So today I have been overtaken by melancholy for no real reason. I think it's my old friend Groundless Anxiety back for a visit. The Lexapro works well for me but you're made how you're made, and I'm prone to anxiety and sadness. The Lexapro just smooths it out most of the time. It's not really a big deal, in the sense that it's a mood I'm familiar with and have lots of coping strategies, except it's 91 degrees and any activity besides sitting still makes me break a sweat. In fact, as I type, I've got the fan blowing directly into my face. It sounds like a 747 but it's better than breaking a sweat typing (which is happening anyway.) It's the kind of weather where talking on the phone makes the side of your face hot and when you finish the call, the phone is beaded with sweat-dew. And the backs of your knees and the insides of your elbows sweat, and you don't really feel clean ever.
So the heat has knocked out most of my coping strategies besides reading and napping, and neither of those has worked. I'm blogging about my mood instead. It never ceases to amaze me how my brain can just completely let me down like this. Oops, it got the mood chemicals wrong today, I'm going to feel shitty for no reason. It took me a while to figure out that nothing was wrong, actually, because normally when I feel shitty there's a least a lot going on to blame it on. Dave's not around so I'm a little lonely but the solitude is nice. (He's at band practice; later on tonight the band has a show at the Cantab downstairs and oodles of people I know will be there, so I'm really looking forward to it. But in the meantime I need to put up with my own company for another 5 or 6 hours.)
The cats are lazing around in the heat. I need to pay some bills but I ain't doing it until the weather cools down or Monday at the air-conditioned office during lunch, whichever comes first. I'm pretty happy with the effort I put in last week at work (as usual, I've taken some home this weekend, but we'll see how motivated I really am.) Zoe is dying, of course, but she's been doing that for some time now and she'll probably stick around for a while longer. No real reason to be all mopey and woeful, but I am.
Although contemplating not having Zoe around is definitely something I am actively trying not to think about, I have to admit, and might be bumming me out just the teensiest bit. She's just so lethargic and cranky. Some of that is probably the heat, but I can't help seeing it as ominous. Humans outlive their pets and that's all there is to it. (I forget if I mentioned and I'm too lazy to read my archives, but while Zoe perked up initially on the antibiotics and painkillers, she stopped responding - i.e. her appetite decreased again - later on in the week, so we won't be going ahead with dental work or any further treatment.)
I miss her perky little chirps and the way she used to climb up on the bed right next to me, even though I ended up trapped and suffocated and hot between her and Dave. She would purr if I woke up in the middle of the night - she has always been an excellent purrer - and she'd just keep purring until I fell back asleep. I haven't heard her purr in a little while. (Not like I could hear it over the fan today!) Mostly she just seems tired and slow and not very interested in anything. My poor button. I miss who she used to be. She hasn't even bothered to boss Simone around, and Zoe has always taken joy in bossing the other cats in the house.
Look at me, getting maudlin. Over a cat. But that's the joy of the internet - deep feelings for your cat are totally legitimate. Anyway, I don't think there's much I can do about either my mood or grieving for Zoe (not that she's gone yet, but I know it's coming) besides ride it out, which is what Ima do. Maybe I will re-read Hamlet again, that usually helps too.
19 July 2008
18 July 2008
Mr. Squirrel
This little guy's acorn can actually hold a votive candle, and he was a wedding present from a dear friend. At present, as you can see, he's acting as a door stopper to hold the door leading to the back stair and porch open. He fulfills this role admirably. Much more interesting than a regular rubber wedge.
I am contemplating putting cat treats in there at random times, mostly because I think it would be cute to see the cats check the votive all the time to see if a treat has shown up. Like checking the change slot on a vending machine - it's pretty rare that someone forgets to take their change, but it's still worth checking!
Also, I need a new camera, or at least a tripod, because this one takes really really blurry pictures without the flash, and it sucks to download a bunch of pictures you thought would be awesome only to find that they look like they were taken through a thick veil of Vaseline. Obviously a tripod would be cheaper but - also obviously - I would really like a new camera... one that I could upgrade with wide angle and macro lenses. The current one is a hand-me-down from Mom and it was state of the art in 2003, but it's starting to show its age. I would also like five hundred dollars to purchase said camera, but none of this is very likely to occur.
17 July 2008
Spook Country - more like Kinda Boring Land
Spook Country by William Gibson
So Neuromancer was the first Gibson I ever read and it's still his book I liked best. I didn't much like Idoru - I found the premise creepy and way too likely. But I loved Pattern Recognition.
Spook Country fell more along the lines of Idoru for me. It's probably partly my fault - I like an hour or two at the start of a book to really immerse myself in the story, and if I don't get that I have a harder time following the plot and caring about the characters. I'm also not that close a reader, and the immersion thing helps me pay better attention. I'm lazy, if you get me.
And Spook Country follows three main characters, all told from 3rd person, and each character is embroiled in a different set of mysterious events. It wasn't until page 188 that I finally I noticed I knew what was going on, and that's about half way through. It seemed like the real action finally started around then, too, which was a relief. Lot of setup.
Gibson writes a lot about virtual worlds intersecting with the real one, but there didn't seem to be much use of this concept made in Spook Country, plotwise. Maybe I am just critical because so much of my life is spent online myself and don't find the idea that the virtual can impact the real, thereby making the virtual a force to be reckoned with, that revolutionary. My paycheck comes from the internet marketing work I do, and I use that internet money to buy groceries with. So I might sorta be the wrong audience.
And the other themes of the novel are September 11th, terrorism, lots of money and renegades who work for the government and gleefully thwart the plans of the bad guys (also government agents, in this case.) So kind of standard ingredients for an airport thriller, which I was a little disappointed about.
Oh, and drugs. I think Gibson always has someone with a drug problem and there's an Ativan addict in this book, too. I had a little trouble with that idea, too, because if you're addicted to benzos, Ativan is going to be the mildest. I'd have expected that character to have moved up to Xanax and then Valium long ago. But I'm not at all an expert on addiction, it's just that I've got a slightly better than layman's understanding of psychopharmaceuticals.
I might give the book another chance and re-read it to see if I like it any better, but not right away. I'm going to read David Mitchell's Black Swan Green next; I've gotten raves from several diverse areas of my life. Plus it's about adolescence in a small English town and apparently has tons of great slang, so I'll be interested to see if I've got to resort to the glossary at the back, or if my knowledge of Britishisms will carry me through.
* update to this post from last week, where I talked a little about coming out of a meeting at work with a bunch more to do and working late to get it done. Today's meeting was the follow-up to that one and I did get most of what I needed to done, and I'm tentatively on track to get the rest done on deadline. I feel like I should get an Employee of the Month award, like,"go me!" for actually making a deadline for once. Next thing you know I'll be making it in by nine.
So Neuromancer was the first Gibson I ever read and it's still his book I liked best. I didn't much like Idoru - I found the premise creepy and way too likely. But I loved Pattern Recognition.
Spook Country fell more along the lines of Idoru for me. It's probably partly my fault - I like an hour or two at the start of a book to really immerse myself in the story, and if I don't get that I have a harder time following the plot and caring about the characters. I'm also not that close a reader, and the immersion thing helps me pay better attention. I'm lazy, if you get me.
And Spook Country follows three main characters, all told from 3rd person, and each character is embroiled in a different set of mysterious events. It wasn't until page 188 that I finally I noticed I knew what was going on, and that's about half way through. It seemed like the real action finally started around then, too, which was a relief. Lot of setup.
Gibson writes a lot about virtual worlds intersecting with the real one, but there didn't seem to be much use of this concept made in Spook Country, plotwise. Maybe I am just critical because so much of my life is spent online myself and don't find the idea that the virtual can impact the real, thereby making the virtual a force to be reckoned with, that revolutionary. My paycheck comes from the internet marketing work I do, and I use that internet money to buy groceries with. So I might sorta be the wrong audience.
And the other themes of the novel are September 11th, terrorism, lots of money and renegades who work for the government and gleefully thwart the plans of the bad guys (also government agents, in this case.) So kind of standard ingredients for an airport thriller, which I was a little disappointed about.
Oh, and drugs. I think Gibson always has someone with a drug problem and there's an Ativan addict in this book, too. I had a little trouble with that idea, too, because if you're addicted to benzos, Ativan is going to be the mildest. I'd have expected that character to have moved up to Xanax and then Valium long ago. But I'm not at all an expert on addiction, it's just that I've got a slightly better than layman's understanding of psychopharmaceuticals.
I might give the book another chance and re-read it to see if I like it any better, but not right away. I'm going to read David Mitchell's Black Swan Green next; I've gotten raves from several diverse areas of my life. Plus it's about adolescence in a small English town and apparently has tons of great slang, so I'll be interested to see if I've got to resort to the glossary at the back, or if my knowledge of Britishisms will carry me through.
* update to this post from last week, where I talked a little about coming out of a meeting at work with a bunch more to do and working late to get it done. Today's meeting was the follow-up to that one and I did get most of what I needed to done, and I'm tentatively on track to get the rest done on deadline. I feel like I should get an Employee of the Month award, like,"go me!" for actually making a deadline for once. Next thing you know I'll be making it in by nine.
16 July 2008
fishing for topics
So I gave blood last month (one of those mobile blood donation clinics in a kitted-out trailer) and got a letter in the mail the other day from Mass General Hospital saying that I was part of a "special" group of people who are CMV negative. Cytomegalovirus is apparently not really risky unless you're a tiny baby or a cancer patient or otherwise immunocompromised. It's carried in bodily fluids (e.g. blood and platelets) and between 50 and 80% of the population has had it (it's just like herpes!).
The letter went on to ask me to become part of a special CMV-negative platelet donor group - the program is called Platelet Pheresis and I think I'm going to do it. Giving blood has never bothered me - I don't feel faint or grossed out and I never seem to be anemic; plus you get free cookies and orange peanut butter crackers! And I always rationalize that I've earned the cookies by giving blood and therefore they aren't fattening, they are just helping me replace the lost blood.
Apparently platelet apheresis takes about 2 1/2 hours - they take the blood out of your arm, grab the platelets from it, and return the rest to you. So you can donate every three days if you want. Not like I have that kind of time, especially given that it's about 45 minutes each way to MGH, but they do Saturday mornings once a month and I could totally manage that.
I know I use this blog to gripe a lot but I do realize that I have been super duper lucky, in my circumstances of birth and life to date. I've had all these huge advantages which in turn allowed me to land my nice well-remunerated interesting white collar job - so it would be nice to do something for someone else. Especially little babies and cancer patients! How can you not want to help them out? And I get cookies!
So that will be my high minded post for this year.
The letter went on to ask me to become part of a special CMV-negative platelet donor group - the program is called Platelet Pheresis and I think I'm going to do it. Giving blood has never bothered me - I don't feel faint or grossed out and I never seem to be anemic; plus you get free cookies and orange peanut butter crackers! And I always rationalize that I've earned the cookies by giving blood and therefore they aren't fattening, they are just helping me replace the lost blood.
Apparently platelet apheresis takes about 2 1/2 hours - they take the blood out of your arm, grab the platelets from it, and return the rest to you. So you can donate every three days if you want. Not like I have that kind of time, especially given that it's about 45 minutes each way to MGH, but they do Saturday mornings once a month and I could totally manage that.
I know I use this blog to gripe a lot but I do realize that I have been super duper lucky, in my circumstances of birth and life to date. I've had all these huge advantages which in turn allowed me to land my nice well-remunerated interesting white collar job - so it would be nice to do something for someone else. Especially little babies and cancer patients! How can you not want to help them out? And I get cookies!
So that will be my high minded post for this year.
15 July 2008
The stork brought us a giant baby
A 13 pounder! A diet is called for, I think. Her belly was shaved for spaying and you can see her fat rolls. That's sort of what I look like with my shirt off, actually.
She's also very interested in food of all kinds, heh. She's exactly the same sweet, affectionate girl we met at the shelter, very very gentle and not at all aggressive so while Inty and Zoe aren't exactly thrilled, she's not challenging them at all. Her current name is Patches - although she doesn't seem to respond to her name - and neither Dave nor I are in love with that (so obvious and boring for a tortie) but we haven't thought of any others. I'm taking suggestions, if you've got any. We got her on Bastille day; maybe something French?
Om nom nom
These corn nuts seem edible.
Check out my fat rolls. They're much more interesting than William Gibson.
She's also very interested in food of all kinds, heh. She's exactly the same sweet, affectionate girl we met at the shelter, very very gentle and not at all aggressive so while Inty and Zoe aren't exactly thrilled, she's not challenging them at all. Her current name is Patches - although she doesn't seem to respond to her name - and neither Dave nor I are in love with that (so obvious and boring for a tortie) but we haven't thought of any others. I'm taking suggestions, if you've got any. We got her on Bastille day; maybe something French?
Om nom nom
These corn nuts seem edible.
Check out my fat rolls. They're much more interesting than William Gibson.
12 July 2008
Date Night
I was complaining on Thursday that nothing had gone right for me, and it was true. But maybe the universe felt bad or something because all the stars aligned for last night.
I picked Dave up at the T around 7:30 and we headed over to Highland Kitchen for dinner. The staff said there was a 20-30 minute wait (they don't accept reservations) but they explained they were erring on the conservative side, so we havered a bit - Dave was REALLY hungry - and ultimately decided to wait. We got a drink at the bar and were seated in about 7 minutes. Our appetizer of calamari with hot peppers was delivered super fast - maybe 10 minutes after we'd ordered it? I have no idea how the kitchen managed that - and it was delicious, crispy fried calamari in a spicy batter with some kind of sundried tomato emulsion for dipping.
Dave made me try a hot pepper ("they're not that hot, really" = fucking lie) and luckily by that time the bread had arrived so I slathered my bread with butter and took a big gulp of beer and that put the fire out. Heh. His tolerance for hot food is way higher than mine, I'm wimpy. Then our main courses arrived - he had a coconut goat curry which was delicious (and also spicy; the top of his head was beaded with sweat by the time the meal was over; he was psyched.) I had a mushroom sandwich with Jack cheese, which I thought would be a portabello mushroom in between hamburger buns, but it was actually a mix of different mushrooms in between hamburger buns. Delicious, although so heavy on the Worcester sauce I couldn't really taste much actual mushroom. But I like Worcester, so no harm done. And the fries which accompanied it were sublime - homemade and hand cut. Om nom nom.
My dad is going to be in town soon and I'm taking him here - Dad will love the spicy high quality food and unpretentious atmosphere. And almost the best surprise of the night was the bill - fifty bucks. Holy crap that's cheap (for my area), especially given the quality of the food; normally a meal like that would end up running about $80. So I'm thrilled to have such a great local joint.
After dinner - the timing here worked out perfectly - we headed over to the Abbey, one of my favorite music venues in the city (it's kind of a dive - sticky floors and totally not hipsterized - but they have some great bands and I love that it's just one step up from a garage.) We saw The Sneaks, which is headed up by Johnny, our wedding photographer. (Johnny, if you're reading this, the new site is gorgeous but I can't link directly to our stuff because it's flash! Waah.) I loved The Sneaks' music, plus it was nice to meet Johnny's wife, who recognized us from the wedding pictures. The band that followed was Buttercup, and they were a tight trio, with great vocal harmonies and - my favorite part - a chick on bass! Rock is so male-heavy, it's always a surprise when a woman is an integral member of the band and this lady definitely was.
And then it was after 10 and we were fading, so we headed home and were there in ten minutes (oh, the rapture! Patronizing local places means you don't have to trek to kingdom come to get home.)
When we got home I gave Zoe her painkiller and her antibiotics - she struggled mightily to avoid these but to no avail. I told her she was "struggling her way to the grave" (Dave's line originally) but I got it all into her eventually. She's not mean about it and doesn't go for me, I think she just really dislikes having anyone mess with her mouth, which with infected rotting teeth is understandable. She growled and squirmed a lot but once it was over, she settled right down and ate her treat and forgave me right away. Same scenario this morning. Gee, only two more weeks of this!
