detachment when it comes to submitting to painful procedures (especially when Imagination insists that pain incurred under anesthesia is just pain delayed with nausea factored in as interest, and therefore, no procedure is ever "painless.")
2) Sparks a lurid fascination with any and all surgical procedures on television from breast implants to liposuction (which looks like someone fencing an unseen foe under the skin) to hip replacement (buzz saws, God help us) to removing a 2-inch-thick tree branch from a motorcyclist's neck.
3) Finds some sadistic pleasure in skipping straight to the worst case scenarios on self diagnostic tools like Web MD, and then constructing a detailed narrative around what life would be like as an amputee.
Just so my imagination doesn't take all the blame, I can also point to several significant instances of Bad Medical Care-- like the two eye doctors who have insisted on repeatedly testing my fainting reaction to a particular numbing drop. Or my shady auctioneer gyno. Or any of the surly rent-a-docs I saw at the Student Health Center in college.
And now I'm supposed to go and look up my third Primary Care Provider in two years, a person I will likely never see again, and show this stranger my horrific toe, knowing that the recommended treatment for infections at this stage involves knives and needles and, if I'm really lucky, LASER DEBRIDEMENT.
I've been working really hard to change my perception of this small town from barren, wind-swept outpost to quaint, opportunity-rich learning environment, but the prospect of offering up my throbbing nightmare toe to a stranger with a knife is really freaking me out.
I am terrified of the doctor. It was not always this way. There was a time when I toyed with the idea of going to medical school, if not to become a practicing physician then to create sweeping, full-color, multilayered illustrations of the saddle joint or the free fall of neurotransmitters as they brave the synaptic gap. I love biology, I love anatomy, I love zoology. I love the epic stories of immune system battles and the mundane heroics of the excretory system. Algebra put an end to all that. X = a big fat fucking wall. So instead I write and I draw and I find gainful employment by other means.
Part of the reason I understood biology so well was that I could turn it into a story with characters and goals and birth and death and drama, and it all made sense. I was still interested in what goes on in the body and how problems are fixed, so I asked questions and read textbooks and pestered my doctors. BUT-- and this is one of those horrible over-arching themes I struggle with in almost every area of my life-- Imagination Must Have Limits.
For instance, Imagination is no longer helpful when it:
1) Renders one incapable of any degree of detachment when it comes to submitting to painful procedures (especially when Imagination insists that pain incurred under anesthesia is just pain delayed with nausea factored in as interest, and therefore, no procedure is ever "painless.")
2) Sparks a lurid fascination with any and all surgical procedures on television from breast implants to liposuction (which looks like someone fencing an unseen foe under the skin) to hip replacement (buzz saws, God help us) to removing a 2-inch-thick tree branch from a motorcyclist's neck.
3) Finds some sadistic pleasure in skipping straight to the worst case scenarios on self diagnostic tools like Web MD, and then constructing a detailed narrative around what life would be like as an amputee.
Just so my imagination doesn't take all the blame, I can also point to several significant instances of Bad Medical Care-- like the two eye doctors who have insisted on repeatedly testing my fainting reaction to a particular numbing drop. Or my shady auctioneer gyno. Or any of the surly rent-a-docs I saw at the Student Health Center in college.
And now I'm supposed to go and look up my third Primary Care Provider in two years, a person I will likely never see again, and show this stranger my horrific toe, knowing that the recommended treatment for infections at this stage involves knives and needles and, if I'm really lucky, LASER DEBRIDEMENT.
I've been working really hard to change my perception of this small town from barren, wind-swept outpost to quaint, opportunity-rich learning environment, but the prospect of offering up my throbbing nightmare toe to a stranger with a knife is really freaking me out.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
So a rabbi walks into a bridge club meeting...
One of the interesting things about being married to the military is how often and how explicitly you are required to fill out various forms. For instance, (Dad, skip this sentence), during my "Well Woman" exam I was asked in the most professional way possible if I had engaged in any designated risk behaviors, up to and including paying for sex from a stranger, engaging in group sex, and/or allowing someone to insert their entire fist into my lady parts. From the robotic and bland-faced delivery of the enlisted nurse, I can only assume that everyone-- from the 21-year-old stationed in Bangkok, to the pregnant dependent, to the frail retiree-- is asked the same set of questions. Apparently not everyone laughs hysterically, though.
Today's form was a bit more disturbing. Apparently the military needs to know, in detail, *exactly* how you would like to be informed of your spouse's untimely death in a horrific accident. Cultural sensitivity abounds: are there any elderly relatives living with you, and could they be of help? "Granddad-- quick, fetch ice!" Would you like a chaplain present, and if so, what denomination? Considering that I don't go to church, it'd just be another stranger I'd have to introduce myself to, so no. Is there anyone you would NOT want there? Dick Cheney. Do you have any medical conditions that would require the presence of a physician in the event that you must be notified of an accident? Just that one where I love my husband and would collapse in spasms of colossal grief.
And man, are they thorough. I filled out an account of my daily schedule and phone numbers to reach me at any place I might possibly go (helpful prompt suggestions were "bowling, bridge, dancing, Service Clubs"). In one way, I suppose this is comforting-- there's a chain of command established now between the military and me and our extended family, and a set of considerations we've agreed upon that will minimize the possibility of confusion. But in another way, it's exceedingly bizarre to choreograph, in advance, the most tragic moment of one's life. I almost wanted to make it as weird as possible, just so that when a Hasidic Rabbi, a pizza deliveryman, and a military representative hunt me down at my bridge club, I'll know exactly what the score is.
What if every profession did this? What if accounting firms had action plans in place for reporting the tragic malfunction of a paper shredder to a distraught spouse?
I'm trying to imagine funny scenarios because the reality of filling out this paperwork has me deeply freaked out. Obviously these questions are born from experience, just like the emergency procedures I help my husband memorize for his training. Somebody actually had the World's Most Inappropriate Acquaintance show up with the group breaking the bad news. Someone else's trick lung started acting up in reaction to the shock and wouldn't you know it? No ventilator.
I'm still working on grasping the reality of my husband's job, and most days it seems like my hands are too small. I can either pick up and hold the part where he's passionately excited about what he's about to do and isn't it cool that he's been able to follow his dream-- OR -- I get to lug around the big tangly slimy part where I'm worried about his safety, resentful about another move, and often completely in the dark about what's coming next. Even more fun is trying to balance the tiny breakable part where I try to figure out how the hell I fit into all of this, how I continue to be me. So far I have not been able to master holding all three at once and getting a global picture of what's going on. I imagine that when I finally accomplish it, the feeling will be so calming, so completely zen, that it'll be like being a milk cow on heroin.
Today's form was a bit more disturbing. Apparently the military needs to know, in detail, *exactly* how you would like to be informed of your spouse's untimely death in a horrific accident. Cultural sensitivity abounds: are there any elderly relatives living with you, and could they be of help? "Granddad-- quick, fetch ice!" Would you like a chaplain present, and if so, what denomination? Considering that I don't go to church, it'd just be another stranger I'd have to introduce myself to, so no. Is there anyone you would NOT want there? Dick Cheney. Do you have any medical conditions that would require the presence of a physician in the event that you must be notified of an accident? Just that one where I love my husband and would collapse in spasms of colossal grief.
