that kid ain't right in the head

I decided the other day that I ought to try one of those stupid blogger things where you list things you are thankful for every day. Three things, things every day during November, whatever. I figured it would efficiently because it would give me blog fodder and also something to read back through when I'm depressed. Also it's possible that the act of being creative is enough to make me feel not depressed - like the endorphin rush you get from exercise.

I'm not feeling particularly enthused about it at the moment, but according to a lot of people, if you force yourself to grind out creative work every day, you'll eventually produce something decent. (Also I kind of think that I force out creative stuff at work every day, so ... why I thought making more work for myself was a good idea, I don't know ... as you can see I'm pretty ambivalent about the general idea of assigning myself MORE work.)

But! If I'm not a huge fan of vague thankfulness and gratitude (does feeling "thankful" work better when you believe in God?), I am at least a true believer in neuroplasticity (basically training your brain to sit up and beg) so it's good to force the ole grey noodle into something different.

Today I happen to be glad that I have a therapist who I like and the money for copays so I can actually go see her.

even more belated

I've had worse

So I love my doctor but she has strange bedside manner. Strange as in she actually interrupted a recent pap smear to go answer an email. I didn't mind because I feel totally safe in the office and we'd been talking about the email (actually I think it was more like an instant message but whatever) and she had an idea while she was examining me and was all, "Stay right where you are!", stripped off her gloves, sent the message - I watched from the table with my feet still in the stirrups - then re-gloved and continued. In context, it was okay and I felt safe, but it was a classic "what not to do".


At least she finished with the speculum before interrupting the exam, which was good because during that part there were definitely some pauses and some "where is the cervix?" muttering coming from the bottom of the table, followed by speculum-cranking noises and attendant internal sensations. I don't have much love for the speculum, I have to say, but it's not that bad - I've definitely had worse sex. (Lisa suggested Worse Sex Than a Speculum would be an awesome band, which it would. And I will be the lead singer and guitarist in that band! I just need to find me some musical ability first.)

The entire visit to the doctor made me realize why some people hate going to the doctor. There was the "You've gained weight since last year!" comment. (Yes, and I'm wearing bigger jeans to prove it.) And also the "You should really be eating more calcium." (Yes, but I dislike the taste of milk and yogurt.) And the "You're still thinking about kids in a couple of years?" (HELL NO, which is what I said last time I was in to see you and you asked about it.) This segued into "You're taking how much Lexapro?" (Yes, I am on the maximum dosage because I have severe anxiety and depression, and while we're on the topic I'll also tell you that my husband is bipolar I. Quite apart from financial considerations, we're pretty reluctant to pass that kind of poisoned genetic legacy on to a kid. So can I get my tubes tied already?) It was like a horrible cross between a conversation with your mother and a high school guidance counselor, if either of those two had recently poked you in the cervix with a giant Q-tip.

Good thing I don't have to go back until next year.

Thank dog for implants

I am old enough to remember back in the early nineties, before breast implants were widespread, how hard it was to find bras with a small back and a large cup. Even when you could find G or H cup bras in the Ladies department of Filene's, you could never find them smaller than 36 inches. In addition to having no range of sizes, they were all old-lady bras and went for about $50 bucks a pop. For a fifteen year old buying bras with her babysitting money on furtive trips to the mall, it was a pretty sucky situation. I was relieved to be able to dispense with Olga-brand beige cups the size of your head (as some humorous smaller-boobed friend demonstrated) when I got the breast reduction at 18, and moved on to the much easier-to-find world of the 34D. It wasn't a piece of cake, but it wasn't so impossible to find pretty bras.

At some point when I was living in the UK, bras suddenly started showing up in a much larger (heh) range of sizes due to the widespread popularity of silicone breast implants (and later, saline). That was a relief since I had only been able to find 36Cs in the UK before that and the band slid up my back and hormonal birth control had given the girls a boost (unwanted, but I made the best of things by ensuring they didn't go unappreciated.) Then I moved to New Zealand, lost a bunch of weight because my first marriage was breaking up, and found that 32DDs fit me better. And ever since, I've been wearing this one sportsbra that I bought over there (Elle MacPherson brand, which I couldn't find here.) That was in 2005. I have been wearing the same bra at least once a week for four and a half years. Jesus. I've put on 20 pounds in that time.

