mostly good stuff

So, we got a gorgeous new place in the 'ville. Click on the photos to make them larger.









Not visible in the pictures are also a back porch, small office nook, laundry in the basement, dishwasher and waste disposer in the kitchen. OMFG, how beautiful is this place? Two bedrooms! We freaked out when we saw it, it was so nice.

The couple currently living there (and don't they totally have good taste? I hope I can live up to their decorating stylishness; not to mention they are both professional photographers, which is one of the reasons the pictures are so well-thought-out. Erik's website is here. Yes, the site uses flash but a photographer's website is a totally appropriate use of flash, I think. Even though I am allergic to flash.) Anyway, the couple currently living there are moving because they've bought, and they wanted the lease to be taken over by a young couple who would really dig the place. Which turned out to be us. Yay! (they were also a little overwhelmed by the immediate response to the place. It doesn't surprise me that they got a huge response, given those pictures and the amenities, but I think it's cute that they were surprised.)

So tra la la and Dave and I have spent all weekend packing. Actually he has been doing most of the work packing and I have been fighting depression, or, as I like to call it, insanity. I'm seeing my prescribing pysch at the start of next month. One of the things I recently learned is that migraines and depression appear to have a strong back-and-forth link, and you can go on antidepressants that will also act as a preventative medicine for the migraines. That would be really nice, since I'm having about 3 - 4 migraines a month.

I try to be proactive and aware and treat them so they don't interfere too much with my life, and basically that works. But it would still be nice not to have to deal with them so often.

Also it would be nice not to dread opening my eyes in the morning. And this time around (maybe always), one of the symptoms of craziness I am experiencing is irritability. Everything rubs me the wrong way. I feel like I spend most of my time snapping and apologizing, snapping and apologizing.

I can't get any perspective on anything, either, which means that I've got no control over my moods. So work, of course, has been an unadulterated joy, since I have no fucking idea about how to gauge my actual performance and feel terrible about everything. I'd guess my attitude hasn't been very good lately, but that's just a guess, I don't really know. In point of fact, I don't hate my job - the work is interesting and they treat me well - and I would like to avoid being fired.

I was lying in bed this morning thinking about how different my life was 5 years ago, in the hope that this would make me feel better. Even remembering that when I was 24-going-on-25, I lived in New Zealand and was therefore isolated from friends and family, I was unable to work because my ex-husband hadn't bothered getting his working holiday visa changed to a normal visa (which would have entitled me to a working visa), so we were broke, I was lonely (with no money and no ability to get a job and being in a foreign country, my only friends were the cats and the internet), and the climate was really humid and mildew blossomed on the walls in what was basically a two-room apartment (and on clothes and shoes in the closet, if they hadn't been worn in a while.) We were broke. I know
I mentioned that before, but we were SO BROKE (in large part because my ex handled all the money and, uh, spent it on whatever he wanted, which seemed mostly to be restaurant food, nights out drinking and hardware that he would then fail to invoice his customers for until the job was finished, months later.) Anyway. So broke I'd have to make decisions about whether to buy conditioner or moisturizer, because I couldn't afford both; or maybe the choice would be between moisturizer and a better brand of cat food. It was fucking awful, partly because I was completely without resources or control over my situation and partly because I knew I'd handed over that control to my then-husband. Also I didn't want to tell anyone how awful my life was, because I was ashamed of having made such bad choices; and finally, I didn't know any better. I thought that's what marriage was like. I thought all husbands got their wives alone and told them how useless and stupid and lazy they were.

So, fast forward to 29-going-on-30 and I am no longer living with my ex; in fact, I am living with someone different, who doesn't treat me badly, who is responsible with money and calls to tell me if he'll be out late or all night, instead of turning his phone off and hitching a ride home on the garbage truck in the morning. I live in a four room apartment with wooden floors and I'm about to move into a 5 room one. I can afford to buy moisturizer and expensive cat food and conditioner all at the same time! I'm legally able to work and I have a good job!

But here's the insidious thing about depression: none of those considerations mattered or made me feel better about myself. All I can think about is the work of packing and moving, the fact that I haven't been doing my share of that work, the fact that poor Inty is sick (she's going to the vet this afternoon because she just keeps throwing up and it's chronic) - anyway, that'll likely entail blood work and an x-ray and hopefully will be treatable and I won't end up paying 500 bucks to find out my cat is going to die soon.

And it just feels endless, this stuff, which I think it is, I'm pretty sure that life is all good and bad mixed up together at the same time and usually both happening faster than is ideal, maybe. (In fact, our existing landlady sold the house at the last minute and refunded our security deposit, which was not something we thought was going to happen. So, financial windfall, in a way. Plus now we've got two weeks of overlap in which we'll be into the new place and not yet have to be out of the old one. This move should be relatively painless, as much as a move can be, anyway.)

So even though logically I know I'm lucky, I'm in a good place and I'm set to get into a better place, it's so much fucking work to keep breathing in and out and pretending like nothing is wrong that anything extra - the cat, the move, assorted wedding planning stuff - is huge and impossible. And the attempts to cheer myself up by looking at my own progress just make me feel worse about myself, because then I feel ungrateful and lazy and like a complainer.

So ... here's hoping that the move goes smoothly, that my grasp on sanity continues to hold and that the prescribing psychiatrist thinks I'd be a good candidate for something that will help with the migraines and the depression. And that the drugs work.

unforeseen developments

so I was singing along to The Immaculate Collection while making dinner* and thinking, wow, this stuff sounds really dated. Still good, mind you, but really dated. It's also much much more interesting than any of the safe, boring stuff Madonna has put out since about 1999.

however, I have to say that Crazy For You is just not one of the stronger songs on the record. Also everything that comes after Open Your Heart pretty sucky, too. Still, she is wearing nice fake eyelashes on the back cover and wearing some kind of clown outfit, so I forgive her.

Digressions aside, I was howling along to Papa Don't Preach and dammit if I couldn't hear when I missed the note (which was most of them.) I'm pretty tone deaf, range-free** and always have been, but maybe somehow I have learned to tell the difference between making the note and not? I didn't know that was something you could learn. And how come no one told me? Y'all just allowed me to humiliate myself at karaoke every 5 years instead. That was an AVOIDABLE MISTAKE, people. You did not have to listen to that.

















*how I got to that point exactly is a long and boring story. trust me.

**as opposed to free-range; there's like one octave my voice will do when I sing. Supposedly I have a nice speaking voice most of the time though, according to others. I get pretty shrill when I'm hanging out with my girlfriends, though. Again, according others.

it's hard to think of seven wierd things I haven't told you all already

For Maya. I love memes. And talking about myself. What's not to participate in, here?

I. I re-read Hamlet once every couple of years. Usually when I'm feeling especially sorry for myself.

II. I am so hyper-clean that I've been known to use q-tips when cleaning the toilet; my fish, consequently, fail to thrive because I ruin their little ecosystem because I can't stand all that dirt in the tank.

III. I'm pretty sure I'm one of those people who taps their teeth and drums their fingers and jiggles their leg but none of it is on purpose so I don't usually notice. I bet it's annoying for other people, though.

IV. I am the boss of my cats. (Unless you have cats, that's not going to sound weird, but it's at least unusual. To the non-cat people: trust me when I say that generally the cats are the bosses of the people.)

V. In college I could read 100 pages an hour (actually I think I can still do that) and take legible notes at the speed that the professor talked. Without skimming or using shorthand. Everyone always wanted to borrow my notes. (I definitely can't write fast any more, and legibility has gone south too.)

VI. I can pull my left thumb out of the socket and bend it around like a chicken wing. (Starting to reach for things here.)

VII. Despite the second item on my list, my car is usually dirty and smells like ass, especially when the weather has suddenly warmed up and you put on the a/c and a terrible mildewy smell comes out of the vents, like the breath of a dying old man with gum disease. I guess that's not exactly weird but it is gross. Sorry.

let the good times roll!

okay, so remember how I was all ranty and shit about overvaluation of property in somerville and also talking about subprime loans and how my landlady had put the house on the market? (Probably you don't remember, but that's what the link function was made for. Also: in retrospect, we should have moved right then.)

Anyhow.

Chickens have come home to roost, motherfucker! I found out completely by accident on Thursday night that my house (which is still on the market) has actually gone into foreclosure and is going to be sold on Tuesday. As in this Tuesday. Three days from now. February 5th, at 2 pm. Jesus motherfucking christ. I called the bank which currently holds the morgage and verified. I can't believe the landlady didn't mention it to us!

She cashed the rent checks right on time, though. And the first foreclosure notice was published before the hot water pipe in the kitchen burst, so ... there was an opportunity there to say something. I don't know what her deal is or the circumstances behind the foreclosure or what happened on her end, but as a tenant in good standing, this sucks a whole lot for me, too.

Here's what I understand about how it will shake out: our lease will be void in the event of a sale/the event of the property reverting back to the bank and we will become tenants at will. The new owners of the property are most likely to want us to leave as soon as possible so they can do what they want with it, which I'd guess will be sell it to a developer or develop it into condos themselves. Hope no one tells prospective buyers about the dealer down the street - his customers seem to like to break into neighborhood cars and first floor apartments a lot.