And man, are they thorough. I filled out an account of my daily schedule and phone numbers to reach me at any place I might possibly go (helpful prompt suggestions were "bowling, bridge, dancing, Service Clubs"). In one way, I suppose this is comforting-- there's a chain of command established now between the military and me and our extended family, and a set of considerations we've agreed upon that will minimize the possibility of confusion. But in another way, it's exceedingly bizarre to choreograph, in advance, the most tragic moment of one's life. I almost wanted to make it as weird as possible, just so that when a Hasidic Rabbi, a pizza deliveryman, and a military representative hunt me down at my bridge club, I'll know exactly what the score is.
What if every profession did this? What if accounting firms had action plans in place for reporting the tragic malfunction of a paper shredder to a distraught spouse?
I'm trying to imagine funny scenarios because the reality of filling out this paperwork has me deeply freaked out. Obviously these questions are born from experience, just like the emergency procedures I help my husband memorize for his training. Somebody actually had the World's Most Inappropriate Acquaintance show up with the group breaking the bad news. Someone else's trick lung started acting up in reaction to the shock and wouldn't you know it? No ventilator.
I'm still working on grasping the reality of my husband's job, and most days it seems like my hands are too small. I can either pick up and hold the part where he's passionately excited about what he's about to do and isn't it cool that he's been able to follow his dream-- OR -- I get to lug around the big tangly slimy part where I'm worried about his safety, resentful about another move, and often completely in the dark about what's coming next. Even more fun is trying to balance the tiny breakable part where I try to figure out how the hell I fit into all of this, how I continue to be me. So far I have not been able to master holding all three at once and getting a global picture of what's going on. I imagine that when I finally accomplish it, the feeling will be so calming, so completely zen, that it'll be like being a milk cow on heroin.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Guess who's retarded at posting pictures?
OK, you're going to have to bear with me here with the image posting. I'm new at this.
Here's a shot from this weekend that proves that even crystallized dirt appreciates a nice set of knockers.
And one of me making my parents proud.
And then this one, called "Soldier in the Hands of God" done by a guy whose brother is in Iraq. Did you see the incredible detail of the ribbon lying loosely around the base of the whole thing? Look again.
Here's a shot from this weekend that proves that even crystallized dirt appreciates a nice set of knockers.
And one of me making my parents proud.
And then this one, called "Soldier in the Hands of God" done by a guy whose brother is in Iraq. Did you see the incredible detail of the ribbon lying loosely around the base of the whole thing? Look again.
More gawking at dirt
So this is how it's going to be-- some shots will be forced upon you and others you can choose to view by clicking on them. I have decided to impose my artsy farsty shot of a rainbow kite on you. Just in case you're getting the impression that the event was at all gay friendly, let me point out that there were also plenty of Shameful Anachronisms--oops!--Confederate Flags riding the breeze and saying nothing and everything at the same time.
Meat on a stick is a more impressive feat.
Check it out: ARCHES bigger than CHILDREN. I couldn't believe how unimpressed this kid was. His dad kept pointing out the arches and saying, "Look, they actually got the sand to arch! See how there's nothing under it? Isn't that amazing?" And the kid just looked at him and said, "Yeah, but aren't we getting corn dogs?" Note to self: go to the Taj Mahal alone.
Oh my Goth!
Speaking of unimpressed kids, did you know that angst goes to the beach too? These two lovely tortured souls strained to illustrate dramatic contrast by scowling at the sun-leathered crowd, no doubt pitying us for the shallowness of exclaiming over sand at a beach. God!
Sandfest 2006
This past weekend, the husband and I went to the beach to watch people flaunt the laws of physics and laugh in the face of God as they sculpted fantastic things out of sand. Let me just be clear on that last part: all of this stuff you're about to see was made out of SAND. The most sophisticated thing I've done with this stuff is manage to wedge it deep into my ass crack after a weekend of camping.
And now, photographic evidence of my weekend (which has been so incredibly taxing to download that I'm copping out on all but the barest of commentary).
The ass crack sculptress stands next to a far superior creation.
This was part of a centerpiece for the competition which was over 20 feet tall. Vendors and sponsors had cleverly carved their names into every other facet, but because they far outnumbered the sculptures and because they actually sold THESE, I refuse to post their names.
This one actually kind of reminded me of a Rodin sculpture, if Rodin maybe moonlighted for Hallmark now and then.
And this one just looked edible for some reason, like those chocolate Easter bricks that you feel compelled to eat simply because it's huge and chocolate and not because it takes any good.
And now, photographic evidence of my weekend (which has been so incredibly taxing to download that I'm copping out on all but the barest of commentary).
The ass crack sculptress stands next to a far superior creation.
This was part of a centerpiece for the competition which was over 20 feet tall. Vendors and sponsors had cleverly carved their names into every other facet, but because they far outnumbered the sculptures and because they actually sold THESE, I refuse to post their names.
This one actually kind of reminded me of a Rodin sculpture, if Rodin maybe moonlighted for Hallmark now and then.
And this one just looked edible for some reason, like those chocolate Easter bricks that you feel compelled to eat simply because it's huge and chocolate and not because it takes any good.
Monday, April 03, 2006
Paradigm Shi(f)t
There's saying I like that goes, "When all you've got is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail." I've been hunting for the crappy things about this move just for the sheer joy of hammering them flat with my caustic wit, but then all this good stuff happened out of nowhere and I was left shuffling my feet, ashamed to admit that maybe I kind of like this place.
I had fun this weekend. We had people over and our initial suspicion that the house had a good social vibe and party layout proved accurate. In fact, the weekend had such a nice vibe that I actually got to hang out with my mother, my grandfather, my brother-, mother-, father-, and sister-in-law and the two-year-old nephew, and three guys my husband knows from the base, all at the same time without the universe collapsing in on itself in complete multi-generational chaos. White people just don't do this, hang out with different generations of multiple families, except maybe deep in Appalachia where they have no choice. But it was great and I felt really lucky to be there.
And we got a new-to-us bed. Carl Jung be damned, I will not dwell on the symbolism that this is my parents' old bed that my husband and I have inherited-- I'm just ecstatic that I can lie in one position for over an hour and not awaken to discover new and shocking muscles in deep spasm. The fact that I have to army crawl almost two feet to reach my husband's side of the bed is the smallest of inconveniences.
Even the dobermans are on their way out. Our neighbor, who I so thoroughly eviscerated in my last two entries, turns out to be the son of the true occupant, and in some epic biblical battle for supremacy, the rebel son has been cast out. With him go the giant broken down truck (towed away with little fanfare by a far lesser, sissy little foreign truck), the chopper, and the dogs. I don't know what fate awaits two attack dogs used to pacing around a tiny patch of mud in their own feces, but soon they won't howl and bay outside my bedroom window.
Hooray for paradigm shifts!
I had fun this weekend. We had people over and our initial suspicion that the house had a good social vibe and party layout proved accurate. In fact, the weekend had such a nice vibe that I actually got to hang out with my mother, my grandfather, my brother-, mother-, father-, and sister-in-law and the two-year-old nephew, and three guys my husband knows from the base, all at the same time without the universe collapsing in on itself in complete multi-generational chaos. White people just don't do this, hang out with different generations of multiple families, except maybe deep in Appalachia where they have no choice. But it was great and I felt really lucky to be there.
And we got a new-to-us bed. Carl Jung be damned, I will not dwell on the symbolism that this is my parents' old bed that my husband and I have inherited-- I'm just ecstatic that I can lie in one position for over an hour and not awaken to discover new and shocking muscles in deep spasm. The fact that I have to army crawl almost two feet to reach my husband's side of the bed is the smallest of inconveniences.
