-
Donate to FET fund
-
The Groups
It’s a step.
Yesterday morning GM told me that she was worried about me, that I had not been myself since I returned from Boston. Fucking brilliant. I can’t even con my old GM anymore.
But really, when your GM tells you that you are bringing her down it’s a kick in the plaid pants. (her exact words were, “I’d rather sit in my room and read by myself if you are just going to cry on the couch all day long.”) The lady is brutal.
Actually it sort of pissed me off. Why can’t I cry on the couch all day? It’s my fucking right to be weepy if I want to! I just cleaned the entire house (including heavy duty washing of all bed linens) and I have earned my emotional leaking moments. Who made your lunch? huh? The person that spreads the peanut butter gets to have a damn cry!
Sure, I’m tired of crying for no damn reason. It is also exhausting having to shift between phony Cali (the Girl that was trying to play the part of such a dutiful Granddaughter) and real Cali (the bitch crying into a quilt on the couch).
I hate that I feel like I have no control over my emotions at all. They soar from one extreme to another and in between I sink under a wet blanket of ambivalence. Seriously- there is no logic to it. I get irate over stupid things and then the very next nano second I couldn’t give a shit.
A month ago I did all of this research to find a doctor for Mother & GM. They are both on medication and need some one local to treat them or at the very least call in refills on their meds. I managed to find a cool, mostly female, family practice clinic near the beach that would treat both Mother’s MS needs and GM’s geriatric glad bag of medical stuff. As I have been in & out of my RE’s office for so fucking long I didn’t feel like I needed to find myself a doctor in the new town. I didn’t need a doctor, I needed an RE.
So yesterday I got a call from the scheduling nurse at the clinic. She was ever so cheerfully calling to remind me that GM’s & Mother’s appointment is on Monday. I thanked her for the reminder call and then before I could pull it back I found myself saying, “May I just ask you one thing?”
I tried to hush the separate conversation going on in my head. You know the one playing on repeat in my mind, “If it works I need it. If it doesn’t work I don’t need it & I am a fucktard for even trying it.” “It”, by the way, was an appointment for ME to see the doctor. Of course I was setting myself up for it not to work. I was only going to make an appointment if I could get in on Monday as well. That is the only way I was going to let it happen.
You see I know I need to see a doctor. I know I need to have someone with a degree declare me whatever it is I am & then give me something to make it better. (yes, I am still rather Pollyanna when it comes to medication. Yes I will think of them as magic happy pills. Yes I know they will take a long time to work.)
However, I also really wanted this to be impossible. As in “no, there is no appointment available until 2007″. That way I could use it as fodder to fuel my “the world is crumbling around me” monologue (which, by the way, is so worthy of a Tony). Only 5% of me really wants to see the doctor (let’s forget about the 99% of me that needs to see one.) the rest of me wants to have something to bitch about. Something specific. I can say I am upset because I can’t see a doctor for a month and then people will understand me. They will see how justified I am in my upsetedness.
So clearly I was a little pissed when the scheduling nurse, the very same nurse that wouldn’t shut up about how cool my name is a month ago when I originally made the appointments, made it a personal mini mission to fit me in on Monday. She said she would have to move someone around & I told her not to bother. & the bitch wouldn’t listen to me. What kind of clinic is this place? She was being so damn nice and helpful and I didn’t want that. I wanted her to be mean and snappy and pissy and rude and impossible. It would have made my monologue so much better if I had an evil nurse to complain about too.
Fucking nice people.
Now I have an appointment on Monday.
Is this where I am supposed to feel relieved? Is now when my shoulders will relax and my melancholy will waft away? Instead I feel like a stupid person for making an appointment. & if I didn’t have to take GM on Monday I can see how I would convince myself to cancel it. That is what I do. I am very, very good at canceling when I freak out. Don’t freak out. Don’t freak out.