So I decided it was time to get fitted for real. Lo and behold, I've graduated to a 32E. I'm still kind of gobsmacked. That seems like a big size when I have been thinking of myself as a D all these years.


Hard to argue with the evidence, though.

It has been a week of self discovery, in fact! I went to the dentist also, and confirmed that I grind my teeth in my sleep. (I had been hoping that all the times Dave woke me up in the night to tell me to stop grinding were freak isolated occurrences, like hurricanes in Florida in September. All just isolated freak occurrences.) The hygienist informed me that I have also been chewing on my tongue. She could tell from the calluses along the sides of it. Jesus H. Christ. Who chews on their own motherfucking tongue? I mean, obviously I do, and there are enough other wackjobs like me that it's a known phenomenon, but what the fucking fuck? I was all happy about not having cavities and not getting yelled at for flossing wrong until I found out that the dentist-provided mouthguard costs $550 and usually isn't covered by dental insurance. I guess I'll be chewing on my tongue for a while longer, because I just spent all my money on new 32E bras.

Then the hygienist asked me if I have dry mouth and I was all, "No way!" until I remembered that I'm constantly thirsty and made the connection. Apparently one can treat dry mouth with the help of toothpaste, mouthwash and serum. I tried the toothpaste and mouthwash tonight. It was definitely less delicious than my regular toothpaste, but whatever, it seems to be working a little. Bring on the serum!

Man, apart from some blog entries I've read about mastitis, this was the unsexiest post I've ever seen that was all about boobs. Yay me! Setting new records for internetian naval-gazing!

Great Expectations

I wish my desk looked this clean all the time. This picture is totally staged though. The roses (from my little pots) smell like summer. I feel a little guilty that I'm the only one who will get to enjoy them, since I am the only one who sits here. Not guilty enough to move the vase, though.



Anyway, so fake cleanliness. Recently I bit the bullet and bought a new vacuum. I actually forked out five hundred bucks for a Dyson Animal. It was the reviews on Amazon that did it to me. They were like, insanely positive. There were reviews titled, "This Vacuum Changed My Life." I am not even making this up.

So when it I arrived I got all excited and insisted on vacuuming at 10 pm and testing each attachment in turn. This made Dave very angry. I think he wanted to sleep or watch TV or relax or something. I don't know the specifics because I wasn't really paying attention. I decided a long time ago that he's lucky to have a wife who gets so pumped up about vacuums and keeping the house clean.

I am kind of disappointed in the vacuum though. I think maybe my expectations got over-inflated by all those long, lovingly detailed reviews by people who now referred to their Dysons as "Jesus". So I was pretty much thinking that the second I plugged it in, all the dust in the house would race into the vacuum's gaping maw of its own accord while the vacuum gave me head.

It didn't work out quite like that, though. I mean, it worked fine and smelled better than the 15 year old Kenmore we have been using, which emits a steady stream of something that smells like a dog fart from its nether regions, but it definitely didn't make the earth move. I dunno. I think I was kind of stupid to buy into the hype in the first place. So I guess the moral of this story is, even a $500 vacuum won't go down on you.

Just like the pioneers

I am typing this in the dark, with Lucky draped over my left arms and part of the touchpad - every time I click the mouse he gets offended, but not offended enough to disembark. I can't touch-type so the screen is bent towards me at a less than 90 degree angle so I can see the letters on the keys by the romantic backlighting of the LCD.

The reason I am typing in the dark is because Dave is in the midst of a full-blown manic episode and is trying to calm himself down ironing by candlelight. Just like the pioneers did! Earlier we had a stimulating round of, "Why can't you read my mind" wherein I failed repeatedly to read Dave's mind. Maybe if I just try harder next time, I'll figure it out and he won't get so mad! Just kidding. Maybe next time I will wise up and start drinking early in the evening. I bet the pioneer wives did that, too.

Anyway, so I should stop typing now so I find out what further excitements the evening holds for me. Also I think it's time to get into my jammies. Jammies are the best.

