pelicans are especially special

In August of 2008, I was on a camping trip on the northern coast with the man I didn't yet know was to be my husband, and a couple of friends.  It's a place that's very special to him, a status that I attribute to a previous trip that he spent agog on the beach for days watching whales breach offshore.  I've only ever seen one there, but I imagine that watching a pod of the behemoths flopping around in the surf is like finding god and spying on his playtime with his friends.  The four of us illustrious campers were on a walk on the beach, approaching a pelican seated in the shorebreak -- by which I mean, periodically a wave actually pushed him further up the beach and partially onto his side before he righted himself.  I took pictures as we approached, awaiting the inevitable trigger-point of take-off over the water.  It never came.

That pelican let me walk right up next to him and sit down on the sand, with hardly a protest.  Initially, I was fairly certain he was going to use that two-foot beak to teach my fingers a lesson they'd not soon forget, but he must have been so sick or exhausted as to warrant such an expenditure of effort unfeasible.  Like when you're in the emergency room with as-yet-undiagnosed mono, and the effort of pulling on your winter coat over your pajamas and walking across the street to the hospital has sapped all your remaining energy and you gratefully pass out in a holding room for three hours until the doctor discovers you there, curled up alone in the fetal position on that rickety hospital cot, undisturbed by the GSW-induced screams and short-on-patience patients around you.  Because surely, anything that could befall you in such a state could not be resisted anyway, especially by such a paltry defense as you could mount.

After ascertaining that I wasn't a threat, the pelican closed his eyes as I gently stroked the feathers on the top of his head.  He rested his head on his breast.  The pictures of us together on the beach are lovely, but they're a facade.  That pelican smelled of rotting fish, his feathers were bedraggled, he lacked the strength to stand up, and his entire body was crawling with bugs.  They poked in and out among dirty down feathers as we sat together on the sand, him resigned, me protective.  Later, I had to comb them out of my hair, although I'm not sure they were actually there.  My friends had proceeded up the beach and were sitting a short distance away, having had the sense to avoid a dying wild animal, and one to which they could give no aid.

When I was a child, a fledgling goldfinch crashed into our sliding glass door and blinded himself.  After he didn't leave the scene of the accident overnight, we brought him inside and put him in a cardboard box with a dish of water, and the family took turns catching bugs to feed him.  In the mornings, that bird sang his little heart out, perched in the middle of his cardboard box.  Perhaps he was calling his parents, I don't know, but he didn't seem anxious about his new lifestyle and was eating well.  After a few days, we dropped him off at the bird sanctuary.  Soon after, we received a form letter thanking us for our effort and informing us that since the blinded bird would be unable to survive, they'd euthanized him.

It seemed harsh to a seven-year-old, but it was clearly the route that produced the least pain and suffering.  I have since often wished that people showed the same humanity to our human loved ones as we do to our pets.  And so, communing with that sick pelican on the beach, it became suddenly clear to me that the proper next step was to end the pelican's suffering.  The conclusion was both horrifying and calming to reach: I couldn't imagine killing that poor bird that had decided to trust me, but neither could I imagine leaving him to his destiny when he was too weak to defend himself against marauders.  So I sat with the idea for a while.

I used to hold a job that required me to cull litters and to euthanize animals, under the auspices of an institutional review board, i.e., via scientifically humane measures...but I didn't have a CO chamber or any sodium pentobarbitol or even an axe.  Once, when I was house-sitting for my parents, a mousetrap failed to kill its victim and my father had advised me to put the entire trap into a bucket of water and hold it there.  I cried my damn eyes out doing that, but I do think it was the kindest thing I could have done.  Although I was standing adjacent to the largest stretch of water in the world, holding an adult pelican underwater did not seem like a good option.  But I could probably break his neck.  After that, the bird would feel no pain and would die very quickly, especially if I could cut off his breathing.  And I shuddered to myself, because how could I do such a thing, when the bird had such a long and flexible neck?  It was imperative that the operation go well, because otherwise I would be torturing instead of alleviating.  And that's when my future husband came back and sat down next to me, while I was pondering how best to go about breaking this pelican's neck.

I wanted to tell him what I was going to do, and tried to start a couple of times, but I thought I'd lose my resolve if I vocalized it.  I hoped he would tire of the monotony and go back to our friends, but he didn't.  And then something told me that it was time to do this thing, and I thought maybe it was the bird.  So I did it, without having warned my poor husband-to-be, who was sitting right next to me, because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do it.

And now I can say that, beyond the emotional component, breaking a pelican's neck is at least as mechanically challenging as I anticipated it might be.  I think I can also say that the procedure went as successfully as it could have, at least in terms of the bird's experience.  My future husband was as shocked as anyone would be if his vegetarian girlfriend suddenly killed a docile animal with her bare hands, without having given any prior indication of intent.  He maintained a little distance from me for the remainder of the afternoon, and I could place no blame on him for it, although I felt a little barbaric and like a pariah, I have always felt I did the right thing.  After it was done, I was going to put the bird's body up in the brush on the beach, but took the boyfriend's suggestion to put it in the surf, because it was a seabird.  And I did , and our friends joined us and asked if the bird had died, and I said yes, and B said that I had done it a kindness by sitting with it during its last moments.  And I agree.

more like a set of guidelines

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shots from da island

I said I'd post pics from the HI trip here, and although I don't think I'm accountable to any gentle readers (because there aren't any), I am true to my word.

hibiscus flowers, waimea beach park

cannonball tree, waimea beach park

sunset at sunset beach

house finch, uss arizona memorial

hang gliding base, sandy beach

roadside stop, north shore

friends of malaekahana

wardrobe malfunction

When I was a very little girl, I was all about the dresses.  I only vaguely remember this phase, as I think it stopped in kindergarten or first grade: as my mom tells it, I came home from school one day very upset because the other kids could see my underwear while I was hanging upside down on the playground.  I don't recall that particular event, but I do recall the neighbor girl and boy distracting me on the top of the jungle gym, observing that I was as tall standing atop it as the nearest young tree.  While I paused, enchanted, she and the neighbor boy took the opportunity to look up my skirt.

I was a naked kid, and didn't feel any shame in that, but I guess being seen in one's underwear is less deliberate and therefore more embarrassing?  Or, perhaps more likely, I was ashamed at having been duped.  (They also once took me on a bike ride, further from home than I was allowed to go, and then all raced off and left me behind, straggling and pushing hard on the pedals while they all changed gears and climbed the hill on their powerful big-kid legs.  I was ashamed then, too, because I thought they wanted me to hang out with them, and now I was all by myself and lost, couldn't figure out how to get home.)  I don't think I learned modesty from the incident, because I remember being told gently at age 8 or 9 that from then on, pants and a shirt were required at the dinner table.  Sitting on the woven bar stools sans vetements left red waffle-patterns on one's sitting parts.  To this day I'm happy to change into my swimsuit on the beach, to prevent the bikini knot from digging into my spine on the drive there.