Her appetite seems to have increased already, so while this makes dental work more likely (urgh, expensive) it also makes the prospect of a recovery more likely. We'll still go cat shopping today (for a HEALTHY one, jesus) but this takes the time pressure off a little. I just wish Zoe would quit trying to die already.
I picked Dave up at the T around 7:30 and we headed over to Highland Kitchen for dinner. The staff said there was a 20-30 minute wait (they don't accept reservations) but they explained they were erring on the conservative side, so we havered a bit - Dave was REALLY hungry - and ultimately decided to wait. We got a drink at the bar and were seated in about 7 minutes. Our appetizer of calamari with hot peppers was delivered super fast - maybe 10 minutes after we'd ordered it? I have no idea how the kitchen managed that - and it was delicious, crispy fried calamari in a spicy batter with some kind of sundried tomato emulsion for dipping.
Dave made me try a hot pepper ("they're not that hot, really" = fucking lie) and luckily by that time the bread had arrived so I slathered my bread with butter and took a big gulp of beer and that put the fire out. Heh. His tolerance for hot food is way higher than mine, I'm wimpy. Then our main courses arrived - he had a coconut goat curry which was delicious (and also spicy; the top of his head was beaded with sweat by the time the meal was over; he was psyched.) I had a mushroom sandwich with Jack cheese, which I thought would be a portabello mushroom in between hamburger buns, but it was actually a mix of different mushrooms in between hamburger buns. Delicious, although so heavy on the Worcester sauce I couldn't really taste much actual mushroom. But I like Worcester, so no harm done. And the fries which accompanied it were sublime - homemade and hand cut. Om nom nom.
My dad is going to be in town soon and I'm taking him here - Dad will love the spicy high quality food and unpretentious atmosphere. And almost the best surprise of the night was the bill - fifty bucks. Holy crap that's cheap (for my area), especially given the quality of the food; normally a meal like that would end up running about $80. So I'm thrilled to have such a great local joint.
After dinner - the timing here worked out perfectly - we headed over to the Abbey, one of my favorite music venues in the city (it's kind of a dive - sticky floors and totally not hipsterized - but they have some great bands and I love that it's just one step up from a garage.) We saw The Sneaks, which is headed up by Johnny, our wedding photographer. (Johnny, if you're reading this, the new site is gorgeous but I can't link directly to our stuff because it's flash! Waah.) I loved The Sneaks' music, plus it was nice to meet Johnny's wife, who recognized us from the wedding pictures. The band that followed was Buttercup, and they were a tight trio, with great vocal harmonies and - my favorite part - a chick on bass! Rock is so male-heavy, it's always a surprise when a woman is an integral member of the band and this lady definitely was.
And then it was after 10 and we were fading, so we headed home and were there in ten minutes (oh, the rapture! Patronizing local places means you don't have to trek to kingdom come to get home.)
When we got home I gave Zoe her painkiller and her antibiotics - she struggled mightily to avoid these but to no avail. I told her she was "struggling her way to the grave" (Dave's line originally) but I got it all into her eventually. She's not mean about it and doesn't go for me, I think she just really dislikes having anyone mess with her mouth, which with infected rotting teeth is understandable. She growled and squirmed a lot but once it was over, she settled right down and ate her treat and forgave me right away. Same scenario this morning. Gee, only two more weeks of this!
Her appetite seems to have increased already, so while this makes dental work more likely (urgh, expensive) it also makes the prospect of a recovery more likely. We'll still go cat shopping today (for a HEALTHY one, jesus) but this takes the time pressure off a little. I just wish Zoe would quit trying to die already.
11 July 2008
In Which Everything Is Okay, For Now.
So I had my hearing test this morning. At 7 am! I was up at 5:30 and left the house well before 7! I never do that and so I had too much coffee to compensate and now I’m flying! My eyes are wide open and kind of bulging from the unaccustomed levels of caffeine so I pretty much look like a boston terrier. Yay! Arf! Arf!
Anyway, my hearing test results were totally normal, although I’ll get checked again every two years or so because of family history. I’ve got some loss in the high frequency range but this is very common (plus it’s cute when Inty opens her mouth to miaow and it’s off my hearing range so she looks like a goldfish with her mouth opening and closing silently.) It could be that I’m not good at distinguishing sounds, so when Dave talks and I’m in the kitchen and something is spattering on the stove and there’s music in the background, even though his volume might be fine, because of the background noise I just can’t make out what he’s saying and end up saying “what? what?” all the time. I don’t care, I’m just relieved my hearing is normal, and who really wants to listen to their husband anyway?
We are planning on going cat shopping this weekend - Zoe's likely lifespan is "weeks and months" rather than "years and years" so since Inty has separation anxiety and Zoe is pretty stable right now, it'll probably be best to introduce another cat into the household now, rather than ruin Zoe's last days or have a traumatic period for Inty after Zoe has died and there's no companion for Inty and then we get a new cat for Inty but she has to adjust to it while still being fucked up from Zoe's death. And we'll enjoy the time we have left with Zoe.
Cat shopping is fun! I looked through petfinder last night. We have some ideas about what we want - an older cat, 3-5, who's just super mellow and super social and gets along well with all the other cats in the shelter colony. Also I promise not to ever leave a cat alone in the car for even a minute, let alone five minutes, and also no cat will ever ride in my car again sans carrier, since it still stinks like cat piss despite the liberal amounts of Nature’s Miracle. I’ll pour more on when I get home tonight. I left the windows open today, hopefully no one will steal it from the work parking lot – or they’ll just get in and realize how bad it smells and get right back out in search of a less stinky car to hotwire.
Anyway, my hearing test results were totally normal, although I’ll get checked again every two years or so because of family history. I’ve got some loss in the high frequency range but this is very common (plus it’s cute when Inty opens her mouth to miaow and it’s off my hearing range so she looks like a goldfish with her mouth opening and closing silently.) It could be that I’m not good at distinguishing sounds, so when Dave talks and I’m in the kitchen and something is spattering on the stove and there’s music in the background, even though his volume might be fine, because of the background noise I just can’t make out what he’s saying and end up saying “what? what?” all the time. I don’t care, I’m just relieved my hearing is normal, and who really wants to listen to their husband anyway?
We are planning on going cat shopping this weekend - Zoe's likely lifespan is "weeks and months" rather than "years and years" so since Inty has separation anxiety and Zoe is pretty stable right now, it'll probably be best to introduce another cat into the household now, rather than ruin Zoe's last days or have a traumatic period for Inty after Zoe has died and there's no companion for Inty and then we get a new cat for Inty but she has to adjust to it while still being fucked up from Zoe's death. And we'll enjoy the time we have left with Zoe.
Cat shopping is fun! I looked through petfinder last night. We have some ideas about what we want - an older cat, 3-5, who's just super mellow and super social and gets along well with all the other cats in the shelter colony. Also I promise not to ever leave a cat alone in the car for even a minute, let alone five minutes, and also no cat will ever ride in my car again sans carrier, since it still stinks like cat piss despite the liberal amounts of Nature’s Miracle. I’ll pour more on when I get home tonight. I left the windows open today, hopefully no one will steal it from the work parking lot – or they’ll just get in and realize how bad it smells and get right back out in search of a less stinky car to hotwire.
10 July 2008
blah blah blah whining from me
Some days are just so full of petty annoyances that all you want to do is complain about them in like a ten minute rant with a drink in your hand. Unfortunately there are no humans in the house at present who can listen and make sympathetic noises ; only the cats are here and they just keep blinking at me. Le sigh. A normal person would call a friend but even though I actually need to call my best friend since I haven’t talked to her in a disgraceful six weeks, I am phone phobic (I think it’s part of the social anxiety deal) and the thought of picking up the phone is inexplicably stressful to me, even though I know that if I called her we would totally have an awesome conversation and I would be all jazzed just from having talked to her … but I suck and instead I am telling the many-eyed internets.
But maybe I will be able to make this funny! I’m ingesting a twisted dark and stormy as I type and so I’ll probably find myself funny towards the end of this, even if no one else does. Because it has been ONE OF THOSE DAYS.
So all was well this morning – I was grumpy as hell, but that’s normal for Thursday (I'm really tired by this point in the week but I don’t yet have the consolation of saying, “at least it’s Friday.”) And work was fine except I had a meeting at 2:30 which ran way late (some other attendees were late getting to the meeting so we were late getting started.) And then that meant I was late getting out at 3:30, which I had to do to get Zoe to the vet at 4; plus the ran-late meeting was one of those exciting ones where you leave with seventeen new action items and the weight of the world on your shoulders. On the way to Zoe’s vet, Inty’s non-local vet called and we chatted for a bit and dammit, she needs to stay on all 3 medications (prednisone pill, oral anti-nausea liquid reglan and ¼ of a pepcid, which we crush up and mix with milk and give to her in an oral syringe.) Plus I gotta go back to Zoe’s vet tomorrow (which is local) to pick up Inty’s prescription from the non-local vet, which was faxed through.
So anyway, got Zoe to the vet (late) for her x-rays and there was a kind of suspicious mass which could just be a lump of colon or could be something more ominous. So her x-rays showed that she was full of stool and are otherwise inconclusive. The more ominous answer would explain her weight loss; it could just be she’s lost weight because her infected teeth are rotting out of her head. To see if the tooth infection is causing her not to eat, we are putting Zoe on a trial regime of antibiotics and painkillers. The thinking is that if she responds to the antibiotics and painkillers, we can be relatively certain that it’s a problem with her teeth and go ahead with a dental cleaning and extraction. If she doesn’t respond to her new drug cocktail (don’t forget, she gets insulin every morning too) then it’s unlikely that a dental will fix the problem and she’ll have weeks or months of relatively pain free drain circling.
Then after Zoe’s appointment I went to pick up more syringes for her and also a scrip for Dave. SO HELP ME DOG, I was only in there for five minutes and I left the windows open. Seriously. I looked at my watch. But when I came out Zoe was panting, mouth open, and looked distressed and I freaked out, I just freaked out, and of course shut the windows and turned on the a/c and let her out of that hot little cage. And she paced around a little and settled down in the back. And she is so old and slow moving and she was still occasionally doing those scary open mouthed pants that I really didn’t think I should put her back in the cage and I didn’t think she was in much danger of crawling under my foot pedals in a hurry either.
I was sort of right. She didn’t crawl under my foot pedals, but she did kind of explore the car while making her sad distressed “I don’t like being in the car” chirps. And then she climbed up on her carrier with her hind legs braced on the car seat and I was like, “aw, are you riding? Are you checking out where we’re going, Zoe? Are you gonna be my navigatress?” and other stupid shit. And then a minute later I was like, “sniff, sniff” and then a minute after that I had pulled over to investigate the strange and increasingly strong odor in the car and I was yelling, “Are you pissing, Zoe?”. I got out and raced over to grab Zoe from the passenger seat because at this point I was like, you’ll piss on the ground, godammit, and in fact she had finished pissing all down the front of the passenger seat but I was rewarded with a couple of wet plops as fecal matter hit the ground (thank god it didn’t get my car upholstery on the way down. But hey, at least the x-rays were right about the stool!)
And I put Zoe back in her carrier (won’t make that mistake again!) and drove home and had the aforementioned drink and poured most of a bottle of Nature’s Miracle onto the car and I can’t even be mad at Zoe, really. I should NOT have left her in the car, even for five minutes with the windows down, and I should have waited until she was clearly feeling better and then put her back in her carrier instead of trying to drive with her roaming around. Poor thing has had a rough afternoon, so I gave her some food and some love when we got home and now she seems to be resting happily enough.
and now I need to get some work stuff done so I can get to what came out of the meeting in a timely fashion, and I also need to cook dinner. I think I also need a robot slave to do my bidding, since I don't feel much like cooking or working.
But maybe I will be able to make this funny! I’m ingesting a twisted dark and stormy as I type and so I’ll probably find myself funny towards the end of this, even if no one else does. Because it has been ONE OF THOSE DAYS.
So all was well this morning – I was grumpy as hell, but that’s normal for Thursday (I'm really tired by this point in the week but I don’t yet have the consolation of saying, “at least it’s Friday.”) And work was fine except I had a meeting at 2:30 which ran way late (some other attendees were late getting to the meeting so we were late getting started.) And then that meant I was late getting out at 3:30, which I had to do to get Zoe to the vet at 4; plus the ran-late meeting was one of those exciting ones where you leave with seventeen new action items and the weight of the world on your shoulders. On the way to Zoe’s vet, Inty’s non-local vet called and we chatted for a bit and dammit, she needs to stay on all 3 medications (prednisone pill, oral anti-nausea liquid reglan and ¼ of a pepcid, which we crush up and mix with milk and give to her in an oral syringe.) Plus I gotta go back to Zoe’s vet tomorrow (which is local) to pick up Inty’s prescription from the non-local vet, which was faxed through.
So anyway, got Zoe to the vet (late) for her x-rays and there was a kind of suspicious mass which could just be a lump of colon or could be something more ominous. So her x-rays showed that she was full of stool and are otherwise inconclusive. The more ominous answer would explain her weight loss; it could just be she’s lost weight because her infected teeth are rotting out of her head. To see if the tooth infection is causing her not to eat, we are putting Zoe on a trial regime of antibiotics and painkillers. The thinking is that if she responds to the antibiotics and painkillers, we can be relatively certain that it’s a problem with her teeth and go ahead with a dental cleaning and extraction. If she doesn’t respond to her new drug cocktail (don’t forget, she gets insulin every morning too) then it’s unlikely that a dental will fix the problem and she’ll have weeks or months of relatively pain free drain circling.
Then after Zoe’s appointment I went to pick up more syringes for her and also a scrip for Dave. SO HELP ME DOG, I was only in there for five minutes and I left the windows open. Seriously. I looked at my watch. But when I came out Zoe was panting, mouth open, and looked distressed and I freaked out, I just freaked out, and of course shut the windows and turned on the a/c and let her out of that hot little cage. And she paced around a little and settled down in the back. And she is so old and slow moving and she was still occasionally doing those scary open mouthed pants that I really didn’t think I should put her back in the cage and I didn’t think she was in much danger of crawling under my foot pedals in a hurry either.
I was sort of right. She didn’t crawl under my foot pedals, but she did kind of explore the car while making her sad distressed “I don’t like being in the car” chirps. And then she climbed up on her carrier with her hind legs braced on the car seat and I was like, “aw, are you riding? Are you checking out where we’re going, Zoe? Are you gonna be my navigatress?” and other stupid shit. And then a minute later I was like, “sniff, sniff” and then a minute after that I had pulled over to investigate the strange and increasingly strong odor in the car and I was yelling, “Are you pissing, Zoe?”. I got out and raced over to grab Zoe from the passenger seat because at this point I was like, you’ll piss on the ground, godammit, and in fact she had finished pissing all down the front of the passenger seat but I was rewarded with a couple of wet plops as fecal matter hit the ground (thank god it didn’t get my car upholstery on the way down. But hey, at least the x-rays were right about the stool!)
And I put Zoe back in her carrier (won’t make that mistake again!) and drove home and had the aforementioned drink and poured most of a bottle of Nature’s Miracle onto the car and I can’t even be mad at Zoe, really. I should NOT have left her in the car, even for five minutes with the windows down, and I should have waited until she was clearly feeling better and then put her back in her carrier instead of trying to drive with her roaming around. Poor thing has had a rough afternoon, so I gave her some food and some love when we got home and now she seems to be resting happily enough.
and now I need to get some work stuff done so I can get to what came out of the meeting in a timely fashion, and I also need to cook dinner. I think I also need a robot slave to do my bidding, since I don't feel much like cooking or working.