Oh, and tomorrow is December. And right now the neighbors to my east and the neighbors to the west both have trucks in front of their houses. Unloading began thirty minutes ago. Giant santas. Giant penguins with scarfs. Giant candy canes. Giant snowmen.
It’s beginning to look a lot like I will loose it.
Protected: oh don’t be surprised
I don’t know why any of you would want to read the workings of my mind when I feel so out of sorts, but because I would feel even more shitteous if one more person e-mails me & tells me to keep blogging… here you go. (& don’t even pretend to be surprised that my self imposed blog hiatus lasted only a day. Remember this is the girl that could only detox for 48 hours.)
This is the cleaned up stream of conscious of my day. It isn’t worth reading at all and I urge you to move along and not watch my train as it begins to wreck. However some of you do seem to feel invested in all things me- butt pee and all- so I guess I shouldn’t spare you my most unflattering moments. Besides, now that so many of you know me outside of a computer monitor I suppose there is no need to keep up the charade of optimism. The following started out as an e-mail to a friend, then I realized it would have been the worst e-mail EVER. Well maybe the worst e-mail ever would be something more like, “You suck!”, but having a friend some hundred miles away e-mail you a discombobulated vomituous diatribe (is diatribe what I mean?) is pretty awful as well. So to the friend that no longer has the sole burden of having me in her in-box: you are welcome.
I will repeat that the following is dumb, lame, stupid, not worth your time and will annoy you. In the scheme of the world my problems and my bad mood are nothing. There. I’m also no longer linear. You’ve been warned. And really, you should just spare yourself.
Hey __________. Thanks for the e-mail asking how I am. Are you sure you want to know? Some people ask and all they want to hear is “fine”. I have a feeling if I said anything but the truth you would be offended. So here it goes. I am not fine. I am maybe 28 degrees below “fine”. I am in the basement with the roaches and evil furnace and fine is in the penthouse drinking a mojito.
Getting out of bed this morning was torture. If Talula had not decided to take a bath on my bladder I might have been able to position my hips in such a way that the pain of having to pee would subside enough to give me at least 30 more minutes of bed wallowing. Bed wallowing is my new morning thing. It is the only thing I do well now. I used to be able to fry an egg really well, but last weekend I started burning them. So now it is just bed wallowing. (defined as being wide awake in bed and starting to find things about yourself to hate before you even look to see what time it is)
I could smell the garlic from the toast I had for dinner last night in my pee. It might not be such a polite thing to share- that I can discern certain food odors in my piss, but you wanted sharing…Years ago I read an article in a science magazine about a woman that had urine that smelled like maple syrup. It ended up being the key to diagnosing her with some out of this world random disease. Ever since then I have been waiting for my pee to smell like maple syrup so that I could run to the emergency room and look like a genius for diagnosing myself. Only now I can no longer remember what it was the woman was sick with.
Talula decided to use her litter box while I was using mine. If I crane my neck I can see directly into her cat litter igloo. I am amazed at how creative she is with her shit. My Mother’s cats just take a crap and leave it there. Talula spends the time delicately rolling her turds until they are something like turd sushi rolled in lavender scented clumping cat litter. I am quite proud of her artistic abilities. Part of me wonders if she is keyed into my meloncholy. Maybe her cat shit arts and crafts is her way of trying to perk me up. If she really wanted to wow me she should try juggling. Just saying.
My brain feels empty this morning. Even as I run through the list of daily things I have to do, I feel no emotion. Usually there is satisfaction to completing my list. Or at the very least there is a running monologue of something. Now it is just going through the motions.
Put out GM’s pills. Clean GM’s bathroom. Start load of laundry. Put away dishes from dishwasher. Print out crossword puzzles from 3 different on-line newspapers. Feed the dog. Walk the dog. Clean up dog shit. Make coffee. Read the paper.