I never got back into dresses, though.  I'll put one on for a special event, but pack along a change of clothes because I really feel unnatural with my knees constantly pressed together, all feminine-like.  I think it strains my hips and my mental health.  The girls that wear cute little sundresses to work amaze me -- you're really comfortable, sitting there in that thing all day?  With your ankles daintily crossed?  Yeesh.  How do you drive in those four-inch heels?  Don't get me wrong, you look good enough to eat, but that kind of an outfit is just too high-maintenance for me.  I miss that brief grunge trend in the 90s when it was totally acceptable to wear a sundress over your skater jeans.

somebody told me that you've got a girlfriend who looks like a boyfriend that i had in february of last year

In my hateful job, working for the man, we collect demographic information about patients, which is entered into an electronic disease database.  The program identifies some common logic errors during the data entry process, to cut down on the amount of quality control procedures that have to be done later.  In addition, some of the data on the form is drawn from the client's record in the database system.  The database system collects the patient's gender, and the form uses that response to autopopulate the patient's sex at birth.

In case you haven't heard, it's the fucking millennium, and gender and sex are not the same thing. (In case the gentle reader needs clarification, sex is a biological characteristic, whereas gender is a social identification, and doesn't necessarily align with the biological sex.)  And a public agency should know that, even if the general populace is unaware.  I went on a mission when the autopopulation was introduced to try to correct the mistake, but everyone agreed that it was an unimportant distinction.

So fast-forward to now, and it's my job to make sure data are entered completely and accurately into the system.  Some of them I enter myself, and those are no problem: I enter "unknown" for the gender and fill out the biological sex at birth according to the form.  I've been doing it for months now.  It's also part of my job to assist others entering data, and they seem to be treating gender as sex, appreciating the auto-population feature.  This makes me GRRRRR, but no one listens to me so who cares?  And then my boss asks me how I've been dealing with this issue, and I told her, and added "that's what I'd tell anybody who asked me about it, too.  Because I'm not permitted to make any assumptions about patient data, and gender is not included on the form."  I'm expecting to be read the riot act, because she likes to do that to me.  But sometimes she surprises me, as when she responded, "Good answer."  Hmm.

I'm completely ashamed of the inner workings of this office and its cost to the taxpayers.  It's perfectly obvious to me why the government is out of money...and it's only tangentially related to gender vs. sex, but sometimes one small example of idiocy opens a window to view the rest of the problem.

everyone loves boobies

As a young child, I was under the impression that when female humans reached adulthood, they were endowed with boobs.  It was a categorical endowment: all boobs were created equal.  I can only assume this came from a lack of fixation on them, or perhaps an inability to adequately compare and contrast different sets (even within my own extended family, there is quite a variety in terms of asset allocation).  I was aware -- at least peripherally -- that women who were overweight were also heftier on top, but I concluded that each had received her intended allotment and then distributed an insulating layer equitably about her entire frame.

The categorial boobs illusion didn't persist into adolescence, but I was disappointed anyway.  My mom claims she's still waiting for hers, or sometimes that her sister stood in line twice and that's why she missed out.  When I was about ten years old, she asked me if I wanted to go shopping for bras, and I was horrified.  If I were to show up at school in a bra, the other kids would think I thought I had boobs!  I was all knees and elbows, and a head taller than 98% of my classmates (no, seriously, I'm not exaggerating at all), and definitely had no need for supportive underwear.  But, wait!  The other girls were starting to wear bras.  Clearly this was some sort of requirement.  I predicted a situation like the one at the choir concert where S & B were talking about shaving legs and she made fun of him for not knowing that girls shave in an upward motion, not a downward motion.  Seriously, who doesn't know that?  Oh, my god, I didn't know that!  Obviously I should've started shaving my legs long ago!  (To this day, I have such fine blonde hair on my legs that no one can tell if I've shaved them or not except in direct sunlight.)  So, clearly, I need to start wearing a bra in case there are things only bra-wearers know about bra-wearing.  Mom brought home some training bras and I started test-driving.  I had very rigid criteria: no part of the bra must be perceivable through or around my shirt, so that no one would suspect that I was wearing one, and therefore conclude that I thought I had boobs.  Spaghetti strap tank tops were definitely out, as were white t-shirts, since I wasn't aware of the nude-colored bra strategy for concealment.  See, there are things only bra-wearers know about bra-wearing!

My mother apparently interpreted my fear of discovery as modesty.  Later in my teenage years -- after I developed something approaching a bustline -- she ruefully remembered my elementary-school chastity.  By that point, I couldn't figure out what was such a big deal about visible bra straps.  I wasn't parading around the "secret" parts of my lingerie, it was just that spaghetti strap tank tops were so very fantastic.  Besides, let's examine the work-arounds: 1) strapless bras: those bitches do not stay put no matter what size bust a girl's sporting, 2) pins: are likely to produce injury, complicate wardrobe changes, and only hide the portion of the strap directly adjacent to the pin, 3) shiny clear plastic straps that actually attract attention to one's effort to hide her functional undergarment from view.

I spent an anxious few years waiting for my boobs to make their appearance.  I even bought a padded bikini top one year, which boosted my poolside confidence but became a spongy dripping mess in the water.  Eventually I realized there are many benefits to being small-busted: sports are less painful, lingerie costs a smaller fortune, cute clothes fit better, archery and billiards shots are more easily executed, and interlocutors maintain better eye contact.  I still, however, sometimes have trouble signalling the bartender, and I'm obligated to store my cell phone and currency in my pocket.  That seems appropriate, anyway, especially given what I hear about cleavage sweat.

Sunday, 9/2/01 11:49 p.m. Chambre Nouvelle

second night here, second night bored & cranky, second night drunk & stoned.  listening to ozzfest bands on cd.  debating whether this living situation will be one i will truly enjoy, or appreciate afterward from a distance, i.e. in retrospect.  as, perhaps, concerts?  many random boys for whom i have no particular concern.  i see a hermit-esque future in my neurological crystal ball.  <-- good description, prime example of how mind-altering substances, used moderately and with proper direction, can produce (or assist in the production of) valuable trains of thought.  other evidence to be presented: 1) paranoia 2) delusions of persecution 3) dulled concentration 4) dedication to self-examination.  my tongue ring hurts.  have not brushed my teeth since "last night" (read: this morning) at bedtime.  everyone else has gone to brian's (the brian somehow affiliated with the basketball team) for whatever reason.  i am listening to the lyrics of this song with intense (efforted) effort and a new perception; pondering my present situation with regard to socialization factors.  drowning pool: bodies.  one -- nothing wrong with me, two -- nothing wrong with me, three -- nothing wrong with me, four -- nothing wrong with me,1) something's got to give, two -- something's got to give, three -- something's got to give, --NOOOOOO let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor -- skin to skin, blood and bone, you're all by yourself but you're not alone, you wanted in and now you're here, but trailed by hate, consumed by fear.  a statement for cliques, gangs, greek houses perhaps?  social anxiety disorder?  clinical depression?  a life lived in secrecy, delusion, and self-doubt?  a facade for the masses?  i wish i could believe there were some believable argument to the benefits of this chemical "enhancement."  sounds like a fucking cult (christian) ceremony or something.  shows how desperately we need to think we are part of some kind of higher order: there's an organized religion at a temp of fervor (they cam in gradations, like politics or milk and chicken eggs, cigarettes) to suit most anyone.  usually conveniently placed within their lives, when they need a sense of devotion and aid the most, whether that be 15 year old girls devoting themselves to Wicca, priests burying homosexual desires, grieving parents who desperately need comforting, etc. etc. etc.