So a move is in our immediate future - probably within 30 days. Awe-SOME! Everyone wants to find a new place to live in the middle of winter in Somerville on short notice a couple of months before a wedding, right? Now I can cross that item off my bucket list! Next on the list: skydiving naked into a cactus forest!

Did I also mention that Dave's classes have started up again, and he's in class three nights a week (about 15 hours). He'll probably need to study at least 15 hours a week outside of class, too. Yes, he works full time too.

However. This stuff is completely immutable and out of my control, so Dave and I are trying to be positive about this. We could move to a second-floor apartment where the roof doesn't leak! Where the fuse boxes don't have melted pennies! And a friend pointed out what a really good thing it could be to start a new (married) life in a new place without baggage and memories and stuff. Don't get me wrong, I like this place a lot, but fresh starts are always appealing.

In fact, I am unaccountably perky about this whole deal. I think it's the thought of living in a place which might have ... a dishwasher! or a waste disposal! or laundry! or that doesn't require 300 gallons of oil per month to remain really cold!

Also, thanks to Dave's bouts of mania, we are pretty much ready to move. I mean, we'll need to pack, and I don't know where the hell we'll find the money for the upfront costs of moving (first,last and security - plus money for movers for the king-sized bed, also the oil company will probably get paid in $50 installments over the next 2 years ... grrrr on having just filled that tank though) ... but the basement is perfectly clean and tidy and organized, and our apartment is usually in pretty good shape.

I felt pretty sorry for myself for a while, though, I have to say. And while I think the situation justified a wallow, maybe it's time to try a different tactic. Because this current tactic that Dave and I are both using*, the one where we work really hard all the time at work and then come home and clean up cat barf and make dinner and do dishes and other projects so that when we *finally* sit down at 9:30 or 10 we immediately fall asleep. Then the alarm goes off the next morning and it's time to get up and do it again. Weekends are more of the same - housework and social obligations until by the time Monday rolls around I'm glad to get back to work, because it's easier than the mammoth task list I set for myself at home. No wonder my performance review was less than stellar this year, if I was using work as my down-time (a little bit. I also did my job. But I don't think I excelled at my job, particularly.)

Anyway, that tactic? Not really working. While the end goal - where Dave finishes school and starts working as an RN and we eat pretty healthy and we exercise a lot and we have a clean apartment at all times - the end goal might be a good one, but the thing about life is that you can't really be sure about if you're going to be able to fulfill your goals. Things happen. Car accidents happen. Foreclosures happen. Divorce happens. So you (I) need to make sure that the progress to your (my) goal is just as enjoyable as you (I) imagine life will be after you've (I've) hit whatever your (my) milestone is.

So I think we're going to try this new thing, called Spending Time Together and Remembering Why We Got Along Well In The First Place. We tested it out this morning and, instead of spending the morning cleaning cat barf and de-hairing the couch and de-crudding the fishtank and bathroom, we went shopping for cell phones and ... actually enjoyed ourselves! And didn't squabble the whole time!

Plus, I got a smartphone that has wifi and a web browser so it can go on the internet wherever I can find a wifi connection, without having to sign up for t-mobile's edge network and a data plan. Also it syncs with Outlook (at last! I can have all my appointments in one place!). The Outlook thing is what I really cared about, the interwebs is just a nice bonus. And a qwerty keyboard, which is nice since I text a LOT.

So spending my afternoon and evening at home - Dave has a show in NH which I skipped. I've got a friend who's singing locally, which would be fun and I'm a little sad not to be going, but I'm going to hunker down and wear jammies and clean (SOME cleaning still needs to be done; just not at the expense of couple-time any more) and I have wedding crap to do plus I could, I don't know, maybe RELAX a little bit? And I have a migraine I've been fighting all day anyway so that's another reason not to go out. Midrin works really well for me, thank dog, but I would like this headache to go away rather than continue to hang around in the background and I kind of think forcing myself to go out and be social would not help the headache, much though I would enjoy it. I guess I don't really have to justify taking care of myself, especially not on my own blog, but hell, I typed it all out, I'll leave it. Even knowing that not going out is the right thing for me this evening, I feel guilty for not supporting my friends.

Oh! Actual good news updates:

Zoe's insulin shots seem to be working really well. So far, so good. Diabetic cats are hard to keep stable so I'm not expecting this to last forever, but she's so perky and chatty and happy and affectionate in a way she hasn't been for months, it's completely worth the trouble and expense.

Also, Dave's medicine seems to be working really well. They don't have a blood glucose test for sanity the way they do for diabetes, but there seems to be a big change. He says he feels better and I know he's a lot easier to deal with (another reason to mind this foreclosure-induced move a little less.)

Some tentative reasons for hope, there.




* I guess using is the right verb for a tactic ... something about the sentence seems really awkward, though. Probably if I was less lazy I'd rephrase it, but then if I worried about unimportant things (like grammar and sentence structure and rational trains of thought) I would totally not have a blog. Instead I would have the experience of a bunch of quickly-forgotten ideas in the shower, and a blog is more fun. Mostly because no one comments on your shower ideas.

Super Lego Mario Super Awesomeness

If you played this game as much as I did when I was a kid, you'll love this. Made me all nostalgic for playing this after school while having some kind of kid snack, probably fruit roll-ups.

It’s going to take a lot of fireworks to clean up this mess

*fyi: metaphors and language in this post might offend you. I’m pissed.*

So, watching the state of the union last night enraged me, mostly because Bush appeared so pleased with himself and I’m so damn mad at him for the mess he’s made. Not like the country hasn’t been fucked up for years … the groundwork for this current recession was laid at least as far back as the Clinton years.

I had to turn off the State of the Union after … not very long. Don’t worry though, I skimmed the full transcript so I’m still informed. I like that this version of the transcript notes the pauses for applause or laughter, but not how Bush’s little black piggy eyes twinkled with self-delight at every scripted reaction from his flunkeys. Way to go, dickhead, you made your yes-men chortle at your jokes! One of my favorite highlights:

I have a message for every American who is 55 or older: Do not let anyone mislead you; for you, the Social Security system will not change in any way. (Applause.) For younger workers, the Social Security system has serious problems that will grow worse with time. … As we fix Social Security, we also have the responsibility to make the system a better deal for younger workers. And the best way to reach that goal is through voluntary personal retirement accounts.

Hooray for Americans 55 and older, you chose the right years to be born in and President Bush congratulates you! Screw you younger people though; y’all need to keep paying into this system to support the aging generations stupid enough to bring you into the world, then pay again for your own retirement (preferably into an 401K or other stock market account that will also help shore up Wall Street’s shoddy shortsighted business practices.)

And then people express surprise when I tell them that I’m not sure I want kids. The only fucking retirement plan I'll ever be able to afford is made by Smith & Wesson; there’s no way I’ll ever have enough money saved to stop working. And I’m talking about working for my own benefit, never mind a dependent or two.

However. You can get the bad taste out of your mouth by watching this. The man does a genius impersonation of Bush and the clip is only about 3 minutes.



Anyway. Out with the old and in with the new, right?

Actually, I’m not so sure that anything new is coming down the line. Whoever gets into the White House is just going to continue doing more of the same. Even if I didn’t believe that, it wouldn’t matter, because I live in Massachusetts. I guess I’ve got a shot at influencing the primary candidate on Super Tuesday. I’m not registered for either party (haha, like I would register Repugnican anyway.)

But who wants phone calls from one party or the other? Bleh. I get enough unsolicited crap from political cults – seriously – and “non-profits” which don’t disclose the percentage of donations which actually go towards the cause you ostensibly wrote a check for. Also, dickbags should be sending me a check, because I just got the bill from the January oil tank and it is A THOUSAND MOTHERFUCKING DOLLARS. Coming right on the heels of the SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS I paid to heat the house (and the dripping hot water faucet and empty apartments above and below us) in December. So now my heating bill for this winter so far is SIXTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS. I think that’s more than I’ve paid in TOTAL for the past 2 years. So I guess the meaning of “capped oil prices”, as defined by my oil company, is really more like “we’re gonna put a cap in your ass and you can suck it up or freeze, bitch.”

Yeah, I get that oil prices are market dependent but I also get that I’m being raped by the market. Yay capitalism! Keep driving your huge cock up my ass while I bend over, I love it hard and bloody. So thanks very much for making this oil war, Mr. President. In your genius effort to gain a foothold in one of the major oil fields in the world, you’ve made prices go to 100 dollars a barrel, in large part because of war uncertainty. Speaking of uncertainty, don’t get me started on the stock market (although actually Wall Street has been fucking things up for at least 15 years now, I can’t blame a single administration for that.)

Which gets me back to being disenfranchised. If I want to do anything with my vote in the Mass primary, I’d probably give it to Romney (former Mass governor) because I think he’s less electable than John McCain (who is looking more and more like a really good contender for the Republicans) and I suppose a Democratic administration is marginally preferable to a Republican one, although I don’t think well of either party.