Hippy dippy woo-woo crap

So, I've been doing yoga for a few years now and all yoga practices incorporate meditation in some way. It's my understanding that yoga evolved as a way to get the kinks out of your body so you could meditate without being disturbed by a leg cramp or something. I don't know how true that is ... but for me, anyway, I started doing yoga as a way to get more fit physically. Eventually I started to notice some mental benefits - exercise is always a de-stresser, of course, but yoga in particular puts focus on mental and physical discipline and awareness and integration of the mental/spiritual with physical.

My therapist has been suggesting for a while now that I incorporate regular meditation into my routine as an anxiety management technique. I have an anxiety disorder that I take meds for every day, and I have tranquilizers available for urgent situations, but I'm not content to leave everything to the pharma-psychology to manage itself. Plus I really believe that meds work much better in conjunction with cognitive behavioral therapy. Meditation is one example of a CBT technique that I use but I have many.

Anyway, at my therapist's urging, I gave meditation a shot but was never quite able to work it into my routine - given the choice between sleeping an extra ten minutes and getting up to meditate, sleep always wins. Then recently I was talking with a friend about my mental health stuff (my friend has some similar issues) and my friend mentioned that she meditates on the train in the mornings. And I was immediately like, oh, BINGO! because otherwise the time on the train is wasted - well, I read, but I can't really do anything productive - it's not a long enough journey to get the laptop out and it's too jerky and crowded to be able to physically write anything. The train is sort of the perfect place, because cell phones don't work, there's no internet, no point in getting the laptop out to work, and even though you're in the midst of a crowd literally pressing in on you physically, emotionally you are completely isolated.

So I just shut my eyes and meditate through a couple of stops (or all the way in), and it doesn't matter if I've got a seat or have to stand, and I'm not chanting and I just look like all the other tired commuters. The only time it's really hard is if people are having a conversation nearby that's loud enough for me to hear distinctly - I almost always end up listening to it rather than meditating, but I try to treat those incidents as a challenge and a way to improve my focus rather than just get ANGRY SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU STUPID ASS I DON'T GIVE A FLYING FUCK ABOUT YOUR STUPID LIFE SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP BEFORE I STAB YOU IN THE FACE. Although trying to improve my focus rather than get angry doesn't always work. heh.

I generally focus on the breath - I cannot just clear my mind and blank out, especially on the way to work in the morning, I have to focus on something neutral or else I'll just start making mental to-do lists for the day ahead. Zen koans don't really work for me either. I am not perfect at it by any means - most of the time, thanks to yoga practice, I can sink right into a meditative state, but I'll almost immediately realize that I'm thinking again, at which point I refocus on the breath. I try to just take note of the thoughts as they pass through, just to kind of check in, awareness-wise, but I let them keep on swimming by without picking up a train of thought and riding it to the end. I've worked out a couple of visualizations, too, but I tend to be super-visual no matter what I'm doing.

It's been very helpful for me in a number of ways. For one thing, even though I am trying not to think about anything, I often do end up solving little problems that have been nagging at the back of my mind for a while. For another, I don't have to be afraid of my brain any more. I used to read all the time when physically possible - book on the T, book on ipod for the walk to and from the T, book on ipod for housework and at actual work whenever the level of work was low enough to permit a book on tape. If I was stuck anywhere I couldn't distract myself with a book or TV, I was miserable and started to worry immediately. You know those middle of the night hamster wheel thoughts? I had those all the time, and I just blocked them out as much as possible. I don't know if I'm describing the situation well, but it was pretty uncomfortable.

Somehow with meditating, the worries are no longer what bubble immediately to the forefront of my mind, and it's surprisingly peaceful to be able to sit quietly rather than working myself up into a panic attack within 15 minutes (not quite that bad, but definitely going in that direction.) I enjoy it now, enough that I try to remember to meditate on weekends, too (especially useful if Dave is wearing his cranky pants).

Sorry that was so long. If you don't have a train ride, it might be a little harder to set aside time and space. On weekends I shut myself in one of the bedrooms. If one or more cats is in there with me, that cat will probably want attention, so I try to use that distraction as a way to improve my ability to focus and shut out any disturbances. (Don't really have face-stabbing inclinations with the cats, fortunately.) Sometimes if I'm really wound up while at home I'll light incense and turn on a little water fountain and focus on the scented smoke and the burbling water. I think the key anyway is not to expect too much from yourself and to incorporate it into your daily routine.