my lungs sound awful and i'm on too much antihistamine.  i guess if i'm going to abuse substances i might as well do all of them to excess.  r says this is typical: j's not drinking, i'm smoking pot and nursing my alcohol, and c isn't around...and r herself is degrading c, playing the coquette, alternately fucking and ignoring c (who has grown the "college beard"), pronouncing my insanity, and reliving her high school life (this time in the form of a video of ----------).  and i, i am dismissing their invitations to go out, and seeking the solitude and seclusion of my chamber.  i seem to grow less and less interested in their activities.  highlighted by frat parties and the boys from ------ last year.  i found myself missing r this afternoon.  i was cranky from lack of sleep and strained tendons as a result of furniture moving yesterday and today -- our furniture is remarkably coordinated.  most of it is mine and therefore available for when and if i decide i want my own place.  this seems an odd idea, possibly to take place far in the future, when i am much more developed -- or at least directed -- an individual than i am now.

as my friends, those who were not acquired through one another as we see in this house, are not inclined to get along well with one another, they do not form these little mobs in my presence.  i would like to think that my multifacetedness requires many different stimulants, but i think it's more that i am self-absorbed and antisocial.  i am too picky about who i befriend.  i dislike acquiring friends through others and avoid commitment to one group of people.  i believe it is part of convincing myself that i am self-sufficient and capable.  what about my passions, what do they indicate?  what are my passions?  i have an obsessive compulsion to overanalyze and deprecate, but i can hardly say that i am passionate about it as it is generally not a particularly beneficial pastime except in that it secures others to me and reiterates my facade [Latin] of sufficiency.  and this devotion, and acceptance of the facade [Latin] is what i really crave.  so there's my friendships/acquaintances/affiliates (alumni?) explained for the jury -- you the reader, being myself or ELSEONE, as the jury.  you are, of course, deliberating over these pages -- or their sum -- aren't you?  to pass some overall judgment of it.  did you like it?  is it realistic?  is it honest, truthfully presented, overt...a box-office seller?  see, society constantly seeks reinforcement, pretenses, preconceptions (preludes?).  we are a community-oriented, COMMUNAL (commune? communion?) species, purportedly.  we need alliances, reinforcements.  we are never enough in ourselves, and THIS is why we have ORGANIZED RELIGIONS!

i appear to be stuck in a repetitive analysis of religion, don't i?  m and s just returned.  most likely l & b are still making the rounds and slutting it up.  j's committed, and r is flamboyant and noncommital -- even if she's supposedly -- outwardly -- committed to mr. college beard.  once again, reinforcement (of adulthood, perhaps virility).  communal, indeed.  insecure, self-conscious, restless and paranoid, more like it.  here i.

it's raining men! hallelujah, it's raining men!

I've just emerged from the ladies' room.  But let me preface the story by admitting that I'm recovering from pee-shyness.  I don't know where it came from, because bodily functions were completely acceptable in my house growing up.  When I started dating, I never used the restroom at my boyfriends' houses.  I'd hold it until my kidneys ached.  My high school boyfriend, whom I dated for two years, was astonished by my capacity.  It was part of my downfall: when I finally caved and excused myself to use the restroom at his house, he made an offhand comment about never having seen me do so, and oh, the shame.  He now knew I had a bladder!

I also never used the restrooms at school, and routinely went from 6:45am to 3:00pm without peeing.  Public restrooms are gross, and cliquey girls hang out in school restrooms, and I really was just far more comfortable waiting until I got home -- well, except for the kidney aches and the strategic sitting positions.  And the whole menarche thing necessitated the occasional ladies' room visit...but by and large, I only peed at home.  Never mind the other thing, which was certainly not an option outside the privacy of my home.  Eventually, this practice led to kidney stones, and I had to give up my urination disorder on pain of white-hot knives to the ureters.

I once dated a guy for who had little sense of propriety.  We only dated for about two weeks, and as such didn't have a lot of time to grow comfortable around each other.  In fact, being around him was fairly uncomfortable in general because he always had to be touching me -- and I mean constantly in possession of my body, holding on to me -- which was why it didn't last.  We started dating because he had this sweatshirt that I totally loved.  I'm fairly certain it was the extent of my attraction to him, because he wasn't very smart or very clean and we didn't have much in common.  He certainly wasn't bothered by stage fright.  We were on the phone one night and the pauses and audible grimaces, combined with the slight echo to his side of the conversation, finally led me to ask what he was doing.  "Taking a dump," he replied, forthrightly.  Oh. My. God.  We definitely did not know each other well enough for that.  We'd never even seen each other naked.  I informed him he could call me back when he was finished with his business and promptly hung up.

Now there's this trend of cell phones in public restrooms, which annoys the living shit out of me.  I'm speaking figuratively, of course, although I am capable of moving my bowels in a public restroom when the need arises if:

1. The restroom is empty, or
2. The restroom is sufficiently noisy, or
3. I'm traveling away from home (because oftentimes convenience and necessity fail to overlap in those circumstances, creating a situation that is far more uncomfortable than an overful bladder) AND have sufficient anonymity from, or stranger-ness to, anyone else who happens to be occupying said restroom.

When folks are yapping on the phone in a public restroom, it makes me want to embarrass the hell out of them with disgusting noises -- real or staged -- and perhaps commentary.  "What am I going to do?! Oh, god, that's never going to look the same again!  Oh, NOOOOOOOOO!!!!"  Another option is singing.  Or just repeatedly hitting the flush lever, because the acoustics of a restroom make it difficult to converse over the sound of a toilet flushing, plus it removes all doubt of location for the person on the other end of the line.

Seriously, what conversation warrants continuation through a bathroom visit?  If it's so important that it really can't wait, you probably shouldn't be relieving yourself while having it.  I mean, there's a distraction aspect to consider.  And if it's just a chat, why don't you demonstrate some common courtesy to the person to whom you're speaking, and not subject him or her to the goings-on of the lavatory?  Just send a text, for Christ's sake.

Kit, I need you!

I used to drive a Ford Focus.  I hated that car.  The first night I had it, my ma and I went up the street to pick up Chinese food during an ice storm, and -- despite learning to drive in Minnesota winter weather and being pretty damn good at it by then -- slid straight through an intersection.  I should have sold it right then, but it was eleven years newer than my previous car and had new-fangled and life-saving features, such as airbags.  (As it turns out, I'd rather have ABS and all-wheel drive, and thus avoid the necessity of airbags.)

That car was a subclinical lemon -- that is, completely untrustworthy and expensive but not certifiable for replacement.  I had to replace the ignition system when it was only four years old, after the third time it stranded me.  Only once was in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming.  At nightfall.  Thank FSM for AAA.  The last time I drove it was to a friend's house to help her clean her new apartment, and I just wasn't terribly shocked, despite the lack of warning symptomology, when it failed to start.  The mechanic reported the engine had cracked.  It was five years old, had only 105K miles.  Don't ever buy the first model year.  Wait until all the wrinkles get ironed out in lawsuits funded by other people.