One thing that has struck me in watching the democratic primary race (and keep in mind that this is the first election I’ve been in the country for and eligible to vote in since 1996) is how weird everyone seems to feel about Senator Clinton, like they were all kind of on the fence about her in the first place and were just looking for a reasonable excuse to jump ship. Her campaign has started using some icky nasty rhetoric against Barack Obama and yes, I find it icky and nasty too. But a lot of people are saying that’s why they’ve stopped supporting her, which … what? You didn’t realize most political campaigns are run this way? You didn’t realize HRC was a politician? What sandhole has your head been in? Ditto with her pro-war votes.

Leaving aside the fact that she’s so divisive as to be practically unelectable (plus an HRC nomination for the Democratic party is guaranteed to stimulate the right wing nuts to crawl out from under their rocks and swell the ranks of voters against her), I just don’t hold it against her that she’s rolled over on a bunch of shit because it was politically expedient to do so. You know which politicians don’t roll over and will speak out? The ones that are so entrenched that taking a controversial stance won’t affect them. (Ahem, Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. Really fucking brave to diss HRC or speak out against the war when you’ve been in the senate –or maybe just Congress – since 1962. Nineteen sixty fucking two. I had to get my calculator out but that’s 45 years (depends on if you count 2008 or not.) It’s not that I disagree with him when he says the war is bad or that he supports Barack Obama, I just think he’s a big blowhard who’s risking zilch and therefore I don’t give his words much weight.

Also I appreciate that HRC has been in Washington for a long time and probably knows everyone. I know that creates its own problems but I’ve noticed that at work and in regular life, having a good relationship with someone – your pharmacist, your boss, your sister – makes a BIG difference in trying to get things done. Not that I would necessarily vote for her since her willingness to do what’s politically expedient means I can’t trust her to stick up for my interests, but who am I kidding? No one gives a shit about my interests.

Anyway. If you don’t like HRC then your option is Barak Obama and I’m not in love with him either because how can I judge someone with no report card at all? (Although I still hope I spelled his first name right.) Possibly I’m just jaded because the campaign for the current Mass governor, Deval Patrick, was similarly grass-roots and messages of hope and inexperience* and since Patrick has been in office, I haven’t seen much in the way of changes, apart from some casinos coming to Massachusetts. Woohoo, that means a lot more money is going to go into a few pockets in central Mass and a few more people will probably develop gambling addictions and Patrick will claim he’s added X numbers of revenue dollars and X number of jobs during his tenure when he runs for re-election.

But I guess I hope Obama gets the democratic nomination, because I prefer him to Anti-Choice McCain. Bleh, though. The whole system is just really crappy. And it’s easy for me to pick holes in someone else’s campaign or administration – one of the things I find amazing about the Presidential primary races is how many people want the fucking job. You could not pay me enough money to be President, for reals.

…Or maybe I am just really crabby because after all that, I did wash my jeans (spilled milky tea on them) and lo and behold! now they are too tight. Fucking hell.



* Deval Patrick is also black, which I feel like adds another similarity to the Obama comparison but I don’t know how to factor race into my campaign strategy analysis so apart from noting it, I’m going to leave it out. Sorry.

red beans and rice didn't miss her

Excursion outside Las Vegas on last week's trip. The desert climate rocks.




I think these mountains make my butt kinda look big, though. Must be the camera angle. Riggggghhhhttttt...

Necessity's sharp pinch

Following up:

So, Zoe has decided to accept the diabetic food. She's pretty thin, though and her coat is looking ratty. She's also developed a sore on her spine which I hope doesn't turn into one of those diabetic lesion things that won't heal. She's seeing the vet monday for the sore and for a blood curve to see if the food has stabilized her blood sugar. (Thank you, vet, for being open on Martin Luther King day. I know it's less nice for staff but I adore you for it. And I adore my own company for giving me the day off. Also happily I am seeing my prescribing psychiatrist on Monday - good to go and good not to have to juggle work stuff with driving an hour each way for the shrink.) Zoe's 13. She might just be starting to circle the drain. I do hope she doesn't die 2 days before the wedding but humans outlive most pet animals and I'm realistic. Right now she's a little droopy but her quality of life is pretty good, so we're still looking at treatment. I don't want her to go any sooner than she has to.

Re: Dave's craziness, he is actually taking steps now to deal with it. The mental health system in the United States (and what I saw of it in the UK, too) is FUCKED UP. If he had a life-threatening wound, the receptionist on the other end of the phone would treat it like the crisis it is, but if you call and say you're having mental health issues, they're all, "not taking new patients ... don't know anyone who is ... click." Best case scenario is, "well, I've got a new patient slot open in three months, do you want that?". No, fuckers, I want some assistance TODAY. And it's goddamned discrimination, frankly; there's a widespread perception that if you just pull yourself together, you can fix yourself. It aggravates the crap out of me.

Relatedly, I bought William Styron's Darkness Visible: a memoir of madness and read it before Las Vegas. It's basically a long essay, and I thought 15 bucks seems like a lot for not so many words but it's totally worth it. I've never read a better description of what it's like to be suicidally depressed. Styron, like me, was unipolar (he described it as "you go straight down", heh) and he does a brilliant job articulating how extremely painful depression is, and how it tricks you with the sine waves, so maybe you feel better in the mornings but by night time or two later later you're always in a terrible state again. Dave is reading it now. I can't recommend it enough.

Since I mentioned Las Vegas, I'll talk about it.

Poor Dave - the night I flew out, there was a blizzard. (My flight left before the blizzard arrived.) Also the much bitched about hot water pipe in the kitchen actually burst, which meant he came home on monday to a flooded kitchen. So pretty crappy for him on top of his other stuff, but the pipe is fixed now. Heh - Dave said to me, "did you notice the cold water tap is now turning the other way?" and then immediately corrected himself and said, "although since you can't tell your right from your left, I suppose you didn't notice." As a matter of fact, I felt like there was something a little confusing happening when I tried to get water but I couldn't pinpoint it. Now that he's pointed it out, though, I notice more.

And the company trip was pretty fun. Mostly I work with some smart, cool people and it was good to get to know them, since my particular job doesn't involve a lot of interaction with other people outside my team. We went on a terrific hike to Red Rocks - I can't recommend the guide enough, they took us on "rock scramble" so we went up a mountain using our hands and feet. Gorgeous views, really fun exercise.

That's one of my coworkers in the picture.

I'll download mine this weekend, hopefully (no really cool shots like that though) and post a link to flickr or a photoblog when they're ready.


The food was okay - portions were often crazily huge, which is not a great thing if the food is mediocre, and I thought everything was overpriced ($14 cocktails! $16 for a glass of champagne!), but we did have some good sushi at one of the Wynn restaurants one night.

And I did gamble! I put a dollar into a slot machine and pulled the handle and my dollar was gone, and then I found penny slots and put a dollar in and made 100 bets and lost every single one. So, I lost 101 bets in a row. I'm pretty happy that two bucks is all I donated to the city, but pretty much everyone in the company lost money.

I was just surprised, really, to have my dire expectations about the odds of winning in vegas come true. 101 bets in a row. Also, slot machines are BORING. And casinos are smoky. But! great people watching, if you like watching slot machine zombies and seeing people lose money very fast (I saw a man lose $2500 at craps in about 20 minutes.)

We also saw le Reve, which was very good. Kind of like I understand Cirque de Soliel, except with water. Amazing feats of acrobatics, gymnastics, dance and diving. but it's very hard to describe a show like that if you haven't seen one. At first I thought the show was really white and heteronormative except with a lot of homoerotic tension, but at the show progressed it was clear that the homoerotic tension was a deliberate element. My favorite part was the ringmaster (male) wearing a pair of fake breasts, which wasn't pointed out or made a big deal of, it was just kind of a nod to the dreamlike quality of the show and the fact they they're fucking with you a little. The whitebread criticism is true there was ONE black female dancer and ONE asian male dancer, and everyone else was white.

Also, very depressing, they have real lions in the MGM hotel (where we were staying). Supposedly they have a bunch of lions on a lion retirement farm somewhere and they swap them out, but this is what I noticed about the lions I saw:
1. the "habitat" was tiny and very loud with rushing water and lion-roaring sound effects and people yelling to get the lions' attention
2. the habitat also had a bunch of humans sitting around texting (employees of the MGM), so I'm thinking the lions were probably sedated
3. I have never seen lions with such clean fur and no fly bites or anything, it was like they had been to the groomers
4. the two lionesses were sitting well apart from each other. Prides in the wild sleep all over each other, so to see them isolating themselves seemed like another bad sign
5. the lioness I observed closely was panting and looked pretty stressed

I bet the life expectancy isn't very good. I had a pretty big lump in my throat watching the lions. I don't know what their life span is but I bet it ain't great. I know zoos do conservation work and some zoos are pretty great, but the MGM just isn't one of them. Nothing like watching a rhino stomp around a tiny muddy paddock or an insane panther lunge at plexiglas over and over and over again to make you wonder who, exactly, is regulating these zoos? (To clarify: the rhino and the panther weren't at the MGM, they were at a zoo in Scotland. The MGM just had the sad lionesses.)