(but not really. I really only look at the pictures now. Yesterday there was a story about a young girl from Haiti that had a tumor on her face. It had enlarged so much that her face looked like a cartoon sort of hippopotamus. I found myself thinking, “If I had a child that looked like this one I would still be thrilled to have a child.” I began a mental list of all of the things that I would sacrifice in a child. The list included things such as missing limbs and extra genitalia. The list is actually quite long, but it feels mean to fantasize about an imaginary kid with so many things wrong with it. Right? )
I sit in the den watching CNN until I hear GM waking up. I must now harness all energy I have to present a happy and adoring face to her. I walk her to the bathroom as her balance is horrible in the morning. I wait for her to flush & then I help her off of the toilet. I supervise her as she takes her pills. Every morning she asks me what each pill is and I make up stupid things. “That pill is to make sure your toes don’t fall off.” “That pill is to keep your brown eyes brown.” When she gets to the biggest pill, the one that is the most difficult to swallow I have to say, “that is for your memory.” She then takes the pill as if her life depends on it. & it does.
I walk GM back to her room and begin to sweat. I have a personal heater in her room that keeps her thin skin warm at night. It makes being in her room, with my fatness and gut rolls, unbearable. But I have begun telling myself that I deserve this sort of uncomfortableness. That somehow i have earned this fifteen minutes of suffering. I even think that if I suffer more that THEN I will start to have good things happen to me. There is an art to martyrdom and I am mastering it.
I help GM get dressed and then stand her up. She is now able to walk on her own- at least back to the bathroom. She will spend twenty minutes in the bathroom and I am never sure what it is she does in there. I think she spends time on her hair and sometimes she comes out with a full face of make up. Mostly she just opens the draws and looks at what is inside.
I find myself thinking how lucky GM is. Sure she has been through some rough times, but she has found love. She had three children that adored her and only one of them turned out to be an asshole. She ended up with four grandchildren. Only one of them ended up a criminal. Another one would love her so much that she would take care of her when she was at her most vulnerable. I shudder at the duality of my life. That I have this love for this woman and at the same time I am so envious of the life she got to have. A life that I fear that I will never have.
We sit in the den drinking our coffee and working the crossword puzzles. She does them out-loud and sometimes I want to yell at her to shut the fuck up. She also cheats. I see her when I get up to reheat my coffee. She leans over so far that I am afraid that she will fall, but somehow she keeps her balance and is able to look at the answers on my crossword puzzle. I find this cheating endearing and sometimes, when I know that she is having a hard time with the puzzle I will purposefully get up and leave my answers angled towards her.
Lunch is always a negotiation. I try to get her to eat at least half a sandwich and a nutria-shake. (I call them chocolate milks). GM has a thing about halves. No matter what I put in front of her she will eat half. So if I want her to eat half a sandwich I have to give her a whole one. This becomes a problem when she specifically asks for a half a sandwich & I make her a whole one. She then feels that I am trying to boss her and in order to punish me she will refuse to eat anything. This happens about twice a week. An hour later I can usually get her to eat a large bowl of ice cream. It is exhausting to have so much tending to do. A part of me thinks that the meal time fights are sport for GM. It’s also a way for her to assert some control in her life.
GM asks me about “our baby Julia” about three times a day. She wonders what the baby will look like. She asks if she can hold the baby. She reminds me of stories that we must share with the baby. When she does this I feel like she is taking a chopstick and shoving it up through my girl parts and right to my heart. I regret that I ever told her about my dream. I would trade that great day with her gladly if I could get her to forget about me having a baby. I have mentioned to her that I don’t want to jinx anything and that maybe we shouldn’t talk about it. Mother has even pulled GM aside and said that she shouldn’t ask me about the baby anymore. But hey, have I mentioned that GM has Alzheimer’s? This is the lady that I had to remind of her husband’s death well over a month after we had buried him. Again I feel like it is my penance for hoping. In exchange for so foolishly believing that I ‘deserved’ a baby I am now stuck with an 85 year old woman asking me about aforementioned baby ad finitum. It is the sort of hell that is on the same parallel as living with R@in Man or a child that is always asking if we are there yet. No. We are NOT there yet and we may never get there and don’t make me pull this car over because I will.