Unrelated: fishtank update. So another fish "disappeared", this one immediately after I'd cleaned the tank. Dammit! I think I have been accidentally killing the algae eaters when I vacuum the gravel - they like to hide and I guess I am just vacuuming too enthusiastically or something. I think I may also have found where one of the bodies is lying. Ugh.

excuses, excuses

So the blogging, she has been very light and infrequent, which I am totally sorry about, not only for anyone who’s checked back here fruitlessly several times in the past month (I recommend using a feed reader to save yourself some clicking), but also because I miss blogging. I like it. Even though I don’t have my new camera’s software downloaded onto the laptop (I dunno what the hell I did with the CD and manual that arrived with the camera but they’re gone and I haven’t had the energy to do really hard things like downloading the software from the company website), I could still tell amusing (maybe) stories about Simone’s butt.

But not having gotten my act together for the camera, it’s kind of an encapsulation of why I’m not blogging. Right now it’s taking all my energy to hold on and keep getting to my job and keep up my end on the housework (which I am also not doing a great job of) and the marriage and the cats. I am barely making it to yoga once a week, never mind voluntary things like getting up early in the mornings to write or getting it together to get the camera installed already.

Not writing is particularly sucky, because I actually have a fiction project in mind that I want to get into already, but somehow it takes everything I’ve got to keep analyzing and tweaking and optimizing for work instead of spending all day sobbing in the bathroom (I’m getting some assistance from Pedro the Lion – I Can. Not. Stop. listening to his melancholy pop songs about god. Plus he is a good lyricist, which I am always a big sucker for. Sad boys writing catching songs! Yay!)

There’s nothing obviously wrong in my life that needs to be fixed and about a zillion things I could point a finger at that could be causing the crazy – hormonal birth control, shorter days with less light, the economy, the election – and that’s just a small sample of the crap I worry about. I swear I have more wrinkles than I did this summer. This Onion article pretty much describes the way I feel all the time. Heh.

To sum up: I am crazed with anxiety, the cause is most likely biological, I don’t have a great deal of faith in meds – they do some of the heavy lifting but they’ve got serious side effects (I’m still taking them, though, don’t worry, I haven’t pulled one of those stunning logical leaps which says, “I still feel crappy despite these drugs so why am I taking them?” to which the obvious answer for the non-crazy is, “you’d be even moar cuh-razee if you stopped taking them” – all I can say is that it’s hard to think that clearly when you’re at the bottom of a well and can’t find the ladder.) Plus for me it’s really roller-coaster-y, so sometimes I’m at the bottom of the well and sometimes I’m like, “what well? Isn’t sunshine great?” and then I fall in and break a leg on the way down, oops.

Okay, so everyone reading this is probably freaked out by now, and you don’t need to be: it sucks to deal with this but it’s nothing new to me. Probably for my whole life I’ll be dealing with inexplicable periods of time where life seems not worth living. (Okay, that didn’t come out reassuring like I meant it to be.) What I am trying to say is that I’ve dealt with this before, lots and lots, and it sucks a whole big bunch but it never lasts forever and – on balance - I spend the minority of my time feeling this way, not the majority, and besides the meds I have lots of coping tools – yoga and therapy and Dave and emailing friends and hey, blogging, plus knowing that I’ve been here before – which helps a lot with perspective. And the cats.

Never underestimate the power of a serenely purring cat. Just knowing, while I’m at work all day, that there are four furry darlings waiting at home to give me nose kisses and get scritches and purr and purr and whine for food and knock shit over and bite me and run and jump and play, fatly or diabetically or kittenishly or with an irritable bowel (depending on the cat) – it helps.


my favorite pedro the lion song, which is actually not about god at all, I don't think

Cemetery walks and other news

Since I can't go to yoga until I get new contacts (semi-custom lenses have been ordered though!), I've been taking walks instead - gotta keep the blood moving. Plus I felt really fat and sluggish and gross from not getting any exercise. My goal is to walk for about forty minutes every day, but so far the every day thing hasn't quite panned out. I manage it four or five times a week, though.