Even the dobermans are on their way out. Our neighbor, who I so thoroughly eviscerated in my last two entries, turns out to be the son of the true occupant, and in some epic biblical battle for supremacy, the rebel son has been cast out. With him go the giant broken down truck (towed away with little fanfare by a far lesser, sissy little foreign truck), the chopper, and the dogs. I don't know what fate awaits two attack dogs used to pacing around a tiny patch of mud in their own feces, but soon they won't howl and bay outside my bedroom window.
Hooray for paradigm shifts!
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
All the way live
Sweet, sweet internet lifeblood now flows into our 1960's chic rent house via a brand new cable slung artlessly from the corner of the back room, across the backyard, through the branches of the oak tree, and up to the telephone pole in the back alley. (An expedition down said alley revealed living room furniture abandoned during the Nixon era and glimpses into various backyard empires ruled by startled dogs.)
I'm putting off exploring the outer boundaries of the town like a starving man puts off wolfing down his last ding-dong. Once I reach the edge of town, there will be nothing else to explore, so I have to savor the process slowly. I'm starting with the immediate neighborhood today, and planning a long walk in the wake of a long awaited thunderstorm. On the way to the grocery store this morning I saw at least three houses surrounded by religious shrines, so I'm headed in that general direction.
Sadly, my next door neighbor continues to stomp the mudhole of my expectations even deeper. I'm now keeping track of the sleazy cliches he hasn't exhibited. Last night he fired up the molar-rattling chopper just to ride in ever-widening concentric circles around the town's residential streets. Round and round he went, and I could hear him the whole time, rev-rev-revvving his way to masculinity. I don't know whether this means his bike is too loud or the town is too small, but neither possibility is comforting. What is comforting is that now I'm certain I'm not the only one lying in bed thinking, "Is that thunder? Oh. No. Just that asshole again."
My family's coming to town for the weekend and I'm excited to give them the grand tour of our anachronism of a house. I don't know what it is about my generation but we seem to be drawn to kitsch like crows to tinfoil. I was delighted to find that the house came with a projector screen (for riveting slideshows of family trips-- "Look! Disaffected teens in front of the Grand Canyon/Lake Tahoe/Mount Rushmore!") and creepy mustard yellow curtain doors in two of the closets.
Lucky for me, the kitsch was gutted out of the kitchen and one bathroom, where cute anachronisms quickly turn to infuriating health hazards. But by and large I'm enjoying the house. There's an odd comfort in being in a place that was once so highly personalized for someone else. I thought it would weird me out, but now what really weirds me out is how thoroughly newer apartments can erase all traces of humanity for the next tenant. By contrast, this place drips people.
Off to explore, slowly.
I'm putting off exploring the outer boundaries of the town like a starving man puts off wolfing down his last ding-dong. Once I reach the edge of town, there will be nothing else to explore, so I have to savor the process slowly. I'm starting with the immediate neighborhood today, and planning a long walk in the wake of a long awaited thunderstorm. On the way to the grocery store this morning I saw at least three houses surrounded by religious shrines, so I'm headed in that general direction.
Sadly, my next door neighbor continues to stomp the mudhole of my expectations even deeper. I'm now keeping track of the sleazy cliches he hasn't exhibited. Last night he fired up the molar-rattling chopper just to ride in ever-widening concentric circles around the town's residential streets. Round and round he went, and I could hear him the whole time, rev-rev-revvving his way to masculinity. I don't know whether this means his bike is too loud or the town is too small, but neither possibility is comforting. What is comforting is that now I'm certain I'm not the only one lying in bed thinking, "Is that thunder? Oh. No. Just that asshole again."
My family's coming to town for the weekend and I'm excited to give them the grand tour of our anachronism of a house. I don't know what it is about my generation but we seem to be drawn to kitsch like crows to tinfoil. I was delighted to find that the house came with a projector screen (for riveting slideshows of family trips-- "Look! Disaffected teens in front of the Grand Canyon/Lake Tahoe/Mount Rushmore!") and creepy mustard yellow curtain doors in two of the closets.
Lucky for me, the kitsch was gutted out of the kitchen and one bathroom, where cute anachronisms quickly turn to infuriating health hazards. But by and large I'm enjoying the house. There's an odd comfort in being in a place that was once so highly personalized for someone else. I thought it would weird me out, but now what really weirds me out is how thoroughly newer apartments can erase all traces of humanity for the next tenant. By contrast, this place drips people.
Off to explore, slowly.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Why can't it be Christmas TODAY?
Total props to Mimi Smartypants for finding this site, which only illustrates my theory that the internet is a magical wonderland where my wildest subconscious wishes can be found, bought and shipped to me. Limbs & Things!
Having trouble with yours? Swap it out.
Cocktail stirrers for the edgy soiree.
Someone whose day is always guaranteed to have been worse than yours.
In case you run out.
Not only is it comforting to know that medical students get practice runs on dummies with names like "Nellie" and "Mr. K" for everything from suturing an episiotomy to detecting irregularities in the prostate (that one, by the way, comes with a carrying case on the off chance that you'd rather not be seen on the subway lugging around a realistic ass), but it's also wonderfully democratic that I, Jane K. Citizen, can purchase these things to spruce up my hum-drum home decor.
Oh, if only I had a few thousand dollars.
Having trouble with yours? Swap it out.
Cocktail stirrers for the edgy soiree.
Someone whose day is always guaranteed to have been worse than yours.
In case you run out.
Not only is it comforting to know that medical students get practice runs on dummies with names like "Nellie" and "Mr. K" for everything from suturing an episiotomy to detecting irregularities in the prostate (that one, by the way, comes with a carrying case on the off chance that you'd rather not be seen on the subway lugging around a realistic ass), but it's also wonderfully democratic that I, Jane K. Citizen, can purchase these things to spruce up my hum-drum home decor.
Oh, if only I had a few thousand dollars.
Grillin', dog fightin', and monster truckin'
I am savoring the hypocrisy in what I'm about to say like one savors those crappy mints from IHOP, which is to say that I'm getting no pleasure out of it, and I have to spit it out before it kills me: I think my new neighbors might be douche bags.
I don't even live in the new place yet-- I only dropped by today to sign the lease and unload a carload of breakables I don't trust the movers with-- and already I'm making sweeping character judgments. Yes, after neurotically swaddling wedding dishes in custom quilted containers, I am summoning the nerve to pass judgment on another. But bear with me a moment.
I think there's something about a 4:1 vehicle-to-resident ratio that points to douche baggery, especially when one of those vehicles is an ear-splitting, flame-covered chopper, and another is a truck with a lift kit that makes entry and egress a gymnastic sport. Now, sprinkle in two be-testicled dobermans in the backyard (right next to our bedroom window) and a driveway rotisserie pit (can't grill around the attack hounds apparently-- smoking blood drippins' rile 'em up), and you get pretty pungent New Neighbor Gumbo. Plus, the guy has gotten used to using our driveway as overflow parking for his vehicular menagerie. Considering that it only officially became our driveway today, I can let this slide, but I have to wonder where he's going to stash that extra pick-up and car come Wednesday.