So I started car-shopping on craigslist.  When you're 25 and childless but fairly poor, car shopping presents some interesting options.  I was really fond of a number of classics, cars that preceded me on this earth by twenty years or more, but they seemed likely to strand me as often as that damned Focus.  I'm not much of a mechanic, and I didn't have a garage or many tools.  Additionally, my driving is conservatively described as "defensive."  I had really missed having a six-cylinder engine.

Lucy

It was my husband-to-be (though I didn't know it at the time) who found my car-to-be: a 1992 Dodge Stealth, DOHC, 222hp, manual transmission, 95K miles.  She was for sale in a fancy schmancy neighborhood in the city.  We went to take her for a spin, and appreciate her womanly hips...and the balls she displayed during acceleration.  (If that sentence strikes you as odd, you're clearly not a car person.)  The owner -- let's call him Mr. Wife Swap -- was selling her because he'd upgraded to a fancy new German car and his two kids didn't fit so well in the alleged 2+2 coupe.  (Nobody fits very well in a 2+2, by the way.)  I was fairly enthralled but terribly nervous; $5000 was a huge amount of money to me.  I told him I was interested but had some other cars to test-drive -- LIES!!! -- and would get back to him.  That night I called Mr. Wife Swap and said I'd take it, would bring him a cashier's check the next day.  I couldn't stand the thought of someone else driving off in my (aging) sports car.

When I showed up to do the transaction, he let me in the house.  It's a pretty ritzy neighborhood and I wasn't surprised by the apparent shoe-removal-at-door policy, but I was surprised by the basket of hospital booties behind the door.  I just object to the sharing of booties.  No floor needs to be so shiny that shared booties should be required.  In fact, I decline.  I will not partake of the booty-sharing.

We sat on the floor to exchange paperwork.  I think he offered me a chair but it I'm fairly comfortable on the floor and didn't mind.  I was curious, however, why the couch was apparently off-limits?  We made some small talk or something and I mentioned that I'd driven my last car out from Minnesota.  He seemed genuinely shocked that I spoke English in full sentences and wasn't morbidly obese, being from the midwest.  Without betraying any cognition that his preconceptions were at all prejudiced, he made it clear to me that he believed everyone in the midwest inbreeds, reads nothing of substance, plays no instruments, carries STDs, and generally presents a drain on society.  Umm, Mr. Wife Swap?  Have you ever been there?  I can't remember if he said he'd been through it or not?  But his experience was fleeting, anyway.  And he's not from the US, so I'm uncertain where he'd developed his well-developed opinions.  I certainly would be reluctant to opine on the regional differences of Great Britain, (just for example), seeing as I've never lived there and only visited once for a short period of time.  It'd be ignorant of me.  Especially if my opinions happened to be bigoted.

The transaction occurred uneventfully, and Mr. Wife Swap had the kindness to draw up two receipts for me, one of which documented full payment of the asking price, and the other documented the sale for the DMV, sans numbers...because the government already made sales tax off the sale of the car, the first time it was sold.  He also provided me with records of all the maintenance and repairs, which I thought was excellent of him.

The next I heard of Mr. Wife Swap, he was swapping wives on TV.  Let me state here that I don't watch the show, but I was reading an article on the internet (because I'm literate, despite my midwestern origins) about a particularly unsavory participant who had specific opinions about midwesterners and their backwardness.  Imagine my astonishment to find it was Mr. Wife Swap!  I keep meaning to watch the episode to see what an ass he made of himself, but I nearly always have better things to do than watch inflammatory reality tv, or at least I like to think so.

So just in case her "celebrity" affiliation status raises her resale value, let me conclude by vouching for the overall health and well-being of my car.  She treats this midwesterner very well, despite her first daddy's misgivings.  But it's getting to be time for me to move on, so all reasonable offers will be considered.  And you should know that she answers to the name of Lucy, just in case you ever get into trouble and need to summon her via your wristwatch.  It can totally be done -- that's also on tv.

i can't steal HIS money, i can't print my OWN money, they want me to WORK for money...why don't i just lay down and DIE?!

I am dismayed that it is only Tuesday.  Despite the fact that I am not a morning person, I dragged myself out of bed yesterday morning and slogged into the office, where I duly sat in my assigned seat and stared at my computer monitor for hours and hours, without the benefit of any work to do to help me bide my time.  A couple of pages came through the fax machine and I responsibly entered them into the database, filed them away, and locked the file cabinet (my boss has developed the unnerving habit of rifling through my desk in my absence).  I may have spent an inordinate amount of time on facebook, various blogs, and other websites, but it was almost certainly entirely due to the lack of work I had.  I even reorganized some terribly disorganized files I inherited from my predecessor.  Such an activity, while it does kill some time and give the appearance of being industrious and work-related, is actually just a waste of time because no one except my predecessor is interested in those files.

Despite all of this responsible adult behavior, I am expected to return today...and tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and maintain the charade of industry.  Periodically, the boss sneaks up behind me so she can read my monitor over my shoulder.  Usually when this happens, it's not displaying work-related material, mostly because I am so absurdly talented and blindingly efficient that all of my work-related activities have been concluded.  However, that doesn't stop her from passing judgment and sending me emails about the necessity of keeping my web-surfing out of the workplace.  Presumably, she's documenting my insubordination somewhere in a file of employee transgressions.  It might cost me my job.  Sometimes I give a shit, since I've been working here for six years and I can't exactly gloss over such a long period of time on my resume.  More often, I feel justified because it's not like I have anything else to do.  Generally speaking, I'm a very conscientious employee, mindful of deadlines and (at least partially) enthusiastic about contributing to projects.  I even generate work for myself.  I've taught myself to use a variety of software in the hope of spawning a pet project to absorb me in the hours assigned me.

But how many hours is it possible to just sit here with nothing to do?  I mean, really.  Have you ever tried to just sit in a chair for an entire work day?  Staring off into space?  Waiting for the phone to ring?  (It does so once or twice, but the resulting conversastions usually last less than five minutes and create about the same length of documentation.)  I've started attending meetings that neither concern nor interest me simply to remove myself from the room.  I like to sit in a corner or with my back to the wall, to recover from the anxiety produced by my boss's tendency to sneak up behind me.  It's good to have a respite.

I used to be grateful to have a job, especially in this "economic downturn."  Unemployment in this state is at 12.5%, last I heard.  Many folks wish they could land a job, any job at all.  I wish my position would be discontinued.  I'm seriously considering suggesting it to my boss's boss.  Worst case scenario, I get laid off?  And I can collect unemployment?  They'll give me money for not working???  Excellent.  This place is destroying my motivation to live.  If I stop breathing, they won't make me sit in front of this monitor.  That sneaky bitch won't appear from nowhere, breathing disapprovingly down my neck, spying on my reading material.  Standing in line at an unemployment office can't possibly be worse than this.  Even waiting tables is starting to look good -- and after the last job I had doing that, I swore I'd become a streetwalker before accepting another food service job.  I can't be grateful for this job anymore.  It makes streetwalking look attractive, daring, exciting.