Reading
So as part of my effort to blog more frequently I decided that I could write about what I'm reading: I read very fast and I read a lot and I always have something to say about what I'm reading, except I never seem to have anyone to say it to. So YOU, lucky blog readers, will be the recipient of my thoughts on mostly genre and sometimes trashy stuff.
Mapping the Edge by Sarah Dunant
This was just an okay thriller. Competently written prose - nothing that set my teeth on edge but no marvelous tiny observations either, competently plotted - there weren't any plot holes a John Deere could fit through or anything - but the characterizations were flawed and kind of terrible, and I found the setup hokey.
Here's your SPOILER WARNING. I am constitutionally unable to write about books without talking about the end, it's such an integral part of how well the story works for me. I don't know how professional critics do it. Anyway. Consider yourself warned, and don't read any further if you're planning on checking this book out yourself.
So Anna, the mother of a small child, goes to Italy for a vacation and doesn't come back when she's supposed to, leaving her worried child and some friends at home. There are three narratives in the book - one from the perspective of a friend at home and two separate scenarios about what has happened to Anna.
In the first scenario of Anna's disappearance, she has been kidnapped by a disturbed man who is obsessed with his dead wife. Anna, of course, resembles the dead wife. In the second scenario, Anna is having a lover's tryst with a man who turns out to be a con man and international art thief. For a while I wondered if the tryst scenario was going to be the drugged hallucination and the kidnapping would turn out to be "real", but by the end I realized it was just a two roads diverging in a yellow wood kind of thing.
Both scenarios struck me as equally hackneyed and I rolled my eyes and huffed with impatience a lot. Not enough to stop reading, though. Heh. Rich crazy photographer in a remote area obsessed with his dead wife who has had his mansion converted into a fortress? Suave lover is revealed as a con man an art thief? Come on.
I give Dunant credit for her skill in timing the narrative arcs of both scenarios, which occur in parallel. Plus she was smart enough to set the book in the mid 90s, before every man, woman and child had a mobile phone (though some characters do, it's plausible that not everyone does) and before email and widespread internet access was common.
My gripe about the book is that Anna's character behaves so inconsistently, while other characters seem like they might have been interesting but aren't really fleshed out enough so you can tell. In a way this sloppy characterization is a plot hole in itself.
In the kidnapping scenario, we are asked to believe that Anna, a devoted mother and experienced solo traveler, is dumb enough not only to get into the car of a strange man - a man who approached her and struck up a conversation earlier in the day - to accept a ride from Senor Weirdo in lieu of a taxi (she's not portrayed as being in desperate financial straits) - but also to drink a strange-tasting espresso in its entirety which has supposedly been left behind, untouched, by the man's supposed friend who just got out of the car before Senor Weirdo approached Anna to offer her a ride. Um. It's 1996, not 1936, and most female travelers alone wouldn't accept the ride, let alone a drink which tasted strange.
In the lover's weekend scenerio, Anna just doesn't try very hard to call home and let them know her plans have changed, which, again, WTF? There are some obstacles thrown up but there are all kinds of phones on the street and stuff, and responsible people who change their plans usually keep calling until they get confirmatin that the folks at home have gotten the message and aren't worried. You hear a ton about how much Anna loves her kid and I just don't think any of the mothers of young children that I know would act like that, blinded by lust or not.
Meanwhile, Stella, the friend who narrates the at home part of the story, seems to have a drug and alcohol problem but that's never really explored, although it would have made the at home narrative more interesting, since it's basically "she didn't call and we worried" and "the phone rang but no one left a message on the machine and they hung up, perhaps it was Anna but we didn't know for sure and kept worrying". Stella also has a contentious relationship with Paul, Anna's live-in gay friend who acts as a father to her daughter, but I never see Paul or Stella behaving in a way which would irritate the other one, and you aren't given any slices of their past together or mutual jealousy over Anna or the daughter to explain why they dislike each other, just a vague "we seemed to rub each other the wrong way" sort of answer.
So ... it was a decent page turner and passed the time, but unless you read fast and are less critical than me, I wouldn't recommend it.
Mapping the Edge by Sarah Dunant
This was just an okay thriller. Competently written prose - nothing that set my teeth on edge but no marvelous tiny observations either, competently plotted - there weren't any plot holes a John Deere could fit through or anything - but the characterizations were flawed and kind of terrible, and I found the setup hokey.
Here's your SPOILER WARNING. I am constitutionally unable to write about books without talking about the end, it's such an integral part of how well the story works for me. I don't know how professional critics do it. Anyway. Consider yourself warned, and don't read any further if you're planning on checking this book out yourself.
So Anna, the mother of a small child, goes to Italy for a vacation and doesn't come back when she's supposed to, leaving her worried child and some friends at home. There are three narratives in the book - one from the perspective of a friend at home and two separate scenarios about what has happened to Anna.
In the first scenario of Anna's disappearance, she has been kidnapped by a disturbed man who is obsessed with his dead wife. Anna, of course, resembles the dead wife. In the second scenario, Anna is having a lover's tryst with a man who turns out to be a con man and international art thief. For a while I wondered if the tryst scenario was going to be the drugged hallucination and the kidnapping would turn out to be "real", but by the end I realized it was just a two roads diverging in a yellow wood kind of thing.
Both scenarios struck me as equally hackneyed and I rolled my eyes and huffed with impatience a lot. Not enough to stop reading, though. Heh. Rich crazy photographer in a remote area obsessed with his dead wife who has had his mansion converted into a fortress? Suave lover is revealed as a con man an art thief? Come on.
I give Dunant credit for her skill in timing the narrative arcs of both scenarios, which occur in parallel. Plus she was smart enough to set the book in the mid 90s, before every man, woman and child had a mobile phone (though some characters do, it's plausible that not everyone does) and before email and widespread internet access was common.
My gripe about the book is that Anna's character behaves so inconsistently, while other characters seem like they might have been interesting but aren't really fleshed out enough so you can tell. In a way this sloppy characterization is a plot hole in itself.
In the kidnapping scenario, we are asked to believe that Anna, a devoted mother and experienced solo traveler, is dumb enough not only to get into the car of a strange man - a man who approached her and struck up a conversation earlier in the day - to accept a ride from Senor Weirdo in lieu of a taxi (she's not portrayed as being in desperate financial straits) - but also to drink a strange-tasting espresso in its entirety which has supposedly been left behind, untouched, by the man's supposed friend who just got out of the car before Senor Weirdo approached Anna to offer her a ride. Um. It's 1996, not 1936, and most female travelers alone wouldn't accept the ride, let alone a drink which tasted strange.
In the lover's weekend scenerio, Anna just doesn't try very hard to call home and let them know her plans have changed, which, again, WTF? There are some obstacles thrown up but there are all kinds of phones on the street and stuff, and responsible people who change their plans usually keep calling until they get confirmatin that the folks at home have gotten the message and aren't worried. You hear a ton about how much Anna loves her kid and I just don't think any of the mothers of young children that I know would act like that, blinded by lust or not.
Meanwhile, Stella, the friend who narrates the at home part of the story, seems to have a drug and alcohol problem but that's never really explored, although it would have made the at home narrative more interesting, since it's basically "she didn't call and we worried" and "the phone rang but no one left a message on the machine and they hung up, perhaps it was Anna but we didn't know for sure and kept worrying". Stella also has a contentious relationship with Paul, Anna's live-in gay friend who acts as a father to her daughter, but I never see Paul or Stella behaving in a way which would irritate the other one, and you aren't given any slices of their past together or mutual jealousy over Anna or the daughter to explain why they dislike each other, just a vague "we seemed to rub each other the wrong way" sort of answer.
So ... it was a decent page turner and passed the time, but unless you read fast and are less critical than me, I wouldn't recommend it.
08 July 2008
Split Ear of a Groundling
So I am getting my hearing tested this Friday. Dave has been getting increasingly annoyed when I yell, “what’s that, sonny boy?” or just nod and smile, hoping that’s an acceptable answer. Or don’t know that he’s said anything at all. Or think he’s said, “I’m bleeding” when he’s really said that he’s reading.
It’s a little depressing to contemplate hearing aids at 30. THIRTY, fer chrissakes. (And before you ask, yes, I had the doctor look in my ears to see if there was just a wax build up. Nope.) I’m hoping that maybe it’ll turn out that there’s just a notch in my hearing right on Dave’s vocal range and that’s why I can’t hear him unless he’s ranting or flat-out yelling. (The notch thing happened to a friend of mine after a head injury and now he can’t hear his wife when she whispers in his left ear. Only his wife, only whispering, only on the left. I haven’t had any head injuries that I know of, but hope springs eternal.)
More likely I’ve got damage from a myriad of ear infections before the age of 4. I went completely deaf for a while, actually. This escaped everyone’s notice for a long time because my mom had three other little kids running around and she paid more attention to them. Just kidding, Mom! I know you’re reading! It actually escaped everyone’s notice because as my hearing faded I learned to lip read. Finally my nursery school teachers figured out that if I was at the front of the class and looking at them, I followed instructions well; at the back of the class and not paying attention, I was clueless. So I got ear tubes and all was well. Or hey, maybe I damaged my hearing listening to the Pixies really loud on my walkman through GameBoy headphones when I was 15. (Remember when ear buds were like, revolutionary?) Doesn’t matter anyway, it’s done now.
But I guess in a way I’m lucky to have had braces at 9, glasses at 11 and acne at 22. Because it got me used to humiliation early! Also, I never associated aging with the need for medical intervention on basic functions (chewing, seeing, facing the world without looking like I’d fallen face down through the broken glass factory). So apart from the aesthetics of wearing big pinkish beige boxes* behind my ears and the fun of telling people in bars and at parties that I’m “hard of hearing”, an old person line if I ever heard one, I don’t care too much. My mom just got hearing aids and those things are fucking awesome – they’re tiny and super discreet and her hearing has improved a ton, which is great. Of course Mom has the Rolls Royce of hearing aids, not the BlueCross BlueShield specials I would sport, but whatever. Maybe by the time I’m her age, I’ll be able to afford a better class of hearing aid, too.
* This makes me wonder if, like BandAids, hearing aids only come in white person colors or “clear” or if there are more options. I’d like mine to be metallic green. A really acidic bile color.
It’s a little depressing to contemplate hearing aids at 30. THIRTY, fer chrissakes. (And before you ask, yes, I had the doctor look in my ears to see if there was just a wax build up. Nope.) I’m hoping that maybe it’ll turn out that there’s just a notch in my hearing right on Dave’s vocal range and that’s why I can’t hear him unless he’s ranting or flat-out yelling. (The notch thing happened to a friend of mine after a head injury and now he can’t hear his wife when she whispers in his left ear. Only his wife, only whispering, only on the left. I haven’t had any head injuries that I know of, but hope springs eternal.)
More likely I’ve got damage from a myriad of ear infections before the age of 4. I went completely deaf for a while, actually. This escaped everyone’s notice for a long time because my mom had three other little kids running around and she paid more attention to them. Just kidding, Mom! I know you’re reading! It actually escaped everyone’s notice because as my hearing faded I learned to lip read. Finally my nursery school teachers figured out that if I was at the front of the class and looking at them, I followed instructions well; at the back of the class and not paying attention, I was clueless. So I got ear tubes and all was well. Or hey, maybe I damaged my hearing listening to the Pixies really loud on my walkman through GameBoy headphones when I was 15. (Remember when ear buds were like, revolutionary?) Doesn’t matter anyway, it’s done now.
But I guess in a way I’m lucky to have had braces at 9, glasses at 11 and acne at 22. Because it got me used to humiliation early! Also, I never associated aging with the need for medical intervention on basic functions (chewing, seeing, facing the world without looking like I’d fallen face down through the broken glass factory). So apart from the aesthetics of wearing big pinkish beige boxes* behind my ears and the fun of telling people in bars and at parties that I’m “hard of hearing”, an old person line if I ever heard one, I don’t care too much. My mom just got hearing aids and those things are fucking awesome – they’re tiny and super discreet and her hearing has improved a ton, which is great. Of course Mom has the Rolls Royce of hearing aids, not the BlueCross BlueShield specials I would sport, but whatever. Maybe by the time I’m her age, I’ll be able to afford a better class of hearing aid, too.
* This makes me wonder if, like BandAids, hearing aids only come in white person colors or “clear” or if there are more options. I’d like mine to be metallic green. A really acidic bile color.
07 July 2008
I wish I had these high energy days more than once month
So today for some reason (probably the long weekend) I had a wild hair and made all kinds of phone calls that I'd been putting off** and went through my mail . Okay ... actually I discovered a huge festering pile of mail in my carrier bag where I'd been hiding it from Dave and that is what put that hair up my ass.
Apparently I'd successfully hidden it from myself as well. See, for some reason a pile of mail is a trigger for Dave and he throws tantrums - and my mail - all over the place. Never mind that there are little piles of his shit all over the place ... ahem. Newlyweds, yay! So if I don't feel like dealing with it that second and I feel him giving my mail pile the hairy eyeball, I've gotten into the habit of stashing it in my bag for the time being. Only the time went and then before I knew it, it was July and I was looking at shit dated back in May. Oops.
Whatever. I dealt with it right then at work and actually no services have been cut off (and won't be now) and then ran errands (got key cut for house cleaner, got eyebrows waxed, yadda yadda lobster bisque) and actually got home and filed the piles I'd made at work and paid the rest of the bills. Self pat!
And now I'm blogging, something else that's been lurking at the bottom of my psyche like the mail at the bottom of my bag. Self pat again!
And I got up this morning and actually got some writing done that wasn't an email or a blog. Self-pat! Granted, it was only a dream (but a very bizarre one, a nightmare involving bleu-cheese-throwing zombies in the Civil War era) but it was super vivid (thanks*, Lexapro!) and I woke Dave up twice in the night because I was screaming. I felt bad when I learned about it this the morning.
And the dream was so vivid and long, with many semi-awake interruptions, that it felt like a short story or something. And that was a terrific realization, since I have been complaining for a while about not having any creative spark or ideas or being able to write anything other than emails, which is basically what blog entries are for me. Apparently my creative well-spring hasn't totally dried up, it's just gone underground. But I know it's there now, and so the nightmare feels almost like a gift. And a wise friend (who is also a writer) advised me to write down the dream before those zombies really started coming after me, so I did, and hopefully it will at least help with the screaming. I don't mind the nightmares so much but for Dave's sake I'd like to not wake him up by yelling. It's his first day of a new semester today, too.
And really tonight I should also call my sister (it's her birthday) and make dinner (Dave gets home late and starving) and finish up a project for work, but somehow the work part of the equation always seems a lot less pressing once I've left the office.
*Vivid dreams and somnolence are my only serious side effects from the Lexapro, so on balance: totally worth it. Especially since my anxiety and depression were starting to impact my ability to do my job, and other aspects of my life.
** calls included a talk with the vet about Zoe. I realise that the last cat I wrote about was Inty, but force-feeding Inty a regime of steroids and Pepcid and Reglan (anti-nausea) for the last two months (plus a couple thousand dollars in diagnostics and prescription food) has finally worked and Interim is beautiful and perky and glossy and has put weight back on and has stopped barfing so much. Not entirely, but it's like four times a week instead of four times a day. Which is good since she was scarily lethargic and scarily thin.
You may or may not be interested to know that I estimate having spent $8000 on Inty for vet bills and transporting her from Scotland to New Zealand and then to the States. She only weighs seven pounds. Ounce for ounce, she is far more expensive than fresh beluga caviar. (Still less than gold, though. Metal market always go up when the economy is uncertain like it is now.) She is eight years old - that's a thousand dollars a year. And now that she's got a chronic condition (IBS), she is uninsurable. She's cost more than the current blue book value of my car. A few more years like this and she'll reach what I paid for my car.