Truthfully, my biggest beef is with the dogs, and here comes the hypocrisy: my dog is not friendly. She was not technically bred to tear the neck veins out of children or guard bank vaults, but she's very picky about who she meets and almost everyone gets a "go to hell" bark/growl combo for the first 1200 encounters. She doesn't cotton to most other dogs either, a fact which became painfully obvious when we tried to socialize her into an active dog park in Florida and I ended up feeling like the only mother whose preschooler channels the devil and stabs people for fun. I grew up around golden retrievers, the fluffy Buddhas of the dog world, and Abby's prickliness dismays me. Don't get me wrong, I love having a creepy-smart dog with a huge vocabulary and repertoire of parlor tricks, and I find it touching and reassuring that she guards me like I'm made of blown glass, but the trade-off of not knowing whether she's going to snap at someone is pretty steep.
Since she and I have done a few more military moves together, Abby's come to understand that packing up to move doesn't mean she'll be left behind, and she's actually made friends with one dog in this town and mellowed out a bit. But I'm worried that living next door to dobermans, and being separated from them by a waist-high chain link fence is a recipe for disaster. Even if she spends most of the time indoors, dogs still have to shit. It's going to be like West Side Story in my backyard.
I don't even live in the new place yet-- I only dropped by today to sign the lease and unload a carload of breakables I don't trust the movers with-- and already I'm making sweeping character judgments. Yes, after neurotically swaddling wedding dishes in custom quilted containers, I am summoning the nerve to pass judgment on another. But bear with me a moment.
I think there's something about a 4:1 vehicle-to-resident ratio that points to douche baggery, especially when one of those vehicles is an ear-splitting, flame-covered chopper, and another is a truck with a lift kit that makes entry and egress a gymnastic sport. Now, sprinkle in two be-testicled dobermans in the backyard (right next to our bedroom window) and a driveway rotisserie pit (can't grill around the attack hounds apparently-- smoking blood drippins' rile 'em up), and you get pretty pungent New Neighbor Gumbo. Plus, the guy has gotten used to using our driveway as overflow parking for his vehicular menagerie. Considering that it only officially became our driveway today, I can let this slide, but I have to wonder where he's going to stash that extra pick-up and car come Wednesday.
Truthfully, my biggest beef is with the dogs, and here comes the hypocrisy: my dog is not friendly. She was not technically bred to tear the neck veins out of children or guard bank vaults, but she's very picky about who she meets and almost everyone gets a "go to hell" bark/growl combo for the first 1200 encounters. She doesn't cotton to most other dogs either, a fact which became painfully obvious when we tried to socialize her into an active dog park in Florida and I ended up feeling like the only mother whose preschooler channels the devil and stabs people for fun. I grew up around golden retrievers, the fluffy Buddhas of the dog world, and Abby's prickliness dismays me. Don't get me wrong, I love having a creepy-smart dog with a huge vocabulary and repertoire of parlor tricks, and I find it touching and reassuring that she guards me like I'm made of blown glass, but the trade-off of not knowing whether she's going to snap at someone is pretty steep.
Since she and I have done a few more military moves together, Abby's come to understand that packing up to move doesn't mean she'll be left behind, and she's actually made friends with one dog in this town and mellowed out a bit. But I'm worried that living next door to dobermans, and being separated from them by a waist-high chain link fence is a recipe for disaster. Even if she spends most of the time indoors, dogs still have to shit. It's going to be like West Side Story in my backyard.
Friday, March 17, 2006
Nanopatience
A new word coined just for today! Nanopatience: (n.) the smallest measureable amount of patience, about the size of a few electron shavings.
I am a sweating, headachey powderkeg because I am grieving the loss of my grandmother and packing the entire household to move to a tiny, tiny town, one whose hot spot is the Super Walmart and where most people recognize each other, if not by name then by lines of kinship (i.e. "that's old Winston's daughter, the one who married the Bailey kid and lives over on the other side of the tracks"). Bustling anonymity is much more my speed-- my college was two and a half times the size of this entire town, which is a snooty-sounding fact I will have to do my best not to share.
All around me are islands of piled junk (which is what all of your stuff becomes, even the stuff you like, when you are required to pack it up and move it) strewn across the floor awaiting some kind of order and assembly. The urge to abandon it all and disappear is startingly strong. The house is quiet except for the sounds of the washer and dryer and the cat occasionally nudging something off a table. The terrain of his world just got infinitely more interesting and he's been alpine climbing towers of junk all morning.
I'm packing in disordered, profanity-laden spurts because I can-- the husband got another golden ticket from the military requiring him to be out of town for the whole packing process doing some obscure training exercise in a spring break vacation town. I calmly articulated my vein-searing jealousy last night, but it didn't make me feel any better. Here is where logic and communication are overrated, and a good five-year-old temper tantrum might have felt a lot better.
Recent bright spots: we found a nice, funky old house to rent in the new town, and it has a spare room with lots of sunlight where I can write; my husband's family is coming to visit in the beginning of next month and they're bringing the little two-year-old nephew who likes to be swung around upside down by his ankles; I got to have an exciting, challenging, four-star interesting conversation with a really smart girl I met about a week ago and who I hope will be coming to visit the tiny, tiny town often; and finally, the tiny, tiny town is a major migratory route for all kinds of crazy species of South American birds and butterflies, which really excites the Marty Stouffard in me.
I'm going to think of this instead of my solitude among the Junk Himalayas and see if it helps.
I am a sweating, headachey powderkeg because I am grieving the loss of my grandmother and packing the entire household to move to a tiny, tiny town, one whose hot spot is the Super Walmart and where most people recognize each other, if not by name then by lines of kinship (i.e. "that's old Winston's daughter, the one who married the Bailey kid and lives over on the other side of the tracks"). Bustling anonymity is much more my speed-- my college was two and a half times the size of this entire town, which is a snooty-sounding fact I will have to do my best not to share.
All around me are islands of piled junk (which is what all of your stuff becomes, even the stuff you like, when you are required to pack it up and move it) strewn across the floor awaiting some kind of order and assembly. The urge to abandon it all and disappear is startingly strong. The house is quiet except for the sounds of the washer and dryer and the cat occasionally nudging something off a table. The terrain of his world just got infinitely more interesting and he's been alpine climbing towers of junk all morning.
I'm packing in disordered, profanity-laden spurts because I can-- the husband got another golden ticket from the military requiring him to be out of town for the whole packing process doing some obscure training exercise in a spring break vacation town. I calmly articulated my vein-searing jealousy last night, but it didn't make me feel any better. Here is where logic and communication are overrated, and a good five-year-old temper tantrum might have felt a lot better.
Recent bright spots: we found a nice, funky old house to rent in the new town, and it has a spare room with lots of sunlight where I can write; my husband's family is coming to visit in the beginning of next month and they're bringing the little two-year-old nephew who likes to be swung around upside down by his ankles; I got to have an exciting, challenging, four-star interesting conversation with a really smart girl I met about a week ago and who I hope will be coming to visit the tiny, tiny town often; and finally, the tiny, tiny town is a major migratory route for all kinds of crazy species of South American birds and butterflies, which really excites the Marty Stouffard in me.
I'm going to think of this instead of my solitude among the Junk Himalayas and see if it helps.
Saturday, March 11, 2006
A late night babysitting an overheated brain
The best possible outcomes in two recent stress-inducing situations have come to pass, and it's filling me with anxiety and sadness. One situation, the next phase in my husband's training, is easy to talk about. The other, my grandmother's death early this morning after a long illness, is not. I'm relieved that she's not suffering, but the weight and velocity of feelings I can't name calls for silence on that for now.