Someone recently asked me if within this depression I ever wanted to hurt myself. I think the line of thought was that if I wanted to DO something TO myself that meant I was in a bad, bad place. (as opposed to the sort of bland blah that I am wallowing in) Here is the truth: do I want to hurt myself? No. Do I feel like I am already hurt? Yes. Would I allow myself to hurt more if I felt like I would be rewarded? Yes. Do I feel stupid for feeling like I am in quicksand? Yes. Do I think that I should get over it and stop complaining? Yes. Will I? not yet. I’ve only just begun.
I have two things in place that keep me on my hamster wheel. For starters, I know that no one can take care of GM as well as I can. It doesn’t mean that I gladly take care of her, but I am resolved to do it. I also would never leave Talula. I do have morose fantasies of what I would do if there was some freak accident where both Talula & GM were to pass away. Most of the fantasies simply involve me getting into a car and driving far, far away. Not exactly the sort of thing that is motivating.
Someone else close to me implied that GM was actually the baby that I have been praying for. Um. I suppose that is one way of looking at it. But only in a twisted Oedipus sort of way. You know, like those “My Husband is my Father” notions. I guess GM could be my child, but she isn’t. She is child-like, but I did not raise her. Sure I ‘get to’ clean her ass sometimes and I prepare her food. I keep her away from harm and I give her unconditional love. It has given me a glimpse of what motherhood might be like. But she is my Grandmother, nothing more. That is enough. GM doesn’t fit into a onesie and you can’t make her.
You know what else gets me really fucking sad? Television. Commercials specifically. I can no longer stomach watching a bunch of people sit down to a meal. I can’t deal. I also can’t stand all of the ads telling me to buy gifts for people. First off I have no money. And second off I have no desire to shop. None. The very idea of being in a mall with normal people just going about their business…I also can’t stand that I hate people now. People that are happy and celebrating and jovial. How come they get to have that feeling? What did they do to earn it? Why don’t I have any of that?
About twice a month my aunt will call me. It is always the same, generic, sort of call. She asks me what I am doing. I tell her whatever mundane thing I am in the middle of & then she exclaims, “oh fun. You must be having so much fun!” She asks how GM is doing. “Fine,” I tell her. Because this isn’t the time & place to let her know that when I tell GM that Aunt has called GM now replies, “who?” Then aunt asks me if I am getting to meet all kinds of people. Um. No. But I buck up and say something stupid like, “Oh Florida is nice.” I do this as I am aware of the contest.
If I admit that I am unhappy or that I think the move was a mistake then Uncle & his team get a point. I’m not really cheating at the game. The truth is that GM is very happy here. She feels so unburdened by not having to know where the shops are or being forced to attend D*AR meetings or church socials. She has no pressure to remember a neighbor’s name. GM is doing pretty great in that regard. As for me, well I feel like shit. Not that anybody’s asking.
Aunt e-mails me photos from her “oh it was so simple” Thanksgiving. Twenty photos of Uncle, Aunt and Cousin out at Aunt’s family farm playing football with a bazillion people in Aunt’s family. There are photos from hay rides & large tables set for dinner. There is even a kiddy table. There are photos of cousin and his cousins doing art projects and photos of pies warming in the oven. & I think, “simple”? Simple was Mother, GM’s & my thanksgiving. Simple is splitting a can of green beans 3 ways and eating macaroni and cheese. Simple is watching the Macy’s parade by your self in the den and crying at the site of Super Grover and convincing yourself that the dreariness of your mood is what deflated the balloon and made Super Grover look so sad.
My cousin is lucky. He will grow up with a table full of Aunts and Uncles, cousins his own age and a myriad of family homes to travel to for the holidays. I am envious. My family has become the crumb of a gingerbread man- what is left after all of the major limbs have been bitten off. It was such a fragile gingerbread man to begin with, only having half a body. Gone went the left arm when my Uncle K died. Gone went the head when my Grandfather died. Gone went the left leg when Uncle L became a motherfucker. Now all that is left is the middle bit. The guts. The bit that you toss to your dog.