Although some animals seem to do pretty well in captivity - giraffes roam a ton in the wild but seem pretty content on zoo lawns, and elephants and of course monkeys and apes are all pretty good candidates for zoos.

That's it from me, really. The wedding venue cancellation did turn out to be a mistake and it's all sorted now, so I'm happy about that. And I'm looking forward to relaxing a little this weekend, although as usual we're overscheduled with errands and chores and social stuff. At least there's a third day.

Friday hi-larity

So I missed the deadline to entertain y'all in EST on a Friday afternoon, but there are still a couple of hours left on PST. Or maybe some of you are still at work at 6, like me. (Stupid company trip to stupid Las Vegas interfering with my time to get my stupid performance self and upwards reviews done. Stupid performance review season. Stupid self for forgetting about this deadline.)

Anyway. I recommend watching Flight of the Conchords. The clip is only 3 minutes, so you aren't committed to 20 minutes for the punchline or anything.



Plus, they're just these brilliant kiwis doing satire, and it makes me miss New Zealand a little. Not enough to move back, but I miss my friends there a whole lot (not that they'd know it, given how crap I am at keeping in touch, but they're part of the constellations in my frontal lobe.)

And I'll update about the other stuff later, I just tired of writing depressing whiny rant after depressing whiny rant. In a revolting metaphorical nutshell: gross stuff comes out when a boil bursts, but then it hurts a lot less and the site can heal.

I'm fancy like ketchup!

Y'all need to check out this comic called Cat and Girl. This one in particular is talking to me right now. Props to K for telling me about it. I'm so glad there are other people in this world who have super dark senses of humor and aren't afraid to show it.

Unfunny cat news:

Got Zoe the special diabetic catfood. She won't eat it. She's currently on my desk chair snoozing in the sun while I crouch over the laptop at the dining room table. I still don't really understand how she persuaded me to do that. I guess the mystery of Zoe is why I keep her at all, let alone feed her baby food and spend hundreds on vet care. (I will actually try mixing the new food with baby food to see if she'll eat more of it. Failing that, I'll have to mix it with water and syringe it directly into her mouth. I can't WAIT for that day.)

Inty is still barfing about once a day (which I guess is progress.) I'm changing their litter from Feline Pine to S'wheat Scoops in case the Feline Pine dust she inhales is what's making her barf. I love her too, even though there are two recent piles of puke under this very dining room table which I will clean as soon as I publish this post.

Unfunny wedding news:

My divorce is final. That's actually good news, because it means I can get remarried. Except I got home yesterday to a letter from the wedding venue informing me that they were grateful to know of my cancellation on the site and regretting to tell me that unfortunately the deposit couldn't be refunded. I DIDN'T CANCEL THE VENUE. Of course I got home at like 6 to this letter (and lots of barf, bonus), so besides leaving a disco-freak-out voicemail there's not much I can do. I'll be out of town most of next week for work, but Dave will handle this. I'm sure it's just a mixup, but what the fucking fuck?

Unfunny Dave news:

His back continues to be in spasm and he continues to be insane. He continues to not see a doctor for either of these conditions, despite currently being in school to become a medical professional. (Seriously, just get some vicodin or something, honey, because otherwise I'm going to have to put you out of your misery myself. I'm sure I'd go to jail but apart from the constant rape and unending boredom and the social stigma*, it seems like a nice way to get away from it all.)

Unfunny leaky faucet news: even turning the hot water off under the sink doesn't stop the drip.

Unfunny oil company news: Turns out I am still getting oil at a capped price, they just increased the price a whole bunch without letting me know. Fuckwads.


On the plus side: apparently I have a lot of compassionate friends, because y'all are very supportive with the comments and the emails and I do completely appreciate it.

* I'm sure I'd cope well with prison, don't you think? Seeing how well I'm coping with two cats and an oil bill.

Rant Ahoy

It’s like this: I got the oil tank filled at the beginning of December. That cost about $600. (because oil prices are so high.) Dave informed me last night that the tank is now almost empty again.

I still haven’t figured out how to pay the December bill. Actually, that’s not quite true. You wanna know how I’m going to pay it? It’s going on a credit card. This makes me crazy because it’s a giant no-no to put cost of living stuff on credit cards. But where else can I find another $600? Although by the time I’ve paid for it, it’ll cost 600 bucks plus 12% interest for however long it takes me to pay off. Not to mention a late fee. And I'll get to perform this enjoyable task on my lunch hour, right after I post this entry.

So yes, it’s winter in New England and I should expect to have some heating bills. But the supposedly fixed price per gallon I signed up for when I opened an account with this heating company had me paying 2.29/gallon, when meant filling the tank cost about $400. They changed the prices (without any warning to me) to 2.79. I’m sure the higher prices reflects the fact that oil is now $100/barrel.

Potentially I could call the company and argue the prices/bill since it wasn’t the original terms of service. That assumes I’ve still GOT my first bill from two years ago, and also assumes the bill/original contract has no clause about prices being subject to change without warning.

Plus, did I mention that I work full time? In a cube farm where there is an unofficial rule about not making any non-work related phone calls, except on lunch. Where am I going to get the time and energy to research this? I’m not; I’m fucked, actually. Hey, don’t forget I’m planning a wedding during my lunch hours too.

Hey, guess what I did spend about $600 on recently though? Christmas presents for other people. Jesus. If I could turn back that clock…

Wanna know why else the oil tank ran out so fast? Apart from the fact that Dave’s got bursistis, which is affected badly by cold weather (which means that he hurts less if we keep the house at 65 rather than 60), the hot water in the kitchen faucet is leaking. It has been since we moved in, but the landlady’s idea of her responsibilities seems to begin and end with cashing the rent checks. The house is also on the market and we are the only tenants left, so we’re not getting any residual heat from other people keeping the house warm. Since the house is on the market, the landlady REALLY doesn’t give a shit about tenant complaints. And no, I don’t know how to fix a leaky faucet (leaking from the tap end.) So maybe we’ll just turn off the hot water in the kitchen at the spigot under the sink. That won’t be inconvenient at all. (but at least it would save a little money.)

Why not just move, right? Because the rent at our place IS cheap, and also because – had you noticed? – moving costs a bunch of money. We didn’t pay a security deposit for our current place, which means we’d have to come up with one to move, not to mention associated expenses of van rental etc. And we’ll need to hire movers for at least the bed, it’s a king. So that would be an outlay of a couple grand. Which, in case you hadn’t been paying attention, DO NOT HAVE.

Hey, guess what else? Zoe has diabetes. She needs special food, and she’ll need a blood curve every 4 months or so, and she’s going to need dental surgery when her blood sugar is stable. So all that will be, oh, I’m guessing in the region of $400-1000 over the next year. But! My company offers pet insurance (which I need to look into more, because does it cover preexisting conditions? The pet insurance only became available as of Jan 1 and Zoe was diagnosed in Dec. I guess I should research this during lunch.)

All of the vet stuff is a little bit down the road, since the vet has been out of the diabetes food for weeks and had it on backorder. (I need to call. During my lunch hour, I guess, which I am quickly using up by blogging.)

Other fun things: my company was acquired last year, and this month we are switching over to the parent company’s payroll system. The parent company pays a week in arrears. Fine, but the extra week is coming out of the January paychecks. For what it’s worth, my company did everything possible to ease the transition of the paycheck thing over, and I do get that January is

We both work full time, and Dave is going to school (not cheap, by the way.) We are not eligible for any kind of public assistance (which really I’d feel bad about taking. I am not the target for these social programs.) In a couple of years, when Dave is out of school and making more money as a nurse, this stuff will be easier.

But in the meantime, I’m getting squeezed in the poverty trap. I have a homeowner’s problem (leaky faucet) but no incentive to get a plumber to fix it (and also no tax break for home ownership.) If I owned, I’d consider taking out a loan for triple glazed windows or something else to make the house more energy efficient, but … I rent. I can’t pay my heating bill outright, so I’m going to put it on a credit card, which means I will pay interest on the bill.

You know what else is really super extra fun? I’ve gone crazy again. I need to see the doctor (another call to make on my lunch hour*) and talk about resuming meds, because the panic attacks, while always enjoyable**, are starting to interfere with normal life, and my anxiety is starting to paralyze me. Luckily, winter’s low light has made Dave crazy too, so not only are we both crazy, we’re BOTH CRAZY AT THE SAME TIME, which means that instead of being able to actually support or help each other through a bad spot, we’re trapped in our own private hells and usually just end up making it worse for each other. Fucking awesome.


Now, does someone want to remind me why I should keep bothering to put one foot in front of the other? Because right now, I’m having trouble remembering why I bother. And all the crap I’ve complained about in this post is the tip of the motherfucking iceberg, man – we’ve also got stalker problems and family feuds, none of which I’ll go into detail on for obvious reasons. Oh, and my migraines. Not better. That might be because THEY ARE TRIGGERED BY STRESS.