My husband was selected for the exact type of training he's been wanting for years now, despite what looked like longer than long odds. Much celebrating has taken the place of our usual monastic, budget-conscious rituals, and in a departure from custom, we've had the time and resources to househunt as a team. The last two moves were unilateral decisions out of necessity-- Florida was up to him and Texas was mine-- but being able to share the burden for our next move is fortunate since it looks like it might be the most challenging. In one of my less sober moments this weekend, I put it succinctly to a friend, "Dude, there's fuck all for housing out there."
The town is smaller than any I've ever lived in before, including, I'm pretty sure, the company compound I lived on in Saudi Arabia. A chipper, pot-bellied realtor with a handlebar moustache showed us several houses in our modest price range, and I got the distinct feeling that at least two of them were on the market because the residents had recently died. The random details death and realtors forget are unsettling: a half empty bottle of Listerine, a "Reagan '84" bumpersticker plastered on a garage wall, tiny bookshelf labels where a collection had been carefully organized by genre, and an old spotted oven mitt abandoned at the back of a drawer.
The smell of an old house recently emptied is also something I'm not used to. Phantom dinners linger under generations of cats and dust, which is all overpowered by that distinct old people smell-- old clothes, old books, old habits. The places are empty, but they're heavy with history that makes me feel like I'm intruding as I wander from room to room thinking about paint colors and what it would take to rip out carpet. One place had chrome handlebars bolted to the bathtub and a ramp leading out the back door. The realtor mentioned that there had been an estate sale recently, but was vague about what had actually happened to the resident, leaving open the possibility that maybe he had just moved to a nursing home. Out the kitchen window I could see a calico cat lounging just off the edge of the back porch, in a worn patch of shade under a bush. I wondered if maybe he was a detail left behind, too.
The other houses were sobering, the kind of creative renovation and design disasters that make soul-less cookie-cutter apartments seem like welcome blank slates. There's only so much forgiveness a small house can muster, especially when its owners watch too much "Trading Spaces" and "This Old House." After seeing the Cheeto-orange bathroom and the three-foot vertical drop-off mid-living room in a house that smelled strongly of baked urine, I was ready for the end of the Parade of Frankenstein Homes. One small panic attack and one large bag of M&M's, I agreed that we could call it a day and return later with [lowered expectations] open minds, and give it another shot.
For now the decision is between the sterile gated community of brand new four-plexes wedged tight up against each other with scraps of manicured grass filling in the short hop from front door to parking lot (i.e., a dog's idea of hell), and an as-yet-undiscovered rental house without too many battle scars and not on the side of town that gets completely sealed off every morning when the train rattles through.
Bright and early tomorrow morning the search continues, and seeing as how it's now almost 2 a.m. and I've only just written the rind off this giant swelling knot of anxiety and unnameable weirdness, I can tell it's going to be a long day.
My husband was selected for the exact type of training he's been wanting for years now, despite what looked like longer than long odds. Much celebrating has taken the place of our usual monastic, budget-conscious rituals, and in a departure from custom, we've had the time and resources to househunt as a team. The last two moves were unilateral decisions out of necessity-- Florida was up to him and Texas was mine-- but being able to share the burden for our next move is fortunate since it looks like it might be the most challenging. In one of my less sober moments this weekend, I put it succinctly to a friend, "Dude, there's fuck all for housing out there."
The town is smaller than any I've ever lived in before, including, I'm pretty sure, the company compound I lived on in Saudi Arabia. A chipper, pot-bellied realtor with a handlebar moustache showed us several houses in our modest price range, and I got the distinct feeling that at least two of them were on the market because the residents had recently died. The random details death and realtors forget are unsettling: a half empty bottle of Listerine, a "Reagan '84" bumpersticker plastered on a garage wall, tiny bookshelf labels where a collection had been carefully organized by genre, and an old spotted oven mitt abandoned at the back of a drawer.
The smell of an old house recently emptied is also something I'm not used to. Phantom dinners linger under generations of cats and dust, which is all overpowered by that distinct old people smell-- old clothes, old books, old habits. The places are empty, but they're heavy with history that makes me feel like I'm intruding as I wander from room to room thinking about paint colors and what it would take to rip out carpet. One place had chrome handlebars bolted to the bathtub and a ramp leading out the back door. The realtor mentioned that there had been an estate sale recently, but was vague about what had actually happened to the resident, leaving open the possibility that maybe he had just moved to a nursing home. Out the kitchen window I could see a calico cat lounging just off the edge of the back porch, in a worn patch of shade under a bush. I wondered if maybe he was a detail left behind, too.
The other houses were sobering, the kind of creative renovation and design disasters that make soul-less cookie-cutter apartments seem like welcome blank slates. There's only so much forgiveness a small house can muster, especially when its owners watch too much "Trading Spaces" and "This Old House." After seeing the Cheeto-orange bathroom and the three-foot vertical drop-off mid-living room in a house that smelled strongly of baked urine, I was ready for the end of the Parade of Frankenstein Homes. One small panic attack and one large bag of M&M's, I agreed that we could call it a day and return later with [lowered expectations] open minds, and give it another shot.
For now the decision is between the sterile gated community of brand new four-plexes wedged tight up against each other with scraps of manicured grass filling in the short hop from front door to parking lot (i.e., a dog's idea of hell), and an as-yet-undiscovered rental house without too many battle scars and not on the side of town that gets completely sealed off every morning when the train rattles through.
Bright and early tomorrow morning the search continues, and seeing as how it's now almost 2 a.m. and I've only just written the rind off this giant swelling knot of anxiety and unnameable weirdness, I can tell it's going to be a long day.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Carpet fibers, wind, gym ogres, and Tyra Banks. There is a connection.
Briefly summarized, the whole programming line-up of the Discovery Channel: choppers, big ships, people with hypothermia, and people hunted down by the FBI using carpet fibers. Right now it's the FBI one, and that solemn baritone-voiced narrator is explaining how luminol works for what must be the 80th time in his life. I wonder if he has anything to talk about at parties or if he just hides in the corner drinking all the free booze and slamming cheese cubes until it's appropriate to leave.
The wind is insane today, something like 45-mile-an-hour gusts. No one's face is visible, just a bunch of blind, hair-matted shapes on top of shoulders as people hunch and struggle across the parking lot. I'm seeing a lot of those pink seams where the wind has flattened someone's hair and jagged lines of scalp peak out. Add to that how awkward people look when the true shapes of their bodies are visible beneath their wind-plastered clothes and we all look pretty vulnerable today.
Despite the wind, I'm planning a run to the gym, purely for its unique comforts. I need to hear that weird synchronous thumping when everyone on the treadmills suddenly hits the same stride. I'm hoping the retired guy with the old, old tattoos will be there, grimly climbing stairs in jeans and a polo shirt, daring his body to break a sweat and scowling at all the rest of us. I'm also hoping the tiny Filipina woman who totally looks like one of these, complete with new plastic parts, if you catch my drift, is there preening and stretching for everyone. There's been a whole unique gym culture at each place I've lived, and I quite like the one here.
Tomorrow is the big day when we find out what and where the next stage of training is for my husband, and I hope it's what he's been hoping for. (He's finally relaxing a bit today, as am I-- he just came through the room doing a version of Madonna's "Vogue" where instead of commanding me to "strike a pose," he waggled his ass and said "touch your nose!" while striking geometric nose-touching poses. This is a large part of what we do for fun, this rearranging of pop song lyrics. That and punctuating serious sentences with farts.)