Since I can't even get an interview elsewhere, though, I have to assume that the market is equally challenging on the street.  Also, I despise wearing skirts and high heels for more than an hour or two.  This is a hopeless situation.

clearly, your arms are just getting shorter

The French have a brilliant term that I wish had an equivalent in English: l'esprit d'escalier.  Literally, it translates as the spirit of the staircase, but it means the witty comebacks you come up with after the fact, like when you've already walked away from the encounter.  I'm nearly never witty under duress, probably because my temper short-circuits my higher intellect...which explains a lot of the trouble/arguments I've had.

I was at the grocery store the other day and there was a man scrutinizing something he'd pulled out of the freezer.  "They tell you your vision starts to go when you get older," he said to me, holding the box at arm's length and squinting at it.  I laughed and offered to help him read it.  He declined, and as I passed, he muttered that he was just trying to see the ingredients, that he was going to have to remember to bring his glasses with him.  "Yeah," I said, "my dad has that same problem."

As soon as I said it, I realized what an undercutting remark it was.  I think I was trying to relate or something, but my comment was more the equivalent of, "Yeah, you're old enough to be my father.  No wonder you can't see for shit."  Oops.  But there's really no recovery from that kind of remark, is there? I could back-pedal all I wanted, but it'd just be acknowledging the undertone, accidental though it may have been.  Instead I just kept walking, and spent the rest of my shopping trip being anxious we'd cross paths again in another aisle, because my tendency is to get over-anxious about things I could've said better.

I got invited to a former college roommate's engagement party by the maid of honor, who knew that I happened to be in town for another event.  When another friend asked to see the ring and the bride-to-be held out her hand, with her fiance looking on, my exclamation was, "Oh my god it's so CUTE!"  Dude bought her a diamond ring while he was laid off from his job and I'm all, oh, look how little and inconsequential it is!  *facepalm*  Fortunately for me, there has been no lasting ill effects -- I was still invited to the wedding -- but I cringe every time I think of it.

Last weekend, I took Dog to the P-A-R-K by myself.  Usually Husband and I go together, but he was busy with school and Dog needed to get out...and so did I, probably. I took the opportunity to call up a friend of mine who's in the midst of a move, because I knew she happened to be driving and had time to talk (for the record, using a cell phone while driving is legal there, and she was in Buttsfuckville, Egypt where there is no traffic).  We chatted as Dog and I walked through the park.  It was a normal-volume conversation and I was watching my sailor tongue because I think swearing in mixed company is tacky.  It's a giant dog park, with upwards of 200 people and their dogs perusing it on the weekends.  We passed this late-middle-aged woman and her two dogs, who were meandering slowly down the path, and she said something to me in passing but I didn't catch it.
"I'm sorry?" I asked, covering the phone with one hand.
"A wilderness walk, and you talking," she said.
I put on a big, toothy smile.  "You're kind of a bitch, aren't you?" I asked, and kept walking.

Okay, so that was an example of the tackiness of cursing in public, yes.  But what the fuck was she thinking?  This is a dog park with paved paths, adjacent to an interstate freeway, in the middle of a city of over a hundred thousand people, and being visited simultaneously by hundreds of people, most of whom are talking.  The fact that I'm talking to my phone is no different -- in fact, there's only one half of the conversation for her to overhear, which is arguably less disruptive to her alleged nature masturbation -- I mean, meditation.  Listen, lady, if you want a wilderness walk, you're in the wrong place.  And while my comment was rude, yours was doubly rude: first you interrupted a conversation I was politely having, and then made a snide comment that was totally out of line.  So go fuck yourself.

I drive my poor Husband nuts with a passive-aggressive tendency that migrated with me out of the midwest: I talk openly about people's violations of social norms and basic consideration...in front of them.  Those people who walk into Target, grab a shopping cart, and stop short in the middle of the entryway to dig their shopping lists out of their cluttered purses?  Yeah.  When we walk past them, I comment to him about how I certainly try to move out of the way of traffic.  It's only directed at the people who are so self-absorbed that they don't care they might be negatively affecting others -- if you dropped your keys, for example, and bent to pick them up, I'd just wait patiently for the retrieval and not say a word.  But you can park your ass to one side or the other of the entryway to look for your shopping list. It's not my fault your handbag is a disaster.

Yes, I know this trash-talking is going to get me into trouble.  It's happened before.  I'm a little surprised that the fistfights I've been in have not been initiated by my smart mouth (but rather by the smart mouths of my friends, whom I feel obligated to back up).  And I'm not bragging about being in fistfights, okay?  I'm just pointing out that I'm aware there can be consequences to my acid tongue.

"Nah, you're not getting older. Clearly, your arms are just getting shorter."

just in case this isn't already the worst day of your life

Dear Ms. Bazelon:

I read with interest your article How Not to Prevent Bullying  this morning, especially the following:

“In the next scene, the mean girls are sitting in a classroom when an announcement comes over the loudspeaker: Jenna has committed suicide. What kind of school would tell kids about such an event in this numbskull way?”

I imagine you meant it as a rhetorical question, since it certainly seems ludicrous, but I have an answer for you: Wayzata High School, Plymouth, Minnesota. I lost my brother to suicide on February 9, 1998, when I was a sophomore in high school. The following morning I was pulled aside at the bell by a teacher, who wanted to advise me that the principal, Dr. Craig Paul, planned to announce my brother’s suicide over the PA system during the morning announcements. I was horrified. My family had spent most of the previous evening dealing with the police, the coroner, and notifying extended family; in short, most of my friends and all of my classmates were unaware of the event. I marched to Dr. Paul’s office and begged him not to make the announcement – my brother did not even attend that school. He replied that other students might need to avail themselves of counseling services, and flatly refused to delay the announcement until I could make it privately to a few close friends. He claimed it was school policy.

I posted the quote above on my facebook status today, with a snide response condemning the princi“pal” for his callous behavior, and I was surprised how many of my classmates remembered it, and thought it terribly inappropriate even when we were fifteen/sixteen years old. I remember he did it again a year or so later, when another student lost his brother to suicide, and I think it traumatized me all over again to relive the experience, and to think that my perspective had done nothing to change Dr. Paul’s.

He has now retired from the school district. My brief Google search today did not produce his contact information, or I would likely have written him instead of you…but I thought you might like to know that – in my experience, at least – the PA system is precisely how suicides are announced at school. And that brought me to my current question: what better way might there be? In this technological age, I’m tempted to suggest an email home, but certainly that wouldn’t reach everyone.

I know that your article was more addressed toward bullying and not suicide prevention, but I’d like to know your thoughts nonetheless. I assume this policy of broadcasting tragedy over the PA is still in place at my old high school, and I’m considering engaging the new principal to see if I can’t get it changed. I also wonder how many other schools operate on the same policy.