But almost as soon as Inty started to recover, Zoe took a turn for the worse with some kind of neurological episode wherein she circled hundreds of times to the left and rolled over in a leftwards direction, the poor bean. We took her to the vet for a blood workup and found no evidence of lasting neurological damage, so the next step is a cat scan (yes, for my cat) and dental work and of course x-rays to rule out a regular tumor. So those were hard things to think about - the trauma of putting her under anesthesia for dental work at 14 versus the possible benefit from the dental work, the idea that if a tumor showed up we probably wouldn't operate, the expense of all this stuff. I know cats are for life and with you in sickness and in health but I've spent three or four thousand on vet treatments so far in the past twelve months and my pocketbook is empty.
Plus - and I asked the vet this - would the dental on Zoe, at age 14, be the equivalent of putting a new hip in a 90 year old human? How many eating years does she have left, anyway? And the vet was great and talked me through everything. So we're gonna x-ray to rule out any kind of growth and we'll try Zoe on a course of painkillers and antibiotics, and if the main problem is infected rotting teeth then she'll respond to the meds and hopefully put on a little weight and we can do the dental; and if she doesn't respond to the meds, then it's unlikely the dental would be helpful. And neuro work is pretty much out of the picture now - since if we found something, we wouldn't operate. And I wish I didn't have to think about money in all of this but it's possible that Zoe is going to have a better old end of life because I can't just throw money at the problem than she would otherwise.
Apart from being kind of lethargic Zoe has no idea she's circling the drain, so maybe she'll make another comeback. I'll keep you posted. Swear. Thus ends the longest end note to a blog entry ever.
Apparently I'd successfully hidden it from myself as well. See, for some reason a pile of mail is a trigger for Dave and he throws tantrums - and my mail - all over the place. Never mind that there are little piles of his shit all over the place ... ahem. Newlyweds, yay! So if I don't feel like dealing with it that second and I feel him giving my mail pile the hairy eyeball, I've gotten into the habit of stashing it in my bag for the time being. Only the time went and then before I knew it, it was July and I was looking at shit dated back in May. Oops.
Whatever. I dealt with it right then at work and actually no services have been cut off (and won't be now) and then ran errands (got key cut for house cleaner, got eyebrows waxed, yadda yadda lobster bisque) and actually got home and filed the piles I'd made at work and paid the rest of the bills. Self pat!
And now I'm blogging, something else that's been lurking at the bottom of my psyche like the mail at the bottom of my bag. Self pat again!
And I got up this morning and actually got some writing done that wasn't an email or a blog. Self-pat! Granted, it was only a dream (but a very bizarre one, a nightmare involving bleu-cheese-throwing zombies in the Civil War era) but it was super vivid (thanks*, Lexapro!) and I woke Dave up twice in the night because I was screaming. I felt bad when I learned about it this the morning.
And the dream was so vivid and long, with many semi-awake interruptions, that it felt like a short story or something. And that was a terrific realization, since I have been complaining for a while about not having any creative spark or ideas or being able to write anything other than emails, which is basically what blog entries are for me. Apparently my creative well-spring hasn't totally dried up, it's just gone underground. But I know it's there now, and so the nightmare feels almost like a gift. And a wise friend (who is also a writer) advised me to write down the dream before those zombies really started coming after me, so I did, and hopefully it will at least help with the screaming. I don't mind the nightmares so much but for Dave's sake I'd like to not wake him up by yelling. It's his first day of a new semester today, too.
And really tonight I should also call my sister (it's her birthday) and make dinner (Dave gets home late and starving) and finish up a project for work, but somehow the work part of the equation always seems a lot less pressing once I've left the office.
*Vivid dreams and somnolence are my only serious side effects from the Lexapro, so on balance: totally worth it. Especially since my anxiety and depression were starting to impact my ability to do my job, and other aspects of my life.
** calls included a talk with the vet about Zoe. I realise that the last cat I wrote about was Inty, but force-feeding Inty a regime of steroids and Pepcid and Reglan (anti-nausea) for the last two months (plus a couple thousand dollars in diagnostics and prescription food) has finally worked and Interim is beautiful and perky and glossy and has put weight back on and has stopped barfing so much. Not entirely, but it's like four times a week instead of four times a day. Which is good since she was scarily lethargic and scarily thin.
You may or may not be interested to know that I estimate having spent $8000 on Inty for vet bills and transporting her from Scotland to New Zealand and then to the States. She only weighs seven pounds. Ounce for ounce, she is far more expensive than fresh beluga caviar. (Still less than gold, though. Metal market always go up when the economy is uncertain like it is now.) She is eight years old - that's a thousand dollars a year. And now that she's got a chronic condition (IBS), she is uninsurable. She's cost more than the current blue book value of my car. A few more years like this and she'll reach what I paid for my car.
But almost as soon as Inty started to recover, Zoe took a turn for the worse with some kind of neurological episode wherein she circled hundreds of times to the left and rolled over in a leftwards direction, the poor bean. We took her to the vet for a blood workup and found no evidence of lasting neurological damage, so the next step is a cat scan (yes, for my cat) and dental work and of course x-rays to rule out a regular tumor. So those were hard things to think about - the trauma of putting her under anesthesia for dental work at 14 versus the possible benefit from the dental work, the idea that if a tumor showed up we probably wouldn't operate, the expense of all this stuff. I know cats are for life and with you in sickness and in health but I've spent three or four thousand on vet treatments so far in the past twelve months and my pocketbook is empty.
Plus - and I asked the vet this - would the dental on Zoe, at age 14, be the equivalent of putting a new hip in a 90 year old human? How many eating years does she have left, anyway? And the vet was great and talked me through everything. So we're gonna x-ray to rule out any kind of growth and we'll try Zoe on a course of painkillers and antibiotics, and if the main problem is infected rotting teeth then she'll respond to the meds and hopefully put on a little weight and we can do the dental; and if she doesn't respond to the meds, then it's unlikely the dental would be helpful. And neuro work is pretty much out of the picture now - since if we found something, we wouldn't operate. And I wish I didn't have to think about money in all of this but it's possible that Zoe is going to have a better old end of life because I can't just throw money at the problem than she would otherwise.
Apart from being kind of lethargic Zoe has no idea she's circling the drain, so maybe she'll make another comeback. I'll keep you posted. Swear. Thus ends the longest end note to a blog entry ever.
06 June 2008
Wedding pictures
Wedding pictures. I know you want them.
These were taken by my cousin Kate (actually my dad’s cousin, so she’s my first cousin once removed, but why quibble?)
I have that funny expression because I’m trying not to cry.
My dress is Vera Wang and my shoes are Cynthia Rowley (with blue soles!), his suit is Alexander McQueen and his shoes are Chuck Taylors (not that they stayed on for long.)
My Aunt Mary got some good ones too(you’ll have to register and sign in to see them all):
At the rehearsal dinner. (I don’t know what my bangs are doing here, but the dress is Philosophy, so maybe that makes up for the fivehead.)
Don’t you just want to nom this little guy right up?
My matron of honor helping me get back into the house. The veil and train were blowing all over and making walking hard.
Check out Mom’s awesome hairdo!
The making of a Toddy tee.
Best man Todd. Big thanks to Todd’s girlfriend Maureen for documenting this. HEE.
And here are some of the photographer's favorite pictures from our wedding. Man, Johnny did such a good job; we loved working with him. Elsewhere on Johnny's blog is a link to some of our pictures from our engagement session – all the engagement photo images were used in an album that guests at the wedding signed. Like a high school yearbook, except it said “Best wishes and good luck!” instead of “Friends 4eva – C U next fall!”. All the pictures Johnny took are favorites, but here are a few super special ultra favorites:
Working out a few kinks before the ceremony.
That lace hankie you can see peeking out on the left side of my dress is one Mom brought it back from Brussels for me when I was 11 or so and said I could carry it at my wedding. It took a while but I did exactly that.
Dave dancing. I’m still jealous of his awesome foot tattoos.
I can limbo pretty low.
Taken with a Holga, used panoramically. Cooool.
My wonderful mother in law.
The rings. His is white gold with a rose gold flower, mine is white gold with pink and purple sapphires.
Polaroid. (I was so tired by the end of the day.)
Best bathroom wallpaper ever.
Romantic.
If you're really a glutton for punishment and want to see all the official wedding pictures (I love them ALL, myself), they're here. Password: deBeer.
These were taken by my cousin Kate (actually my dad’s cousin, so she’s my first cousin once removed, but why quibble?)
I have that funny expression because I’m trying not to cry.
My dress is Vera Wang and my shoes are Cynthia Rowley (with blue soles!), his suit is Alexander McQueen and his shoes are Chuck Taylors (not that they stayed on for long.)
My Aunt Mary got some good ones too(you’ll have to register and sign in to see them all):
At the rehearsal dinner. (I don’t know what my bangs are doing here, but the dress is Philosophy, so maybe that makes up for the fivehead.)
Don’t you just want to nom this little guy right up?
My matron of honor helping me get back into the house. The veil and train were blowing all over and making walking hard.
Check out Mom’s awesome hairdo!
The making of a Toddy tee.
Best man Todd. Big thanks to Todd’s girlfriend Maureen for documenting this. HEE.
And here are some of the photographer's favorite pictures from our wedding. Man, Johnny did such a good job; we loved working with him. Elsewhere on Johnny's blog is a link to some of our pictures from our engagement session – all the engagement photo images were used in an album that guests at the wedding signed. Like a high school yearbook, except it said “Best wishes and good luck!” instead of “Friends 4eva – C U next fall!”. All the pictures Johnny took are favorites, but here are a few super special ultra favorites:
Working out a few kinks before the ceremony.
That lace hankie you can see peeking out on the left side of my dress is one Mom brought it back from Brussels for me when I was 11 or so and said I could carry it at my wedding. It took a while but I did exactly that.
Dave dancing. I’m still jealous of his awesome foot tattoos.
I can limbo pretty low.
Taken with a Holga, used panoramically. Cooool.
My wonderful mother in law.
The rings. His is white gold with a rose gold flower, mine is white gold with pink and purple sapphires.
Polaroid. (I was so tired by the end of the day.)
Best bathroom wallpaper ever.
Romantic.
If you're really a glutton for punishment and want to see all the official wedding pictures (I love them ALL, myself), they're here. Password: deBeer.
24 May 2008
quick hit
Mimi Smartypants, I laughed until I cried reading about the dead bird with half its face eaten off by ants. Please never stop writing. Also please get a book deal and tour for it and include Boston in your itinerary so I can either forget to get tickets or come to your reading and then be too shy afterwards to come up and say how much I love your writing. Because I am neurotic and fun like that!
This is happily unrelated to Mimi Smartypants, but since we've gotten back from the honeymoon my anxiety levels have gone (back) through the fucking roof. Welcome home! I wondered where that hand tremor had gotten to.
This is happily unrelated to Mimi Smartypants, but since we've gotten back from the honeymoon my anxiety levels have gone (back) through the fucking roof. Welcome home! I wondered where that hand tremor had gotten to.
09 May 2008
I'm glad you're gone because you sucked! *
So, to my regular readers, you may or may not have followed the comment conversation that came after this post. Specifically, there was a comment from Anonymous which I felt needed a fuller response, and thus I am devoting a whole blog post to it.
Here’s Anonymous’s original comment, in its entirety, and below is my response.
Oh hai, anonymous… judging from the content of your comment, Anonymous in this case is my ex husband. I hope you remembered to anonymize the IP address that you were posting from too. Log files and analytics programs, you know. I’m not surprised to see you using Firefox but when did you stop using Linux and go back to Windows?
Reading to the end of that blog was painful,
I have a suggestion for you: stop reading if it causes you pain.
why are you still going on about our marriage,
It’s my blog. I’ll talk about whatever I want. See my suggestion above if you don’t like what I write about.
when you know exactly why we got married. Immigration in the UK was a problem for you and you were so disappointed that you couldn’t stay.
Oh, I see – you married me out of pity, to save me from my disappointment. How noble of you. And here I thought it was because we loved each other. Guess I was mistaken about your motives.
Sure we said we would marry properly in the future but that future never came.
In the intervening years, I’ve learned that if you want a specific event to come to pass, you have to work to make sure it happens. You were never willing to do the work.
It was very hard to maintain a relationship with someone that completely cut herself off from society.
Funny, my recollection of the situation is that you decided to move to New Zealand right after we got married and told me that you were going and I could come or not. This did not leave me a lot of choices. I did move to NZ with you and then … surprise … couldn’t get a job until you got your work permit sorted out. I didn’t cut myself off from society voluntarily, but it is hard to meet new people when you’ve got no job, know not a soul besides your husband who is always at work (or after-work “socializing”), and have no money. Although you dragged your feet on the work permit, you did finally get it sorted and then I was able to get a job. In three weeks. And then once I had a job, I made friends and had a social life. Funnily enough, though, you seem to have forgotten about that – maybe because you hated my friends and thought my job was for shit, though you had no problem spending any money I made from it.
Unreal that you will be wearing a vera wang dress, thought you would be up for something simpler from the Armani Prive collection. What would an underdressed ‘hills have eyes’ character look like walking up the isle with you.
I’m assuming that the “underdressed ‘Hills Have Eyes’ character” comment is a hit at Dave? I'm not familiar with the movie, since one of the nice things about having left you is not having to sit through all those shitty horror movies any more. Your own slack approach to bathing, brushing your teeth, shaving, washing your clothes, etc don’t exactly put you in a position to cast aspersions on anyone else’s sartorial styles.
I only read the posts to see how Interim is doing, she’s fine
If you already know she's fine, why are you bothering to read? Why not go straight to your crystal ball and not inconvenience yourself with all this reading that’s apparently painful for you?
so stop fussing with the vets, she does it on purpose for attention, the more you fuss the more she will do it. She must be costing you a fortune
Oh, you’re right, how deluded I am, thanks for the advice. She must be putting her little paw down her throat to force herself to vomit and that’s why she’s lost so much weight … the only problem is that cats don’t think that way. Crazy manipulative people think that way. YOU think that way.
It would be nice if you could stop posting about me on a public indexable forum
Again: It’s my blog. I’ll talk about what I want. You should stop reading if you don’t want to hear what I have to say.
I have never said anything demeaning about you to anyone, so would expect the same courtesy.
Well, I guess telling me that I’m a stupid cunt who never gets anything right doesn’t count as demeaning. Or maybe I’m not “anyone”, so that's why it doesn’t count as demeaning.
I don’t think you’ve got the right to expect anything at all from me, let alone courtesy. As long as we’re on the courtesy topic, though, I’ll point out that I’ve done you the courtesy of never referring to you by name at all. We never shared a last name so the handful of people in the world who know you and know that you were once married to me AND know how to spell my first and last names could do theoretically do a search and end up on this blog and find out what my opinion of you is, but … I doubt anyone but you really cares.
Remember this is your first REAL wedding so treat it that way and look fabulous...
According to your earlier observations, fabulous isn’t really possible. You should have weighed in earlier about Vera Wang and the groom. Now it’s too late to follow your advice! I'm in floods of tears.
Anyway I wish you all the best with the wedding and hope it goes as you had planned it
Gee, after your previous disparaging remarks, the good wishes are a little disconcerting. Somehow I don't think you're entirely sincere.
Comments are now moderated, for obvious reasons. There might be a delay between hitting publish on your comment and seeing it post. In fact, if I don’t like a comment, I might not post it at all. Because – and I bet you know where this is going - it’s my blog.
* the title of this post comes from an awesome mix CD that my friend K made for me shortly after I left Anonymous.
Here’s Anonymous’s original comment, in its entirety, and below is my response.