I, however, have a far more important deadline coming up before then: tonight is the season premier of America's Next Top Model, where Tyra Banks shines up that forehead of hers and regenerates her soul on a diet of young girls' dreams. Actually, I don't mind Tyra all that much. The scripted theatrics of her elimination nights are really no worse than the rest of reality TV, and she at least pretends to be sympathetic. I do miss Janice Dickinson's boozed up eviscerations though-- replacing her with Twiggy was a dubious move.
The wind is insane today, something like 45-mile-an-hour gusts. No one's face is visible, just a bunch of blind, hair-matted shapes on top of shoulders as people hunch and struggle across the parking lot. I'm seeing a lot of those pink seams where the wind has flattened someone's hair and jagged lines of scalp peak out. Add to that how awkward people look when the true shapes of their bodies are visible beneath their wind-plastered clothes and we all look pretty vulnerable today.
Despite the wind, I'm planning a run to the gym, purely for its unique comforts. I need to hear that weird synchronous thumping when everyone on the treadmills suddenly hits the same stride. I'm hoping the retired guy with the old, old tattoos will be there, grimly climbing stairs in jeans and a polo shirt, daring his body to break a sweat and scowling at all the rest of us. I'm also hoping the tiny Filipina woman who totally looks like one of these, complete with new plastic parts, if you catch my drift, is there preening and stretching for everyone. There's been a whole unique gym culture at each place I've lived, and I quite like the one here.
Tomorrow is the big day when we find out what and where the next stage of training is for my husband, and I hope it's what he's been hoping for. (He's finally relaxing a bit today, as am I-- he just came through the room doing a version of Madonna's "Vogue" where instead of commanding me to "strike a pose," he waggled his ass and said "touch your nose!" while striking geometric nose-touching poses. This is a large part of what we do for fun, this rearranging of pop song lyrics. That and punctuating serious sentences with farts.)
I, however, have a far more important deadline coming up before then: tonight is the season premier of America's Next Top Model, where Tyra Banks shines up that forehead of hers and regenerates her soul on a diet of young girls' dreams. Actually, I don't mind Tyra all that much. The scripted theatrics of her elimination nights are really no worse than the rest of reality TV, and she at least pretends to be sympathetic. I do miss Janice Dickinson's boozed up eviscerations though-- replacing her with Twiggy was a dubious move.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Psychic Seventh-Inning Stretch
"And just like that she was human again. Almost."
That's how the children's story version of the past four days would have ended. Before that would have been chapters devoted to the various flavors of crazy I've been, starting with Depression-Nut Crunch and moving on to Compulsive-berry and Insomnia Swirl. Holy God I've been in the trenches, but it's looking like it might let up. I'm blaming most of this on curious tidal shifts in my hormone levels courtesy of the military's little experiment with my fertility, but it's hard to intellectualize things as abstract as hormone levels when you're busy scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing! And wondering why your kitchen suddenly looks like a New Delhi slum! The dust! The dog hair!
Of course, I'm also reserving a significant portion of blame for our evil mattress, which has become officially intolerable. I'm sleeping on the futon in the living room most nights, which is actually quite comfortable, except for the part where the cat, distressed that I am Out of Place, paces back and forth across my throat. We actually went to Sears yesterday to try to sort things out, which was risky because I was irritable enough to rip someone's ears off at the first sign of resistance, but the saleswoman was helpful and reassuring and it appears that we can trade out our Guantanamo Bay Special for an actual mattress. (<-- that was horrible. Sorry.)
Things continue to deteriorate with my grandmother and I'm finding that I dream about her at least every other night. Last night she came and sat down next to me on an airport bench. She was smiling and she had a shopping bag from a gift shop with her, but she didn't say anything, just reached down and squeezed my knee and settled back to wait with me.
Last night she looked like she did fourteen years ago, the summer we went to visit her and my grandfather in Utah where they were volunteer park rangers at Flaming Gorge. It was a great trip. I must have been about 13, and the presence of such geographical hyperbole-- soaring cliff faces! bottle green rapids! Martian landscape canyons gouged deep in layers upon layers of orange and red rock!-- shook me out of myself for a while. It seemed like a whole different world, and there were my grandparents, running the precariously placed visitor's center at the top of the gorge, presiding over the whole canyon like accidental monarchs in their brown Park Service uniforms. I'm not sure why, but it really seemed like it was theirs, the whole place.
In other news, the Big Finishing Deadline for my husband is finally over. He's completed his first stage of training and now we're just waiting to see what the next stage will be and where it will take us. He's done quite well, but I believe our combined adrenaline output over the past month would kill an elephant. We're both having a hard time tapering off, and my uterus and our mattress aren't helping. Here's hoping for more serotonin, firm back support, and some cheap Mexican beers...
That's how the children's story version of the past four days would have ended. Before that would have been chapters devoted to the various flavors of crazy I've been, starting with Depression-Nut Crunch and moving on to Compulsive-berry and Insomnia Swirl. Holy God I've been in the trenches, but it's looking like it might let up. I'm blaming most of this on curious tidal shifts in my hormone levels courtesy of the military's little experiment with my fertility, but it's hard to intellectualize things as abstract as hormone levels when you're busy scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing! And wondering why your kitchen suddenly looks like a New Delhi slum! The dust! The dog hair!
Of course, I'm also reserving a significant portion of blame for our evil mattress, which has become officially intolerable. I'm sleeping on the futon in the living room most nights, which is actually quite comfortable, except for the part where the cat, distressed that I am Out of Place, paces back and forth across my throat. We actually went to Sears yesterday to try to sort things out, which was risky because I was irritable enough to rip someone's ears off at the first sign of resistance, but the saleswoman was helpful and reassuring and it appears that we can trade out our Guantanamo Bay Special for an actual mattress. (<-- that was horrible. Sorry.)
Things continue to deteriorate with my grandmother and I'm finding that I dream about her at least every other night. Last night she came and sat down next to me on an airport bench. She was smiling and she had a shopping bag from a gift shop with her, but she didn't say anything, just reached down and squeezed my knee and settled back to wait with me.
Last night she looked like she did fourteen years ago, the summer we went to visit her and my grandfather in Utah where they were volunteer park rangers at Flaming Gorge. It was a great trip. I must have been about 13, and the presence of such geographical hyperbole-- soaring cliff faces! bottle green rapids! Martian landscape canyons gouged deep in layers upon layers of orange and red rock!-- shook me out of myself for a while. It seemed like a whole different world, and there were my grandparents, running the precariously placed visitor's center at the top of the gorge, presiding over the whole canyon like accidental monarchs in their brown Park Service uniforms. I'm not sure why, but it really seemed like it was theirs, the whole place.
In other news, the Big Finishing Deadline for my husband is finally over. He's completed his first stage of training and now we're just waiting to see what the next stage will be and where it will take us. He's done quite well, but I believe our combined adrenaline output over the past month would kill an elephant. We're both having a hard time tapering off, and my uterus and our mattress aren't helping. Here's hoping for more serotonin, firm back support, and some cheap Mexican beers...
Thursday, March 02, 2006
The teenager in me rolls her eyes and sighs...
Well, it's finally happened: I heard Nirvana's "Heart-shaped Box" on the oldies station, sandwiched between Pink Floyd and-- God, help us all-- the Eagles, who, to borrow a particularly apt expression of distaste I heard recently, crawled directly from Satan's anus.