Sincerely,

Snatch (umm, that's not how I signed the actual email)

shoulda been a geologist

I had an ultrasound a week ago today to check for gallstones.  I've been having pain under my last ribs on the right side for nearly a year and Dr. Google suggested it might be gallstone-related.  The technicians aren't allowed to share their conclusions on ultrasound pictures, so I've been patiently waiting for my doctor to get around to reviewing them and contacting me.  The clinic is very technological and the tech assured me that the doctor would receive the results that morning.  So, seven days later, I'm feeling really neglected.  At first I was understanding and patient -- after all, she has a lot more patients than just little old me, and besides, my symptoms had subsided (which probably means I passed a gallstone?).  After a few days I was a little miffed.  By today I'm fed up and thinking she obviously doesn't give a shit about me...especially because she hasn't followed up with me on the hives I've had for over a month now with no trigger identified.  I swear I'm not a hypochondriac and I haven't had any medical issues since she became my primary doc, at least three years ago, so it's not like I'm crying wolf here.  So I got fed up and changed to a new doc...which might be the only benefit of the managed health care system my insurance uses.  In the meantime, she's ignoring me, her usually-healthy-but-currently-very-itchy-and-in-pain patient.

I suspect the hives are due to a soy allergy, so I'm treating myself with a soy elimination diet.  Did you know that soy is in FUCKING EVERYTHING?!  Soy lecithin is an emulsifier added to pretty much everything that comes in a box or a bag, in addition to pretty much all sources of chocolate, baked goods, cereal, peanut butter, cheese, and ice cream.  Soy is also added as a source of protein and fiber to the "healthier" prepared food choices, such as, say, oatmeal.  I'm an adequate (read: not talented) cook and perfectly capable of feeding myself, but my sweet tooth refuses to be satisfied by brown rice and vegetables.  Coming up empty-handed after searching my kitchen high and low (and there are some really inaccessible cupboards in which we store our baking ingredients) is immensely disheartening.  I work full-time and tutor kids afterward, husband is in school four days a week in addition to his full-time job -- we just don't have time to cook a full meal from scratch every damn day.  I'm hoping the allergy tests (waiting for them to call me back so I can schedule an appointment for a skin prick panel) will identify something specific -- I guess some people are allergic to soy protein but not to soybean oil?

I'm especially ornery about this because I'm spoiled: I'm generally remarkably healthy.  I recognize that itchiness and pain after eating are somewhat first-world problems.  But I'm a fucking vegetarian with a moderate lifestyle who really tries to take care of herself, and was recently (also!) found to have familial high cholesterol.  I was advised to give up red meat (haven't had any in 15 years) and nuts (can't eat them -- I'm allergic).  So that's a fail.

I know this blog doesn't have a following, but if you're here because of a relevant search and have any experience/advice, I'd love to read it in the comments.

Oh, yeah -- the title of this entry comes from the remarkable ability of my anatomy to make rocks: in addition to these alleged gallstones, I also make piles and piles of kidney stones (even though my doctor assures me that there's no correlation between gallstones and kidney stones).  Clearly I could have been a contender in geology.

80 degrees is booby tassel weather

I'm sitting at my desk at work listening to my coworker scarf down his afternoon snack: microwave popcorn. I know there are varied and righteous opinions surrounding the production of microwave popcorn in an office environment, but I won't address them here and now. I just wish he'd use a damn bowl because the rumpling of paper and rustling of kernels every time he shoves his grimy little fist into the bag to extract a handful is making me crazy. Not to mention that it's 79°F (26°C) in this office and has been for MONTHS despite the fact that it's mild and mid-fifties outside. I'm just as miserable in a chilly office as the stereotypical woman, but doesn't thirty degrees of heating seem excessive for a city that doesn't freeze?

We've called the facility management folks out countless times and they've concluded there's nothing to be done except to bring in fans. Now we have two fans circulating all the time and now it's 79°F and windy, which really doesn't help much.  We have learned, however, that our office was never designed for human occupation.  Three of us are stuck in this windowless hellhole roasting away when it was really just supposed to contain files...super-secret confidential files that are so important they require three humans to guard them.  My job is so stupid.

I went to a bachelorette party on Saturday night -- my first one if you don't count the one the Big Boss threw for my old boss, which, while it did involve lingerie and tequila and took place in a bar, was hardly risqué.  Saturday's party was a burlesque dancing lesson, and it had the potential to be as risqué as desired.  (Let me interrupt myself here to say that I detest dancing, I never go to the clubs, I have at least two left feet and no sense of rhythm whatsoever -- no, really - it's why I learned the flute instead of the drums, which is really kind of a shame because it'd have been so much more fun to date my ex-boyfriend if I could have been the drummer in his band.  So picture me attempting to dance as resembling those doggies that dance with their human owners: precarious balance, no idea what to do with the forelimbs, only as much hip-area motion as is required to ambulate in something approaching a rhythmic fashion.)  The Burlesque Professor, as the instructor called herself, brought feather boas and elbow gloves and pretty fans for all of us, taught us some moves, outlined some strategies, tips, and tricks, and then made us perform for each other at the end of class.  Like, right then and there, I'm supposed to come up with something sexy and beguiling, and I don't have a fucking clue what I'm doing.  It was so. much. fun.  Of course, whatever I came up with couldn't hold a candle to what some of the other girls did (or maybe it could precisely hold a candle without spilling even a drop of wax because I imagine it looks like I have a steel rod shoved three feet up my ass when I try to dance) but let's just say I wasn't the least talented one there, and women can be soooo supportive of each other when they desire (almost as catty as they can be to each other at other times).  I don't know why I'm using "they" to refer to women there because I certainly fit the category but maybe I want to believe I'm above it or something.  Clearly, I'm deluding myself.

The point, however, is that it was fun and silly and witty and sexy and unpretentious all at the same time, and I think everyone had a good time.  At the end of the lesson we all got the opportunity to purchase hand-made booby tassels from the teacher.  They were really cute. :)

Dog

This is Dog. He is our family's social ambassador, as the rest of us (Husband, me, two snakes, and three lizards) are markedly more introverted.
He enjoys long walks on the beach, cheese, sniffing tail, playing tug of war, wrestling, investigating dead things, and swimming, except when the waves are scary.
He does not appreciate grooming, vacuum cleaners, hot weather, being excluded from any meals or snacks, strangers approaching his yard, playing "wheelbarrow" (which is too bad because I thoroughly enjoy it), or long road trips...although he hates to be left behind and generally suffers well through the car portion of any adventures we take.

cars win all ties

Yesterday, it being a holiday, I took Dog to the P-A-R-K. (This being a blog, my being away from Dog, and the fact that Dog cannot read, all together, do not seem to have overcome my habit of spelling out that word to avoid the quivering full-body excitement that speaking that word aloud incites in Dog.) Well, that's not completely honest: Husband had a study partner at the house for the purposes of tackling calculus, and our house is 715 square feet, many of which can seemingly be simultaneously occupied by Dog, especially when a week of rain has kept him cooped up in his dog house; also, he is extremely enthusiastic about visitors. It seemed disrespectful of the study group to lounge on the couch and watch TV while Dog molested the study partner, not to mention the TV could prove distracting (to them). And I had an invitation to join a couple of friends and their puppy at the p-a-r-k. It took all of these factors combined to motivate me to change out of my pajamas and pile Dog in the car, and then we went to the p-a-r-k.