This afternoon GM leaned over and tapped her head against my head. It was a really random gesture of affection. (I think.) She uses so much hair spray each morning that her hair was still sticky with the aqua-net. So when she butted heads with my head at the temple our hair stuck together. She found it very delightful and amusing. I immediately went to the metaphor. Here I am, stuck, and not amused. In order to free ourselves I had to decide which way to pull. If I pulled back I would pull at GM’s hair and hurt her. If I pulled forward and down I would be only pulling my hair. Only I would have the pain of hair being yanked from the root. When I pulled my head back I thought, “If I do this quickly I probably won’t feel a thing.” But then I realized that I needed to feel the yank as it might snap me out of my funk. That didn’t work. It didn’t hurt at all. It felt like hair being pulled out. & again I found myself thinking something like, “I would pull out every single hair from my head if it would get me a baby.” I would be bald, but I would be a Mother. I would wear the scarfs that my great grandmother gave me. The silk scarves with hand painted flowers and nautical designs. I would be Jackie O. Mother.
I got a brand new issue of fit pregnancy in the mail today. That’s a fun thing to get when you are depressed. It took me forever to get them to stop sending me the magazine in bama and now, for some reason, it has found its way to my florida mail box. I am being stalked by a glossy magazine with perky pregnant people posing. Pulsing pituitaries! My gut instinct was to toss the magazine into the kitchen trash. Really let it marinate and mingle with my coffee grinds, egg shells and other offensive mail (like the requests for money that GM keeps getting from a certain political party that can bite me). For whatever reason I couldn’t throw it out. I shoved the magazine behind the phone books as if I would some day come back to it. As if it was some sort of secret porn or fetish magazine. I am itchy just knowing that it is downstairs waiting to stab me with emotions all over again.
I sold my first item on eb@y. Yay me. But because I am a fucking idiot I didn’t do any research when it came to pricing the shipping. So I basically just paid some woman in Arizona to take a cookie jar off of my hands. In the state I am in it is hard to not bang my head on the steering wheel over shit like that.
Have I mentioned that I will be 31 in a few weeks? Have I mentioned that my neighborhood has already exploded in holiday cheer? Do you want to hear how my face has been broken out in this bizarre sort of acne rash for nearly a month? Did you happen to notice that it has been nearly 80 degrees in Florida?
I’m guessing it may be a while before you ask how I am again. I’m the worst version of myself at the moment. Why you read this far is beyond me.
Mini (psychotic) break
I am going to be going on a blog hiatus for _____. This walking depression isn’t leaving me and I can’t deal with how it is making me feel. Not sure if there are phases with this sort of thing, but I am on the step that makes you cry for no reason. (just coming out of the phase that makes you not want to get out of bed and brush your teeth…)
Friday I watched a movie with Mother & GM. It was just a random movie, nothing too special about it. About thirty minutes into the film a little girl is being tucked into bed & she reaches up to hug her Mother and exclaims, “I love you, Mommy.” & I lost it. I started wailing so much that we had to turn the movie off and I had to be sent to my room as I was scaring GM.
I cried for the rest of Saturday with this sort of drone voice in the back of my head saying, You will never hear the phrase “I love you, Mommy.”
There are these massive gaping holes in my heart and I am at a loss for what to do about it. Each try (all 14 of them), each invasive procedure, each surgery, each time I let myself hope and pray. In its place are empty spaces and now I am falling apart.
I feel my faith slipping away and all of that mushy Pollyanna shit that I am usually good for has left me. I can’t deal with all of the holiday shit that is in my face. I don’t want to get happy about the birth of anyBODY, much less some religious person, who may or not be responsible for the Universe & therefore is the reason I don’t have my own baby. You following me?
See? I am a wreck. I walk by women with strollers full of babies & I hate them. Not the sort of drivel one wants to read. I get it.