Reading to the end of that blog was painful, why are you still going on about our marriage, when you know exactly why we got married. Immigration in the UK was a problem for you and you were so disappointed that you couldn’t stay. Sure we said we would marry properly in the future but that future never came. It was very hard to maintain a relationship with someone that completely cut herself off from society.
Unreal that you will be wearing a vera wang dress, thought you would be up for something simpler from the Armani Prive collection. What would an underdressed ‘hills have eyes’ character look like walking up the isle with you.
I only read the posts to see how Interim is doing, she’s fine so stop fussing with the vets, she does it on purpose for attention, the more you fuss the more she will do it. She must be costing you a fortune
It would be nice if you could stop posting about me on a public indexable forum, I have never said anything demeaning about you to anyone, so would expect the same courtesy.
Remember this is your first REAL wedding so treat it that way and look fabulous...
Anyway I wish you all the best with the wedding and hope it goes as you had planned it
Oh hai, anonymous… judging from the content of your comment, Anonymous in this case is my ex husband. I hope you remembered to anonymize the IP address that you were posting from too. Log files and analytics programs, you know. I’m not surprised to see you using Firefox but when did you stop using Linux and go back to Windows?
Reading to the end of that blog was painful,
I have a suggestion for you: stop reading if it causes you pain.
why are you still going on about our marriage,
It’s my blog. I’ll talk about whatever I want. See my suggestion above if you don’t like what I write about.
when you know exactly why we got married. Immigration in the UK was a problem for you and you were so disappointed that you couldn’t stay.
Oh, I see – you married me out of pity, to save me from my disappointment. How noble of you. And here I thought it was because we loved each other. Guess I was mistaken about your motives.
Sure we said we would marry properly in the future but that future never came.
In the intervening years, I’ve learned that if you want a specific event to come to pass, you have to work to make sure it happens. You were never willing to do the work.
It was very hard to maintain a relationship with someone that completely cut herself off from society.
Funny, my recollection of the situation is that you decided to move to New Zealand right after we got married and told me that you were going and I could come or not. This did not leave me a lot of choices. I did move to NZ with you and then … surprise … couldn’t get a job until you got your work permit sorted out. I didn’t cut myself off from society voluntarily, but it is hard to meet new people when you’ve got no job, know not a soul besides your husband who is always at work (or after-work “socializing”), and have no money. Although you dragged your feet on the work permit, you did finally get it sorted and then I was able to get a job. In three weeks. And then once I had a job, I made friends and had a social life. Funnily enough, though, you seem to have forgotten about that – maybe because you hated my friends and thought my job was for shit, though you had no problem spending any money I made from it.
Unreal that you will be wearing a vera wang dress, thought you would be up for something simpler from the Armani Prive collection. What would an underdressed ‘hills have eyes’ character look like walking up the isle with you.
I’m assuming that the “underdressed ‘Hills Have Eyes’ character” comment is a hit at Dave? I'm not familiar with the movie, since one of the nice things about having left you is not having to sit through all those shitty horror movies any more. Your own slack approach to bathing, brushing your teeth, shaving, washing your clothes, etc don’t exactly put you in a position to cast aspersions on anyone else’s sartorial styles.
I only read the posts to see how Interim is doing, she’s fine
If you already know she's fine, why are you bothering to read? Why not go straight to your crystal ball and not inconvenience yourself with all this reading that’s apparently painful for you?
so stop fussing with the vets, she does it on purpose for attention, the more you fuss the more she will do it. She must be costing you a fortune
Oh, you’re right, how deluded I am, thanks for the advice. She must be putting her little paw down her throat to force herself to vomit and that’s why she’s lost so much weight … the only problem is that cats don’t think that way. Crazy manipulative people think that way. YOU think that way.
It would be nice if you could stop posting about me on a public indexable forum
Again: It’s my blog. I’ll talk about what I want. You should stop reading if you don’t want to hear what I have to say.
I have never said anything demeaning about you to anyone, so would expect the same courtesy.
Well, I guess telling me that I’m a stupid cunt who never gets anything right doesn’t count as demeaning. Or maybe I’m not “anyone”, so that's why it doesn’t count as demeaning.
I don’t think you’ve got the right to expect anything at all from me, let alone courtesy. As long as we’re on the courtesy topic, though, I’ll point out that I’ve done you the courtesy of never referring to you by name at all. We never shared a last name so the handful of people in the world who know you and know that you were once married to me AND know how to spell my first and last names could do theoretically do a search and end up on this blog and find out what my opinion of you is, but … I doubt anyone but you really cares.
Remember this is your first REAL wedding so treat it that way and look fabulous...
According to your earlier observations, fabulous isn’t really possible. You should have weighed in earlier about Vera Wang and the groom. Now it’s too late to follow your advice! I'm in floods of tears.
Anyway I wish you all the best with the wedding and hope it goes as you had planned it
Gee, after your previous disparaging remarks, the good wishes are a little disconcerting. Somehow I don't think you're entirely sincere.
Comments are now moderated, for obvious reasons. There might be a delay between hitting publish on your comment and seeing it post. In fact, if I don’t like a comment, I might not post it at all. Because – and I bet you know where this is going - it’s my blog.
* the title of this post comes from an awesome mix CD that my friend K made for me shortly after I left Anonymous.
06 May 2008
notes from underground
On the phone with the nice customer service lady from Macy's, about a part of a wedding present (the icecream maker attachment for a KitchenAid) which had gone astray in the post ...
CS lady: It'll take a few days to get that out to you.
Me: That's fine.
CS lady: So, You understand it will take 5 - 7 days, right?
Me: That's fine.
CS Lady: That's 5 - 7 business days. And that's just to process the return. It will probably take 7 - 10 days to arrive.
Me: I'm getting married in two weeks. I'm not making icecream any time soon. Really. It'll be fine.
CS lady: It'll take a few days to get that out to you.
Me: That's fine.
CS lady: So, You understand it will take 5 - 7 days, right?
Me: That's fine.
CS Lady: That's 5 - 7 business days. And that's just to process the return. It will probably take 7 - 10 days to arrive.
Me: I'm getting married in two weeks. I'm not making icecream any time soon. Really. It'll be fine.
17 April 2008
little light
So ... today I left work early to take Zoe to the vet.
Before I left work, I checked in on the status of a project I've been working on for about a month, which is due tomorrow and, um, it's not as close to done as I thought. So tomorrow will probably be long and mind-numbing. I do really like my field but occasionally the job is pretty manual (think spreadsheets) and tomorrow will be one of those occasions.
At least I have a great rendition of The Scarlet Pimpernel to listen to while I do it. The book itself is a little awful - there's a LOT of clumsy writing and heavy-handed characterizations and purple prose, but the reader Karen Savage is a delight. I so heart Librivox anyway: all their stuff is free and it's all stuff that's in the public domain, and readers volunteer to read stuff. I've listened to several solo projects and a few group ones. Nothing beats a big meaty solo project by an accomplished reader, but the group projects are also really interesting - sometimes people have thick non-native-English-speaker accents but they are still good readers, and sometimes they are native speakers and they just MAUL the chapters with mispronunciations and flat affects. Usually those chapters are kind of a chore to get through, but the vast majority is pretty good, and I like how librivox is a completely flat power structure, refusing to make recommendations about which reader is best, because they don't want to discourage or intimidate anyone. That makes up for the occasional less enjoyable chapter. Also, it means the bar is set less high! So I could do some of this reading, if I wanted. I am thinking about it, I do like the sound of my own voice ... maybe this summer, when I have more time. (Not like I have any realistic reason to expect the summer to be less busy than I am now, but hope obstinately continues to spring.)
So, anyway, took Zoe to the vet for her blood-glucose level check-up and it was 298, which is sky high. Which means her diabetes is not really under control. Which means more tests at the vet, and more expense. Initially I thought maybe there was a chance that Dave hadn't given her the shot properly (it's easy to miss) but he confirmed she definitely got the right dose. So, total bummer. I also made an appointment for Inty since, you know, all barfing all the time but I might need to reschedule until after the wedding, when I'll have more time and a little more financial ease. (Weddings have many hidden associated expenses. MANY hidden associated expenses.)
I also got a call from the jeweler who is making our wedding rings, and those were more expensive than I was hoping for, although not exactly a hidden expense ... I don't know where I thought wedding rings came from. The stork brings them? But it's completely money well spent - we'll be wearing these rings forever, they are custom designed, Jade is a terrific designer and makes beautiful beautiful work AND she's local so I'm all helpy with the local economy and stuff. Plus she's rad and I like her a lot.
But for the checkbook, not such a good day.
However.
After the vet and the other errands, I got home to a bunch of awesomeness. The first gift for the wedding arrived, which is very exciting (I haven't opened it yet because I'm waiting for Dave to get home, he's at class). Dave made ratatouille for dinner and left it in the oven for me (I just had some and hey, the dude can really cook!). I called my mom to whine (because she is always gracious enough to ask how I am doing, which is not a favor I score 100% on returning; sorry, Mom) and mid-phone-call (I was actually talking to Dad) I noticed that there was a vase of irises on top of the fridge with a little note on it, from Dave to me. He'd been reading my blog and the note was a very sweet response. Also apparently in real life I appear (to Dave at least) to have my act together more than I feel I've got together on the inside. Which reassures me a little about what people at work might think. (Unless they read this blog.)
And I got a some really thoughtful responses, and that was on a blog post I thought was way too long and probably boring for anyone to read.
And I even got a(nother) good response to this post, which will maybe be an interim (heh) solution to the Inty barfing problem. Because she is still barfing a whole lot, and losing weight, and needs a followup evaluation. If I can get her to put a little weight back on, though. I'm thinking pepcids in baby food might go down well ... sometimes I think she just throws everything up and then gets what the vet refers to as "sour stomach" and keeps horking and doesn't eat because, you know, she's nauseated. My poor wee black naughty. I totally understand, because the migraines make me pretty sick to my stomach. She emits this heartbreaking howl right before she barfs - she knows it's coming - which is simultaneously awful and a little hilarious. Also, at 4 am, it's wakey-uppy, and then you (I) get to lie in bed and listen to her strain to bring something up and then wonder where she deposited it and try to make a mental note remember to put your (my) slippers on right away when you (I) get up. So as to avoid stepping in.
... Anyway. So obviously some stuff is hard right now, but some people are also nice. And it's all going to be okay, eventually. And this blog has gotten me some awesome pet advice.
Update 4/18: Zoe's insulin problem might be due to the insulin being past its shelf life. And talking to the vet, she suggested what I've been thinking of doing, which is testing Zoe's blood glucose at home. That way I'll be able to just have phone consultations with the doctor and I can do a curve over the course of a day if I need to, get her better regulated that way. And much cheaper than going in every couple of weeks. So for Zoe's next appointment, Dave and I will go learn from the techs how to get the blood out of her ear. The vet very sweetly said, "I think Zoe is a good candidate for this, she's such a good cat." My little heart went pitty-pat to learn that the vet thinks Zoe's a good cat. Of course she is, but I don't expect other people to see beyond the drool and the ratty fur.
Before I left work, I checked in on the status of a project I've been working on for about a month, which is due tomorrow and, um, it's not as close to done as I thought. So tomorrow will probably be long and mind-numbing. I do really like my field but occasionally the job is pretty manual (think spreadsheets) and tomorrow will be one of those occasions.
At least I have a great rendition of The Scarlet Pimpernel to listen to while I do it. The book itself is a little awful - there's a LOT of clumsy writing and heavy-handed characterizations and purple prose, but the reader Karen Savage is a delight. I so heart Librivox anyway: all their stuff is free and it's all stuff that's in the public domain, and readers volunteer to read stuff. I've listened to several solo projects and a few group ones. Nothing beats a big meaty solo project by an accomplished reader, but the group projects are also really interesting - sometimes people have thick non-native-English-speaker accents but they are still good readers, and sometimes they are native speakers and they just MAUL the chapters with mispronunciations and flat affects. Usually those chapters are kind of a chore to get through, but the vast majority is pretty good, and I like how librivox is a completely flat power structure, refusing to make recommendations about which reader is best, because they don't want to discourage or intimidate anyone. That makes up for the occasional less enjoyable chapter. Also, it means the bar is set less high! So I could do some of this reading, if I wanted. I am thinking about it, I do like the sound of my own voice ... maybe this summer, when I have more time. (Not like I have any realistic reason to expect the summer to be less busy than I am now, but hope obstinately continues to spring.)
So, anyway, took Zoe to the vet for her blood-glucose level check-up and it was 298, which is sky high. Which means her diabetes is not really under control. Which means more tests at the vet, and more expense. Initially I thought maybe there was a chance that Dave hadn't given her the shot properly (it's easy to miss) but he confirmed she definitely got the right dose. So, total bummer. I also made an appointment for Inty since, you know, all barfing all the time but I might need to reschedule until after the wedding, when I'll have more time and a little more financial ease. (Weddings have many hidden associated expenses. MANY hidden associated expenses.)
I also got a call from the jeweler who is making our wedding rings, and those were more expensive than I was hoping for, although not exactly a hidden expense ... I don't know where I thought wedding rings came from. The stork brings them? But it's completely money well spent - we'll be wearing these rings forever, they are custom designed, Jade is a terrific designer and makes beautiful beautiful work AND she's local so I'm all helpy with the local economy and stuff. Plus she's rad and I like her a lot.
But for the checkbook, not such a good day.
However.
After the vet and the other errands, I got home to a bunch of awesomeness. The first gift for the wedding arrived, which is very exciting (I haven't opened it yet because I'm waiting for Dave to get home, he's at class). Dave made ratatouille for dinner and left it in the oven for me (I just had some and hey, the dude can really cook!). I called my mom to whine (because she is always gracious enough to ask how I am doing, which is not a favor I score 100% on returning; sorry, Mom) and mid-phone-call (I was actually talking to Dad) I noticed that there was a vase of irises on top of the fridge with a little note on it, from Dave to me. He'd been reading my blog and the note was a very sweet response. Also apparently in real life I appear (to Dave at least) to have my act together more than I feel I've got together on the inside. Which reassures me a little about what people at work might think. (Unless they read this blog.)
And I got a some really thoughtful responses, and that was on a blog post I thought was way too long and probably boring for anyone to read.
And I even got a(nother) good response to this post, which will maybe be an interim (heh) solution to the Inty barfing problem. Because she is still barfing a whole lot, and losing weight, and needs a followup evaluation. If I can get her to put a little weight back on, though. I'm thinking pepcids in baby food might go down well ... sometimes I think she just throws everything up and then gets what the vet refers to as "sour stomach" and keeps horking and doesn't eat because, you know, she's nauseated. My poor wee black naughty. I totally understand, because the migraines make me pretty sick to my stomach. She emits this heartbreaking howl right before she barfs - she knows it's coming - which is simultaneously awful and a little hilarious. Also, at 4 am, it's wakey-uppy, and then you (I) get to lie in bed and listen to her strain to bring something up and then wonder where she deposited it and try to make a mental note remember to put your (my) slippers on right away when you (I) get up. So as to avoid stepping in.
... Anyway. So obviously some stuff is hard right now, but some people are also nice. And it's all going to be okay, eventually. And this blog has gotten me some awesome pet advice.
Update 4/18: Zoe's insulin problem might be due to the insulin being past its shelf life. And talking to the vet, she suggested what I've been thinking of doing, which is testing Zoe's blood glucose at home. That way I'll be able to just have phone consultations with the doctor and I can do a curve over the course of a day if I need to, get her better regulated that way. And much cheaper than going in every couple of weeks. So for Zoe's next appointment, Dave and I will go learn from the techs how to get the blood out of her ear. The vet very sweetly said, "I think Zoe is a good candidate for this, she's such a good cat." My little heart went pitty-pat to learn that the vet thinks Zoe's a good cat. Of course she is, but I don't expect other people to see beyond the drool and the ratty fur.
16 April 2008
On marriage, and weddings, and the bridal experience.