I had printed directions from the internet, but all the park entrance roads were closed and I spent some time being lost, asking for directions, retracing my path, giving up, parking, and hiking up a substantial elevation change on sodden unpaved soil, but we eventually arrived at the dog p-a-r-k. Incidentally, if I have any readers and if said readers happen to be dog owners, how is one expected to navigate such terrain whilst keeping the dog on-leash? The p-a-r-k rules are very specific as to this necessity, but I feel strongly that had I not released my grip on the leash on at least two occasions, Dog and I both would likely have sustained falling-related injuries. His strategy is to speed up -- which works well on the descent as he avoids the problem of inertia that threatens to deliver me to the bottom on my backside, but causes substantial loss of traction on the ascent and threatens anyone within, say, a six-foot radius. Isn't it ironic that the required dog leash is six feet long? Dog is accustomed to being off-leash at our usual dog p-a-r-k and allows me to reclaim his leash after hills...and I don't really see a viable alternative. But I digress.

After overcoming the motivational, navigational, road-closure confrontational, and elevational challenges involved in arriving at the dog p-a-r-k, there were no dogs there. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration: there were three dogs there who left within five minutes of our arrival. We hung out for a while hoping for company and one more showed up, but she was elderly and had no interest in entertaining a giant puppy. So we walked back down to the car and loaded Dog inside.

A minivan had just parked in front of us on the street and its various passengers were gradually disembarking. The kids piled out onto the sidewalk, but Presumed Grandma stood, oblivious, in the middle of the street. It's a downhill slope with a speed limit of 30 mph, and the particular spot in which we were situated followed a more-or-less blind curve...so, basically, she was awaiting road kill status. Presumed Dad made gestures suggesting Presumed Grandma remove herself to the sidewalk. I sat and waited. Finally, Presumed Dad took Presumed Grandma by the arm and placed her on the sidewalk. I began slowly creeping out of my parking space, alternately cranked 180 degrees backward to see approaching traffic descending from the blind curve, and checking back to see that no children or feeble-minded elderly persons had ventured into my path. These maneuvers were repeated multiple times. As you can see, I am a very conscientious driver. When I finally pulled out and cleared the minivan, I punched the accelerator because, well, you know, I was entering traffic and must get up to speed. That's when the biker (bicyclist, not motorcyclist) cursed me out from the other lane.

Clearly, he had been coming down the hill in the right-hand lane, not that I could see him since he came around a blind curve and was hidden by parked cars. Clearly, he had been able to see me pulling out, since he didn't crash into my rear end. Clearly, since his vehicle has no walls, it is in his best interest to be hyperaware of his surroundings. I felt awful, even though it wasn't my fault. But then he cut me off. Seriously, who the fuck cuts off a car on a bicycle? That's worse than standing in the middle of the street, tempting fate. That's deliberately putting oneself in harm's way, apparently to make a point, or to exact some revenge? I don't know. So I hit my brakes, created a reasonable following distance, and we coasted tandem to the bottom of the hill, where there is a stop sign. The high and mighty bicyclist, of course, blew right through the stop sign, just as I was expecting. Since I was stopped at said stop sign, I may have taken the opportunity to remark (or yell down the street) that stop signs also apply to asshole bicyclists.

Lest I offend anyone, please allow me to state for the record that I share the road at every opportunity. I have never once hit a bicyclist or pedestrian -- never even come close -- although I myself was hit by cars three times in college while riding my bicycle. I was riding legally every time, and the drivers broke the law: 1. Didn't look right while turning right, 2. Didn't look behind when pulling out from street parking, 3. I don't know what happened but he hit me from behind which was just ridiculously incompetent. At the same time, as a bicyclist I realize that I am less visible than a car to other drivers, and that (as my junior high track coach phrased it) cars win all ties. If you're a bicyclist on the road, you're a vehicle. You have all the rights of a vehicle, as well as all the responsibilities. You can't expect to be protected by the laws when you don't obey them: traffic laws exist to create a common understanding regarding right-of-way, safe speeds, etc. I know it sucks to lose all that downhill momentum because of a stupid stop sign, and to have to start from zero again. But if you want to play with the big kids out on the road and escape with your various body parts intact, that's what's required. And you lose all credibility when your supercilious ass flies through stop signs after bitching at drivers who are doing their very best to be careful of everyone else.

Here's a link to a video -- it doesn't show the actual accident and everyone was okay, but it resulted from a bicyclist running a stop sign and hitting (not being hit by) a car. Bicyclist runs stop sign, collides with car.

musings: a narrow escape

My best friend texted me this morning because she was laughing over one of her many brushes with extreme bodily injury and wanted to share the joy. That girl gets herself in and out of more scrapes than the average ten people combined. I'd like to be able to blame it all on her drinking, but that -- while it certainly complicates matters -- is an insufficient explanation. I swear scrapes just descend upon her like flies on shit.

Last summer, I got married. It was a super secret affair that masqueraded as a camping trip (okay, it started off as a legitimate camping trip but then we crazy kids got it into our heads to get hitched and start living as legitimately wedded adults instead of merely cohabitating in gleeful non-wedlocked sin). I picked her up from the airport after work and she was already sloshed. Then, my husband-to-be entertained her and himself with drinks while I packed a bag, camping gear, and the car. He knows well her tendency to over-imbibe and tried to take it easy on the pouring, but, true to form, she snatched the bottle from his hand and topped herself off generously. She and I were driving up early to snag an additional site at the campground and spend one night before the rest of the group joined us. By the time we actually departed, I was certain she'd pass out immediately in the car...but, no. Lest you think I'm complaining, I actually very much enjoy DA's intoxicated company. She definitely has a drinking problem, but she is generally not a problem when she drinks -- at least, not when she's with me (it's all the other times that she really gets into trouble). She chatters enthusiastically and enjoys my bad attempts at humor, and she's one of the few people in the world who gets me unfettered because I know she'll always love me, anyway. So I took the responsible driver role, and she took the entertainer role, and the time and road flew past us, giggling and giddy on empty highway. Until she had to pee.

By that time, we were really out in the middle of nowhere, not to mention that the PCH drops off precipitously on the coastal side, leaving a narrow ribbon of pavement and few opportunities to pull over. She was not, she informed me, going to make it to the next town, however far ahead that might be. I managed to find an off-shoot from the main road, which had a couple of houses, and pulled to the side. Since it was past midnight, left my brighted headlights on to assist in the location of an appropriate bathroom. DA toddled drunkenly off onto the shoulder...and promptly disappeared. What the fuck? I had deliberately turned eastward, i.e., away from the precipitous 100-foot drop-off to the rocks and surf; how had this calamity befallen us? I heard her groaning painfully from somewhere, yanked on the e-brake, and vaulted out of the car. Calling to her, I checked my run as I realized that, if I fell off whatever she'd fallen off, no one was likely to find us or hear us calling for help. Sure enough, ten feet off the roadside and conveniently just at the edge of my headlights, the ground dropped off into a concrete drainage ditch ten or twelve feet deep. Full of muddy water. And blackberry vines, full-grown and vicious, with thorns an inch long and populous. And there was no way in hell I could reach DA.