I’ll be thinking of you all & wishing you well. Just think of me as that bitch that ruins all of the statistics for everyone else.
The white snake.
I’ve been doing a LOT of writing this week. Nothing that I will share here as most of it is of the, “why are things so fucking shitty all of the damn fucking time?” genre (odd that wasn’t a genre option at NaNo…but I digress) I’ve also been getting some good e-mails from friends. Don’t you love it when your friends care enough to send you, “GET HELP NOW!” notes? I do. Because I need it. I am a bitcher & complainer but seldom a doer when it comes to my own well-being. So thank you for all of the e-mails (especially the ones with forwards from crazy people- those are always good to snap out of your own problems), voice-mails and text messaging.
Last night I picked up a book that I have had since GM was diagnosed, The Loss of Self. It was on a dense shelf of other Alzheimer’s books that were all well read and book marked or with entire chapters dog eared. The sad thing was this book was virtually brand new. The one book that I had on how to take care of the care giver & I hadn’t even cracked the spine. oops.
I spent an hour or so thumbing through the book and the more I read the more I realized that what I have been going through is normal. This is kind of huge for me. Growing up with a manic Mother and now taking care of GM has had me straddling two generations of crazy. I always sort of prided myself on being the only person in my family NOT on antidepressants. It’s a stupid and ridiculous form of snobbery, but I had some fucked up pride in not having to take a blue or yellow pill every morning.
I’m figuring out the best way to get some help. My insurance won’t cover any more therapy visits this year and I don’t yet have a primary care physician. I’m thinking about calling my old doctor in ‘bama. I think a part of me is hoping that he will send me some magic pills in the mail, but I am guessing it doesn’t work that way…
Last night I had a dream that can best be described as unusual. I was in my bedroom, only it didn’t look like my bedroom now. It actually looked more like my bedroom if I had won a contest from Architectural Digest. Nice that I upgraded my bedding in my sleep. In my dream I was
asleep but awoke to discover that there was a medium sized white snake in the bed with me (& spare me the phalic interpretations). I sat up to look at the snake and assumed it was dead. Not once did it scare me, but I was more annoyed that I would have to ultimately get rid of it. I got up and picked up the snake and it began to move. It coiled up inside the palm of my hand and radiated warmth. I took the white snake to my balcony (see, Architectural Digest was very good to me!) and threw the animal up into the air. It seemed to have vanished but then I realized that it turned to snow. Snow is my number one favorite weather situation and I woke up feeling happy.
Now here is where it gets interesting. This morning, as I was downloading the crossword puzzle from the local newspaper, I saw this article: Snow in Florida
I’m not going to address my euphoria over my new psychic powers (just in time for me to be a guest star on NBC’s Heroes!!), but people!! There. Was. S N O W. in Florida.
I’m just worried that the Universe fucked up my holiday wish list. I want money for an IVF, and THEN I want snow.
Just Checking…
And if there was a fight…
The shower scene.
I realized this morning that I had not washed my hair on over a week. A full on, seven days. For whatever reason I just wasn’t motivated to do it. I didn’t care. I couldn’t muster up the energy for it. Of course as soon as I realized it I felt gross and nasty and made myself get out of my warm bed to do something about it.
Once I was in the shower and in between the steps rinse and repeat I began to sob. I was positioned directly under the hot stream of water and I just had this image of the heat of the water melting my heart.
It was then that I realized that I have been in walking depression. I don’t know if that is a real term or not, but the way I think of it is that I have been walking around, going about my business & unaware of a hovering, dark cloud of funk inside of me.
I should have noticed it when it became harder & harder to get out of bed. I usually spring up around 6:30am and get going on all of my morning chores. As much as I hate to admit it (as it seems so very uncool) I have evolved into a morning person. This most likely stems from the fact that nobody in my house is awake in the early hours & I can pretend that I am just living a life for me.