* I totally love calling the doctor’s office with everyone in a 20-cube radius listening in while I describe my symptoms of CRAZINESS. Also I'm 100% positive my coworkers want to know that level of detail about my mental health.

** who doesn’t like hyperventilating and sobbing for an hour? Come on, you know you do.

Of cabbages and kings

well, kings or Presidents. This is the first election I've been in the country AND of age to vote since 1996, so I'm following the primaries with some interest.

Not obessive interest though - I live in fucking Massachusetts, so by the time the primaries arrive here the matter will be decided without my primary ballot.* Similarly, Massachusetts always votes Democratic, so even if Romney does win, he won't win his home state.

Not that it matters, since the shrinking population of Massachusetts means we're about to lose another seat in Congress. Yay. Could it be the shitty weather, shitty roads and high cost of living? Or maybe it's the fact that Mass is 49th in the nation (right ahead of Michigan) when it comes to job creation and economic recovery.** I guess someone has to be last in order for a first to exist, though.

But hey, what are blogs for if not to pontificate upon politics that you wouldn't bore anyone with at parties? I'm not really interested in the Republican primaries, although I hope someone really dire and unelectable like Guiliani will win, because that would almost ensure a Democratic sweep in the White House.

I'm not scared of Romney since his tenure in Mass just seemed to show that he'll go where the prevailing political winds take him. Which is an opinion I also hold about Clinton. Both Clintons, in fact. But lots and lots of politicians are basically mercenary. I bet it comes with the job. Office politics is not something I'm good at (though I like to think I get by okay) but it's a really useful skill.

I don't really think H. Clinton would win a Presidential election; I think she's been smeared so thoroughly - plus people still REALLY REALLY hate her from B. Clinton's White House tenure - although I think she'd do a fine job. I also think Obama is more electable based simply on being a dude. Look at the historical facts: black men got the vote before women, there was a black male Supreme Court justice before there was a (white) female one. Okay, those are only two facts and I bet there are a zillion more facts in support of my case and a zillion facts against. I don't have them because I'm not much of a politics wonk.

Anyway. I'll be interested to see how it all shakes out. I'd most like to see a Democrat in the White House, even a mercenary one, and after that I kind of don't care. I think an Obama/Edwards ticket would probably work well, as would an Obama/Biden ticket. I would lovelovelove to see an Obama/Clinton ticket, but I don't think that would be very electable - a black person AND a lady, uh oh, that's super double-plus ungood for conservatives. It'd probably stimulate them to emerge in droves to vote for even a maximum wingnut like Huckabee. Bleh.





*In fact, can one even vote in the primaries if one is not registered with a political affilition? I'm registered as an independent because I just don't want to deal with anyone else wanting my details and money. Does that make me ineligible to vote in a primary? I know, I know, I'm on the internet ... I could just look it up.

** I work ni high tech, one of Mass's few growth areas, so this economic stuff doesn't actually affect me, except that I can't afford to move to San Jose - which has, not incidentally, better weather, high tech jobs and swing state status, so my vote might actually count.

Drinking the KoolAid, holy crap

(says she of the Blogger platform.)

Even though I love my job and this is the nicest company I have ever worked for, I can't imagine spending 4-5 hours every weekday weaving a chainmail banner with the company logo on it, like this Googler did. I notice the stats don't include a time estimate of how long many hours spent on the project.

the saga of my boobs, part one million

Sarah Hepola has a great salon piece on what it's like to have big boobs. She articulates everything I really minded.

I was in the middle of a semi-naked makeout session with the man I was (foolishly) dating when he interrupted to ask a question.

"What size are those?" He meant my breasts.

A sleazeball, right? Of course. But I've gotten that question, too. It's like kissing me is some kind of license to ask. Gee, why don't you ask how much I weigh, too?


A gajillion porno sites and essentially all of modern pop culture would suggest having big boobs is a wonderful thing, an aspirational thing; hey, people pay good money for these puppies. But for me, it's something I never wanted, something that never fit what I felt like inside, something I try badly to ignore. Unfortunately, most people don't return the favor.

...

But underneath all the good-natured self-mockery and the saucy, low-cut tops, there is something else: I am embarrassed by my knockers. And the fact that something I am embarrassed about is the first thing people notice about me? Well, that kinda sucks. I feel like I could save a baby from a burning building, I could cure cancer with glitter alone, and I would still be referred to as "Sarah, you know, the short one with the big tits."

Ditto. It's not really any fun. One of my first husband's best friends referred to me, for years, as "the lassie wi the big tits." Um, thanks. That was after the reduction, which, if you are interested, brought me down to a 32DD. My surgeon's response, a year after the reduction: "Huh. I thought they'd be smaller, more like a C cup." Yeah, I thought so too. But you don't need to slice me up again and cut off my nipples and reattach them again and leave big swathes of ropy scar tissue - it's okay, I'll live with it. It's certainly an improvement from the G cup or whatever I was wearing before. I was too embarassed to go to the old ladies in a department store who would have measured me, and it's uncommon to stock even a 32DD (which is why I often end up wearing a 34D and tugging at the back as it slides up all day). Never mind the 32G.

And not knowing your own cup size is another point that Hepola touches on:

I'll sum up my early adolescence like this: I wore T-shirts in the pool. I showered alone. I learned that clever ruse of changing clothes but never being naked. I tried to be terribly quiet about all this, because if I was terribly quiet, then all of it just might disappear.

Which is the kind of magical thinking that got me to the age of 33, not knowing the size of my breasts. I don't need an "Oprah" episode and a thousand women's magazine articles and the cast of "What Not to Wear" to tell me I'm in the wrong cup size. My breasts spill out the top. (I was horrified to discover the tabloid press had a name for this: quadriboobage!) My breasts spill out the bottom. They spill out everywhere boobs can spill out, basically.

It's been ten years since I had the reduction, and I still think it was a great decision. Even though my boobs, outside of a bra, fall about halfway to China, at least within a bra, I can look normal and wear dresses off the rack and stuff. Mostly because I am 5'7" and slim, so the boobs can get smushed into a sheath and look fine, as long as it's got some elastic.

But pre-operation, I was the object of admiration from my friends for how I could change without ever getting undressed. They also admired how well I hid my disproportion. And then they refused to let me borrow clothing, because it would get stretched. Which was true but annoying.


They look like I expect: Beige and giant, like you could parachute out of a plane with them. I try them on and she is surprisingly hands-on with me, running one finger along each seam, sticking a finger deep in the crevasse of my cleavage and rooting around, jiggling things unexpectedly. Even my boyfriend and my doctor aren't this thorough.

Yeah. How about the time I was getting fitted - bad enough to be topless in front of a bunch of strangers with your untoned stomach jiggling all over the place and muffin top seeping over the top of your pants with no sweater in place to camoflage it - and one lady commented on how saggy I was. Awesome. Why don't you also recommend aerobics so I can tone my thighs a little (as a waxer once did)?*

I'm sure she didn't mean to wound me, but if you're 21 or so and some white haired old broad is clucking over your tits and speculating that it's happened extra fast because of the reduction, that's no fun. Of course she's right; they are at my elbows and I offer proof:


I really should go braless less often.

versus:


I might be angry, but I'm supported.

it has always been my not-so-revelatory suspicion that this entire industry -- this luxurious, pink powder-puff, thongs-as-women's-empowerment industry -- is really just about pleasing men. Because let's face it: I am much more comfortable in a jogging bra and cotton boy shorts, and those don't run me $100 a set. It's all well and good to find a bra that fits, but the truth is that I wanted a bra that not only fit but could also be seen in daylight by the man I'm in love with.

Yeah. Except actually, a good sportsbra with an underwire seems to run me about 50 - 60 bucks. Worth every motherfucking penny.


* it's funny, I seem to mind the comments from other women more than men. Maybe because I expect that kind of bullshit from men, but when another woman - and one you are paying, who is seeing you vulnerable, in a state of undress - offers up her opinions about your body, well, it's like a double betrayal.

holiday cookies

as usual, I indulged my taste for the intricate and the macabre. I'll start you off slowly.


This took took like eleven hours to make. (See? slow!)


The gingerbread Lestat.


Lestat meets Akasha. Yum.

Even my precious snowflake is far less gorgeous than the one in the picture accompanying the recipe for roll-out spice cookies by Dorie Greenspan. The dough tastes delicious, is easy to make and roll out and the cookies are pretty damn good, too.

Everyone else is doing a year's best

so why not jump on the bandwagon?





So the other night Dave and I had a long stoned conversation* while he cooked dinner and I cleaned up cat barf about our picks for the year’s best album. Dave’s choice was, of course, John Davis’s solo album Arigato! (Davis is the frontman for Superdrag, one of Dave’s favorite bands ever. One of mine - now - too, if I think about it.)

