As most/all of you probably know from my wife's blog, she just recently got trolled by some grotty little specimen who thought it'd be funny to say things like "dead babies are funny" and "haha you killed your kids" and linked to a childfree forum in as well. Honestly, I'm surprised it took this long, and like I told S., "forget it, Jake - it's the Internet."
But still, they said something mean to my sweetie, so I went to this childfree forum to see if I could detective up anything, see if this chucklehead bragged about it or if they had a devoted section to trolling mom blogs or dead baby blogs. Came up empty on both counts, which was a little reassuring, but I was a little surprised to see the amount of sheer vitriol these folks had for people with kids. Oh, sure, much of it was focused on wholehearted participants in the cult of mommy, the sort of people that years of infertility and child loss have made pretty hateable to me. But so much time and energy devoted to being angry at people, even people at whom I'd be angry, sort of baffles me.
It makes my own identity more complicated. There's a decent chance that S. and I will never have kids at all, and a better-than-decent chance that biological children are already off the table. So who would we be then? "Childless?" That's, like, one house down from "barren," with all of those pitying connotations. "Childfree?" That make it sounds like you had a bad case of children, and are now child-free. Maybe we're just us, and if anyone asks, we'll just say we don't have kids. If they're gauche enough to push, I will tell them, and they will regret it.
I'm not childfree in that forums' sense. They revel in it and the contempt for people who have had children is palpable. I understand where that vitriol comes from, but it's not me. It will never be me. But part of the reason it's out there is because there's nothing between childless and childfree. Either you can't have them or you think they're disgusting. And you can't not be either. People ask. People always ask. And always judge.
So fine. Pull out the microscope and look at me. The first thing you'll see is a middle finger.
Showing posts with label miscellaneous. Show all posts
Showing posts with label miscellaneous. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Saturday, June 6, 2009
On horror.
First, thank you for all of the happy birthday wishes. S. and I had a very nice day together, and like I told her, the best gift I could get was getting back a little bit more of the woman I love. We had a nice lunch at a favorite diner, went to go see "Land of the Lost" (wasn't one of Will Ferrell's best - closer to "Blades of Glory" than "Anchorman"), and did a little shopping. I picked up a copy of The Road by Cormac McCarthy and a few DVDs. All of which happened to be horror movies. Which brings me to the topic of this post.
Since we lost the boys, I've been watching a lot of horror movies.
I've probably mentioned this before, if only in passing. I'm not sure what it is that draws me to watching scary movies. I've always enjoyed them to one degree or another, moreso as an adult. But since we lost our sons, I've found it much easier to watch them, almost reassuring in a way.
Maybe it's that sense that somebody has it worse than me, if only in fiction (a concept the pros call downward comparison). Maybe I've had my capacity to feel fear dulled by such a traumatic experience, so it takes longer to hit my threshold for the sort of scares I used to get. Maybe it's because there are a shit-ton of good horror movies coming from all corners of the world, and it's much easier to see these movies in the age of the Internet than it used to be. Or a mixture of all of these. All I know is that I've been watching a lot of scary shit as of late. Some of it enjoyable, some of it not.
Conversely, almost anything involving children makes me really angry. Kids on television, kids in movies, people becoming parents, the trials and tribulations of parenthood. I would honestly rather watch somebody get their leg sawed off than fumble to get the quadruplets ready for their school field trip. Some might find that a little perverse. Honestly, I don't care and anymore I don't have the patience to keep up appearances.
Both are probably products of the same urge. We are afraid of what's out there in the dark. We have stories to explain lightning and thunder and fire and rain and snow and disease and birth and death. Our beliefs, our ideologies, our faiths: All torches against the dark. We open ourselves to horror stories because fictional terrors are manageable terrors. We inoculate ourselves against fear this way, by letting in just enough of the dark to keep from being overwhelmed by it. We celebrate birth and children for the same reason - we stave off the idea of oblivion by reassuring ourselves that through children our legacy will live on. As long as our bloodline continues, we never really die. As long as we have children, we will never die. Whitney Houston was right: The children are our future (and also, that crack cocaine is fucking fun). In the hopes of future generations, we light a candle against the dark.
Which brings to mind the movie "The Village." But I'll get to that.
Almost anything having to do with children fills me with grief and sadness and frustration and rage. Not exactly reassuring. So I no longer have that as an option. But I can open myself up to the horrors others envision and that alleviates the sadness for awhile. I've also been spending a lot of time with apocalyptic imagery lately. But that's for another post.
So, horror.
I want to get this down before I get to the pithy part. As I'm writing this out, I keep thinking about the movie "The Village." If you haven't seen it, go see it. Get it from Netflix or something, I'll wait.
...
...
...
...
...
Seen it yet? No?
...
...
...
Okay. So as I'm sitting here writing this post and working these ideas out, it occurs to me that "The Village" is sort of a literal instantiation of the stuff I'm talking about here. You've got a bunch of people who have been traumatized by the death of someone close to them and decide that the sane response to this is to abandon the modern world for an invented pre-industrial agrarian society. Which is a fiction intended to keep real horror at bay. And these people have kids, and kids being kids they know that the kids are going to want to explore life beyond the village, but since life beyond the village is what drove the adults to create the village in the first place, the adults don't see that as an option - no rumspringa here. So the adults create "those of whom we do not speak." They invent small horrors to keep their children safe from the larger horror of the outside world, from which they have made themselves safe with their own invented village. Their protective fiction has its own protective fiction, complete with pantomime raids and sacrifices and costumes hanging in a shed at the edge of the woods.
And yet, they can't keep trauma and violence at bay. One of their own, for reasons nobody can fathom, does something horrible. Something for which nobody's fictions can account. Death and tragedy lie outside of reasoning and explanations and platitudes. And their only chance to avert the monster they ran from, reappeared in their midst, is to send someone out into the world to retrieve medical help. They send a blind woman - a woman for whom the dark isn't just my clumsy metaphor, but life itself. She fumbles out into the dark beyond the village, guided only by necessity, without the comfort of fiction to keep her safe. No matter what narrative we construct, be it community, tradition, birth and growth, or monsters in the closet, it always comes back to the dark and all the ways we shelter ourselves from it.
So that was quite the tangent.
So I'm going to share with you some of the horror movies I've enjoyed lately - I wouldn't be surprised if I'm the only one who finds solace in them, but it works for me.
Basic: Suitable for most people.
Pulse - Based on the Japanese movie Kairo, this is basically a technological ghost story á la The Ring. Not qute as good as that movie, but sufficiently somber and spooky to be effective, with more of an emphasis on mood and atmosphere than cheap scares.
Cloverfield - A verité take on the giant monster movie, sort of like The Blair Witch Project meets Godzilla. The protagonists can be really irritating, but I think that's sort of the point - this is pretty much exactly what it would look like if a bunch of clever New York yuppie types found themselves running for their lives from something that can play tiddlywinks with skyscrapers. A little slow to start, but once it does, it doesn't let up until it ends.
The Descent - A prime example of what I like to call the "just when you thought it couldn't go any more wrong" movie. Interpersonal drama between a group of women on a caving expedition leads to disastrous consequences...and then things get really weird. There are bad things happening on about two or three different levels at once, and the tension keeps racheting up and ratcheting up masterfully.
Shrooms - A solid teens-in-trouble film. A group of more or less annoying college students go to Ireland looking for psychedelic mushrooms. Of course, they happen to go looking in a part of the country with a decidedly shady past involving a brutal order of monks and feral orphans, and nobody's sure if what's happening is real or not because they're all tripping balls. Sufficiently creepy, gory but not overly so, and well-plotted.
Intermediate: If you're not fond of horror movies, approach with caution.
Halloween (remake) - I don't understand why this remake attracted so much negative attention, it's not like the original is no longer available. Plot-wise, it's very similar to the original, which was pretty much the first slasher movie, but Rob Zombie's aesthetic makes all of the difference. This is an actively hostile movie. It aims to make you uncomfortable and succeeds. This is a good thing. Every death scene in this movie looks like a crime scene photo, messy and horrible in its banality. Everyone suffers, physically or emotionally, and the portrait painted of humanity is bleak. Puts the "horror" back into "horror movie."
The Abandoned - A haunted-house story about inescapable destiny, in which a woman travels to rural Russia to check out the family homestead she's inherited, and instead finds all manner of creepy shit. I don't want to say much else for fear of ruining it, but this movie has atmosphere in spades and will freak you out.
The Mist - Based on the Stephen King story of the same name, it's one of the better adaptations of his work. Like any other good scary movie, it works on psychological and supernatural levels at the same time - the situation the characters find themselves in could be something as simple as a really bad snowstorm or the bizarre invasion with which they're actually dealing, and there would still be the equally terrifying human factor to deal with. The ending is a real kick in the teeth, though, and although I commend the director for having the sheer balls to include it, it's also the reason I'm listing it here instead of under Basic.