The event is significant because hearing a rebellion song from my youth on an oldies station, whose stated mission is to "jam through your workday," makes me, by extension, old. I've been slowly coming to terms with this, both by having steadily more white hairs to pluck from my head, and by recognizing a growing malevolence towards the tastes and habits of people younger than me. 'How the hell is Christina Aguilera allowed to live?' for example, is a question that has occurred to me several times, and points to oldness.
I was fourteen when "In Utero," Nirvana's last official album, came out. My family was living in Saudi Arabia and the cover image on the copy of the album I bought had been carefully colored in by an official censor from the Ministry of the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue. Seriously. It was, and is, a recognized government organization with an army of censors who sift through mountains of pornographic Western cereal boxes and Seventeen magazines with varying widths of black permanent markers drawing modest black leggings and body suits on images of women. The unique pathology of a censor is poetically evident when you stand in a grocery store looking at rows and rows of Michelle Kwan Wheaties boxes meticulously colored in.
But I digress.
My chastely altered copy of "In Utero" was dear to my heart. I appreciated it for its cryptic, evocative lyrics and gutteral, howling guitar solos. The fractured quality of Kurt Cobain's voice spoke in universal terms to all things confused, cornered and hurting, which I think is a pretty accurate description of what it felt like to be fourteen.
When Kurt Cobain committed suicide, I was fifteen and he was 27. 27 seemed to be a mythical age because it's the age of some of the Great Rock Deaths-- Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison come to mind-- and seemed to me at the time to be some sort of a jumping off point. If things don't work out by the time you're 27, they're not going to. Also, to a fifteen-year-old, the prospect of living almost your entire life over again before you even reach 27 seems like an exhausting, herculean feat.
So imagine my surprise when, driving home from work today, I heard Nirvana on the oldies station and realized that I am 27. This was both horrifying and extremely comforting. Horrifying because I think the fourteen-year-old me would have puked if she thought she would turn out so boring-- listening to NPR, addicted to nothing racier than lattes, and married. But it's also incredibly comforting that I've found someone who's agreed to put up with tangled old me for the long haul, that I can finally give a shit about things happening outside of my own head, and that excitement is no longer defined by killing landslides of brain cells.
I just don't know how I'll handle the muzak version of "Polly."
The event is significant because hearing a rebellion song from my youth on an oldies station, whose stated mission is to "jam through your workday," makes me, by extension, old. I've been slowly coming to terms with this, both by having steadily more white hairs to pluck from my head, and by recognizing a growing malevolence towards the tastes and habits of people younger than me. 'How the hell is Christina Aguilera allowed to live?' for example, is a question that has occurred to me several times, and points to oldness.
I was fourteen when "In Utero," Nirvana's last official album, came out. My family was living in Saudi Arabia and the cover image on the copy of the album I bought had been carefully colored in by an official censor from the Ministry of the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue. Seriously. It was, and is, a recognized government organization with an army of censors who sift through mountains of pornographic Western cereal boxes and Seventeen magazines with varying widths of black permanent markers drawing modest black leggings and body suits on images of women. The unique pathology of a censor is poetically evident when you stand in a grocery store looking at rows and rows of Michelle Kwan Wheaties boxes meticulously colored in.
But I digress.
My chastely altered copy of "In Utero" was dear to my heart. I appreciated it for its cryptic, evocative lyrics and gutteral, howling guitar solos. The fractured quality of Kurt Cobain's voice spoke in universal terms to all things confused, cornered and hurting, which I think is a pretty accurate description of what it felt like to be fourteen.
When Kurt Cobain committed suicide, I was fifteen and he was 27. 27 seemed to be a mythical age because it's the age of some of the Great Rock Deaths-- Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison come to mind-- and seemed to me at the time to be some sort of a jumping off point. If things don't work out by the time you're 27, they're not going to. Also, to a fifteen-year-old, the prospect of living almost your entire life over again before you even reach 27 seems like an exhausting, herculean feat.
So imagine my surprise when, driving home from work today, I heard Nirvana on the oldies station and realized that I am 27. This was both horrifying and extremely comforting. Horrifying because I think the fourteen-year-old me would have puked if she thought she would turn out so boring-- listening to NPR, addicted to nothing racier than lattes, and married. But it's also incredibly comforting that I've found someone who's agreed to put up with tangled old me for the long haul, that I can finally give a shit about things happening outside of my own head, and that excitement is no longer defined by killing landslides of brain cells.
I just don't know how I'll handle the muzak version of "Polly."
Monday, February 27, 2006
This post will not be eloquent.
If you've ever seen a fire in a trashcan you'll know how my brain is working right now.
In the pottery class I took in Alabama, we used trashcan fires to set the glaze on our pieces after they were bisque fired. Raku, it's called. The Japanese developed this way of taking a perfectly lovely plain fired pot, painting it in poisonous chemicals and ground up glass, refiring it until it was all shiny and molten, and then throwing it into a trashcan full of sawdust or wood chips or newspaper and letting it all catch fire. The point is having no idea how that last chaotic crucible will end up marking the pot. It's a total surprise, and you have to be at peace with the fact that you have no control over how it turns out.
I used to love the idea of something starting out so calm and meditative-- making a pot on the wheel gets to be like muscling all the knots out of your soul-- and then just tossing it into chaos and hoping you'll recognize it when everyone starts digging through the ashes with an iron pole and claiming what's theirs.
Now that life seems to be trying the process out on my brain, I'm not so enthusiastic.
I'm losing someone important to me and I had no idea it would feel this way. Emotions are ambushing me and they're never the ones I expect. One of my students protested a grade today and I felt like putting his head on a pike right outside my door in the smelly, institutional looking hallway with the posters that say, "Now's your chance to SHINE!" And then in the next millisecond I felt absolutely nothing. A Visa commercial made me cry tonight. I laughed my ass off alone in the living room moments later at a cartoon in the New Yorker about limited edition "Dick Cheney to Harry Whittington" sympathy cards.
The fact is, everything I look at reminds me of my grandmother but the minute I try to say something, or even form a coherent thought about it, the words melt right back into me and I don't recognize a single one. I get it now, why babies cry sometimes for no evident reason. There is a unique torture in experiencing something and having no words for it, no way of understanding why it feels the way it does.
In the pottery class I took in Alabama, we used trashcan fires to set the glaze on our pieces after they were bisque fired. Raku, it's called. The Japanese developed this way of taking a perfectly lovely plain fired pot, painting it in poisonous chemicals and ground up glass, refiring it until it was all shiny and molten, and then throwing it into a trashcan full of sawdust or wood chips or newspaper and letting it all catch fire. The point is having no idea how that last chaotic crucible will end up marking the pot. It's a total surprise, and you have to be at peace with the fact that you have no control over how it turns out.
I used to love the idea of something starting out so calm and meditative-- making a pot on the wheel gets to be like muscling all the knots out of your soul-- and then just tossing it into chaos and hoping you'll recognize it when everyone starts digging through the ashes with an iron pole and claiming what's theirs.
Now that life seems to be trying the process out on my brain, I'm not so enthusiastic.
I'm losing someone important to me and I had no idea it would feel this way. Emotions are ambushing me and they're never the ones I expect. One of my students protested a grade today and I felt like putting his head on a pike right outside my door in the smelly, institutional looking hallway with the posters that say, "Now's your chance to SHINE!" And then in the next millisecond I felt absolutely nothing. A Visa commercial made me cry tonight. I laughed my ass off alone in the living room moments later at a cartoon in the New Yorker about limited edition "Dick Cheney to Harry Whittington" sympathy cards.