Arigato! is straight-up rock but Davis is a born-again Christian and most of the songs are about God, which definitely sheds a different light on the “who sucked out the feeling” guy. “Sucked Out” was written by Davis when he was still all rock-and-rollerish and not sober; then his dad died and he quit drinking and converted. I don’t know why this background information fascinates me, but it does. (I allow the biographical information of authors to inform my reading, also.)

We saw a reunion Superdrag show this fall and no joke, it was the best show I think I’ve ever seen in my life, despite the presence in the audience of an occasional tiny fuckhead with a pierced neck. (Don’t worry, I elbowed her right back as hard as I could.) It was a reasonably small venue (the Paradise) and a sold-out crowd. (More trivia: the Paradise in Boston is where Superdrag played their last show before taking a break.) The opening acts were awesome and local to Knoxville, where Superdrag is based.

I have never seen such a high energy show for TWO FUCKING HOURS. I still feel guilty because I was sober and my back hurt from standing on a concrete floor for three hours during the opening acts and I was wearing earplugs the whole time (because live music fucking hurts) so I don’t think I looked very enthused, but I was. There inside my own head, I was thrilled. And they played all the greatest hits off the Superdrag CDs – I was surprised to find I knew every song – and a whole bunch of stuff off Arigato! (much of which I also knew, since Dave downloaded the singles off John Davis’s MySpace page (that link will take you to the page where you, too, can listen and download) and had been playing them ever since.

So we bought the album at the concert and it’s really good. It’s not Christian-christian, in that kind of safe-pop way that I think Christian rock tends to get categorized as; it’s much closer to John Donne’s gripping raw struggle with God. Which is cool to see – at leas faith works for someone, even if not for me! And while the message isn’t doing it for me, the rock does. It’s straightforward and sincere, which is Dave’s thing – he really values authentic emotion. It’s also a very skillful album – the songs are well-thought out and well crafted, without the craftsmanship ever actually taking over. A terrific balancing act.

So I liked the album a lot, but it wasn’t my pick for year’s best. Probably my personal favorite this year is Andrew Bird’s Armchair Apocrypha, which is clever and a little goofy and kind of experimental. And not quite insincere, but there’s no raw emotion, everything is polished to a high gloss. It’s very cerebral and a little cool, if you consider that a flaw, which I don’t (not for this album, anyway.) Those things are all the things that I dig, though, and that link above to the John Donne isn’t an accident – the metaphysical poets are my favorites because they take this emotion and compress it really tightly into tightly constrained boxes of metaphor and rhyme scheme and when it works, it gives me goosebumps. Andrew Marvell’s bracelet of bright hair about the bone, oh my! The risk with doing that kind of thing is that you can slide into insincere artifice (see: the later work of They Might Be Giants, or some of Pope’s poems) and just play by the numbers, which is boring and sneery.

Bird doesn’t do that, though. Imitosis is probably my favorite song on the album. I mean, how can you not love this?
“despite what all your studies had shown/
What was mistaken for closeness was just a case for mitosis”
So smart! The internal rhyming, the pun! And it’s a fucking peppy salsa number with violins! And then the chorus “we were all basically alone” is haunting. Not all the songs are that good, although I also love "Plasticities" (guaranteed to get me bobbing my head at my desk at work like a looner) and "Fiery Crash" and "Dark Matter" and ohhhh, all the songs, really.

So what I think it comes down to for year’s best is really a matter of taste. I feel kind of fraudulent professing any musical taste at all since I’m unable to create music myself (no, can’t carry a tune or keep a beat, it’s sad for me since I LOVE to sing). But I guess a lot of critics don’t necessarily produce. (Theoretically critics are well-educated, though, and my musical education is suckola.) I don’t think either of these albums is obviously head and shoulders above the other; I don’t think either album will go down in history as much more than a footnote, not necessarily because of the quality of the work but because neither is well-known.

So, blah blah blah, here’s some other stuff I found this year.

Best Album to Play When Parents Come Over: Amy Winehouse, Back to Black. Yeah, I’m sick of her tabloid antics too, but your parents will love the Phil Spector 60s heavily-produced orchestral sound. And maybe you’ll get a secret thrill from all her swearing which your deaf parents don’t notice. But although I still like the album, there’s not much more to it than what you hear on your first listen, which means I don’t listen to it very often. I bet it would be great for a party, too.

Best Guilty Pleasure: Belle & Sebastian, The Life Pursuit It can be totally twee but The Blues are Still Blue is a fucking terrific track. Plus, soft spot for the Glasgwegians singing about cups of tea and Morningside because awww, net curtains and sweetness.

Best New-To-Me Discovery That Was Not New This Year: Butch Walker, Letters. Dave’s drummer gave him a copy of this album and it’s awesome car music, kind of sunny-yet-melancholy sensitive-songwriter boy pop. Yay! Also in the category is The Pernice Brothers, Yours, Mine and Ours.

Most Flexible Album: Fiest, The Reminder. 1234 made it into an iPod commercial, but don’t hold that against the band, because the singer’s voice is terrific and out of 14 songs on the album, there are only a few that I skip. (“Sea Lion Woman” sucks, but “My Moon My Man” more than makes up for it.) But you can totally play it with kids in the room, or parents (and no worries on the swearing), or as background music in the car, or just sit down with a drink and listen to it, and it holds up to all that stuff. Sometimes innocuous can be a virtue.

Best Pop Album: New Pornographers, Challengers. I have a feeling this album will come to mean “fall of 2007” to me, it feels very specific like that. I will note that after seeing them play in concert in bored fashion, I lost interest in this album and now only play it sporadically. I think I overplayed it, actually; my lack of interest might be due to user error and not the album. Whatever. It’s still a great poppy record, and shit, it has a LOT of really great songs on it – it would be shorter to list the tracks that suck (“Failsafe”, “All The Things That Go To Make Heaven And Earth” and “Adventures in Solitude” is iffy) than to list the super rad awesome tracks (“My Rights Versus Yours”, “All the Old Showstoppers” – the best track on the album, I think – “Challengers”, “Myriad Harbour”, “Unguided”, “Mutiny I Promise You”, “Entering White Cecilia”).

Most Overrated: it’s a tie between Rilo Kiley’s Under the Black Light and Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky. The Wilco album has a few good tracks (“Either Way”, “You are My Face”but it seems self-indulgent (Impossible Germany is like, skippable Germany); if this was a book I’d say it needed another round of edits. The Rilo Kiley is interesting and experimental and plays around with different genres a lot – something I appreciate (see Andrew Bird) but in this case, it’s mostly not a success. Standout tracks include “15”, “Smoke Detector” – heh, I smoke in bed too - and “Silver Lining”, although I’ve got a soft spot also for “Breakin’ Up” – one of the songs where the experimentalness works. Moneymaker, on the other hand, sounds like a cover of an obscure disco song, and not in a good way. And that was the single they chose, too. Bleah. Why didn’t someone ask ME?

* all I really needed to say was stoned, huh? length is kind of implied

I love this picture

It's not the most flattering picture ever taken of me (although the haircut looks terrific, thanks to Matthew-the-genius-hairdresser) but I really like it because Zoe is looking straight at the camera (Dave's cell phone) and I'm not. So - a nice picture even if it shows my nose in profile, which I don't like.

Plus this picture is really typical of Zoe and me - she sees the laptop come out and climbs right into my lap, giant Campbell's-soup-kid-eyes alight, and then sort of burrows in. She is warm and cute but uncomfortable, so I end up hunched over the (warm) laptop losing the battle with Zoe's fur which is oozing onto the touchpad. You can like, see how soft her fur is, though, and how sweetly she rests her chin on my (typing) arm.

The casual nature of digital camera photos is fantastic. You can take like a million versions of a picture, or the subject doesn't have to bother to look at the camera, and whether you choose to use the picture or delete it, it's free. I feel less compelled to smile for photos because I don't have to pay to get them developed and if it's unflattering, I can delete it, instead of thinking, "that was a waste of film". (The challenge now is to make sure I'm not wearing the exact same flattering-photo-smile-face in all my pictures.)

Anyway. Happy me and the internet and Bobo and her Campbell's-soup-kid-eyes (which I suspect is maybe due to diabetes vision problems. She did turn out to be diabetic after all, but so far it's minor and might be controllable with diet for a while. And as long as her quality of life is good, I can handle committing to an insulin regime, even if it does mean we can't just pile up the Meow Mix and take off for the weekend any more. Not like we do that anyway, I just cling to the idea that some day I'll take advantage of the spontaneity available to me. Also someday I will make our Christmas stockings.)

Internet roundup

News of the Weird:

MSN’s Bad Santa. Just in time for the holidays, MSN created a “Santa” you can chat with. But apparently this Santa has a dirty mouth. Check out the transcript from the register. My favorite part is when Santa calls the children dirty bastards, but second-favorite is the tone of outrage in the story, since I don’t really believe that the “children” in the story were actually children. Anyway, if your kids are IMing with strangers, a Santa-bot with some bad code is not great but isn't the most harmful thing they could run across. But still not good news for MSN's already greyish public image.