Quarantine - Oh, this one is scary as fuck. Like Cloverfield, it's told from an immediate point of view. The conceit here is that a TV journalist and her cameraman are out riding along with a group of firemen for a human-interest story when the firemen are called to take care of a medical emergency at a small apartment building. The medical emergency goes very bad very quickly, and the cameraman keeps rolling, if only to document what's happening. The screws tighten very suddenly and very quickly and the ending spares you not at all. The original Spanish version, titled [REC], is equally recommended.
Advanced: Approach with great caution, not for the average movie buff.
The Ruins - A much bleaker take on the teens-in-trouble genre, where a group of spring-breaking boys and girls in Mexico run off in search of an archeological dig and meet a really grisly end. Ostensibly, the movie is about a malevolent force of nature. But, like The Mist, the people involved do as much damage to each other as the antagonist does.
Hostel - Famous mostly as the progenitor of the so-called "torture porn" genre of horror film, we once again have a group of college-age boys engaging in spectacularly bad decision-making and paying dearly for it. Although this movie does not skimp on the graphic violence and suffering typical of the genre, I think critics of this movie miss the black satire underneath - this movie has a lot to say about capitalism and industries designed to cater to a particular set of desires. One man's spring break is another man's murder holiday, perhaps. It's also much more plausible than, say, The Ruins, which rattled me more in the actual events of the movie, but it's much easier to imagine the situation outlined in Hostel actually occurring. Which leads me to the next movie...
Shuttle - I'm not sure this is actually out on video yet, but it's great. It has a simple, elegant premise - what if the bus driver didn't take you where you wanted to go? - and builds up twist after twist, spiraling it into deeply disturbing territory and an ending that neatly wraps up everything that has come before with the force of a blow to the stomach. The last images of this movie haunted me for days afterward. And I find the premise of this movie even more plausible than that of Hostel, which makes me genuinely nervous. It takes a lot to affect me any more, but this did it.
Martyrs - A young girl escapes her imprisonment in an abandoned slaughterhouse, where she was beaten and starved by a mysterious group of people for reasons that aren't made clear. As she recovers from her ordeal, she makes a friend and trusts her to keep her secret - that she was followed out of imprisonment by a shadowy creature that mutilates her periodically. Flash forward several years, to the same girl murdering a family as they sit down to breakfast. From here, what seems like a psychological thriller turns into something both stranger and more noble - a meditation on devotion, loyalty, suffering and transcendence that reminds me more of Lars Von Trier's Dancer in the Dark that anything else. And like that movie, this one can be really hard to watch, especially in the last 30 minutes or so. It doesn't offer easy answers, and in some ways it doesn't even offer clear moral choices, something horror films usually do. Not at all a scary date movie, this one will leave you shaken.
Honestly, I think scary movies get a bad rap. Like science fiction, they're mostly treated as genre trash - something cheap and disposable - and certainly there are plenty of films in both genres that are. But there are also films that refuse to pander, that hold difficult ideas up to the light and present them clearly and honestly. And it's been my experience that that's the best you can hope for when faced with real trauma and loss, so in a way I respect that in my entertainment as well.
Or, you know, I'm being all pretentious and shit.
Since we lost the boys, I've been watching a lot of horror movies.
I've probably mentioned this before, if only in passing. I'm not sure what it is that draws me to watching scary movies. I've always enjoyed them to one degree or another, moreso as an adult. But since we lost our sons, I've found it much easier to watch them, almost reassuring in a way.
Maybe it's that sense that somebody has it worse than me, if only in fiction (a concept the pros call downward comparison). Maybe I've had my capacity to feel fear dulled by such a traumatic experience, so it takes longer to hit my threshold for the sort of scares I used to get. Maybe it's because there are a shit-ton of good horror movies coming from all corners of the world, and it's much easier to see these movies in the age of the Internet than it used to be. Or a mixture of all of these. All I know is that I've been watching a lot of scary shit as of late. Some of it enjoyable, some of it not.
Conversely, almost anything involving children makes me really angry. Kids on television, kids in movies, people becoming parents, the trials and tribulations of parenthood. I would honestly rather watch somebody get their leg sawed off than fumble to get the quadruplets ready for their school field trip. Some might find that a little perverse. Honestly, I don't care and anymore I don't have the patience to keep up appearances.
Both are probably products of the same urge. We are afraid of what's out there in the dark. We have stories to explain lightning and thunder and fire and rain and snow and disease and birth and death. Our beliefs, our ideologies, our faiths: All torches against the dark. We open ourselves to horror stories because fictional terrors are manageable terrors. We inoculate ourselves against fear this way, by letting in just enough of the dark to keep from being overwhelmed by it. We celebrate birth and children for the same reason - we stave off the idea of oblivion by reassuring ourselves that through children our legacy will live on. As long as our bloodline continues, we never really die. As long as we have children, we will never die. Whitney Houston was right: The children are our future (and also, that crack cocaine is fucking fun). In the hopes of future generations, we light a candle against the dark.
Which brings to mind the movie "The Village." But I'll get to that.
Almost anything having to do with children fills me with grief and sadness and frustration and rage. Not exactly reassuring. So I no longer have that as an option. But I can open myself up to the horrors others envision and that alleviates the sadness for awhile. I've also been spending a lot of time with apocalyptic imagery lately. But that's for another post.
So, horror.
I want to get this down before I get to the pithy part. As I'm writing this out, I keep thinking about the movie "The Village." If you haven't seen it, go see it. Get it from Netflix or something, I'll wait.
...
...
...
...
...
Seen it yet? No?
...
...
...
Okay. So as I'm sitting here writing this post and working these ideas out, it occurs to me that "The Village" is sort of a literal instantiation of the stuff I'm talking about here. You've got a bunch of people who have been traumatized by the death of someone close to them and decide that the sane response to this is to abandon the modern world for an invented pre-industrial agrarian society. Which is a fiction intended to keep real horror at bay. And these people have kids, and kids being kids they know that the kids are going to want to explore life beyond the village, but since life beyond the village is what drove the adults to create the village in the first place, the adults don't see that as an option - no rumspringa here. So the adults create "those of whom we do not speak." They invent small horrors to keep their children safe from the larger horror of the outside world, from which they have made themselves safe with their own invented village. Their protective fiction has its own protective fiction, complete with pantomime raids and sacrifices and costumes hanging in a shed at the edge of the woods.
And yet, they can't keep trauma and violence at bay. One of their own, for reasons nobody can fathom, does something horrible. Something for which nobody's fictions can account. Death and tragedy lie outside of reasoning and explanations and platitudes. And their only chance to avert the monster they ran from, reappeared in their midst, is to send someone out into the world to retrieve medical help. They send a blind woman - a woman for whom the dark isn't just my clumsy metaphor, but life itself. She fumbles out into the dark beyond the village, guided only by necessity, without the comfort of fiction to keep her safe. No matter what narrative we construct, be it community, tradition, birth and growth, or monsters in the closet, it always comes back to the dark and all the ways we shelter ourselves from it.
So that was quite the tangent.
So I'm going to share with you some of the horror movies I've enjoyed lately - I wouldn't be surprised if I'm the only one who finds solace in them, but it works for me.
Basic: Suitable for most people.
Pulse - Based on the Japanese movie Kairo, this is basically a technological ghost story á la The Ring. Not qute as good as that movie, but sufficiently somber and spooky to be effective, with more of an emphasis on mood and atmosphere than cheap scares.
Cloverfield - A verité take on the giant monster movie, sort of like The Blair Witch Project meets Godzilla. The protagonists can be really irritating, but I think that's sort of the point - this is pretty much exactly what it would look like if a bunch of clever New York yuppie types found themselves running for their lives from something that can play tiddlywinks with skyscrapers. A little slow to start, but once it does, it doesn't let up until it ends.
The Descent - A prime example of what I like to call the "just when you thought it couldn't go any more wrong" movie. Interpersonal drama between a group of women on a caving expedition leads to disastrous consequences...and then things get really weird. There are bad things happening on about two or three different levels at once, and the tension keeps racheting up and ratcheting up masterfully.
Shrooms - A solid teens-in-trouble film. A group of more or less annoying college students go to Ireland looking for psychedelic mushrooms. Of course, they happen to go looking in a part of the country with a decidedly shady past involving a brutal order of monks and feral orphans, and nobody's sure if what's happening is real or not because they're all tripping balls. Sufficiently creepy, gory but not overly so, and well-plotted.
Intermediate: If you're not fond of horror movies, approach with caution.