She ascertained that nothing seemed broken, to my immense relief and disbelief, but couldn't figure out how to climb out. "Well," she said, ever the pragmatist, "since I'm down here I'm going to pee." I paced around the lip of the crevasse and discovered that the drop was less high on the far side of the blackberries, which she would have to climb through. If you've ever tried to harvest blackberries, you probably noticed that getting near them usually results in bleeding and pulling stickers out of your flesh. No gardening gloves I've met can prevent it (although they can be helpful in limiting the severity of the resultant puncture wounds). My best friend, though, is a superstar with the world's highest pain tolerance -- just ask her tattoo artists -- and she gamely mounted the monstrous thorny bush and scrambled up the muddy embankment with hardly more than a squeaky, slightly desperate-sounding protest when it snagged her various bits and pieces. In the light of the headlamps, I could see she was soaking wet, muddy, slightly bloody, and shivering. She theorized (and I couldn't help but agree) that it was likely fortunate she was wasted when she fell off the cliff into the brambles, because when you're drunk you don't stiffen: she apparently flopped somewhat gracefully into the drainage ditch, landed on one hip, and sort of rolled off it and spread out the impact. Fresh out the culvert, and she suggested she should strip naked so as to avoid smearing mud all over the interior of my car! For perhaps the only time, I appreciated Lucy's (my car's) aged black leather interior. After giving her (DA, not Lucy) a final once-over, we piled back in, cranked up the heater, and were on our merry way.

It was dark when we arrived at the campground and we set up the tent and went to bed, still giggling over DA's tendency to attract (near) disaster. In the light of day, which was her birthday the cut on her hip looked much more menacing...we eventually had to run to town to pick up some first aid supplies as it started to get infected. But other than needing to wash her clothes, the girl sustained very little damage from her ordeal. We got a lot of mileage out of the story as our friends arrived and we recounted it to each of them, and everyone was equally incredulous that she managed to escape unharmed (for the most part) and with her humor, if not all her dignity, intact. And then we proceeded to have a fabulous weekend with friends camping on the beach, celebrating DA's birthday, and gettin' hitched. There are plans developing to return this year, so I'd better put my flashlight back in the damn car.

afterburner

Thirteen years ago today, my brother died by suicide. It has been a long process to the understanding of the event that I have today, but in many ways it's hard to comprehend how much time has passed. My life now bears little similarity to then, in terms of the people I know, the place I live, the stage of life I'm living. None of the people I will see today has ever met my brother, and it's likely that I won't talk to anyone who knew him. I'm married now, living 2,000 miles across the country, and even the season is different in this part of the world at this time of year (i.e., there is no sign of ice on the ground and flowers are blooming in my front yard). It's a different world.

I called up my mom to share some love, and of course we reminisced and shared some stories and reflections, which demonstrates more than anything else how far we've each come in moving forward: at the time, we could not have had a discussion regarding "why" and I most assuredly could not have told her that I don't disapprove of his taking his own life. Today I can express quite freely my opinion that every person should have control over his or her life, to the point of making a decision to end it. This is not a validation of suicide per se, but rather a recognition of freedom of choice. Only purely selfish motives are involved in determining that another person must continue a life that he or she wishes unequivocally to end, and those are not valid motives. But beyond the rest of our conversation and its indications, the most positive aspect of our chat was The Afterburner.

Afterburner was a flight sim game in the 1980s -- Google tells me that it was actually an arcade game that was later released for various consoles -- but in our house it referred to a laptop-sized console with a joystick. M got it for Christmas one year and played it obsessively. There's a picture of him sprawled out in the hallway on Christmas completely immersed. That hunk of plastic accompanied us on every road trip we took -- and there were quite a few -- despite its terribly awkward dimensions and the constant reminders to put the damn thing on mute because, oh, my god, the sounds it made were soooo annoying, especially with four of us crammed into the car for hours on end. I have never been into video games but I got fairly handy with the thing, too. Eventually he grew out of it, and I have no idea what happened to it. It's more than likely stashed somewhere in my parents' house to this day.

The day we went to the crematorium, it was just the three of us: me, my mom and dad. The hearse had already delivered the casket and it was awaiting our arrival on the roller belt to the crematory oven. We just kind of stood around awkwardly while they started up the super-industrial machinery and turned on the gas. After the desperate prettiness of church flowers and polished funeral home decor, a crematorium is strikingly sterile and unapologetically harsh. After the casket is delivered into the oven, the door was shut and there was nothing more to see, but some odd sense of unfinished witness-bearing persevered and we didn't seem able to leave. The crematory process lasts for hours, and the cremains cool afterward before being removed and proceeding to their eventual "resting place" or whatever you want to call it; there's really no point in hanging out. I don't remember who noticed it, but the control panel contained an Afterburner indicator light, and we all seized upon it. Afterburner! Potentially the most morbid indicator light of the crematory oven, and it was our release. The Afterburner phase marked the end of our responsibility, because it was familiar and recognizable and therefore comforting. My mom reflected that it might be really painful for some people, but for us it has positive connotations, all wrapped up in a long-ago Christmas that somehow summarizes a person we all loved. We must be really fucked up people. I just love that we all saw it the same way.

lemme out -- wait, i'm still alive???

I had a dream last night that a group of girls and I were doing this crazy caving/rock climbing adventure in a tropical area that had formerly been inhabited (by people who were not afraid of heights, obviously, and potentially had prehensile tails) but whose structures and passageways had fallen into a dangerous state of disrepair. To complicate matters, waves of various strength often rolled through the rocky, moss-grown tunnels connecting various parts of the settlements, obligating one to grasp at anything solid and hold one's breath until they passed. There were also raised concrete walkways on one side of the river cliff, and besides being unfinished and marked off with caution tape, they were also crumbling to pieces and had no railings. Even with our belay equipment, which we used exceedingly rarely, all the passages were treacherous. Then there was a portion requiring us to jump off the cliff and land in the water, oh, 200 feet or so below, and swim through the current to the edge of the rocky cavern so we could climb out. The first of our group -- one of the only men -- was drawn under by the current and presumably drowned, which was not encouraging. We found out later that he had indeed drowned and that his spirit was endeavoring to ensure we shared his fate. It was understood that a long time would pass before anyone else came through the passage, so he was taking full advantage of the opportunity to snare some company.

I'm not normally afraid of heights, just warily respectful. But I often experience a disturbingly reduced gravity in my dreams (which sometimes allows me to transition into lucid dreaming, but more often just raises high anxiety and disbelief at the acrobatics required to enact simple ambulation). Dreamgravity encourages falling and does not lessen the impact, but does not provide solid anchoring to the earth...unless the earth in question is slippery, crumbling, and unsteady, in which case I am almost certainly too massive to pass over it unscathed. Soooo...whereas my companions didn't seem to have much difficulty navigating the terrain and exhibited a commensurate amount of confidence, I was pretty much terrified the whole time, and certain I was about to fall to my death.

I'm drawing a parallel to the job market. What seems to take very little effort and create very little risk for others is treacherous and life-sucking in my little dominion. Plus, the ground is crumbling and there are active attempts to drown me. Awesome and encouraging.