News of the Depressing:

Credit card interest rate rise up to 30% triggered if your credit score changes. (A change in credit score can be triggered just by opening a new credit card, or enquiring in a couple of places about opening a new credit card. Awesome!) See Pandagon for the full story. I knew there was a reason I was working on getting my credit card balance to zero. (Apart from moral satisfaction, of course, which is not that much of a motivator when confronted by the shiny and the pretty.)

News of the Cuteness:

As long as we’re talking about pandas, check out this video of a baby panda sneezing. It’s only 14 seconds long. (I hate embedded videos – normally - they take forever to load and you don’t know if they’ll last ten seconds or 10 minutes.)

Bits and bobs

There's a scrap store called Bits and Bobs in Edinburgh, although when I clicked on the link to see if it was either new or if I just didn't remember it from when it was there, it's not really in the city, it's outside. Edinburgh is a funny city in that about 5 miles outside the city center, you hit farmland and start to see cows. That was always surprising to me, that country and city rubbed shoulders so closely like that without any surbuban strip malls to ease the transition.

This is really a follow-up post, anyway.

So I changed the sheets last night, with Inty "helping", which means she kept jumping up on the bed and trying to settle and then acting all surprised when a blanket landed on top of her, then attacking the sheets from the inside out, frightening herself and running away, and then coming back to yell at me before the starting the whole cycle all over again. It was annoying-cute, like Winston is ugly-cute.
A friend suggested I get some baby food since Zoe's lost so much weight, and Zoe fucking LOVED that shit. It smells, if possible, grosser than wet cat food, and I really can't wait to clean up the inevitable baby food cat barf, but at this point, I'll do anything that will get some calories into her. Her spine is all knobbly, it's just like I remember from Vince, who I can't link to because I can't figure out how to get my pictures from iPhoto onto the internet because I can't figure out the file path. This whole Mac OS baffles the crap out of me, which makes me feel stupid and lazy for not trying harder to learn it but also impatient, because I need my brain for storing information about Britney Spears's latest driving infraction.

Anyway. Vince got a tumor and died. I don't feel ready for the same to happen to Zoe. Also it's really cold out and I think the ground might be frozen by now and what do you do, pay a hundred and fifty bucks to get the cat cremated or put the cat in the freezer until spring when you can bury it for free? That's a dilemma I don't want to have. Another thing I don't want to have: migraines. Since this recent low, I've stopped drinking in an effort to limit the frequency of migraines, but so far no go.

And as long as I'm talking about how cheap I am, I just one minute ago caved and turned the heat on. It was at 61 and I'm boiling it all the way up to 66. I know how to party. But we've got a quarter tank of oil and it will probably cost about half a month's rent to refill it and I'm trying to put off that moment as long as possible. I may be cheap but we're also legitimately broke, although hopefully Dave's new job will go some way towards easing that pain. In the meantime, I'll continue to wear my fleece indoors over three layers and a blanket, thanks.

Since I wrote this, I seem to have magically lost about 10 pounds despite not making any changes to my eating habits. Which just makes me think that body weight is at least 80% genetic. Also it reminds me to point out an interesting response to that post from a friend, who confessed she hadn't taken my talking about compulsive eating completely seriously because I'm not overweight. I'm not - I'm 5'7" and usually weigh about 135 pounds. This means I don't suffer any social disapproval or other prejudice based on my appearance, which is nice, but since I'm of a normal weight I can't really complain about how fucked up my body image is without pissing people off (which I understand. It's like saying, "Darn! My eyelashes are so long they brush my sunglass lenses!", you know? Cry me a fucking river.)

And oooooh, Dave just came home with flowers. Just because. Yay! I'm off to make vodka cupcakes and put my flowers in a vase. Man, I love flowers but never want to spend the money. I can already smell the lilies, I should remember to spoil me more often.

Disgusting Friday Surprise

This is just going to be a gross-out post. I'll put the really super TMI information in white font (so hold down your mouse's left button and run it over where the words ought to be, and they'll show up) but it's all kind of awful. Because that's the kind of week this has been. If your week been good or even moderately okay, CLICK AWAY NOW, because this story might ruin it.

So Zoe has been sick for a while - maybe a month - and losing weight and barfing a lot. A lot. Like, daily. Or thrice daily.

Yes, I took her to the vet. X-rays and blood tests showed nothing abnormal. It might just be that she's 13 and her long dirt nap is en route. Of course I'm sad even contemplating this, not to mention sad that I might not get much more than two years with her, and we love each other so. Dave says my armpit is the only one she's ever stuck her face into, which I guess isn't big news unless you're a total pet person and get what it's like to have an animal develop special affectionate behaviors for you specifically, because they loooooove you.

I do realise that burrowing into my armpit doesn't sound quite so magical once it's all typed out. You'll just have to grant me some slack here if you aren't an animal lover. She's just so damn cute when she burrows under the covers to get warm, for instance. Often I find a deflated little lump in the bed where she's been sleeping all day when I get home at night and it makes me smile.

Back to the barfing: cleanup has been fun, of course. Most nights I get home from work and do a run-through of the house to try to find the barf before I step in it. If I've got time, I do a quick run-through in the morning before work, too. Because she hasn't been eating, mostly it's thin watery yellowish barf (bile). Poor baby. She does have an appointment coming up to go see the vet again. A frequent thrower-upper myself, I feel her pain.

So, this morning? While I was making the bed? Guess what I found? ... yeah. A little oval yellow-ish stain on the bottom sheet. What the hell?, I thought, I don't remember that being there when I put the sheets on last week.

That's because ... it probably wasn't. My guess is that one of the days this week when she was sleeping under the covers, she barfed in there. Yeah. On my side. I found it this morning. I slept on barf-sheets last night, in a barf-bed. Ew ew ew ew ew. It's possible I've been sleeping in that since Monday night. Ew ew ew ew ew.

So, what with Zoe's sickness and my own previously-unmentioned medical stuff, it's been a bad week for pussies around here. (I admit it. I totally wrote this whole post for that single whited-out joke. Now go bleach your brain.)

oh hai, teh funny!!!1!

There's a lolcat wiki to translate the Bible into lolspeak. It is fucking hilarious; check out Genesis 1, 1:

            Boreded Ceiling Cat makinkgz Urf n stuffs


1 Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.

2 Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz.

3 At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.4 An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stuffs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can see in teh dark An not tripz over nethin.5 An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. It were FURST!!!1



Of course, to enjoy this you have to be okay with thinking about teh Bibble as not-the-literal-truth, and you have to be okay with God = boreded ceiling cat. So, my mother? Would not think this was funny at all.

Just like that Christmas that my sister and I kidnapped the baby Jesus from his manger in our dime store creche. So that she wouldn't notice the absence of the tiny baby doll immediately, we subbed in a little pink pig (from our Pass the Pig game). We tucked a little ransom note (demanding, I think, "100 sheep by sundown or the baby gets it") under the piglet and sat back to await the fireworks.

And waited.

And waited some more.

Finally during Christmas dinner all the kids (all-bar-parents were in on the secret by now - you should have seen my brother turn red and cackle with suppressed glee when we told him) made a big fuss about "checking in on Jesus" and Mom eventually got up to look. Well. She was Not Amused. Especially the pig part, maybe more so because it was such dead ringer for the bebbe jebub.
Mmmmm, sacrilicious. I've never enjoyed brussels sprouts more.


... oh, and if you don't know what lolcats are, they are "poorly spelled human emotions ascribed to pictures of animals" (That's the most concise definition I've ever seen, and it comes from the terrific and even funnier lolsecretz blog.) Or you can just Google the phrase "I can has cheezburger?" and you'll pull up a ton of information. PWN!


(I don't really know what PWN means. That's okay, because judging by the way I keep this video all over the interwebs, no one else knows what it means, either.)

Not just a river in Egpyt

I am so happy the NYT is now free all over the place, all the time. Check out this fun pop-psych article: Denial makes the world go round. (I can't say I'm super-psyched that the opening and closing example of the article is a woman whose shopping is out of control, who didn't feel able to tell her husband about it. Couldn't they have used a scenario about an affair or something not related to the duplicitous-female-likes-to-shop stereotype? But whatever, it's still worth the click.)

“There are lots of way to think about this,” said the lead author, Daniel J. Hruschka of the Santa Fe Institute, a research group that focuses on complex systems. “One is that you’re moving and you really need help, but your friend doesn’t return your call. Well, maybe he’s out of town, and it’s not a defection at all. The ability to overlook or forgive is a way to overcome these vicissitudes of everyday life.”


I've seen that. Aren't we way harsher about other drivers than ourselves or the trusted driver of our car? God, if I held myself and my friends and my family to the same standards I hold stangers and theoretical people to, I'd be friendless, alone and probably be planning my suicide, unable to live with myself.

Nowhere do people use denial skills to greater effect than with a spouse or partner. In a series of studies, Sandra Murray of the University of Buffalo and John Holmes of the University of Waterloo in Ontario have shown that people often idealize their partners, overestimating their strengths and playing down their flaws.