Halloween (remake) - I don't understand why this remake attracted so much negative attention, it's not like the original is no longer available. Plot-wise, it's very similar to the original, which was pretty much the first slasher movie, but Rob Zombie's aesthetic makes all of the difference. This is an actively hostile movie. It aims to make you uncomfortable and succeeds. This is a good thing. Every death scene in this movie looks like a crime scene photo, messy and horrible in its banality. Everyone suffers, physically or emotionally, and the portrait painted of humanity is bleak. Puts the "horror" back into "horror movie."
The Abandoned - A haunted-house story about inescapable destiny, in which a woman travels to rural Russia to check out the family homestead she's inherited, and instead finds all manner of creepy shit. I don't want to say much else for fear of ruining it, but this movie has atmosphere in spades and will freak you out.
The Mist - Based on the Stephen King story of the same name, it's one of the better adaptations of his work. Like any other good scary movie, it works on psychological and supernatural levels at the same time - the situation the characters find themselves in could be something as simple as a really bad snowstorm or the bizarre invasion with which they're actually dealing, and there would still be the equally terrifying human factor to deal with. The ending is a real kick in the teeth, though, and although I commend the director for having the sheer balls to include it, it's also the reason I'm listing it here instead of under Basic.
Quarantine - Oh, this one is scary as fuck. Like Cloverfield, it's told from an immediate point of view. The conceit here is that a TV journalist and her cameraman are out riding along with a group of firemen for a human-interest story when the firemen are called to take care of a medical emergency at a small apartment building. The medical emergency goes very bad very quickly, and the cameraman keeps rolling, if only to document what's happening. The screws tighten very suddenly and very quickly and the ending spares you not at all. The original Spanish version, titled [REC], is equally recommended.
Advanced: Approach with great caution, not for the average movie buff.
The Ruins - A much bleaker take on the teens-in-trouble genre, where a group of spring-breaking boys and girls in Mexico run off in search of an archeological dig and meet a really grisly end. Ostensibly, the movie is about a malevolent force of nature. But, like The Mist, the people involved do as much damage to each other as the antagonist does.
Hostel - Famous mostly as the progenitor of the so-called "torture porn" genre of horror film, we once again have a group of college-age boys engaging in spectacularly bad decision-making and paying dearly for it. Although this movie does not skimp on the graphic violence and suffering typical of the genre, I think critics of this movie miss the black satire underneath - this movie has a lot to say about capitalism and industries designed to cater to a particular set of desires. One man's spring break is another man's murder holiday, perhaps. It's also much more plausible than, say, The Ruins, which rattled me more in the actual events of the movie, but it's much easier to imagine the situation outlined in Hostel actually occurring. Which leads me to the next movie...
Shuttle - I'm not sure this is actually out on video yet, but it's great. It has a simple, elegant premise - what if the bus driver didn't take you where you wanted to go? - and builds up twist after twist, spiraling it into deeply disturbing territory and an ending that neatly wraps up everything that has come before with the force of a blow to the stomach. The last images of this movie haunted me for days afterward. And I find the premise of this movie even more plausible than that of Hostel, which makes me genuinely nervous. It takes a lot to affect me any more, but this did it.
Martyrs - A young girl escapes her imprisonment in an abandoned slaughterhouse, where she was beaten and starved by a mysterious group of people for reasons that aren't made clear. As she recovers from her ordeal, she makes a friend and trusts her to keep her secret - that she was followed out of imprisonment by a shadowy creature that mutilates her periodically. Flash forward several years, to the same girl murdering a family as they sit down to breakfast. From here, what seems like a psychological thriller turns into something both stranger and more noble - a meditation on devotion, loyalty, suffering and transcendence that reminds me more of Lars Von Trier's Dancer in the Dark that anything else. And like that movie, this one can be really hard to watch, especially in the last 30 minutes or so. It doesn't offer easy answers, and in some ways it doesn't even offer clear moral choices, something horror films usually do. Not at all a scary date movie, this one will leave you shaken.
Honestly, I think scary movies get a bad rap. Like science fiction, they're mostly treated as genre trash - something cheap and disposable - and certainly there are plenty of films in both genres that are. But there are also films that refuse to pander, that hold difficult ideas up to the light and present them clearly and honestly. And it's been my experience that that's the best you can hope for when faced with real trauma and loss, so in a way I respect that in my entertainment as well.
Or, you know, I'm being all pretentious and shit.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Seizure (word) salad.
Thank you for the words of support and concern for S. For those of you who follow her blog (much easier, since she updates with orders of magnitude more regularly than I), I know she's thinking about how to write about it, and she appreciates it.
As near as we can tell, she's fine. She was fine all weekend, she's fine today, and even though her doctor hasn't cleared her to drive yet (sort of hard when the soonest he can see her is tomorrow grrr fuck argh), she went ahead and kept her appointments today. But it got me thinking.
We're both on meds. We were both on meds before we lost the boys. Her for depression, me for anxiety (we complement each other in that regard). Hers got ramped up after we lost the boys and it was clear that she was experiencing severe depression. Lots and lots of pills. And I reaped the benefits, since she had bottles of stuff she could no longer take on her new regimen (hello, Ativan - so nice to see you). And after some fiddling (Abilify = 8 double espressos, all the time), she stabilized and was doing well again. Until the seizure, which whoops, side effect of Wellbutrin. It was just to get her over a hump that she's mostly over already, so no worries. She's doing fine so far without it.
But I'd been thinking about reevaluating my own medication. I'm not anxious (in fact, I'm surprised at how coolly I handled her seizure - half of my brain was saying "oh fuck my wife why is my wife seizing oh holy fuck", and the other half was saying "check her fingernails - okay, she's not cyanotic, eyes are dilated, but not to different degrees, they aren't pointing in different directions either, no asymmetry so it's probably not stroke..."), but I am depressed. And like I've said, I'm feeling it. Anhedonia. Lack of energy. Lack of motivation. So we were talking about me seeing a psychiatrist to see if I should take anything with an energizing effect as well.
You know, like the stuff that gave S. dyskinesia and seizures. So, like, hold on one fucking minute.
Is this the trade-off, then? I am a big fan of better living through chemistry (spent a decent chunk of college, ahem, self-medicating for my anxiety), but is this the price to pay? Shit, two of my favorite vices are alcohol and video games, neither one of which mix well with seizures. Is this the price, then? Trade the things I enjoy for things that allow me to enjoy more the things I can no longer enjoy? Fuck that.
Yes, I know, different people, different medications, different neurochemistry, yadda yadda yadda. It just all continues to be too fucking complicated by half. A year-plus out, and we're still feelings the collateral damage. Not just emotionally, but physically. Medically.
As near as we can tell, she's fine. She was fine all weekend, she's fine today, and even though her doctor hasn't cleared her to drive yet (sort of hard when the soonest he can see her is tomorrow grrr fuck argh), she went ahead and kept her appointments today. But it got me thinking.
We're both on meds. We were both on meds before we lost the boys. Her for depression, me for anxiety (we complement each other in that regard). Hers got ramped up after we lost the boys and it was clear that she was experiencing severe depression. Lots and lots of pills. And I reaped the benefits, since she had bottles of stuff she could no longer take on her new regimen (hello, Ativan - so nice to see you). And after some fiddling (Abilify = 8 double espressos, all the time), she stabilized and was doing well again. Until the seizure, which whoops, side effect of Wellbutrin. It was just to get her over a hump that she's mostly over already, so no worries. She's doing fine so far without it.
But I'd been thinking about reevaluating my own medication. I'm not anxious (in fact, I'm surprised at how coolly I handled her seizure - half of my brain was saying "oh fuck my wife why is my wife seizing oh holy fuck", and the other half was saying "check her fingernails - okay, she's not cyanotic, eyes are dilated, but not to different degrees, they aren't pointing in different directions either, no asymmetry so it's probably not stroke..."), but I am depressed. And like I've said, I'm feeling it. Anhedonia. Lack of energy. Lack of motivation. So we were talking about me seeing a psychiatrist to see if I should take anything with an energizing effect as well.
You know, like the stuff that gave S. dyskinesia and seizures. So, like, hold on one fucking minute.
Is this the trade-off, then? I am a big fan of better living through chemistry (spent a decent chunk of college, ahem, self-medicating for my anxiety), but is this the price to pay? Shit, two of my favorite vices are alcohol and video games, neither one of which mix well with seizures. Is this the price, then? Trade the things I enjoy for things that allow me to enjoy more the things I can no longer enjoy? Fuck that.
Yes, I know, different people, different medications, different neurochemistry, yadda yadda yadda. It just all continues to be too fucking complicated by half. A year-plus out, and we're still feelings the collateral damage. Not just emotionally, but physically. Medically.
Monday, May 25, 2009
If it isn't one thing, it's another.