It's not in Somerville, it's right over the line in Arlington and there's a muddy shallow brook (the Mystic Brook, of Mystic Brook Parkway fame, for locals) that borders one side of the cemetary which is home to some enormous fat-bodied carp, turtles, ducks, as well as some shopping carts and traffic cones. Besides providing an eternal resting place for the dead, the cemetery also seems to be temporary housing for a hobo. I discovered his/her camp when trying to find my way into the cemetery (my terrible sense of direction meant that I couldn't remember the way in from last time, so I walked along the river thinking that would get me into the cemetery.

It did, via a little unclaimed patch of land with a well-worn track - clearly some kind of unofficial back entrance to the cemetery. I noticed as I was getting in that there was a bunch of rubbish and some branches that looked almost like a lean-to ... I wandered further along and saw a bunch of clothes - like, a couple of whole outfits - strung along the cemetery fence, which I thought was weird. Maybe some underpants and the odd t-shirt from drinking, copulating people was to be expected, but you don't forget that you wore jeans that day and leave without them. Then I noticed that there was a bedspread hung on the fence, and a big bar of Irish Spring on top of that. Oh. Those branches didn't just look like a good place for a fort, they were someone's house. Also, he/she must have been washing their clothes in the brook, which is muddy and seems like it wouldn't exactly be ideal for cleanliness. But where else are you going to get running water? And it's not like someone who's homeless has six bucks in quarters to hit the laundromat with.

Ironically, I was listening to Howards End at the time (that's a very good recording by Elizabeth Klett that I linked to) - anyway, among other things, Howards End is about housing and finding your place in the world. So of course I felt guilty, listening away to Forster on my iPod when this other person didn't have any home to go to or power chargers to plug their iPods into, or a job to give them an iPod in the first place. Then I got over the guilt and tiptoed away from Hobo Corner. In succeeding walks, I've found that the hobo uses Degree deodorant (travel size), drinks white wine and smokes cigarettes.

I also feel guilty about strolling through the cemetery like it's a park, since it's not a park ... but on the other hand, I'm probably the only one (besides the hobo) who is looking at all the gravestones and admiring them and wondering about the lives of the people under the stones. I don't know, if I was dead, I don't think I'd mind if someone wandered around my cemetery thinking. I've never seen a single mourner there, though a few graves always have fresh flowers. So despite my guilt, I haven't stopped going there for my walks.

Anyway, I'm so wracked with guilt all the time that it's hard to tell what's valid and what's not. On the way to the cemetery there is a 4 way traffic light. It's a busy intersection, so as a pedestrian, you really need to press the button, or you're not going to be able to cross. I am so retardedly self-effacing that it took me five minutes to push the button - I didn't want to inconvenience the cars by making them stop at a red light, so I was waiting for a break in the traffic, which never came. Now I just push the button but it took a minute for me to figure out that yes, I've got as much right to push the button and make the cars wait as the cars have to carry on going when they've got the green.

But that's enough about my neuroses for now, I think. The other news I wanted to mention is that we're getting a kitten. (Mom, I know - this is totally not, like, a good or smart idea.) But someone in Dave's nursing class found a kitten in her yard and took him in. She says he's super sweet and she'd keep himself, except her existing cat doesn't like him, and she is determined not to take him to a shelter, but to find a home herself. Not like our cats will like him better, except for Simone, who loves everyone and persists in grooming Inty even though she gets swatted for her trouble after about three licks.

Anyway - Dave texted me one night to say, "this girl in my class has a kitten who needs a home. Do we want a kitten?" So I replied, sensibly, that kittens are cute but we probably don't need any more cats right now, and that was the end of it. Except he kept mentioning this kitten, so finally I realized what was going on and said, "honey, if you want a kitten we can have the kitten." So we are going to have a little male who will probably need to be neutered toot sweet - from the pictures I've seen, he looks like he's about 12 weeks. He doesn't have FeLV, thank fuck - the classmate got him tested - but he'll need his shots.

So that's the scoop for now.

Suits of woe

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

mostly good stuff

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









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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

let the good times roll!

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

Anyhow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh! Actual good news updates:

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

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

Some tentative reasons for hope, there.




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

Necessity's sharp pinch

Following up:

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's one of my coworkers in the picture.

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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