I can think of a zillion real life examples where I've seen this happening. I'm sure my own relationship is included.

This typically involves a blend of denial and touch-up work — seeing jealousy as passion, for instance, or stubbornness as a strong sense of right and wrong. But the studies have found that partners who idealize each other in this way are more likely to stay together and to report being satisfied in the relationship than those who do not.

So ... denial = neccesary coping tool for functioning in society. It's just when there's too much that there's a problem. Like drugs or alcohol! Whoa. Heavy.

O I am a bad cat mother

A new low in Friday cat-blogging, hein? I'm pretty sure she spent a while last night deciding what part of me to eat first. And yes, that's a little Yahoo! t-shirt she's wearing. I bet you didn't know brand marketing schwag went all the way down to the pet-apparel vertical. (FYI: I think she had the shirt on for about 5 minutes in total. Just long enough for me to get the pictures. And no, I didn't get scratched or bitten. She was mad but apparently not mad enough to resist.)

Exciting Text Fight

Exciting for me, anyway. If by “exciting” you mean “now I feel shitty”, which I do. Verbatim transcript below.


Me: I feel bloated and tired of boughten food.

Dave: Didja grab a burrito for lunch? Tasty, homemade. Like mom used to make.

Me: No, it’s the company lunch today (chili cookoff, which is actually cool.)

Dave: You’re going out to dinner tonight for the third time this week. May i suggest moderation?

Me: You can suggest anything you fucking want. I have been moderating.

Dave: Just saying.

Me: I’m in a pretty bad mood today and i miss exercise and fresh vegetables. I know you were trying to make a helpful suggestion but your advice seemed obvious and condescending to me, like my [redacted relative].

Dave: Jesus. Forget i said anything.

[this response crossed with my followup text, below]

Me: I am also extra sensitive due to compulsive eating issues. Like when someone asks you how come you have to get so mad all the time and suggests you chill out

And that is where things currently stand. Ain’t love grand?

Re-reading, it seems obvious to me that we’ve both got a point. My life has been hard and shitty lately (Dave’s has too), so anger is bubbling out all over the place – as you can see above, somewhat inappropriately. At the same time … we’ve been dating for two years, during which I have struggled with compulsive eating. Telling a compulsive eater to moderate is about equivalent telling an alcoholic that it’s fine to drink, just stop after one or two. They already know that, trust me.

I’ve been fighting compulsive eating since I was about 14, my first year of boarding school. That’s when the first eating disorder which had been carefully nurtured by the media and my fucked-up elementary school really took root and blossomed, helped greatly by the 32F breasts which had arrived with puberty the summer before I started high school. (No, they aren’t still that size. That’s another story, though. Insurance paid for the surgery, because I had back problems. At 17. Back problems.)

Sometimes people (men) have trouble understanding why a woman wouldn’t want huge tits. For men, bigger dicks are better, right? And big boobs on women are often a huge (heh) plus. Except a big dick is like a secret weapon, whereas big boobs are pretty much impossible to hide. I won’t even get into what a pain in the ass it is to try to find dresses when your top is a size 14 and your bottom is a size 6, or say much about how with really big boobs, all you can hope for re: tops is to find stuff that drapes nicely. Like, you know, a tent. Tents also don’t show “too much” cleavage (don’t want to look slutty!). Not showing cleavage, when you’re stacked like I was, pretty much requires a turtleneck.

Also, I gotta say, the summer I grew boobs was a pretty vicious induction into puberty. Suddenly construction workers were hollering at me from across the street, based on my new silhouette. (They probably had children my age.) Fathers of the children I babysat for showed new interest in my life, asking how school was going for me and casually asking if I had any boyfriends. (I know: predatory and disgusting.) Boys were talking to me, but not looking at my face while they did so. It didn’t help that my group of “friends” freshman year included some sharks who saw my weakness, smelled blood and drove in for the kill. I’m sure those girls had their own issues driving them, but that doesn’t mean being bullied doesn’t suck a lot more for the victim.

I was desperately lonely and wanted nothing more than a boyfriend, but I was so suspicious and terrified of sex and my new body that I couldn’t do anything but shoot them all down. I would spend hours and hours obsessing over one in particular and thinking how cute he as and how great it would be if he talked to me, trying to sound smart in English class so he would notice and then … if he did talk to me, I shut down completely. In retrospect, not ALL the boys were talking to me just ‘cause I had a pair of industrial-strength floatation devices on my front – the English class thing worked! – but I was too uncomfortable with myself to be able to tell that.

So I decided I didn’t have a boyfriend was because I wasn’t attractive enough. I couldn’t do anything about my face but my body, that was under my control, right? And I started trying to really control my food intake, which led to restricted eating and then binging and purging and what I eventually learned to call compulsive eating.

Because here’s the thing about eating for emotional reasons: it works. Your serotonin levels do rise. You feel worse about it afterwards but that temporary relief from pain is like a fucking drug. It’s a little worse, actually, since with a drug you can quit. With food you have to re-learn how to eat. You need to create a new relationship with food. You can’t get away from it. On bad days, well meaning friends will tell you that you “deserve” some chocolate. And I really LIKE to eat, it is a sensuous pleasure for me. I can’t just regard it as fuel.

I am 29 now. The battle with food has been going on for more than half my life. I mentioned in my comment on a previous post that I’d quit drinking to try to help my migraines. So far teetotalling hasn’t helped with the migraines (except that I can feel morally superior in knowing that a particular migraine is not my fault) but it’s been pretty easy not to drink at parties, dinners out, shows, home after a tough day … I have an initial desire for a drink and then after about 30 minutes I relax and watch other people get loaded. No big deal.

Similarly, I’ve never been able to cultivate a long-term relationship with cigarettes, and believe me, I’ve tried. (Yes, I know the physical downside. No one wants cancer. What no one seems to acknowledge is that cigarettes are hugely helpful emotionally – a built-in excuse to take little breaks throughout your day with a relaxing/stimulating legal drug which doesn’t impair your work performance. And smokers usually develop their own little relationship networks, which is another reason to smoke.)

No other drug has ever really gotten its hooks into me (except pot, but even that relationship is less problematic for me than food.) I think it’s probably because I’m already fighting an addiction battle, it’s just with food, and there’s not really room for anything else in there. (Plus I am just not THAT self-destructive, and know better than to keep a bottle in my desk drawer or hit the bong before work.) Food is different, though.

So: who wants leftover Halloween candy? Because my office was SWIMMING in the stuff last week. Of course, I ate my way through it, disgusting or not. (Runts: much less delicious than I remember.) Because – did I already mention? – last week was wicked shitty, this week is shaping up to be another crapper and there was all this serotonin-stuff lying in piles on tables. I found it impossible to resist, grabbibng handfuls whenever I went by and unwrapping as stealthily as possible so no one would realise what I was up to, how greedy and piggy I was being. My strategy became to just eat it as fast as possible, so it would go away. I had help from coworkers, of course, but I’d like to think that if we’d all saved our wrappers and counted them up, I’d have finished first. By a mile.

All of which is a long-winded way of explaining why I was so mad when Dave suggested (reasonably, if a little insensitively) that I moderate my food intake at lunch today and tonight at dinner. Thanks for the tip, hon.

Not that you asked but yes, my pants are a little tight this week.

love

change of subject

I was going to write about how I'm all depressed and stuff today, but then I got into work and there was Halloween candy everywhere, a tidal wave and all the good kind, too: whoppers and skittles and rolos and reese's cups (those singleton packages. I love those fucking things.). Anyway, the sugar high has made me unable to think about depression (what's that?) and also, unable to see straight but never mind. I'll probably get back to the depression in a couple of hours.

So instead I'm just going to mention that Jaden's Steamy Kitchen is doing a vanilla bean giveaway. Eight people will win half a pound of beans each. And if you mention this contest on your blog, you get an additional two entries. Also Jaden's blog is so fabulous - she has awesome, accessible recipes and she's really funny, so it's worth reading anyway, even if you don't cook. (A certain regular reader will know that I'm squinting west, in her direction, with a meaningful westerly squint.)

That photo there on the left is what half a pound of vanilla beans looks like. A lot of damn vanilla beans. (Photo credits to SteamyKitchen. Hope it's okay that I republished the picture.)
And if you've ever bought one or two sad looking beans curled up in a McCormick's jar at the supermarket, weeping little vanilla bean tears because they have been separated from their beanly brethren then it's hard not to weep in sympathy. Particularly because those jars seem to go for 6 - 9 bucks, which is HIGHWAY ROBBERY for one measly bean. So, uh, I'm kind of interested in winning this contest, not that I ever win anything (curse you, Popgadget, for tempting me to sign up for a pink Dyson giveaway which OF COURSE I did not win and now they've sold my fucking email address and I get lots and lots of shitty spam, all of which would have been totally worth it IF I had won but since I didn't win now I'm just bitter. And now you can see what I have to be depressed about.) Anyway. I'm pretty sure Jaden doesn't sell her email lists. I can has beans now?