Things have been going pretty well for us lately. Like I said, S. is doing much better, and we were looking forward to a nice, quiet Memorial Day weekend. I got some work done at school on Wednesday and Thursday, didn't make it in on Friday because S. and I had a much-needed air-clearing talk about me and my feelings and her and her feelings and our relationship. One of the things I love about our relationship is that we rarely full-on fight - we're usually pretty good about arguing about one thing and one thing only, though the loss of the boys has tested that considerably. So anyway, long weekend coming up, chance to relax, all is more or less well...
...and then Friday night, S. has a seizure.
I don't know when it started, I was dozing off on the loveseat in front of an episode of "Mythbusters" when an odd noise woke me up. It sounded like S. was hurt, like when one of the cats gets stuck and digs their claws in, but there were no cats near her, and her arms were drawn up close to her chest, her legs straight out in front of her, head to the side and her eyes closed. I knew this wasn't good - all the color had drained from her face, and her pupils were almost completely dilated. She didn't register anything I was saying or even that I was in front of her. As soon as it started, it stopped, and she fell immediately into a deep sleep. When she finally came to, she had no idea of what had just happened, wasn't sure of the year, and when I told her she'd had a seizure, it took 5 or 6 times of me saying it for it to sink in. Once it did, she got really upset and afraid. I told her we had to go to the hospital and she didn't want to go - it took a lot of insisting to get her off the couch and into the car. The whole time she just kept saying "make it stop, make it stop..."
I knew how she felt. No more hospitals. No more doubt, no more wondering what the tests are going to reveal. No more lives in the balance. We've had enough of that for a lifetime. No more crises, no more emergencies. When do we get to just take a fucking rest?
Long story short, there was no sign of stroke, her head and chest scans and x-rays were clear, so no masses or aneurysms or anything. Consensus is that her dose of Wellbutrin lowered her seizure threshold (apparently an established side effect for her dose range) and what were just myclonic jerks turned into a full-on tonic-clonic seizure. Prescription? Stop taking the Wellbutrin. Simple enough. We finally got home around 4am on Saturday and did a lot of sleeping.
Make it stop. No more emergencies. No more of me walking from the hospital back to our house to take care of the animals at 3am (and take my own meds while I'm at it), wondering what the scans are going to reveal - is it going to be a mass? Will it be malignant? Are our days numbered even shorter than all days always are? Am I going to be rattling around our place by myself, alone here, surrounded by the accumulation of our life together? Am I, in the end, going to lose my wife and my sons to whatever this is?
No, no I'm not. Not this time, at least. But haven't we earned some karmic right to a little peace and quiet? Haven't we earned the right to no more emergencies for a little while? Just that? Just some room to breathe and be?
...and then Friday night, S. has a seizure.
I don't know when it started, I was dozing off on the loveseat in front of an episode of "Mythbusters" when an odd noise woke me up. It sounded like S. was hurt, like when one of the cats gets stuck and digs their claws in, but there were no cats near her, and her arms were drawn up close to her chest, her legs straight out in front of her, head to the side and her eyes closed. I knew this wasn't good - all the color had drained from her face, and her pupils were almost completely dilated. She didn't register anything I was saying or even that I was in front of her. As soon as it started, it stopped, and she fell immediately into a deep sleep. When she finally came to, she had no idea of what had just happened, wasn't sure of the year, and when I told her she'd had a seizure, it took 5 or 6 times of me saying it for it to sink in. Once it did, she got really upset and afraid. I told her we had to go to the hospital and she didn't want to go - it took a lot of insisting to get her off the couch and into the car. The whole time she just kept saying "make it stop, make it stop..."
I knew how she felt. No more hospitals. No more doubt, no more wondering what the tests are going to reveal. No more lives in the balance. We've had enough of that for a lifetime. No more crises, no more emergencies. When do we get to just take a fucking rest?
Long story short, there was no sign of stroke, her head and chest scans and x-rays were clear, so no masses or aneurysms or anything. Consensus is that her dose of Wellbutrin lowered her seizure threshold (apparently an established side effect for her dose range) and what were just myclonic jerks turned into a full-on tonic-clonic seizure. Prescription? Stop taking the Wellbutrin. Simple enough. We finally got home around 4am on Saturday and did a lot of sleeping.
Make it stop. No more emergencies. No more of me walking from the hospital back to our house to take care of the animals at 3am (and take my own meds while I'm at it), wondering what the scans are going to reveal - is it going to be a mass? Will it be malignant? Are our days numbered even shorter than all days always are? Am I going to be rattling around our place by myself, alone here, surrounded by the accumulation of our life together? Am I, in the end, going to lose my wife and my sons to whatever this is?
No, no I'm not. Not this time, at least. But haven't we earned some karmic right to a little peace and quiet? Haven't we earned the right to no more emergencies for a little while? Just that? Just some room to breathe and be?
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Back (in black)
It's been a rough few months.
My absence from this blog was about 40% deliberate. Like many of you, sometimes I need a vacation from dead baby land. I haven't been writing, I haven't been reading. So much grief, both for me and for others. Compassion fatigue. I can only give so much. It's important, but caring takes energy, effort, and lately I've been very tired.
The other 60% have been the reasons I've been so tired.
Part of it has been my new job. I love what I do, and it's such a revelation for me to wake up and not even think of it as "going to work." I don't love every part of it, and I don't love it every day, but I love what I do. But it takes a lot of time and energy. I was responsible for almost 170 kids across three classes, and this was the first time I've had this large a teaching load. Not a lot of time left in the day after that. I spent about a week out of school sick with a cold that turned into serious ear and sinus infections. I spent the rest of the semester playing catch-up. Not much left of my brain by the end of the day.
The rest? Well, if you follow my wife's blog, you'll know that she's been having a very hard time over the last few months. And honestly? I've never seen her so depressed in all of the years we've been together, including the time following the death of her mother from cancer. Helpless, mired in grief. Paralyzed by anxiety and self-doubt. In tears, constantly. Wracked with sobs and pain. I'll be honest. There were days that I wondered if I would come home and find her body.
Nothing I could really say to anyone else about it, and even with her in therapy, I had to get her out of bed, get her to shower occasionally, remind her that it wouldn't always feel this way, that there was a strong, smart, compassionate, kind woman under the grief and pain. It was tiring, so tiring. I was exhausted. So much on my shoulders, no time or strength to talk about it outside of my own therapy. It was all so big, and so important. I had to carry it. I had to be strong. Not much time left for myself at the end of it all. Nothing left to give to anyone else.
Fortunately, things are getting better. S. got her meds adjusted, is in therapy twice a week and consulting with a psychiatrist, and our beautiful, beautiful new dog is a source of joy and love and happiness. She gets us out of bed, gets us outside, reminds us of the presence of things that are good and pure and sweet. S. is doing better. Not cured, not even close, but no longer at the bottom of a deep, dark hole. I'm on vacation now, in many senses of the word.
We got up late yesterday. I was mostly exhausted after spending the last week grading final exams and papers. We ran to the market to get food, and I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening making chili. In our house, food is love. When S. and I first started dating, I would make her dinner on the weekends. It was my way of courting her. For me, cooking is comforting. It's a soothing ritual - the preparation of ingredients, the timing of different things. I put on the radio or some music, have a beer or two, chop vegetables, cook meat, add seasonings, stir. It's a wonderful feeling - just me and the ingredients and knives and heat. A world of my own. A way to meditate, almost. And at the end of it, something delicious, something tangible.
And so today, a day which proved so horrible and terrifying last year, we sit in our living room, something familiar on television, surrounded by sweet animals, and the sweet, spicy smell of the chili I made yesterday reheating in the kitchen. It's one of those dishes that's always better the next day.
My absence from this blog was about 40% deliberate. Like many of you, sometimes I need a vacation from dead baby land. I haven't been writing, I haven't been reading. So much grief, both for me and for others. Compassion fatigue. I can only give so much. It's important, but caring takes energy, effort, and lately I've been very tired.
The other 60% have been the reasons I've been so tired.
Part of it has been my new job. I love what I do, and it's such a revelation for me to wake up and not even think of it as "going to work." I don't love every part of it, and I don't love it every day, but I love what I do. But it takes a lot of time and energy. I was responsible for almost 170 kids across three classes, and this was the first time I've had this large a teaching load. Not a lot of time left in the day after that. I spent about a week out of school sick with a cold that turned into serious ear and sinus infections. I spent the rest of the semester playing catch-up. Not much left of my brain by the end of the day.
The rest? Well, if you follow my wife's blog, you'll know that she's been having a very hard time over the last few months. And honestly? I've never seen her so depressed in all of the years we've been together, including the time following the death of her mother from cancer. Helpless, mired in grief. Paralyzed by anxiety and self-doubt. In tears, constantly. Wracked with sobs and pain. I'll be honest. There were days that I wondered if I would come home and find her body.