Now I struggle to be dressed by nine. I find myself putting on the same pair of pants and the same shoes (ok, and sometimes the same shirt) every day. I really can’t be bothered with my appearance. I haven’t worn make up or cared about it in over a week.
In the shower I wept as if somebody had cut me. Heaving, gross sobs - the kind that bring up the taste of last night’s dinner. What kills me is that I have no specific reason for this walking depression. It is like a stew of so many ingredients. A little bouillon of generic sadness as the base. Then add resentment, a heaping dose of jealousy, a tablespoon of regrets, at least a cup of body issues, a sprig of fear, a dash of anxiety, and a slab of melting baby dreams. This has been simmering in my heart for longer than a week, but for whatever reason it has started to seep out and flavor the rest of my being. And just in time for the holiday/birthday season. Yum!
I don’t think there is a solution. I don’t imagine that there exists in the world a remedy for walking depression. It’s like this private quicksand that I will have to struggle daily to pull myself out of.
Just. one. word.
This is a suggested Saturday post by my friend Sherry. This is way better than my own attempt at a meme. You can steal this one too.
You.
Can.
Only.
Type.
One.
Word.
No.
Explanations.
Not as easy as you might think…
1. Yourself: expository
2. Your boyfriend/girlfriend: lacking
3. Your hair: tangerine
4. Your mother/stepmother: nutty
5. Your dog: herpetologist
6. Your favorite item: correspondence
7. Your dream last night: eccentric
8. Your favorite drink: coffee
9. Your dream car: wagon
10. The room you are in: cookery
12. Your fear: barren
13. What you want to be in 10 years: established
14. Who you hung out with last night: e-mail
15. What you’re not: diminutive
16. Muffin: bagel
17: One of your wish list items: IVF
18: Time: morning
19. The last thing you did: newspaper
20. What you are wearing: flannel
21. Your favorite weather: snowfall
22. Your favorite book: Salinger’s
23. The last thing you ate: folic
24. Your life: paused
25. Your mood: inconsistent
26. Your best friend(S): remote
27. What are you thinking about right now? sex
28. Your car: Grandmother’s
29. What are you doing at the moment?: contemplation
30. Your summer: tropic
31. Your relationship status: gettable
32. What is on your TV?: dust
33. What is the weather like?: pleasant
34. When is the last time you laughed?: recently
I do not think that means what you think it means. (& Photo Friday!)
Yesterday GM & I had a really good day with each other. (Thank fucking gawd as tuesday and wednesday were tough, aggressive, combative days. Never easy. Always emotional.)
It could have been awful as GM’s hairdresser, K, had asked us to come in on Thursday as K’s Friday schedule was becoming too hectic for her to give proper attention to GM. Love her reason, but hate the change in the routine. GM has had her hair done on Friday’s for well over a decade…but I digress. GM seemed genuinely ok with the day change. Whether or not I can convince her to go next week on a Wednesday will be a battle for another day.
Did I tell you about how we had to change hair dressers as the first salon we went to for three weeks GM found too “old”. The lady likes to be special & doted on and when she was the same age as everyone else nobody gave her extra attention. So now we go to a hip and happening salon where she is certainly one of the oldest clients. It makes so much sense that she wanted to change things up. This new place is vibrant and alive - a drastic difference from the last place where everyone falls asleep under the dryer and farts away.
Anyhow yesterday was a perm day (GM gets one every three months) and as this was her first perm in Florida I wanted to make sure she was settled for the two hour extravaganza.
While we were waiting on the comfy couch GM begins to ask me what we should do for Mother’s birthday. (hurrah that she remembered a birthday!) I suggested that she treat Mother to something fun at the salon and handed GM a list of all of the services fancy hair and spa place offers. GM looked over the long list and then exclaimed, “Oh! This sounds exotic!” and pointed to a service towards the bottom of the page.
“Do you think they will mix her a drink?” GM continues. I, on the other hand, am already glowing scarlet. I know I will have to explain that “Brazilian” does not mean what she thinks it means. Seriously, having to say the words “pub!c hair” to your GM? Only funny in retrospect.