So, I was standing in the fitting room at Vera Wang, looking at myself in the dress (and wearing the Undergarment of Insanity. This undergarment required many google searches, but I finally found something which was backless AND had an underwire. The only design flaw – besides the lack of instructions for the adjustable straps – is that it’s not a snap crotch. So, um, that will be fun. Luckily my maid of honor is up to the task.)
So there was this beautiful dress and that I was wearing in front of a full-length mirror and then on top of it was my regular old face, and it felt … strange, like someone had photoshopped my face into an ad. After I eloped with my first husband, I really gave up the idea of ever having a real wedding or wearing white and I guess the reality of it still hasn’t sunk in. Leaving aside considerations about tackiness of wearing white to a second wedding … I definitely bought into the bride concept enough to not care that A) this is my second marriage (but first wedding!) B) that white originally symbolized purity/virginity and we’ve been living together for a couple of years and, uh, clearly not a virgin …
I really wanted that status symbol of being a bride, illogical as it may be in my case. And yet, while I wanted it, I don’t feel like I deserve it (see objections A and B above)… which is bullshit since the whole bride-wearing-white is a marketing concept and the only thing that qualifies one to deserve to wear a white dress is the desire to wear one and the ability to purchase it. (I also feel very torn about the idea of a couple receiving gifts for a wedding, since the original idea was to help a couple set up house together and we did that when we moved in together. But I wasn’t so torn that I failed to register at a couple of places; nor did I request that anyone who wanted to give us a gift should make a contribution to the charity of their choice instead because actually, there is a bunch of stuff we need and it would take us years to be able to afford it on our own. Almost all our furniture and sheets and towels and stuff is hand-me-down and/or left over from college, so - for example - the towels are getting pretty threadbare, as you might imagine. Blah blah justification-cakes.)
Anyway. I hate it when women become consumed by their weddings and swore that that wouldn’t happen to me, but I cannot seem to shut up about it. Everyone indulges me in this, too, which is not helping my resolve. Because truthfully I do feel extraordinarily lucky to be able to have this marvelous wedding (thank you, Mom and Dad) and so I shouldn’t complain, because, you know, lucky.
That said, planning a party for 150 people when there are all kinds of other agendas in play IS a lot of work. As an example of another agenda … my mom is using the wedding as an excuse to have a mini family reunion with her side of the family, which I think is a fairly common side function for weddings (and funerals), it just hadn’t occurred to me beforehand that this was the case, so I was like, WHY exactly are you so insistent on inviting these people I barely know to my wedding? Why would they even care about my wedding? … because …despite the marketing, my wedding is not actually all about me. (It's about Dave, too! Heh.)
But a big community celebration of the couple's commitment to one another is kind of the point of having a wedding, I think. And that’s a really cool tradition, and it was one of the things I regretted most about eloping the first time around. I can totally see where someone wouldn’t be into having a wedding and would just want to do something quiet at the courthouse, but I like the idea of the wedding as a chance for a bunch of community good wishes for people starting a new phase.
And it is a new phase. I lived with my first husband for a while also before we got married, and things definitely shifted after we got married. It felt a little more permanent and not like we might break up after every big fight. I liked that feeling. I’m also, of course, deeply glad about Massachusetts’ no fault divorce options, since I do think it’s important to be able to get out of a relationship once you’ve tried everything and it’s still just not going to work.
Even after I left my first husband, I was somehow relieved to have gotten married at all – I’d been terrified all my life that I’d end up an unmarried spinster (such an awful word), lonely and the object of pity for others. This fear was not helped by the fact that I was a super late bloomer and didn’t really start dating until I was about 19 … and even then, I couldn’t really find anyone to be my BOYFRIEND, which I thought was my fault. In a way it was, since I was all fucked up about myself and thought I was just unlovable and unattractive, when really it was not so much that I was unlovable as that I was thought that finding someone to love me would fix my giant seething mass of insecurities. Which, as it turns out, is not a good idea.
I have a pet theory that damaged attracts damaged, which is why when I first met my first husband - and I was the same mess that other, saner boys had run screaming from - and he stuck around to actually become my boyfriend, it was a sign that he was just as fucked up as me. It should have been a sign, anyway. That’s unfortunately the kind of lesson that only experience can teach you.
At least I learned it pretty well – after I left the first husband and moved back to the states, I would meet men in bars and tell them that I had just left a marriage, that I was unemployed and living with my parents - and you’d think they’d be all, beep beep beep flashing lights, back off! But no, the strategy kind of backfired, since I was so open about admitting how much I’d fucked up, it disarmed them into thinking I wasn’t crazy and asked for my number anyway. I guess they ignored the obvious logic that only a crazy broad would get herself into a shitty situation like that.
But somehow being married – the fact that someone HAD once wanted me enough to commit to marry me – did a lot for my self-esteem. Fucked up though that is, the status afforded to women who get married went a long way towards making me feel better about myself. (I also had, and continue to seek, a lot of therapy.) But it was like I’d checked some kind of life goal off the list: I’d proved my worth by getting married, just as I’d proved my independence by living abroad for a while. On to the next life goal: Owning the Dallas Cowboys.
So on the eve (… nearly) of marrying again, I don’t have that huge need for someone else to validate my worth as a woman by marrying me … which I think is why I am entering this marriage with so much reflection about the meaning of weddings and the experience of being a bride. I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t enjoying all the priviledges that come with bridal status – everything from the mild envy of other women to getting to wear the white dress and getting a couple of fantastic pieces of jewelry to having a party where I will be, legitimately, the star for the day. (Co-star, really, but the wedding industry is All About The Bride – which is fucked up, but this is long enough already so I won’t get into it.) That’s a lot of ego-stroking, so no wonder I found it seductive and no wonder, as a good progressive liberal feminist, I also found it troubling, with all the class indicators and consumerism which surround weddings.
So my strategy has been to try to separate the wedding (which is basically a giant party) from the marriage/relationship, which I don’t expect to change much (apart from maybe the comfort that a worrywart like me derives from being married during fights.) And I feel like I’ve done a decent job of this for the most part, but as the wedding date gets closer (May 18th, peeps!), I am finding I’m getting more sucked into the idea that the success of the wedding will somehow be a predictor of the success of the marriage. Which it’s not, really.
You can have a perfect wedding and it can still all end in divorce a few years later, or you can run into every disaster possible and still make a go of the marriage. In some cases … like where one member of the to-be-wedded couple behaves badly at the wedding or during the run-up, in retrospect it’s like, yeah, that groom who banged a stripper at his bachelor party, that probably should have said something about the prospects for his future fidelity during the marriage … but mostly, as long as the couple continue to treat each other with respect as hopefully they’ve been doing all along, the wedding isn’t any kind of reading of the entrails of the marriage’s success. I was just having a hard time for a while making the distinction in my head between Dave’s and my relationship and our wedding.
The wedding and the relationship are related, sure, but not the same, although I hadn’t previously made this distinction. Therefore, the fight we had last weekend freaked me right out (Oh noes! We are fighting right before the wedding! Does this mean we shouldn’t be getting married?!!1111???)
But actually, if you (okay, me) take a step back and think about it, it makes sense that we should be fighting because Dave’s school stuff continues to be wicked stressful and also very time-consuming, plus his band is really taking off. And all of THAT results in Dave not having much time at home to help with housework or wedding stuff or hang out with me (never mind time to himself, which is probably more important than the first two).
Plus I’ve had some changes at work that mean I feel like I need to prove myself (obviously dealing with wedding stuff – which mostly needs to be dealt with between the hours of 9 am and 5 pm – is not helping my work situation.) So I end up feeling lonely and also overworked, especially given the increased effort/time spent at my paid work … and so we’re both getting a pretty raw deal right now, which is why it’s no surprise that we’re fighting, but also that the fighting isn’t really anything but a byproduct of both of us being short on patience and on sleep. And it’s not an indication that the wedding ought to be called off, it’s an indication that we’ve got WAY too much going on right now.
And we’ve recognized that, and Dave has made changes at work so he’s “only” working a 32 hour week, which will hopefully help with the school pressure. As for me, the wedding WILL be over soon, and then things can mostly go back to “normal”, which is still too busy, but at least might afford more time and energy for yoga and self-care. And we’ll reassess the situation once the big old wedding hurdle has been cleared, and see if we need to make other changes. And if that doesn’t work … well, remember what I said about Mass divorce laws! Heh. I’m not planning on ever getting divorced again, though.
Holy crap. 2000 word blog post, and it’s not even humorous. I wonder if anyone will read to the end?
So there was this beautiful dress and that I was wearing in front of a full-length mirror and then on top of it was my regular old face, and it felt … strange, like someone had photoshopped my face into an ad. After I eloped with my first husband, I really gave up the idea of ever having a real wedding or wearing white and I guess the reality of it still hasn’t sunk in. Leaving aside considerations about tackiness of wearing white to a second wedding … I definitely bought into the bride concept enough to not care that A) this is my second marriage (but first wedding!) B) that white originally symbolized purity/virginity and we’ve been living together for a couple of years and, uh, clearly not a virgin …
I really wanted that status symbol of being a bride, illogical as it may be in my case. And yet, while I wanted it, I don’t feel like I deserve it (see objections A and B above)… which is bullshit since the whole bride-wearing-white is a marketing concept and the only thing that qualifies one to deserve to wear a white dress is the desire to wear one and the ability to purchase it. (I also feel very torn about the idea of a couple receiving gifts for a wedding, since the original idea was to help a couple set up house together and we did that when we moved in together. But I wasn’t so torn that I failed to register at a couple of places; nor did I request that anyone who wanted to give us a gift should make a contribution to the charity of their choice instead because actually, there is a bunch of stuff we need and it would take us years to be able to afford it on our own. Almost all our furniture and sheets and towels and stuff is hand-me-down and/or left over from college, so - for example - the towels are getting pretty threadbare, as you might imagine. Blah blah justification-cakes.)
Anyway. I hate it when women become consumed by their weddings and swore that that wouldn’t happen to me, but I cannot seem to shut up about it. Everyone indulges me in this, too, which is not helping my resolve. Because truthfully I do feel extraordinarily lucky to be able to have this marvelous wedding (thank you, Mom and Dad) and so I shouldn’t complain, because, you know, lucky.
That said, planning a party for 150 people when there are all kinds of other agendas in play IS a lot of work. As an example of another agenda … my mom is using the wedding as an excuse to have a mini family reunion with her side of the family, which I think is a fairly common side function for weddings (and funerals), it just hadn’t occurred to me beforehand that this was the case, so I was like, WHY exactly are you so insistent on inviting these people I barely know to my wedding? Why would they even care about my wedding? … because …despite the marketing, my wedding is not actually all about me. (It's about Dave, too! Heh.)
But a big community celebration of the couple's commitment to one another is kind of the point of having a wedding, I think. And that’s a really cool tradition, and it was one of the things I regretted most about eloping the first time around. I can totally see where someone wouldn’t be into having a wedding and would just want to do something quiet at the courthouse, but I like the idea of the wedding as a chance for a bunch of community good wishes for people starting a new phase.
And it is a new phase. I lived with my first husband for a while also before we got married, and things definitely shifted after we got married. It felt a little more permanent and not like we might break up after every big fight. I liked that feeling. I’m also, of course, deeply glad about Massachusetts’ no fault divorce options, since I do think it’s important to be able to get out of a relationship once you’ve tried everything and it’s still just not going to work.
Even after I left my first husband, I was somehow relieved to have gotten married at all – I’d been terrified all my life that I’d end up an unmarried spinster (such an awful word), lonely and the object of pity for others. This fear was not helped by the fact that I was a super late bloomer and didn’t really start dating until I was about 19 … and even then, I couldn’t really find anyone to be my BOYFRIEND, which I thought was my fault. In a way it was, since I was all fucked up about myself and thought I was just unlovable and unattractive, when really it was not so much that I was unlovable as that I was thought that finding someone to love me would fix my giant seething mass of insecurities. Which, as it turns out, is not a good idea.
I have a pet theory that damaged attracts damaged, which is why when I first met my first husband - and I was the same mess that other, saner boys had run screaming from - and he stuck around to actually become my boyfriend, it was a sign that he was just as fucked up as me. It should have been a sign, anyway. That’s unfortunately the kind of lesson that only experience can teach you.
At least I learned it pretty well – after I left the first husband and moved back to the states, I would meet men in bars and tell them that I had just left a marriage, that I was unemployed and living with my parents - and you’d think they’d be all, beep beep beep flashing lights, back off! But no, the strategy kind of backfired, since I was so open about admitting how much I’d fucked up, it disarmed them into thinking I wasn’t crazy and asked for my number anyway. I guess they ignored the obvious logic that only a crazy broad would get herself into a shitty situation like that.
But somehow being married – the fact that someone HAD once wanted me enough to commit to marry me – did a lot for my self-esteem. Fucked up though that is, the status afforded to women who get married went a long way towards making me feel better about myself. (I also had, and continue to seek, a lot of therapy.) But it was like I’d checked some kind of life goal off the list: I’d proved my worth by getting married, just as I’d proved my independence by living abroad for a while. On to the next life goal: Owning the Dallas Cowboys.
So on the eve (… nearly) of marrying again, I don’t have that huge need for someone else to validate my worth as a woman by marrying me … which I think is why I am entering this marriage with so much reflection about the meaning of weddings and the experience of being a bride. I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t enjoying all the priviledges that come with bridal status – everything from the mild envy of other women to getting to wear the white dress and getting a couple of fantastic pieces of jewelry to having a party where I will be, legitimately, the star for the day. (Co-star, really, but the wedding industry is All About The Bride – which is fucked up, but this is long enough already so I won’t get into it.) That’s a lot of ego-stroking, so no wonder I found it seductive and no wonder, as a good progressive liberal feminist, I also found it troubling, with all the class indicators and consumerism which surround weddings.
So my strategy has been to try to separate the wedding (which is basically a giant party) from the marriage/relationship, which I don’t expect to change much (apart from maybe the comfort that a worrywart like me derives from being married during fights.) And I feel like I’ve done a decent job of this for the most part, but as the wedding date gets closer (May 18th, peeps!), I am finding I’m getting more sucked into the idea that the success of the wedding will somehow be a predictor of the success of the marriage. Which it’s not, really.
You can have a perfect wedding and it can still all end in divorce a few years later, or you can run into every disaster possible and still make a go of the marriage. In some cases … like where one member of the to-be-wedded couple behaves badly at the wedding or during the run-up, in retrospect it’s like, yeah, that groom who banged a stripper at his bachelor party, that probably should have said something about the prospects for his future fidelity during the marriage … but mostly, as long as the couple continue to treat each other with respect as hopefully they’ve been doing all along, the wedding isn’t any kind of reading of the entrails of the marriage’s success. I was just having a hard time for a while making the distinction in my head between Dave’s and my relationship and our wedding.
The wedding and the relationship are related, sure, but not the same, although I hadn’t previously made this distinction. Therefore, the fight we had last weekend freaked me right out (Oh noes! We are fighting right before the wedding! Does this mean we shouldn’t be getting married?!!1111???)
But actually, if you (okay, me) take a step back and think about it, it makes sense that we should be fighting because Dave’s school stuff continues to be wicked stressful and also very time-consuming, plus his band is really taking off. And all of THAT results in Dave not having much time at home to help with housework or wedding stuff or hang out with me (never mind time to himself, which is probably more important than the first two).
Plus I’ve had some changes at work that mean I feel like I need to prove myself (obviously dealing with wedding stuff – which mostly needs to be dealt with between the hours of 9 am and 5 pm – is not helping my work situation.) So I end up feeling lonely and also overworked, especially given the increased effort/time spent at my paid work … and so we’re both getting a pretty raw deal right now, which is why it’s no surprise that we’re fighting, but also that the fighting isn’t really anything but a byproduct of both of us being short on patience and on sleep. And it’s not an indication that the wedding ought to be called off, it’s an indication that we’ve got WAY too much going on right now.