Nothing I could really say to anyone else about it, and even with her in therapy, I had to get her out of bed, get her to shower occasionally, remind her that it wouldn't always feel this way, that there was a strong, smart, compassionate, kind woman under the grief and pain. It was tiring, so tiring. I was exhausted. So much on my shoulders, no time or strength to talk about it outside of my own therapy. It was all so big, and so important. I had to carry it. I had to be strong. Not much time left for myself at the end of it all. Nothing left to give to anyone else.
Fortunately, things are getting better. S. got her meds adjusted, is in therapy twice a week and consulting with a psychiatrist, and our beautiful, beautiful new dog is a source of joy and love and happiness. She gets us out of bed, gets us outside, reminds us of the presence of things that are good and pure and sweet. S. is doing better. Not cured, not even close, but no longer at the bottom of a deep, dark hole. I'm on vacation now, in many senses of the word.
We got up late yesterday. I was mostly exhausted after spending the last week grading final exams and papers. We ran to the market to get food, and I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening making chili. In our house, food is love. When S. and I first started dating, I would make her dinner on the weekends. It was my way of courting her. For me, cooking is comforting. It's a soothing ritual - the preparation of ingredients, the timing of different things. I put on the radio or some music, have a beer or two, chop vegetables, cook meat, add seasonings, stir. It's a wonderful feeling - just me and the ingredients and knives and heat. A world of my own. A way to meditate, almost. And at the end of it, something delicious, something tangible.
And so today, a day which proved so horrible and terrifying last year, we sit in our living room, something familiar on television, surrounded by sweet animals, and the sweet, spicy smell of the chili I made yesterday reheating in the kitchen. It's one of those dishes that's always better the next day.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Arrghhh. Kids today.
So I get this email late last week. Well wait. Just to provide some context:
* If a class is full, or a student hasn't fulfilled all of the prerequisites for a class, or if the registration dates for the class have passed, then the only way a student may enroll in a class is to fill out what's called a force-add slip, which authorizes the registrar to add students above the maximum enrollment, past the regular registration range, or who wouldn't otherwise qualify.
* These force-adds are authorized entirely at the discretion of the instructor. I don't have to let anyone into my classes who puts me over my cap, who is coming into the class late, or who hasn't met the prerequisites. Doing this is a favor. You ask a professor if they would be nice enough to do this.
* I got this email late last week. On the 19th, to be precise.
* Classes started on August 25th.
That said, I now present the email in its entirety. Names have been changed for the obvious reasons.
----------
Subject: Signature
From: "SUZY SNOWFLAKE" (EMAIL REDACTED)
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:00:10 -0400
To:"CDE" (EMAIL REDACTED)
This is SUZY SNOWFLAKE. I need to change my Introduction to Psychology time and need you to sign a Change of Schedule form to enter your class. I was wondering if there was any possibility to see you about ten or fifteen minutes prior to your Child Development class tomorrow so you can sign the form.
Thanks,
SUZY
----------
We're a month into the semester and you just now want to add my class? You "need" to change your time? Well, I "need" a wet bar in my office and both fog and lasers to herald my entrance into the classroom. Looks like we're both being grossly unrealistic and are both shit out of luck.
I think what gets me the most is the "I need you to do this for me", as if I'm a salesperson at Abercrombie or something. No, see, it works like this: If you're nice, polite, and recognize that you're asking me to go above and beyond, you have a shot. Just a shot. If you approach me like the help and tell me "chop-chop, I have places to be", you get nothing.
I have heard stories from my colleagues about the ridiculous sense of entitlement that seems to distinguish the current generation of college students, but this is one of the few times I've run into it directly. I had a student challenge a grade I gave her once, on the grounds that she didn't think the material on which I was testing her was important. A colleague of mine had a student approach her after class on the first day and tell her that he was going to need for her to "sell him on why he should take this class". She, of course, looked at him like a new and particularly odious species of insect. Just last week, another student requested that one of my colleagues give her a make-up exam next month because, like, she just booked a flight home the day of the exam.
Entitlement.
Some times we run into this wall, where we find out that we can't have everything we want when we want it, no matter how much we think we deserve it.
I told the student no, that we were a month into classes, the first exam was in three days, and there was no way for her to catch up.
I've become very familiar with "no."
* If a class is full, or a student hasn't fulfilled all of the prerequisites for a class, or if the registration dates for the class have passed, then the only way a student may enroll in a class is to fill out what's called a force-add slip, which authorizes the registrar to add students above the maximum enrollment, past the regular registration range, or who wouldn't otherwise qualify.
* These force-adds are authorized entirely at the discretion of the instructor. I don't have to let anyone into my classes who puts me over my cap, who is coming into the class late, or who hasn't met the prerequisites. Doing this is a favor. You ask a professor if they would be nice enough to do this.
* I got this email late last week. On the 19th, to be precise.
* Classes started on August 25th.
That said, I now present the email in its entirety. Names have been changed for the obvious reasons.
----------
Subject: Signature
From: "SUZY SNOWFLAKE" (EMAIL REDACTED)
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:00:10 -0400
To:"CDE" (EMAIL REDACTED)
This is SUZY SNOWFLAKE. I need to change my Introduction to Psychology time and need you to sign a Change of Schedule form to enter your class. I was wondering if there was any possibility to see you about ten or fifteen minutes prior to your Child Development class tomorrow so you can sign the form.
Thanks,
SUZY
----------
We're a month into the semester and you just now want to add my class? You "need" to change your time? Well, I "need" a wet bar in my office and both fog and lasers to herald my entrance into the classroom. Looks like we're both being grossly unrealistic and are both shit out of luck.
I think what gets me the most is the "I need you to do this for me", as if I'm a salesperson at Abercrombie or something. No, see, it works like this: If you're nice, polite, and recognize that you're asking me to go above and beyond, you have a shot. Just a shot. If you approach me like the help and tell me "chop-chop, I have places to be", you get nothing.
I have heard stories from my colleagues about the ridiculous sense of entitlement that seems to distinguish the current generation of college students, but this is one of the few times I've run into it directly. I had a student challenge a grade I gave her once, on the grounds that she didn't think the material on which I was testing her was important. A colleague of mine had a student approach her after class on the first day and tell her that he was going to need for her to "sell him on why he should take this class". She, of course, looked at him like a new and particularly odious species of insect. Just last week, another student requested that one of my colleagues give her a make-up exam next month because, like, she just booked a flight home the day of the exam.
Entitlement.
Some times we run into this wall, where we find out that we can't have everything we want when we want it, no matter how much we think we deserve it.
I told the student no, that we were a month into classes, the first exam was in three days, and there was no way for her to catch up.
I've become very familiar with "no."
Monday, June 23, 2008
Teachable moments 2: The Teachening
I'm still thinking about all of this stuff surrounding teaching a class on child development. It's one of my favorite parts of teaching Introduction to Psychology, and I'm usually pretty good about leaving my personal life stuff out of the classroom - as in, what's bothering me right now - but it does bring up something else.
I often use anecdotes from my life when I teach, to illustrate examples. I am blessed both with the ability to observe ways in which psychological principles play out in life and with a set of family and friends who are interesting/fucked up enough to provide me with plenty of material. It's just part of teaching, I never really thought about it that much.
But now, I'm faced with a dilemma: Do I talk about losing the boys when we get to the bit on miscarriage and stillbirth? I've alluded to it before, when I talk about critical points in development, but not from personal experience. I honestly don't know if that would be laying it all out there, or if laying it all out there is even bad. I wouldn't shoehorn it in, but I'm teaching a class where it's highly relevant. We'll see how it goes, I guess. I'm more worried that this going to be the year that I finally get a yowling Jesus freak in one of my classes.
As for the person who sent out the scolding email regarding the baby pool, I'm not mad at her as much as embarrassed for her. I honestly don't know whether her kids were born at 36 weeks - it could have been as early as 32 by my sketchy math. And time in the NICU is time in the NICU, and I'm sure she's worried. I think it speaks more to one of her more enduring qualities: The ability to jump to wrong, and often ridiculous, conclusions based on misinterpretation of information. It's something she does on an unfortunately regular basis, given my observations of her in scholarly settings. And the response to the email has been telling: Bafflement, and pained silence.
I often use anecdotes from my life when I teach, to illustrate examples. I am blessed both with the ability to observe ways in which psychological principles play out in life and with a set of family and friends who are interesting/fucked up enough to provide me with plenty of material. It's just part of teaching, I never really thought about it that much.