The fact is, everything I look at reminds me of my grandmother but the minute I try to say something, or even form a coherent thought about it, the words melt right back into me and I don't recognize a single one. I get it now, why babies cry sometimes for no evident reason. There is a unique torture in experiencing something and having no words for it, no way of understanding why it feels the way it does.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Birds
This morning I'm listening to all the birds that have suddenly come back to Corpus and thinking about my grandmother. The past couple of days have started and ended in thick skeins of fog and it seems like all the birds snuck in on their migratory paths when the world couldn't see them coming. I'm wondering where they've been-- Mexico? South America?-- and what other lives they've watched over while they were gone from mine. This morning they're bobbing like heavy fruit from the skinny branches of the crepe myrtle outside my window and gabbling to each other with the excitement and energy of old neighbors back from exotic vacations. Probably trying to outdo each other-- "Oh it was great! We saw some Aztec ruins and spent a little time in Rio. Very noisy, but God it was beautiful!"
I'm thinking about birds because my grandmother's heart is failing. Huge migratory journeys are on my mind because today I feel like I can understand how the sun and wind and physical memory could guide you across oceans to the same place, season after season. Right now I feel like I could close my eyes and walk the 400 miles to where my mother and grandmother are. There is a cell-level pull working on me, like the pull the moon exerts on the tides. It's not for the purpose of saying goodbye, but for something deeper and more difficult to understand. It's to honor the continuity of the line of mothers from which I've come, a blood migration going back over centuries and whose origins are hidden in fog.
She is more than my grandmother. She is the closest thing I know to a beginning, and all these parts of me I've always taken for granted are now covered in questions. Where did all of these things come from? How did they begin? Who else used my fingertips and eyes and the strength of my arms before I inherited them? How far have all of these things traveled before they ended up here?
In the selfishness of youth and the blindness of individuality, I've always thought that I got wherever I was under my own steam. But today, listening to birds and thinking of my grandmother, I'm realizing how foolish that was. I am only the most recent iteration of a complex and beautiful set of codes that has traveled over decades and oceans, trading hands like a gift. I am pulled today by recognition of this fact, and by the pain of gratitude I've never expressed.
I'm thinking about birds because my grandmother's heart is failing. Huge migratory journeys are on my mind because today I feel like I can understand how the sun and wind and physical memory could guide you across oceans to the same place, season after season. Right now I feel like I could close my eyes and walk the 400 miles to where my mother and grandmother are. There is a cell-level pull working on me, like the pull the moon exerts on the tides. It's not for the purpose of saying goodbye, but for something deeper and more difficult to understand. It's to honor the continuity of the line of mothers from which I've come, a blood migration going back over centuries and whose origins are hidden in fog.
She is more than my grandmother. She is the closest thing I know to a beginning, and all these parts of me I've always taken for granted are now covered in questions. Where did all of these things come from? How did they begin? Who else used my fingertips and eyes and the strength of my arms before I inherited them? How far have all of these things traveled before they ended up here?
In the selfishness of youth and the blindness of individuality, I've always thought that I got wherever I was under my own steam. But today, listening to birds and thinking of my grandmother, I'm realizing how foolish that was. I am only the most recent iteration of a complex and beautiful set of codes that has traveled over decades and oceans, trading hands like a gift. I am pulled today by recognition of this fact, and by the pain of gratitude I've never expressed.
Monday, February 20, 2006
Waking up with Carl Jung, or Why I Hate our Mattress
Have you ever made a very expensive purchase only to find out later that it was bad and wrong? Call to mind, if you would, the costliest shitty purchase you've ever made and meditate on it. Then leave me a comment and tell me what it was because it might make me feel better about the mattress we bought in Florida.
My husband and I bought our Marriage Bed, the most symbolic of symbols, from a Sears in Pensacola, Florida. We weren't exactly using spare twenties to light the grill, so the fact that thing was over a grand (or, as I called it at the time, "a THOWsand fucking DOLLARS?!") was kind of a big deal. But it was supposed to be top of the line, and when it came to a bed, our collective reasoning took on my dad's slow, measured West Texas tones: "On a deal like this, what you're payin' for is quality."
What we were paying for, it turns out, was a bed with all the lush firmness and support of a wet graham cracker. In the space of one year, my husband and I wore two deep body-shaped grooves into the mattress that no amount of turning, rotating, or acrobatic sleep poses would remedy. Did we sleep that whole year, only rising to empty our bladders and bowels and eat quick handfuls of pound cake? Are we massive humans with leaden limbs who sleep in one corpse-like pose all night? And what does it mean on a Jungian level that our Marriage Bed has aged so quickly?
These were the thoughts spinning through my head at 4:52 this morning, which has got to be the hour that God takes off for smoke break because it's desolate and miserable and if you happen to be lying there in incredible back pain, praying doesn't help. I even tried seeing some advantage in sinking forever into a Rachel-shaped hole in my mattress-- it could be like those trick books where people cut out the shape of a revolver from the pages and hide the gun inside. You could make the bed right over me and I could pop out and surprise everyone. Or rather, slowly and painfully creak out and bitch at everyone. The background music to these thoughts went, "a THOWsand fucking DOLLARS, a THOWsand fucking DOLLARS..."
My husband, ever practical, doesn't even think about what Carl Jung would say about our mattress. Instead, he stumbled out of bed this morning after getting an earful of my neurotic
growling and went straight to see what Sears' warranty website had to say. Now an added perk of the Mystery Move Reality Show is that we'll be taking the mattress back and hoping to see our money again.
My husband and I bought our Marriage Bed, the most symbolic of symbols, from a Sears in Pensacola, Florida. We weren't exactly using spare twenties to light the grill, so the fact that thing was over a grand (or, as I called it at the time, "a THOWsand fucking DOLLARS?!") was kind of a big deal. But it was supposed to be top of the line, and when it came to a bed, our collective reasoning took on my dad's slow, measured West Texas tones: "On a deal like this, what you're payin' for is quality."
What we were paying for, it turns out, was a bed with all the lush firmness and support of a wet graham cracker. In the space of one year, my husband and I wore two deep body-shaped grooves into the mattress that no amount of turning, rotating, or acrobatic sleep poses would remedy. Did we sleep that whole year, only rising to empty our bladders and bowels and eat quick handfuls of pound cake? Are we massive humans with leaden limbs who sleep in one corpse-like pose all night? And what does it mean on a Jungian level that our Marriage Bed has aged so quickly?
These were the thoughts spinning through my head at 4:52 this morning, which has got to be the hour that God takes off for smoke break because it's desolate and miserable and if you happen to be lying there in incredible back pain, praying doesn't help. I even tried seeing some advantage in sinking forever into a Rachel-shaped hole in my mattress-- it could be like those trick books where people cut out the shape of a revolver from the pages and hide the gun inside. You could make the bed right over me and I could pop out and surprise everyone. Or rather, slowly and painfully creak out and bitch at everyone. The background music to these thoughts went, "a THOWsand fucking DOLLARS, a THOWsand fucking DOLLARS..."
My husband, ever practical, doesn't even think about what Carl Jung would say about our mattress. Instead, he stumbled out of bed this morning after getting an earful of my neurotic
growling and went straight to see what Sears' warranty website had to say. Now an added perk of the Mystery Move Reality Show is that we'll be taking the mattress back and hoping to see our money again.
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