And we’ve recognized that, and Dave has made changes at work so he’s “only” working a 32 hour week, which will hopefully help with the school pressure. As for me, the wedding WILL be over soon, and then things can mostly go back to “normal”, which is still too busy, but at least might afford more time and energy for yoga and self-care. And we’ll reassess the situation once the big old wedding hurdle has been cleared, and see if we need to make other changes. And if that doesn’t work … well, remember what I said about Mass divorce laws! Heh. I’m not planning on ever getting divorced again, though.
Holy crap. 2000 word blog post, and it’s not even humorous. I wonder if anyone will read to the end?
14 April 2008
mondegreenery
I was listening to Trail of Dead the other day and I finally paid attention to the lyrics and this is what I heard in "Will You Smile Again for Me?"
If you don't want it then
You could at least pretend
That the paper's your soul
And your butt's the pen
Wow, I thought, asshole as amenusis and toilet paper as notebook. I didn't realize they had that kind of a sense of humor. Gettin' all Ofili'd up in a Trail of Dead album! Imagine!
So I looked up the lyrics. Turns out they're
If you don't want it then
You could at least pretend
That the paper's your soul
And your blood's the pen
so ... yeah. No one in Trail of Dead has a scatological sense of humor. I have that sense of humor.
If you don't want it then
You could at least pretend
That the paper's your soul
And your butt's the pen
Wow, I thought, asshole as amenusis and toilet paper as notebook. I didn't realize they had that kind of a sense of humor. Gettin' all Ofili'd up in a Trail of Dead album! Imagine!
So I looked up the lyrics. Turns out they're
If you don't want it then
You could at least pretend
That the paper's your soul
And your blood's the pen
so ... yeah. No one in Trail of Dead has a scatological sense of humor. I have that sense of humor.
07 April 2008
A Tale of Two Vertical Search Engines
The good vertical search engine:
There's a vertical search engine called MissingMoney.com, and basically you type in your name and state and it checks to see if there's any unclaimed money in your name ... like a last paycheck, or an old bank account. I did a little research and the service seems to be legit, despite the impossibly spammy-sounding text in the SearchEngineWatch post where I first read about the service. (I read SearchEngineWatch all the time, so I know it's a legit site, and I think the excessive use of hyperlinks in their post might be to prevent the content from being scraped and reused elsewhere without allocation. And maybe the writer thought he was being funny by imitating the hyperbolic authorial voice common to spam email. But "Find free money" just doesn't do it for me, especially since this is money that's been yours all along. Like treating your tax return as a "bonus" .... no, that money was yours all along, and the government's just been making interest off it in the meantime. Can you tell I sent my taxes off today?) Anyway.
Some of the commenters over at lifehacker said they'd found money. I didn't find anything searching on my name and state, but oh well.
It only takes a few seconds to type in your last name and state, and there's really nothing to lose, you don't have to input an email address or your social security number or much else that could be used to prop up any kind of nefarious identity theft.
The bad vertical search engine:
A government-funded health search engine called Popline, with the tagline of "Your connection to the world's reproductive health literature", has put a stop on all keywords that contain the word "abortion". As in, any search that you do which includes "abortion" in your kewyord string will come up with no results. Your connection to the world's reproductive health information now has no connection with abortion. That is SO FUCKED UP. Wired has a great article on it. An excerpt:
That said ... when I went to the site myself and performed a search on the word "abortion", I got back a zillion article results. So maybe someone somewhere in the goverment is listening. It's still wicked messed up that they tried to block it in the first place, though.
update: Broadsheet has more on the decision to reinstate "abortion" as a search term.
There's a vertical search engine called MissingMoney.com, and basically you type in your name and state and it checks to see if there's any unclaimed money in your name ... like a last paycheck, or an old bank account. I did a little research and the service seems to be legit, despite the impossibly spammy-sounding text in the SearchEngineWatch post where I first read about the service. (I read SearchEngineWatch all the time, so I know it's a legit site, and I think the excessive use of hyperlinks in their post might be to prevent the content from being scraped and reused elsewhere without allocation. And maybe the writer thought he was being funny by imitating the hyperbolic authorial voice common to spam email. But "Find free money" just doesn't do it for me, especially since this is money that's been yours all along. Like treating your tax return as a "bonus" .... no, that money was yours all along, and the government's just been making interest off it in the meantime. Can you tell I sent my taxes off today?) Anyway.
Some of the commenters over at lifehacker said they'd found money. I didn't find anything searching on my name and state, but oh well.
It only takes a few seconds to type in your last name and state, and there's really nothing to lose, you don't have to input an email address or your social security number or much else that could be used to prop up any kind of nefarious identity theft.
The bad vertical search engine:
A government-funded health search engine called Popline, with the tagline of "Your connection to the world's reproductive health literature", has put a stop on all keywords that contain the word "abortion". As in, any search that you do which includes "abortion" in your kewyord string will come up with no results. Your connection to the world's reproductive health information now has no connection with abortion. That is SO FUCKED UP. Wired has a great article on it. An excerpt:
"We recently made all abortion terms stop words," Dickson wrote in a note to Gloria Won, the UCSF medical center librarian making the inquiry. "As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now."
There was no notice of the change on the site.
Dickson suggested other kinds of more obscure search strategies and alternative words to get around the keyword blocking.
"In addition to the terms you're already using, you could try using 'Fertility Control, Postconception'. This is the broader term to our 'abortion' terms and most records have both in the keyword fields," she wrote.
She also suggested using a euphemistic search strategy of "unwanted w/2 pregnancy." But the workarounds don't satisfy critics of the censorship.
That said ... when I went to the site myself and performed a search on the word "abortion", I got back a zillion article results. So maybe someone somewhere in the goverment is listening. It's still wicked messed up that they tried to block it in the first place, though.
update: Broadsheet has more on the decision to reinstate "abortion" as a search term.
04 April 2008
Friday Fun
Good thing I didn't look at this website until after 5 ... it was hard to stifle the snickers coming from my cube. My mom is actually not as terrible as all that but I have fielded the occasional call for technical assistance which leaves me shaking my head, just as you have to think all the people who submitted emials from their own mothers must have done. Most of the emails are pretty sweet, though, because they are so affectionate and not in a big-deal way, just kind of an "I'm-your-mom-and-I-love-you" which gets taken for granted a lot if you're lucky enough to have a mom that loves you.
29 March 2008
An Open Letter to the Downstairs Neighbor
Dear Clueless Downstairs Neighbor,
On a Saturday afternoon, when Cat Power is being played semi-loudly, our car is in the driveway and yet we aren't answering the door, what do these clues say to you?
Apparently these signals mean nothing to you, since instead of waiting twenty minutes and trying the door again, you kept ringing the fucking doorbell until someone came down. Because you needed to get your registered-out-of-state-therefore-not-entitled-to-local-street-parking-permits truck out of the driveway RIGHT THEN. Do I need to put a fucking sock on the door handle, or would you miss that, too?
Look, I understand that you probably don't know how busy we are and how rarely we see each other and how therefore we only have a few, uh, windows of opportunity in any week. That's fine. But after you rang the doorbell the first ten times and no one came down, maybe you could have wondered why. Maybe you had to get to work, and it didn't occur to that taking your truck to work would involve getting it out of the driveway until three minutes before it was time to leave.
I'm not even going to hate on you for not having ever bothered to change your registration from NH to MA, because yes, one pays pretty dearly to re-register it in a new state and one also pays Massachusetts taxes for the privilege of owning a vehicle (in addition to all the other Mass taxes.) I'm broke too, you know, and you don't seem to use the truck very much and cutting this corner isn't really hurting anyone. EXCEPT FOR CERTAIN INSTANCES, like when you interrupt sex and ruin my afternoon because Dave has band practice and had to leave soon anyway. Thank you, Downstairs Dumbass, for thereby making my already difficult life a little less enjoyable.
Yours sincerely,
Your Upstairs Neighbor, Who Hopes You Feel Like Listening To The Ramones Played Very Loudly On Sundays Before 8 AM
P.S. Your kitten is pretty cute, I always say hello to him when he's playing in the window.
On a Saturday afternoon, when Cat Power is being played semi-loudly, our car is in the driveway and yet we aren't answering the door, what do these clues say to you?
Apparently these signals mean nothing to you, since instead of waiting twenty minutes and trying the door again, you kept ringing the fucking doorbell until someone came down. Because you needed to get your registered-out-of-state-therefore-not-entitled-to-local-street-parking-permits truck out of the driveway RIGHT THEN. Do I need to put a fucking sock on the door handle, or would you miss that, too?
Look, I understand that you probably don't know how busy we are and how rarely we see each other and how therefore we only have a few, uh, windows of opportunity in any week. That's fine. But after you rang the doorbell the first ten times and no one came down, maybe you could have wondered why. Maybe you had to get to work, and it didn't occur to that taking your truck to work would involve getting it out of the driveway until three minutes before it was time to leave.
I'm not even going to hate on you for not having ever bothered to change your registration from NH to MA, because yes, one pays pretty dearly to re-register it in a new state and one also pays Massachusetts taxes for the privilege of owning a vehicle (in addition to all the other Mass taxes.) I'm broke too, you know, and you don't seem to use the truck very much and cutting this corner isn't really hurting anyone. EXCEPT FOR CERTAIN INSTANCES, like when you interrupt sex and ruin my afternoon because Dave has band practice and had to leave soon anyway. Thank you, Downstairs Dumbass, for thereby making my already difficult life a little less enjoyable.
Yours sincerely,
Your Upstairs Neighbor, Who Hopes You Feel Like Listening To The Ramones Played Very Loudly On Sundays Before 8 AM
P.S. Your kitten is pretty cute, I always say hello to him when he's playing in the window.
27 March 2008
self pity, part one trillion
I cried in the car all the way home tonight. It's true that I only live 3.5 miles from work, but there are a lot of stop lights. I just turned Superdrag up really loud (I hate listening to myself sob, I sound so undignified) and just wailed. It felt pretty great, apart from when I almost didn't notice there was a fire truck behind me with its sirens on because the car stereo and I were making so much noise together. The flashing lights were a good tipoff though. For some reason I feel really safe in the car, it tends to be where I cry and it's where I am likeliest to have a panic attack. (I don't know for sure about the frequency of my panic attacks in the car vs. in other locations, I've never actually kept track and run the numbers. Even I am not that self-obsessed or that much of a stats wonk.)
Rationally I know that I'm actually most likely to die an unnatural death when I'm in my car, but that doesn't translate to the part of me that really digs that I can fine-tune the car's temperature and turn up music as loud as I want without pissing off coworkers or neighbors; it's also SO unlikely that anyone else on the road will notice I'm losing my shit. Not many people look past the windshield at the person driving, you get your cues from turn signals and the car's position on the road. So it's an awesome place to be alone. Plus, perfect excuse not to answer the phone! Apart from the inherent unsafety of being on the road during a crying jag or a panic attack (yes, I'll pull over if I get that upset), it's perfect.
Not that I have any more reason to cry today than any other day, except that it's Thursday, which is usually the hardest day of the week for me - I'm so exhausted on thursdays and I can't keep reminding myself that at least it's Friday.
This week hasn't been that different than any other recent weeks - the unpacking work that's yet to be done still looms hugely, Dave has midterms (okay, that's a little extra stress but it's not like I'm the one taking the tests) and I had a Wednesday evening commitment (not yoga, grrr) that got me home at 11, which happened to be exactly the same time that Dave got home from class.
When I did get home last night, there were FOUR separate piles of cat puke to clean up, and Dave had already cleaned up after Zoe earlier in the day when she barfed on the bed five minutes before he needed to leave the house. What is with that timing, anyway? It's like they hold it in until it's least convenient and then puke on the soft furnishings. Or Zoe does, anyway, and I'm lucky - I guess - that she's the less frequent offender in the barf arena.
Quite apart from the ick of cleaning up, which at this point I'm pretty inured to, it's upsetting because it means that the medication for one of them isn't working. If I knew which one was puking all the time, I would be a little less worried but they tend to yak when I'm not home or when I'm asleep. I guess that's not that surprising since I spend my limited time at home either sleeping, cleaning up cat barf, cleaning normal stuff, or cooking. In about that order, too.
But it would be really helpful if I knew which one was upchucking all the time, because then I would know which one to bring to the vet. Could be Zoe's diabetes OR Interim's IBS; I think the ralpher is probably Inty, but I'm kind of dreading that vet visit because the next step for her is exploratory surgery so they can ascertain that she does, indeed, have IBS. And surgery = expensive. Could be Zoe, though, because we're having trouble getting her blood sugar consistently stable (which I've heard, via Dr Internet, is common with cats.) Either way it fucking sucks.
So wow, several paragraphs about cat effluvia. I guess it was kind of on my mind. I also clean most of it up, since Dave works full time and goes to nursing school half time, so he gets a pass on most of the housework (he would by default anyway, he's here even less than I am.) As I mentioned above, he's got midterms this week and boy are they making him into an asshole. I totally get that A) working your way through school is tough no matter what, B) because he's so stressed his back is in spasm again and therefore he's in constant severe pain, and C) midterms are extra fun. Can't wait 'til finals! They are happening the week before we get married. W00t! Anyway, I feel that these are understandable, forgivable reasons for temporary displays of assholery but at the same time it's no fun for me to constantly cheerlead for someone who's angry and anxious and pretty down and who therefore remembers less frequently than of yore to ask how my day was. Also it's not like we SEE each other very much, so maybe he wants to know how my day has been but forgets to ask during the rare 15 minute intervals when he's actually conscious and in the same room as me. (I'm positive that if you asked him, he would tell you how it's really hard for him - which it is - and he's doing the best he can - which he is - and maybe he would have a separate rant about what a jerk I am. That's okay, that's how relationships ARE sometimes, I think.)
But hey, everyone tells me, school is temporary, right, and then it'll be done and he'll be a nurse and things will be better. True but three years is a long time for a "temporary" situation to go on, and it feels like forever when you're in the middle of it.
And also I have residual anxiety over the "this is temporary while we build our future", since that was the line my first husband fed me for years until I finally realised that he wasn't doing anything to make the temporary workaholism go away. (If that's what he was really doing on all those late nights and it probably really was.) So I told my ex that things had to change because I was miserable NOW and had been for a long time and no changes were forthcoming and I left. And then I was pretty much like, fuck that plan, life is too short to be miserable in the present for the sake of an intangible future. Which I still think is true. But also I think Dave should go to nursing school and get his degree. And rationally I know that the school situation is actually different from persistent workaholism, and actually does have a built-in stopping point. But it's hard not to feel like I've been here before, and it ended badly.
Seriously, though, I shouldn't bag on my ex for working so damn much since I seem to be doing more of that lately myself. After I left my job at a marketing agency*, where I was super-overloaded with work, I swore not to put in ten or twelve hour days regularly again, that it just wasn't worth it. But! There have been shakeups at work, and I've got a new boss, who is only temporary but who I need to prove myself to. And actually temporary new boss is doing a really great job managing the team, which I am super ultra happy about, which means I am ending up putting in more hours because I'm really excited about the work I'm doing. And Dave isn't home anyway, so why not stay until 7? There's only cat barf waiting for me at home.
So to sum up, all this unhappiness is temporary and a direct by-product of the hard work Dave and I are doing to build our careers. So I am sucking it up, which is why I'm ranting here and not, like, telling Dave in a heavy tone that "we need to talk" or calling anyone who will take my calls to cry and rant and whine about how fucking hard I have it. But sucking it up kind of sucks, and it wears on you after a while, and this is a good place to vent. And rants from unhappy people with fucked up lives usually make the best blog reading/comedians/musicians.
Anyway. Off to cook risotto, which does involve stirring at the stove for 40 minutes but it's a comforting one-pot dish, and I rarely fuck it up, so it meets tonight's needs. I'm thinking about having a glass of wine with it (you know ... it's the risotto that needs the wine, not me, but as long as it's opened) but I'm a little worried that would lead to a migraine, since I have basically stopped drinking. Maybe if I drink a lot of water and stick to a single glass it'll be okay. Stupid vascular headaches. Ima risk it, though. Go me and my small life!
*I've learned since that heavy workloads are typical in an agency, for a variety of reasons. It sucks if you're good at your job, because along with a lot of very flattering and seductive praise and attention and possibly promotions and raises you're given all the problem accounts to "work your magic on", e.g. overdeliver on sales's overpromises to a disgruntled client that someone else has already angered. The other reward at an agency for doing good work is more work, and bigger accounts - you are the star so they bring you in on all the biggest and most important pitches and then the client, once they've signed the contract, naturally think they'll be working with you, which adds another client to your already too-long roster. I'm sure not all agencies are run like that, but it's common in the industry. There's a lot to like about being part of an in-house team.
Rationally I know that I'm actually most likely to die an unnatural death when I'm in my car, but that doesn't translate to the part of me that really digs that I can fine-tune the car's temperature and turn up music as loud as I want without pissing off coworkers or neighbors; it's also SO unlikely that anyone else on the road will notice I'm losing my shit. Not many people look past the windshield at the person driving, you get your cues from turn signals and the car's position on the road. So it's an awesome place to be alone. Plus, perfect excuse not to answer the phone! Apart from the inherent unsafety of being on the road during a crying jag or a panic attack (yes, I'll pull over if I get that upset), it's perfect.
Not that I have any more reason to cry today than any other day, except that it's Thursday, which is usually the hardest day of the week for me - I'm so exhausted on thursdays and I can't keep reminding myself that at least it's Friday.
This week hasn't been that different than any other recent weeks - the unpacking work that's yet to be done still looms hugely, Dave has midterms (okay, that's a little extra stress but it's not like I'm the one taking the tests) and I had a Wednesday evening commitment (not yoga, grrr) that got me home at 11, which happened to be exactly the same time that Dave got home from class.
When I did get home last night, there were FOUR separate piles of cat puke to clean up, and Dave had already cleaned up after Zoe earlier in the day when she barfed on the bed five minutes before he needed to leave the house. What is with that timing, anyway? It's like they hold it in until it's least convenient and then puke on the soft furnishings. Or Zoe does, anyway, and I'm lucky - I guess - that she's the less frequent offender in the barf arena.
Quite apart from the ick of cleaning up, which at this point I'm pretty inured to, it's upsetting because it means that the medication for one of them isn't working. If I knew which one was puking all the time, I would be a little less worried but they tend to yak when I'm not home or when I'm asleep. I guess that's not that surprising since I spend my limited time at home either sleeping, cleaning up cat barf, cleaning normal stuff, or cooking. In about that order, too.
But it would be really helpful if I knew which one was upchucking all the time, because then I would know which one to bring to the vet. Could be Zoe's diabetes OR Interim's IBS; I think the ralpher is probably Inty, but I'm kind of dreading that vet visit because the next step for her is exploratory surgery so they can ascertain that she does, indeed, have IBS. And surgery = expensive. Could be Zoe, though, because we're having trouble getting her blood sugar consistently stable (which I've heard, via Dr Internet, is common with cats.) Either way it fucking sucks.
So wow, several paragraphs about cat effluvia. I guess it was kind of on my mind. I also clean most of it up, since Dave works full time and goes to nursing school half time, so he gets a pass on most of the housework (he would by default anyway, he's here even less than I am.) As I mentioned above, he's got midterms this week and boy are they making him into an asshole. I totally get that A) working your way through school is tough no matter what, B) because he's so stressed his back is in spasm again and therefore he's in constant severe pain, and C) midterms are extra fun. Can't wait 'til finals! They are happening the week before we get married. W00t! Anyway, I feel that these are understandable, forgivable reasons for temporary displays of assholery but at the same time it's no fun for me to constantly cheerlead for someone who's angry and anxious and pretty down and who therefore remembers less frequently than of yore to ask how my day was. Also it's not like we SEE each other very much, so maybe he wants to know how my day has been but forgets to ask during the rare 15 minute intervals when he's actually conscious and in the same room as me. (I'm positive that if you asked him, he would tell you how it's really hard for him - which it is - and he's doing the best he can - which he is - and maybe he would have a separate rant about what a jerk I am. That's okay, that's how relationships ARE sometimes, I think.)
But hey, everyone tells me, school is temporary, right, and then it'll be done and he'll be a nurse and things will be better. True but three years is a long time for a "temporary" situation to go on, and it feels like forever when you're in the middle of it.
And also I have residual anxiety over the "this is temporary while we build our future", since that was the line my first husband fed me for years until I finally realised that he wasn't doing anything to make the temporary workaholism go away. (If that's what he was really doing on all those late nights and it probably really was.) So I told my ex that things had to change because I was miserable NOW and had been for a long time and no changes were forthcoming and I left. And then I was pretty much like, fuck that plan, life is too short to be miserable in the present for the sake of an intangible future. Which I still think is true. But also I think Dave should go to nursing school and get his degree. And rationally I know that the school situation is actually different from persistent workaholism, and actually does have a built-in stopping point. But it's hard not to feel like I've been here before, and it ended badly.
Seriously, though, I shouldn't bag on my ex for working so damn much since I seem to be doing more of that lately myself. After I left my job at a marketing agency*, where I was super-overloaded with work, I swore not to put in ten or twelve hour days regularly again, that it just wasn't worth it. But! There have been shakeups at work, and I've got a new boss, who is only temporary but who I need to prove myself to. And actually temporary new boss is doing a really great job managing the team, which I am super ultra happy about, which means I am ending up putting in more hours because I'm really excited about the work I'm doing. And Dave isn't home anyway, so why not stay until 7? There's only cat barf waiting for me at home.
So to sum up, all this unhappiness is temporary and a direct by-product of the hard work Dave and I are doing to build our careers. So I am sucking it up, which is why I'm ranting here and not, like, telling Dave in a heavy tone that "we need to talk" or calling anyone who will take my calls to cry and rant and whine about how fucking hard I have it. But sucking it up kind of sucks, and it wears on you after a while, and this is a good place to vent. And rants from unhappy people with fucked up lives usually make the best blog reading/comedians/musicians.
Anyway. Off to cook risotto, which does involve stirring at the stove for 40 minutes but it's a comforting one-pot dish, and I rarely fuck it up, so it meets tonight's needs. I'm thinking about having a glass of wine with it (you know ... it's the risotto that needs the wine, not me, but as long as it's opened) but I'm a little worried that would lead to a migraine, since I have basically stopped drinking. Maybe if I drink a lot of water and stick to a single glass it'll be okay. Stupid vascular headaches. Ima risk it, though. Go me and my small life!
*I've learned since that heavy workloads are typical in an agency, for a variety of reasons. It sucks if you're good at your job, because along with a lot of very flattering and seductive praise and attention and possibly promotions and raises you're given all the problem accounts to "work your magic on", e.g. overdeliver on sales's overpromises to a disgruntled client that someone else has already angered. The other reward at an agency for doing good work is more work, and bigger accounts - you are the star so they bring you in on all the biggest and most important pitches and then the client, once they've signed the contract, naturally think they'll be working with you, which adds another client to your already too-long roster. I'm sure not all agencies are run like that, but it's common in the industry. There's a lot to like about being part of an in-house team.
07 March 2008
The internet makes me happy and not happy at the same time
good news first:
Google released a calendar sync for Outlook. This is wicked good news for me since when I got a new phone a few weeks ago, I basically said, 'I text a lot and I want something that can sync with my calendar at work because OMG! TOO MANY APPOINTMENTZ! I LOSEZ TRAX!' (I didn't really fall into lolspeak but the sales guy understood me.) I ended up with a windows smartphone, a dash, which has a qwerty keyboard and is a microsoft platform. I know, I know, Bill Gates is not teh coolest, but I do know the msn OS pretty well and wasn't up for learning another platform. So my phone syncs with my work computer (where most of my appointments are; I kept making doctors appointments that coincided with meetings. Oops. Guess which got cancelled? Hint: not the meetings.) And now I've got a cloud version of this data too, so I can access a larger version from my home computer (because I still don't completely know how to use all the functions on my phone. I know, I know - lame.)
Also, this article by Gord Hotchkiss is kind of interesting, about the way human memory works and how that informs the way we use search engines ...
I know that Enquiro has done a lot of research on how Chinese users scan a page and I know Chinese (Cantonese) is read differently than English, so I'm assuming he's including Chinese users in this. Cooooooool.
Although I'll quibble with Hotchkiss's citation that "It depends on the type of information, but generally speaking, our limits, as discovered by George Miller in the mid 50’s, seems to be 7 “chunks”, plus or minus two." He does say plus or minus two but Chinese speakers typically can juggle 9 - 10 numbers in their active memory at any time. (Thanks, New Yorker, for that similar article.)
I also think this is a little dubious, mostly because any time cavemen get dragged into social sciences my radar starts to twitch:
but still, it's a good read.
Also, if you're wondering how I got to that article and topic, that's what I do all day at work, search engine stuff. It pays the bills.
Bad news:
Want to have a baby? Now's the time. The Boston Globe wrote a scaremongering piece of offensive claptrap that completely made me want to barf. My local rag! But how can I not be outraged by statements like this:
Yeah, because it's fucking terrible advice to want to be financially stable before you have a kid. Is the writer of this article unaware of divorce statistics? And how well single mothers typically fare, financially, after a divorce?
Compare this statement:
to this:
Um ... correct me if I'm wrong, but there are about TEN YEARS in between ages 25 and 35 in which you can simultaneously pursue a career and look around for a mate. (The heteronormal assumptions in this article are also beyond breathtaking. Since when is it neccesary to settle down with a mate before you have kids? yeah, it makes sense for a lot of people, but everyone doesn't have to follow that path to have a kid.)
Leaving aside the weakness of using "the good news is" as a bridge in a formal piece of writing, what "psychology research" is this? Because from what I've seen, being broke and financially dependent on your partner (I presume; or maybe the author is suggesting women who want to have babies become so-called welfare queens?) ... anyway, having no job and no control over how money is allocated in your household isn't really conducive to gaining happiness, in my opinion.
The whole article is bullshitty linkbait, of course, but it made me really mad anyway.
thanks to feministing for the link.
.....
Other stuff:
we moved, it was very painful, and I didn't kill Dave, and since I'm typing, obviously he didn't kill me. I would like to write a blog post enumerating all the things I did wrong and right for next time we move, but this is all I've got time for now. (No time for spellcheck or proffing! sorry.) I'm running late picking him up, actually.
Google released a calendar sync for Outlook. This is wicked good news for me since when I got a new phone a few weeks ago, I basically said, 'I text a lot and I want something that can sync with my calendar at work because OMG! TOO MANY APPOINTMENTZ! I LOSEZ TRAX!' (I didn't really fall into lolspeak but the sales guy understood me.) I ended up with a windows smartphone, a dash, which has a qwerty keyboard and is a microsoft platform. I know, I know, Bill Gates is not teh coolest, but I do know the msn OS pretty well and wasn't up for learning another platform. So my phone syncs with my work computer (where most of my appointments are; I kept making doctors appointments that coincided with meetings. Oops. Guess which got cancelled? Hint: not the meetings.) And now I've got a cloud version of this data too, so I can access a larger version from my home computer (because I still don't completely know how to use all the functions on my phone. I know, I know - lame.)
Also, this article by Gord Hotchkiss is kind of interesting, about the way human memory works and how that informs the way we use search engines ...
Satisficing behavior also extends to the actual interaction with the search page in a number of ways. First of all, we have capacity limits to the number of results we can put into our working memory for consideration at any one time. We don’t scan the page, load up all 18 or 20 results in working memory, and then make our optimal choice. Here too, the capacity of our working memory and satisficing play a part. In this case, the heuristic cut off is simply the fact that results show at the top of the upper left. This is where we expect to find the best results, so it makes sense that we take the top 3 or 4 results (this seems to be the typical channel capacity for most people with search results) and load these up for further consideration. A quick 4 or 5 second scan, looking for which of these is the best match to our query, and we either click or select the next group of 4 or 5. But everyone, yes, everyone, scans the same way at the beginning. We all start in the upper left corner and scan the first “chunk” of results. We’ve done hundreds (actually, thousands at this point) of eye tracking sessions, so take my word for it. This is typical behavior.
I know that Enquiro has done a lot of research on how Chinese users scan a page and I know Chinese (Cantonese) is read differently than English, so I'm assuming he's including Chinese users in this. Cooooooool.
Although I'll quibble with Hotchkiss's citation that "It depends on the type of information, but generally speaking, our limits, as discovered by George Miller in the mid 50’s, seems to be 7 “chunks”, plus or minus two." He does say plus or minus two but Chinese speakers typically can juggle 9 - 10 numbers in their active memory at any time. (Thanks, New Yorker, for that similar article.)
I also think this is a little dubious, mostly because any time cavemen get dragged into social sciences my radar starts to twitch:
Consider that our social circle in the past, a concept known as Dunbar's number, generally was about 150 people. These are not mere acquaintances, but people we know something about. To use the definition provided by Dunbar himself, these are people who, if you saw them sitting by themselves in a bar or coffee shop, you would have no hesitation going over and joining them. Just like our working memory, our ability to maintain social relationships has finite limits. And, once again, there are evolutionary reasons for this. The average size of the human tribe 40,000 years ago on the African savannah? You guessed it, about 150 people.
but still, it's a good read.
Also, if you're wondering how I got to that article and topic, that's what I do all day at work, search engine stuff. It pays the bills.
Bad news:
Want to have a baby? Now's the time. The Boston Globe wrote a scaremongering piece of offensive claptrap that completely made me want to barf. My local rag! But how can I not be outraged by statements like this:
No generation of women has had more trouble with fertility than this generation, who received the terrible baby boomer advice, "Wait. You have time. Focus on your career first."
Yeah, because it's fucking terrible advice to want to be financially stable before you have a kid. Is the writer of this article unaware of divorce statistics? And how well single mothers typically fare, financially, after a divorce?
Compare this statement:
If you are past your early twenties, and you're single and want to have children, you need to find a partner now.
to this:
There is plenty of evidence to show that the quality of your eggs takes a nose dive at age 35.
Um ... correct me if I'm wrong, but there are about TEN YEARS in between ages 25 and 35 in which you can simultaneously pursue a career and look around for a mate. (The heteronormal assumptions in this article are also beyond breathtaking. Since when is it neccesary to settle down with a mate before you have kids? yeah, it makes sense for a lot of people, but everyone doesn't have to follow that path to have a kid.)
The good news is that psychology research shows you will gain more happiness anyway by finding a partner than by having a good job.
Leaving aside the weakness of using "the good news is" as a bridge in a formal piece of writing, what "psychology research" is this? Because from what I've seen, being broke and financially dependent on your partner (I presume; or maybe the author is suggesting women who want to have babies become so-called welfare queens?) ... anyway, having no job and no control over how money is allocated in your household isn't really conducive to gaining happiness, in my opinion.
The whole article is bullshitty linkbait, of course, but it made me really mad anyway.
thanks to feministing for the link.
.....
Other stuff:
we moved, it was very painful, and I didn't kill Dave, and since I'm typing, obviously he didn't kill me. I would like to write a blog post enumerating all the things I did wrong and right for next time we move, but this is all I've got time for now. (No time for spellcheck or proffing! sorry.) I'm running late picking him up, actually.
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