But now, I'm faced with a dilemma: Do I talk about losing the boys when we get to the bit on miscarriage and stillbirth? I've alluded to it before, when I talk about critical points in development, but not from personal experience. I honestly don't know if that would be laying it all out there, or if laying it all out there is even bad. I wouldn't shoehorn it in, but I'm teaching a class where it's highly relevant. We'll see how it goes, I guess. I'm more worried that this going to be the year that I finally get a yowling Jesus freak in one of my classes.
As for the person who sent out the scolding email regarding the baby pool, I'm not mad at her as much as embarrassed for her. I honestly don't know whether her kids were born at 36 weeks - it could have been as early as 32 by my sketchy math. And time in the NICU is time in the NICU, and I'm sure she's worried. I think it speaks more to one of her more enduring qualities: The ability to jump to wrong, and often ridiculous, conclusions based on misinterpretation of information. It's something she does on an unfortunately regular basis, given my observations of her in scholarly settings. And the response to the email has been telling: Bafflement, and pained silence.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Mirror, mirror
If I didn't know any better, I'd think that my wonderful wife just tagged me on a meme. Seeing as how my ability to write for this blog seems to have been disrupted by a bizarre streak of good fortune, this is probably a good way to get back in the game...
1. What were you doing 10 years ago?
I was 28 years old, and probably working two jobs (this was vacation for me - during the rest of the year, I worked two jobs and went to college full-time). So mostly working and sleeping. When not doing that, spending a fair amount of time on Usenet or in front of my PlayStation. Writing poetry, being angry at the world, at myself. I was still several months away from meeting S at this point, so I was probably a not-quite hermit. Going to see Einstürzende Neubauten at the Paradise in Boston. Getting my second tattoo. It was a simpler time.
2. What 5 things are on your to-do list today?
Finish dissertation revisions
Work on class syllabi for next semester
Clear out more of email backlog
Go to grocery store
Write guest post for Glow In The Woods
And I got all of it done. Woo-hoo!
3. List snacks you enjoy.
Wasabi peas.
Assorted flavors of Pocky.
Popcorn.
Chips (potato or corn) and dip (queso, salsa, horrible mutant creamy southwestern ranch stuff)
Crackers and Brie.
4. What would you do with a billion dollars?
First? Settle all debts, public and private.
Second? Buy me some shit. Sensible, practical stuff like a house, and frivolous stuff like a home theater setup and screening room addition to that house in which to put it. More tattoo work. Clothes. S says I'm a clotheshorse. If I am, it's her fault. I wore stuff from the Garment District and Army surplus before she met me.
Third? Invest. Put it way for a rainy day.
Fourth? Donations and charitable work. Big awards to people like the ACLU, MoveOn, Habitat for Humanity, area animal shelters. Work for infertility education and outreach. Work for literacy. Scholarships for deserving students who can't afford college. Big-ass endowment to my alma mater's psychology department,
5. List places you have lived.
Norman, OK
Midwest City, OK
Oklahoma City, OK
Columbia, MO
Cockeysville, MD
Boston, MA
Brighton, MA
Somerville, MA
Arlington, MA
Tiny College Town, OH
6. List jobs you have had.
Busboy/dishwasher
Dishwasher
McDonald's grill worker
Stock clerk, men's clothing store
Retail bookseller (for two whole weeks)
Picture framer
Customer service, copy shop
Shift supervisor, copy shop
Research assistant, developmental psychology lab (at same time as the above copy shop jobs)
Inside sales, copy shop
Research assistant, clinical psychology lab
QC Documentation, pharmaceutical company
Graduate teaching assistant, psychology
Visiting assistant professor, psychology (woo-hoo!)
7. List those who you would like to answer the above questions.
I think just about everyone who I read has done this.
1. What were you doing 10 years ago?
I was 28 years old, and probably working two jobs (this was vacation for me - during the rest of the year, I worked two jobs and went to college full-time). So mostly working and sleeping. When not doing that, spending a fair amount of time on Usenet or in front of my PlayStation. Writing poetry, being angry at the world, at myself. I was still several months away from meeting S at this point, so I was probably a not-quite hermit. Going to see Einstürzende Neubauten at the Paradise in Boston. Getting my second tattoo. It was a simpler time.
2. What 5 things are on your to-do list today?
Finish dissertation revisions
Work on class syllabi for next semester
Clear out more of email backlog
Go to grocery store
Write guest post for Glow In The Woods
And I got all of it done. Woo-hoo!
3. List snacks you enjoy.
Wasabi peas.
Assorted flavors of Pocky.
Popcorn.
Chips (potato or corn) and dip (queso, salsa, horrible mutant creamy southwestern ranch stuff)
Crackers and Brie.
4. What would you do with a billion dollars?
First? Settle all debts, public and private.
Second? Buy me some shit. Sensible, practical stuff like a house, and frivolous stuff like a home theater setup and screening room addition to that house in which to put it. More tattoo work. Clothes. S says I'm a clotheshorse. If I am, it's her fault. I wore stuff from the Garment District and Army surplus before she met me.
Third? Invest. Put it way for a rainy day.
Fourth? Donations and charitable work. Big awards to people like the ACLU, MoveOn, Habitat for Humanity, area animal shelters. Work for infertility education and outreach. Work for literacy. Scholarships for deserving students who can't afford college. Big-ass endowment to my alma mater's psychology department,
5. List places you have lived.
Norman, OK
Midwest City, OK
Oklahoma City, OK
Columbia, MO
Cockeysville, MD
Boston, MA
Brighton, MA
Somerville, MA
Arlington, MA
Tiny College Town, OH
6. List jobs you have had.
Busboy/dishwasher
Dishwasher
McDonald's grill worker
Stock clerk, men's clothing store
Retail bookseller (for two whole weeks)
Picture framer
Customer service, copy shop
Shift supervisor, copy shop
Research assistant, developmental psychology lab (at same time as the above copy shop jobs)
Inside sales, copy shop
Research assistant, clinical psychology lab
QC Documentation, pharmaceutical company
Graduate teaching assistant, psychology
Visiting assistant professor, psychology (woo-hoo!)
7. List those who you would like to answer the above questions.
I think just about everyone who I read has done this.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Vows belated^2
Yes, that's an exponent in the subject line, because that's how I roll. Nerdy.
So awhile back, my beloved S posted her belated marriage vows to me on our wedding anniversary. Pretty much what she said was true (about the circumstances - her appraisal of me? I dunno. I try), and it made me choke up a little to read them. I mean, I know she loves me, and I know she knows I love her. And she knows that I know that she knows I love her, and she knows that I know she loves me, y'know? But on our wedding day, she wasn't her usual articulate self, and more than ever, I need to know what I'm doing right or what I'm good at, because dead babies provide plenty of evidence to the contrary. I especially thought it was generous of her to omit the fact that the rabbi read my vows from a piece of hotel stationery, hastily scribbled on the way to the ceremony, using the dashboard as a desk.
(Our officiant really was great - how often do you hear Hebrew prayers sung in a gospel style? That shit was amazing.)
She also failed to mention how amazing she is, and that should also be rectified.
I have yet to meet anyone warmer or with a more generous spirit than S. She is, under normal circumstances, one of the most caring, compassionate, sensitive people I have ever met. Her ability to find joy and pleasure in the simplest things - a drive on a beautiful day, ice cream, a bed full of dogs and cats, a lazy Sunday morning with tea, the New York Times crossword and some music - makes it easy to enjoy spending time with her.
She's incredibly smart - sometimes I think smarter than she gives herself credit for - and that, combined with her dry and clever sense of humor, makes for the perfect package for me. We're like Nick and Nora Charles, except less with the drinking and the crime-solving and the money. So maybe not so much like them.
What's more, these values are infectious. When we met, I wasn't exactly what you'd call a ray of sunshine. I was coming up on the end of three years of working two jobs (one full-time) and going to school full-time. I'd get up at 6:30, go to school, go to work straight from school, get home at 12:30, stay up for an hour, go to bed, and do it all again the next day. I'd come out of a relationship that had ended badly, and although I was a better, more mature, stronger person for the experience, I was also angry, bitter, cynical, and very guarded.
S. saw through that to the person I was - the person I am - underneath. She understood where the anger came from, and made it safe for me to not have to be so guarded anymore. She provided a healthy correction to my generally pessimistic outlook. Just by having her in my life, I am a better, more compassionate, more thoughtful person. She lifts me up.
Plus, she's cute as hell. That doesn't hurt.
I remember the first time I said "I love you" to her. We were at one of our favorite restaurants in Boston (the S&S Deli, for those of you playing along in the Boston area), and she ordered a hamburger. When the food came, she promptly took the hamburger apart, removed the fresh tomato, and replaced it with ketchup...
Me: "You just took the tomato off."
S: "Yeah..?"
Me: "And replaced it with ketchup."
S: "Yes."
Me: "You do know that ketchup is made with tomatoes, right?"
S: "Yeah, but it's a different experience. It's all about the texture."
Me: (laughing) "I love you."
That was it. No violins or candles, no huge buildup, no "tonight's the night he's going to say it" or any of that other romantic-comedy bullshit. Nope, just her and me, sitting in a booth, laughing and me spontaneously expressing what I was feeling at that moment, which was tremendous respect and affection, and joy at being in her company. You know, love.
And that's how we go through life: Next to each other, facing what's ahead, laughing and taking joy in the simple pleasures when we can, holding on to each other when we can't.
I love you, S.
So awhile back, my beloved S posted her belated marriage vows to me on our wedding anniversary. Pretty much what she said was true (about the circumstances - her appraisal of me? I dunno. I try), and it made me choke up a little to read them. I mean, I know she loves me, and I know she knows I love her. And she knows that I know that she knows I love her, and she knows that I know she loves me, y'know? But on our wedding day, she wasn't her usual articulate self, and more than ever, I need to know what I'm doing right or what I'm good at, because dead babies provide plenty of evidence to the contrary. I especially thought it was generous of her to omit the fact that the rabbi read my vows from a piece of hotel stationery, hastily scribbled on the way to the ceremony, using the dashboard as a desk.
(Our officiant really was great - how often do you hear Hebrew prayers sung in a gospel style? That shit was amazing.)
She also failed to mention how amazing she is, and that should also be rectified.
I have yet to meet anyone warmer or with a more generous spirit than S. She is, under normal circumstances, one of the most caring, compassionate, sensitive people I have ever met. Her ability to find joy and pleasure in the simplest things - a drive on a beautiful day, ice cream, a bed full of dogs and cats, a lazy Sunday morning with tea, the New York Times crossword and some music - makes it easy to enjoy spending time with her.
She's incredibly smart - sometimes I think smarter than she gives herself credit for - and that, combined with her dry and clever sense of humor, makes for the perfect package for me. We're like Nick and Nora Charles, except less with the drinking and the crime-solving and the money. So maybe not so much like them.
What's more, these values are infectious. When we met, I wasn't exactly what you'd call a ray of sunshine. I was coming up on the end of three years of working two jobs (one full-time) and going to school full-time. I'd get up at 6:30, go to school, go to work straight from school, get home at 12:30, stay up for an hour, go to bed, and do it all again the next day. I'd come out of a relationship that had ended badly, and although I was a better, more mature, stronger person for the experience, I was also angry, bitter, cynical, and very guarded.
S. saw through that to the person I was - the person I am - underneath. She understood where the anger came from, and made it safe for me to not have to be so guarded anymore. She provided a healthy correction to my generally pessimistic outlook. Just by having her in my life, I am a better, more compassionate, more thoughtful person. She lifts me up.
Plus, she's cute as hell. That doesn't hurt.
I remember the first time I said "I love you" to her. We were at one of our favorite restaurants in Boston (the S&S Deli, for those of you playing along in the Boston area), and she ordered a hamburger. When the food came, she promptly took the hamburger apart, removed the fresh tomato, and replaced it with ketchup...
Me: "You just took the tomato off."
S: "Yeah..?"
Me: "And replaced it with ketchup."
S: "Yes."
Me: "You do know that ketchup is made with tomatoes, right?"
S: "Yeah, but it's a different experience. It's all about the texture."
Me: (laughing) "I love you."
That was it. No violins or candles, no huge buildup, no "tonight's the night he's going to say it" or any of that other romantic-comedy bullshit. Nope, just her and me, sitting in a booth, laughing and me spontaneously expressing what I was feeling at that moment, which was tremendous respect and affection, and joy at being in her company. You know, love.
And that's how we go through life: Next to each other, facing what's ahead, laughing and taking joy in the simple pleasures when we can, holding on to each other when we can't.
I love you, S.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Some weekend levity
One of the unexpected side effects of the grief S and I feel is a renewed appreciation for all the crappy, horrible, guilty-pleasure snacks we'd normally enjoy in moderation. We have become connoisseurs of junk food. Our tortilla-chip-and-queso capacity will be the stuff of Viking legend. Bards will sing sagas for our ability to put Ruffles and ranch dip away.
To that end, over our last few trips to the grocery store, I've been picking up bags of exotically flavored potato chips. Once I'd gathered 6 different flavors, I decided that we'd have a potato-chip tasting. Absurd? Sure. But we damn well know our chips. Time to expose these fancy-schmancy gourmet flavors to the white heat of our critical palates. So, without further adieu, I present the first annual Once In A Lifetime/So Dear, Yet So Far joint gourmet potato chip tasting.
Some ground rules:
1) Chips were selected for novelty of flavoring. The same company also made "mesquite" and "yogurt and green onion" flavors which, while exotic-sounding, seemed more like pretentious variations of the standard barbecue and sour-cream-and-onion flavors. Which? Boring. If you're going to come to this show, you'd better come with the new, son.
2) Tastings consisted of 3 chips each, which allowed for an initial taste and taste over time.
3) Between tastings, a preferred beverage was used as a palate-cleanser. (Diet Coke for S, iced tea for me).
4) Ratings and criteria are completely subjective, and our judgment is questionable.
So let's get started...
#1: Honey Dijon
Honestly, I would have never thought to make a mustard-flavored potato chip, let alone one that uses a sweet dijon mustard. So I went into this one having little to no preconceptions, and maybe just a little fear. Turns out that that fear was wildly unfounded.
C: "I was expecting a much stronger, more mustardy taste."
S: "I can taste the honey dijon, but that's only for chicken."
C: "As it is, it tastes like somebody waved mustard near the chip, or like I was eating regular chips from a paper plate with mustard stains on it from a recently eaten hot dog."
S: "It's like I'm eating a chicken. Although, there is something to the sweet and salty combination."
C: 2 chips out of 5 ("Sort of bland, inoffensive. Not bad, but not a go-to flavor.")
S: 3 chips out of 5 ("I can see myself eating it when there's nothing else to eat.")
#2: New York Cheddar with Herbs
You don't see cheddar-flavored potato chips too often, so I wasn't sure how this was going to work either. Is it a mild cheddar, a sharp cheddar? An extra-sharp cheddar? What herbs? Oregano? Or something wacky like coriander? Well, turns out we had another whimper, instead of a bang.
S: "I didn't know New York made cheddar."
C: "I am reminded of cheese-flavored Pringles, without the regrettable aftertaste."
S: "Enh. I'm not really a cheese-and-potato-chip person."
C: "Again, not as bold a taste as I would have expected."
C: 2.5 chips out of 5 ("Sort of underwhelming.")
S: 2 chips out of 5 ("Not really doing it for me.")
#3: Island Jerk
It's been years and years since I had jerk chicken, but I remember really liking it, and thinking that this particular approach to seasoning could be quite the upsetter to more conventional barbecue chips or the Doritos X-treme Habanero Ranch Bleu Cheese Spice Explosion flavors. At this point, I was a little worried, though. None of the other flavors had lived up to the wild rollercoaster of flavor I'd been anticipating. Until this one...
C: "Mmmm. I like this."
S: "This is kind of interesting."
C: "Here, the flavor is assertive without burning my mouth. Very good, and probably hard to scarf an entire bag without injuring yourself."
S: "There's kind of a brown-sugary thing, sort of sweet and spicy."
C: 3.5 chips out of 5 ("This is the first one I've really liked")
S: 3.5/4 chips out of 5 ("Yeah.")
#4: Tuscan Three Cheese
The New York Cheddar was weak sauce, the Honey Dijon didn't really do anything either. Was this going to be the chip to stand up for the non-spicy contingent? Would I really be taken on a trip to Tuscany, afloat on a raft of potato-chip goodness? I wouldn't. S, on the other hand, would.
S: "Initially better than I thought it was going to be."
C: "Not getting anything especially Mediterranean from this."
S: "Less cheesy and more...rich. Do you know what I mean?"
C: "It's a pleasant, slightly cheesy chip, but I'm not sure Tuscany figures into it at all. And are there really three cheeses here? I'm getting sort of a general cheese thing, but not three cheeses."
S: 4 chips out of 5 ("I like these - can you get me some that aren't burnt?")
C: 2.5/3 chips out of 5 ("Meh. Not bad, but nothing special.")
#5: Buffalo Bleu
This is a bold move against the conventional barbecue flavor. I think there's a buffalo-flavored Doritos product as well, but they've probably added Citrus Burst or something to it. This should be one loud, clear note of buffalo spice with a cool, almost-sweet bleu undertone. And it almost was.
S: "I'm scared - these look spicy."
C: "Ahh, now this is what I was expecting."
S: "Oof - that's a little too spicy. A little too much going on with this one."
C: "Something with some bite, and it actually tastes like buffalo wing sauce. Not really getting the bleu cheese taste, but I'm liking these."
S: 1/2 chips out of 5 ("I would rather not eat those")
C: 3/4 chips out of 5 ("nom nom nom nom nom")
#6: Spicy Thai
S and I both love Thai food. But for the purposes of this chip, we were pretty sure this wasn't going to mean "peanut sauce." I was afraid that it was going to be some red-pepper monstrosity. Which, mercifully, it wasn't. Now I sort of wonder what a lemongrass chip would be like...
C: "Mmm. Reminds me of the Island Jerk - starts off sweet, then burns a little. "
S: "Again, a little sweet, a little spicy. But I don't like this as much as the other one."
C:"I definitely taste the ginger here. I could eat these, especially when I feel a little masochistic."
S:"It's a little spicier - this would be good with a bleu cheese or ranch dip."
S: 3.5 chips out of 5 ("I think it needs something to cool it off")
C: 3.5 chips out of 5 ("Maybe I can eat the rest of these while she's asleep...I didn't say that out loud, did I?")
So, to recap:
S's top three: Tuscan Three Cheese, Island Jerk, , Spicy Thai ("These would all be better if they weren't BURNT!")
C's top three: Island Jerk, Buffalo Bleu, Spicy Thai ("I don' t know what your problem is. I like burnt chips.")
I'm sure we'll be able to divide the remainder of the chips up equitably for snacking purposes. Those Tuscan chips are all S, I'm going to be the only one going near the Buffalo Bleu chips. I suspect, however, that negotiations for the Island Jerk and Spicy Thai will be strained. There may be open warfare. And, as is always the case, it is the innocent, harmless Honey Dijon and New York Cheddar caught in the middle. But these are the wages of snack food.
To that end, over our last few trips to the grocery store, I've been picking up bags of exotically flavored potato chips. Once I'd gathered 6 different flavors, I decided that we'd have a potato-chip tasting. Absurd? Sure. But we damn well know our chips. Time to expose these fancy-schmancy gourmet flavors to the white heat of our critical palates. So, without further adieu, I present the first annual Once In A Lifetime/So Dear, Yet So Far joint gourmet potato chip tasting.
Some ground rules:
1) Chips were selected for novelty of flavoring. The same company also made "mesquite" and "yogurt and green onion" flavors which, while exotic-sounding, seemed more like pretentious variations of the standard barbecue and sour-cream-and-onion flavors. Which? Boring. If you're going to come to this show, you'd better come with the new, son.
2) Tastings consisted of 3 chips each, which allowed for an initial taste and taste over time.
3) Between tastings, a preferred beverage was used as a palate-cleanser. (Diet Coke for S, iced tea for me).
4) Ratings and criteria are completely subjective, and our judgment is questionable.
So let's get started...
#1: Honey Dijon
Honestly, I would have never thought to make a mustard-flavored potato chip, let alone one that uses a sweet dijon mustard. So I went into this one having little to no preconceptions, and maybe just a little fear. Turns out that that fear was wildly unfounded.
C: "I was expecting a much stronger, more mustardy taste."
S: "I can taste the honey dijon, but that's only for chicken."
C: "As it is, it tastes like somebody waved mustard near the chip, or like I was eating regular chips from a paper plate with mustard stains on it from a recently eaten hot dog."
S: "It's like I'm eating a chicken. Although, there is something to the sweet and salty combination."
C: 2 chips out of 5 ("Sort of bland, inoffensive. Not bad, but not a go-to flavor.")
S: 3 chips out of 5 ("I can see myself eating it when there's nothing else to eat.")
#2: New York Cheddar with Herbs
You don't see cheddar-flavored potato chips too often, so I wasn't sure how this was going to work either. Is it a mild cheddar, a sharp cheddar? An extra-sharp cheddar? What herbs? Oregano? Or something wacky like coriander? Well, turns out we had another whimper, instead of a bang.
S: "I didn't know New York made cheddar."
C: "I am reminded of cheese-flavored Pringles, without the regrettable aftertaste."
S: "Enh. I'm not really a cheese-and-potato-chip person."
C: "Again, not as bold a taste as I would have expected."
C: 2.5 chips out of 5 ("Sort of underwhelming.")
S: 2 chips out of 5 ("Not really doing it for me.")
#3: Island Jerk
It's been years and years since I had jerk chicken, but I remember really liking it, and thinking that this particular approach to seasoning could be quite the upsetter to more conventional barbecue chips or the Doritos X-treme Habanero Ranch Bleu Cheese Spice Explosion flavors. At this point, I was a little worried, though. None of the other flavors had lived up to the wild rollercoaster of flavor I'd been anticipating. Until this one...
C: "Mmmm. I like this."
S: "This is kind of interesting."
C: "Here, the flavor is assertive without burning my mouth. Very good, and probably hard to scarf an entire bag without injuring yourself."
S: "There's kind of a brown-sugary thing, sort of sweet and spicy."
C: 3.5 chips out of 5 ("This is the first one I've really liked")
S: 3.5/4 chips out of 5 ("Yeah.")
#4: Tuscan Three Cheese
The New York Cheddar was weak sauce, the Honey Dijon didn't really do anything either. Was this going to be the chip to stand up for the non-spicy contingent? Would I really be taken on a trip to Tuscany, afloat on a raft of potato-chip goodness? I wouldn't. S, on the other hand, would.
S: "Initially better than I thought it was going to be."
C: "Not getting anything especially Mediterranean from this."
S: "Less cheesy and more...rich. Do you know what I mean?"
C: "It's a pleasant, slightly cheesy chip, but I'm not sure Tuscany figures into it at all. And are there really three cheeses here? I'm getting sort of a general cheese thing, but not three cheeses."
S: 4 chips out of 5 ("I like these - can you get me some that aren't burnt?")
C: 2.5/3 chips out of 5 ("Meh. Not bad, but nothing special.")
#5: Buffalo Bleu
This is a bold move against the conventional barbecue flavor. I think there's a buffalo-flavored Doritos product as well, but they've probably added Citrus Burst or something to it. This should be one loud, clear note of buffalo spice with a cool, almost-sweet bleu undertone. And it almost was.
S: "I'm scared - these look spicy."
C: "Ahh, now this is what I was expecting."
S: "Oof - that's a little too spicy. A little too much going on with this one."
C: "Something with some bite, and it actually tastes like buffalo wing sauce. Not really getting the bleu cheese taste, but I'm liking these."
S: 1/2 chips out of 5 ("I would rather not eat those")
C: 3/4 chips out of 5 ("nom nom nom nom nom")
#6: Spicy Thai
S and I both love Thai food. But for the purposes of this chip, we were pretty sure this wasn't going to mean "peanut sauce." I was afraid that it was going to be some red-pepper monstrosity. Which, mercifully, it wasn't. Now I sort of wonder what a lemongrass chip would be like...
C: "Mmm. Reminds me of the Island Jerk - starts off sweet, then burns a little. "
S: "Again, a little sweet, a little spicy. But I don't like this as much as the other one."
C:"I definitely taste the ginger here. I could eat these, especially when I feel a little masochistic."
S:"It's a little spicier - this would be good with a bleu cheese or ranch dip."
S: 3.5 chips out of 5 ("I think it needs something to cool it off")
C: 3.5 chips out of 5 ("Maybe I can eat the rest of these while she's asleep...I didn't say that out loud, did I?")
So, to recap:
S's top three: Tuscan Three Cheese, Island Jerk, , Spicy Thai ("These would all be better if they weren't BURNT!")
C's top three: Island Jerk, Buffalo Bleu, Spicy Thai ("I don' t know what your problem is. I like burnt chips.")
I'm sure we'll be able to divide the remainder of the chips up equitably for snacking purposes. Those Tuscan chips are all S, I'm going to be the only one going near the Buffalo Bleu chips. I suspect, however, that negotiations for the Island Jerk and Spicy Thai will be strained. There may be open warfare. And, as is always the case, it is the innocent, harmless Honey Dijon and New York Cheddar caught in the middle. But these are the wages of snack food.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Apropos of nothing.
I can still remember one of the first things S did that really endeared her to me.
When we first started dating, I was in a crappy job that I didn't like. Inevitably, our evenings together would start with me venting for about ten or fifteen minutes about my stupid job. After one particularly firebreathing rant, she looked at me with an amused expression and said...
"You don't scare me."
And, just, awwwww. I loved that.
When we first started dating, I was in a crappy job that I didn't like. Inevitably, our evenings together would start with me venting for about ten or fifteen minutes about my stupid job. After one particularly firebreathing rant, she looked at me with an amused expression and said...
"You don't scare me."
And, just, awwwww. I loved that.
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