Of course by the time I had come back to collect GM (two hours of free time for me!) she was the most popular anecdote in the place. Apparently she had told EVERYONE that she wanted to buy her daughter a Brazilian because she thought it was a cocktail. Having an 85 year old lady giggle over downstairs waxing had to have made quite a few people’s day.
Now, on to photo friday! E is for Eb@y. At some point today I will be embarking on my first attempt to sell something. I’m oddly nervous about fucking it up somehow.
Closed Caption Connoiseur
I have mentioned before that I have difficulty with my hearing. Usually I can start the day with what you may call normal hearing, but by the time the sun sets I am straining to make out your typical inside voice. Luckily GM is a hard of hearing gal as well so we crack each other up yelling out pleasantries and Jeopardy answers.
One of my bigger hurdles is dealing with television programs with shitty closed captioning. Sometimes the misspelling and lameness of the caption server can completely distract me from the program itself. This was never more apparent than a few months ago when I watched VH-1’s World Series of Pop Culture with some friends. I am quite used to being teased for having old lady hearing, but when your friends are over reading the craptastic captioning it can get hilarious. Whoever was in charge with the captioning for this program was just plain crazy. “King of Pop” became “ming of poop”…ok, I can’t remember what the exact infractions were, but trust me, they were that bad.
Some captioning services actually sensor for you. For instance in a recent episode of the show Bones the word “bastard” was replaced with “…”. I just imagine this meek and shy plain Jane feeling mighty smug at sparing the hearing impaired with what she deemed as bad language.
Other stations have overly enthusiastic captioning. Every single sound is spelled out: “door opens” is quickly followed by “door closes”. The worst is when they type “footsteps” and then follow with some random descriptive word such as “scary” or “ominous”. I get that those specifics are for the true hearing impaired, but it does seem like too much.
Since I am bitching about some of the bad services I should point out that there is a program that has the BEST and dare I say, poetic, closed captioning I have ever seen. House. If you don’t watch this program already you should. It kicks ass.
If you already watch the show and are looking for a new way to enjoy it try turning on your closed captioning. Points are given for the accuracy and speed of the captioning, but the beauty is how they describe the music sequences. Here are the descriptions from this week’s episode:
Pensive Music
Sad Music
Dramatic Music
Even though I can hear the transitions, there is something so profound about seeing the words “pensive music” on the screen.
(By the way, I tried to watch this new show the other night called 3 lbs. It is CBS’s version of House. I lasted five minutes before switching the channel. Everything about it is a rip off: the snarky and emotionally unavailable doctor, his staff of eager to please residents, even the way the cases are presented. Skip it.)
two announcements & one question
Announcements:
1) A new forum has been set up to discuss and support each other on food issues. To find the forum go to rainbow conceptions and go to the Forum index or community listings. At the bottom of the index is the new board for weight/food discussions. In order to read or post you must become a member. This is to protect the safety of the members of the site. Rainbow conceptions was conceived (ha!) for GLBT families, but they have graciously put up with my straight, single girlness and have set aside this little space for those of us with food issues to connect. All with crazy fucked up emotional eating anxiety are welcome- regardless of your sexual orientation. Thanksgiving is right around the corner and I am already stressing.
2) Someone has put an offer on the bama house. (spit, spit) It is WAY below the asking price and there is some back and forth going on. If it sells we will be lucky to break even. This means no bonus IVF cash as I had been (grumble, grumble) promised by a certain member of my family. But it would mean that we wouldn’t be paying both a mortgage AND rent. So it’s a start. Please send lots of BUY CALI’S HOUSE energy down south.
Question:
Have any of you guys sold anything on eb@y? I have these rare Holiday dishes that I want to sell and I figured now is the time to do it. How hard is it? Do you always set a reserve? How do you determine shipping costs?
-
Great Hosting By:
